So, we can get started now. So thank you everyone for joining us today. And the COVID-19 pandemic has been raging on for the better part of a year now. And while recent announcements point to a vaccine coming out soon, there isn't really a clear end in sight yet. And pretty much every part of our society has been impacted by the pandemic from a day to day lives to all of our political processes. These changes have come under a lot of scrutiny over the past couple months, but a subject that hasn't really been explored as significantly is the effect of the pandemic on peace building. And given the importance of peace building initiatives, not completely understanding the effect the pandemic is having on them can have pretty dramatic consequences. So here to speak on the effects of COVID-19 on peace building in Nigeria, allies is grateful and honored to host allies alumni Miss Britt Sloan, an independent consultant on conflict resolution and peace building, and her former colleague, Miss Sharon Obogu, a program officer with the Marine Corps. So either of you would like to get started. Thank you so much for that lovely introduction and I'm so pleased to be here and rejoin the allies family and IGL family. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience and hope all of you despite the distance are still finding ways to build those bridges and transcend those borders so thank you so much for for having us. And as Nitya mentioned, I am a former program manager with with Mercy Corps in northeast Nigeria. I'm currently an independent peace building and conflict management consultant based in Erbil so it is very much evening here. I'd like to give Sharon the floor to introduce herself for her just a moment as well before we turn to the slides. Alright, hi everyone. My name is Sharon Obogu. I am the program officer for the Northeast conflict management and stabilization I work for Mercy Corps, and focusing in the north eastern states of Nigeria precisely bonus days. So I'm excited to be here to speak on the topic peace building in a pandemic. Excellent. Thanks so much and we can flip to the first slide. Um, so as Nitya so rightly said over the past year, the coven 19 pandemic has affected nearly every country and territory on the globe. And while the virus may not be able to distinguish between people of different nationalities, ethnicities, ages, genders, political stripes, the way that the pandemic interacts with different societies is indeed different. And that relationship is particularly fraught in context that are affected by violence and instability due to some of the underlying root causes of that fragility. And so my former colleagues at Mercy Corps Lisa inks and Adam Lichen held developed this model that you see here to map out some of those relationships demonstrating not only how coven affects peace, but also how violence and instability affect coven. And when we're talking about coven 19 we mean not just the virus, but also some of the containment and mitigation measures that government states around the world put into place can actually reinforce violence and instability. And so I'll just briefly present the five different pathways that we see here and then we'll explore them a little bit more in depth within the specific case study of Northeast Nigeria. So my colleagues Lisa and Adam had posited that coven 19 and those containment measures can have a negative effect on proliferation of dis and misinformation, increasing scarcity and economic competition fraying social cohesion and enabling armed groups to fill the void. One that we're going to focus on in particular today is the deteriorating how coven can contribute to deteriorating state society relations, and in particular, limited the limited legitimacy of government and limited capacity of government to fulfill their duties, and the exclusion and marginalization of in particular minority groups within a society and the weak civic engagement of the many of those same groups in a participatory governance process. And so, while there is an impulse among some donors and policy communities to shift funding towards public health interventions. This comes at the expense of peace building and governance. In the complex world, these seemingly distinct sectors are intrinsically linked. And so social divisions and broken social comp contracts actually indeed the effective implementation of public health responses. Just as the pandemic and botched mitigation measures and responses to the pandemic can actually undermine long term efforts for peace, and good governance and stability. And so there's really an imperative here to continue seeing those linkages, understand the complexities and that holistic analysis of the problem, as well as to recognize the opportunities to strengthen the resilience of fragile societies in these contexts. So we can move now to the next slide. So, as some of you may be aware, Northeast Nigeria has been at the epicenter of a brutal conflict since 2009. And the two groups have a one group, mostly known as Boko Haram but formally formally known as Jamah, Ahal, Asuna, Lidawa, and Jihad came and rose up and started a violent uprising and then subsequently there was a splinter group as well the Islamic State West African province. That split in 2016, these groups and a number of smaller splinter groups have affected the entire late Chad Basin region, including not just Nigeria but also its neighboring countries of Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. But the epicenter remains Borno State in Northeast Nigeria. And in the past decade, we've witnessed that 36,000 people have been killed, 1.1 million people have been displaced, and 1.2 million have remained cut off from humanitarian assistance. And it is important to note that obviously while this violence is horrific, these groups collectively known as Boko Haram did prey on real grievances that were pre-existing. And there have been in Borno since before 2009, longstanding governance grievances around corruption, poor service provision by the government, regionalism, both in terms of how resources are allocated from Abuja, the capital of Nigeria to Borno, and also within Borno from the state capital of my degree to different local government areas in how the north central and south parts of Borno have been prioritized for political power. And this also extends to a sense of political protectionism within the way that that government is set up. There are pre-existing sociocultural conflicts and divisions, including inter-ethnic divisions between the majority Kenori tribe and other minority tribes throughout the state, including Shua, Margi, smaller tribes throughout the state intergenerational conflict that we often see between traditional elders and youth in their society, some inter-religious conflict between Christians and Muslims, although it is important to note that the root of the conflict isn't really a just one in the same way that we see it in other parts of Nigeria, as well as quite severe marginalization of women in all public spaces. So those all those set of conditions pre-existed were pre-existing, but since the violence started, you've now seen a new set of dynamics that have both reinforced those pre-existing dynamics and introduced new effects. So we've seen quite a severe militarization of the response at the expense of other interventions that really address these root causes of the crisis, an interest in using military as the primary tool to address the crisis and not really looking at these other governance grievances and social sociocultural conflicts and really looking at the institutional reform that's often in some ways much more difficult than a pure military response. We've also seen since 2015 in particular, the introduction of the international humanitarian aid, it's important to note that there were a network, there was a network of local organizations that were providing humanitarian assistance before then, but you saw a huge investment after 2015 until now for the international humanitarian organizations coming in and providing emergency life-saving assistance to people. However, there's been quite a severe politicization of that aid, both in terms of the government trying to at times co-opt that aid and use it for their own purposes, and as well as quite a tense relationship with the humanitarian community, and also understanding how these humanitarian assistance modalities can sometimes actually undermine those interventions to invest in those longer-term reform processes that the government itself is responsible for. And then you have these dynamics of displacement. As we said, you have 1.8 million people displaced which has not only eroded people's livelihoods, people's ability to get education, their ability to access systems of government, and basic services, but it's also only in further deepened their trauma that they might have experienced as a result of the initial violence and eroded these traditional conflict management mechanisms that were in place as you have IDP internally displaced persons now settling in host communities that haven't historically interacted. So we can go to the next slide now. So now I want to talk about some of those different pathways that you saw on that first slide, but looking specifically at the case study of Northeast Nigeria. So starting with these state-society relationships and really looking at the collapse of the social contract, in Northeast Nigeria we see, as we said, quite a significant lack of legitimacy of the government. On the first day that it was announced that COVID had reached Nigeria, I remember being in the car with a taxi driver, and asking if he believed that COVID was indeed in Nigeria. I remember the first case was in Lagos and he said, absolutely not. I don't believe that it's here. I believe that it's just the government creating this story so that they can get more humanitarian assistance from the international community and just take that money for themselves. There's an inherent lack of trust in the government and suspicion that any good things that come from outside are just co-opted by the government. There's also this sense of a double standard. In the first month of the lockdown in Borno in April, we saw that the lockdown was being applied as people liked as the government saw fit for themselves. You had a crackdown on religious leaders who were trying to carry out Friday prayers, but government officials were allowed to move around the city as they liked. That further erodes the credibility of both the government as well as the mitigation measures around COVID. As mentioned, you have poor access of citizens to the levers of government. Since the insecurity started in 2009, we've seen a huge flight of local government officials from local communities to the capital of my degree. This is in some cases because traditional leaders in particular and government officials were the primary ones being targeted by Boko Haram and armed opposition groups. They were very fearful to return, but that has left this very physical gap between communities at the grassroots and the individuals that are supposed to represent them, both the state and local government officials as well as traditional authorities in some cases. So that makes it incredibly difficult for citizens to understand why these measures are lockdown measures, containment measures are being put into place, and to also voice their concerns, their needs, give government an understanding of how these measures are affecting them. Also very tangibly, we've seen that the, we've seen an effect on local government as well. We had initially, there were initially local government elections that were planned for June of this year, which would have been the first since the crisis started. Until now you've had local government officials that have been appointed rather than elected, which again means that that sense of real representation is missing at the local level. And because of COVID we've now seen that the elections has have been postponed until we don't know when. Lastly, in terms of these these governance challenges and the interaction with COVID. We've seen this politicization and mismanagement of palliative support from the government. Often this support is insufficient in quantity it only makes its way to, to several families are several hundred families which is wildly insufficient. There have been reports of some of the stocks being infested with with weevils and insects being rotten. And then we have this issue again of politicization not only of the broader age sector, but even of the assistance that's being delivered by the government that they often give this assistance only to their own political party loyalists, rather than to, rather than on the basis of the And we can move to the next slide. And so we mentioned that in the context of the crisis we've seen this militarization of the response. And this is a bit challenging because I want to make clear that a lot of these dynamics were pre existing coded but again COVID has exacerbated some of them. So since the since COVID started you've seen that armed opposition group attacks haven't necessarily increased in number, but they have become increasingly predatory towards civilians. Since the military has been asked to not only manage the fight against armed opposition groups, but also manage interstate travel and the COVID 19 lockdowns, you've seen a vacuum of power. Again, this was part of the military strategy that they were removing people from forward operating pieces military personnel from forward operating pieces. Since about November of last year, but we've seen an escalation of that approach and an even further reallocation of resources of the military which has allowed these armed opposition groups to gain control over vehicle checkpoints etc. But you've also seen the military taking advantage of these lockdown measures during the interstate travel bands, even though in theory these lockdown measures were firm policies of the government, the military would often take bribes and hike their prices to enable citizens civilians to travel from state to state or from city to city.  You've seen an increase in gender based violence and domestic violence globally, but in this case we've seen it linked to access to assistance. So in this case, the military is sexually exploiting women to give them protection, safe passage access to assistance, and all of these abuses by the military have only deepened tension between military and civilians. And then you have this network of community based militia groups that are like vigilante groups in the community that that rose up in the wake of Gokul Haram. And in the with the rise of COVID again you saw that these groups started to exploit their power that they in the initial days of the lockdown they often very forcefully tried to enforce the lockdown. And in particular you saw them using this power against other youth. So these militia groups are primarily local male youth, and they've gained outsized influence because of their their work on behalf of the community to fight against these armed opposition groups, but they've also turned that increased status and influence against other youth in the community, and you've seen this being only further, further manifested during COVID. Next slide please. So the third dynamic that I want to discuss is a further erosion of social cohesion in terms of the relationship between COVID and fragility. There has been a huge strain on individual and collective resilience in in the society. One of the main concerns that we heard from community members was that, especially during the initial lockdown which came around Ramadan and northeast areas, predominantly Muslim, was that the lockdown was really undermining their ability to participate in cultural and social activities. They weren't able to go to prayers and male youth typically meet in in these large Lisa groups these informal groups that chat and talk. And these really provide a social safety net in these local communities. But if you have these lockdown measures in place, those very foundational elements of community cohesion and resilience are at risk of breaking down. As mentioned, the violence, the crisis has caused extreme rates of trauma in northeast Nigeria. And as we know, even in countries where we can comfortably sit in our own homes and have air conditioning and access to, you know, water and sanitation. There's been an increase in stress and trauma as a result of this. That's compounded even further. The existing trauma is compounded further when you're in IDP camps or in informal settlements across the state. Again, another dynamic that we see is this distrust of traditional leaders. I mentioned that already we've seen that traditional leaders often are in my degree and the capital of Orno State as opposed to in local communities. COVID has only exacerbated some of those tensions. We've seen examples of traditional leaders who if they are seen to be agreeing with the government in these lockdown measures, then they're seen as pandering to political ends rather than fighting on behalf of the local community. And we've also seen situations of traditional leaders who are basically gatekeepers to the aid, rather than actually facilitating the distribution of assistance to local communities. You've seen a situation of traditional leaders mandating who that assistance can go to, often their own family and friends, or co-opting that COVID aid keeping the PPE for themselves. Finally, you've seen a stigmatization of different social groups. We've seen cases of, again, youth, there was that pre-existing intergenerational conflict, but because of the aid, because of COVID and the way that aid has been distributed, many youth see that it's part of their own duty to fight against these traditional leaders, and there have been instances of youth actually stealing the aid off trucks. And that's caused an increase in intention in the community. You also have IDPs internally displaced persons who are viewed as possible carriers of COVID, that they're dirty, they're in close quarters, and just in general that they are the primary recipients of aid. There's a perception among the host community already that IDPs get most of the aid, which is inaccurate, in fact, the majority of aid goes to host communities. But there's still this perception that under COVID, IDPs are even further getting the lion's share. There's another case of this being extended to different ethnic groups as well in one of the communities where Mercy Corps works. The Fulani tribe, who are primarily nomadic herders, are seen to be bringing COVID into the sedentary local community. Next slide. Oh, I forgot that little bubble there. If you can go back, I forgot that that, yes, humanitarian assistance. So we often see humanitarian assistance as a really positive thing, an important contribution, a life-saving emergency support to local communities. And I want to touch on the fact that in the case of, it can actually exacerbate conflicts. Again, I mentioned how this relates to IDPs, that IDPs are being seen to monopolize that aid. Again, it's causing tensions and further fractures between traditional leaders and their communities. So I just wanted to put that button on it, that humanitarian assistance can sometimes actually, we talk about conflict-sensitive humanitarian assistance. And I think in the case of COVID, it's vitally important to be thinking in those terms because humanitarian assistance can often work at cross purposes to social cohesion and resilience. All right, next slide. The last dynamic that I'll talk about is the fueling of rumors and misinformation. In Northeast Nigeria, we had, there was a statistic from one of our partner organizations that consistently sticks in my head that even though they were doing sensitization around COVID, trying to provide factual information about COVID to the community via radio, and 96% of their audiences had heard this information, only 45% of their audience actually believed that COVID-19 was real and deadly. So this is obviously a huge gap. And when we think about why is this, how can this possibly be that people are getting this information, but they're not believing in it, one of the big reasons for that is again going back to this inherent mistrust of the messengers themselves. In much of the sensitization work that's being done in Northeast Nigeria, the government and international non-governmental organizations, NGOs, are serving as the primary messengers. And so if there's already a mistrust in government, as we talked about, there's already this politicization of NGOs, then those being the primary messengers actually serves to undermine the message itself. There's also much more trust in social media than other forms of media. So when you're using newspaper, even radio, you're seeing that those modalities, those vehicles are not in fact the most trusted. So you see this widespread, as a result, you see this widespread proliferation of myths around COVID-19, and in the US, I mean, we're not so, we're familiar with some of them, but in Northeast Nigeria, there is this continued feeling that until we see it, we can't believe it. So if we don't have concrete evidence that COVID is real, it must just be this government plot to continue to undermine local communities. So it continues to fuel these pre-existing beliefs and conspiracies around the mal intent of the government. I'm always careful to bring up this topic, but some of those rumors can serve to fuel extremist narratives as well. Back in April, you saw the head of JAS make an hour-long audio statement about how COVID was just a plague against these secular democratic governments. It was God's way of responding to their evil secular democratic approaches to governance. Because again, you had the initial lockdown in Borno be right around the time of Ramadan, that seemed to fuel this narrative that the government itself was perpetuating this war on Islam. Now, while we haven't seen any uptick in recruitment of these groups since COVID started, and again, that's important to emphasize because a lot of CT, CVE people like to make this strong linkage, there is still some risk that's there. So now I'll turn it over to Sharon to talk about in response to these dynamics that we're seeing, what are just a couple of examples of what Mercy Corps has done in response. All right. Thank you so much, Brits, for that extensive information. So firstly, I'd like to say that peace building is an integral and vital in the pandemic period. And similarly to what Brits has just said, I'll be taking us through on three major highlights, areas of Mercy Corps peace building programming as it relates to the pandemic. I'll also be sharing examples and workable solutions, which were also achieved during this period. So on the first slide, the first program highlights is the area of participatory COVID planning. So Mercy Corps has continually engaged community structures, the Good Governance Committee and the Bruno State Tax Force in workshops in order to bridge the communication gaps between the government and the community. So for example, for example, there is, there is this hoax. There's been complaints from people around COVID-19 being a hoax and the government using it as a way of enriching themselves. Also people not getting tested adequately. And then we have the same stigmatization of patients by frontline workers. And so to address this, Mercy Corps is working to establish a grievance redress and complaints mechanism for ongoing communication. The next slide, please. Here. So the second program highlight is the management of conflicts through community-led dialogues. The community structure responsible for this is the conflict management committee. During the conflict analysis workshop, they mapped out conflict issues, which include the traditional leaders, the conflict between the traditional leaders and the community. And then they see that the traditional leaders were perceived to hold COVID palliatives rather than uneven distribution in the community. Particularly this happened in Goza LG of Borneo State, the northeast, eastern Nigeria. In the traditional leaders community dialogue, participants agreed to establish a distribution committee with representation from different stakeholders to avoid gatekeeping by traditional leaders. So to have some sort of equal distribution whenever palliatives or other distribution items coming to the not necessarily COVID palliatives or the distribution items come into the community, there will be equal presentation and people who will be able to have these items. So another example, which was seen was conflict between market vendors and the community. So these market vendors had increased the price of old stocks, which even escalated into physical violence. So the prices of these old stock commodities were increased just to make profits or just to make high profits. So in the market vendor community dialogue in Dambua area, vendors are great to reduce prices of their stocks when more goods became available. So this very stock of old, the price of old stocks were reduced when more goods became available, sorry. So another example again of a successful dialogue is the IDP hosts community dialogue, which is the internally displaced persons and the host community dialogue in Goza area of Borneo States. Where the IDPs were faced with stigmatization by the host communities over getting more palliative items. And to resolve this, the communities agreed to join sensitization and distribution of personal protective equipment to the opposite communities. Can you just go back? Yeah, thanks. So this is the third highlight of our programming, which is the use of digitalized Mitaka tool to address more conflict. So the use of traditional religious leaders who are credible local actors were used actually to pre record messages about COVID facts, because the community. There's this mistrust or mistrust with the messengers or with the government and other stakeholders. But you find out that the community have more trust or build more trust to their religious leaders. So how do we get this very, the right messages to the people. So Mexico in the program and use this religious leaders to pass this message messages across about COVID facts prevention and response to counter meets. For example, one of the recurring meets in communities is that COVID-19 is not a real disease. So it is a way for politicians. It is a way of politicians to make money. If someone in the committee submit this meets to the hotline, they will receive an automated, automated message in response to explaining that COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by virus. So, and also, what are the main symptoms. This very digitalized system also actually gives gives you the response of the right messages as to to answering questions concerning this, and then, and that there is no evidence that this virus is being spread intentionally for political or religious reasons. Rather, it is happening naturally and the spread can be prevented. This is the sort of messages to actually define or give the definition that COVID it's real. So in conclusion, I'd like to say that peace building cannot be overemphasized in this times of of COVID as it also has to do with behavior change, changing perceptions and attitudes of people. Thank you very much. I'll hang around for questions. So I'll hand over to Brits to continue with the next presentation. So it's just our last slide. Thanks so much Sharon for that really great overview. And so just some key takeaways before we turn over to your questions. I'm just emphasizing again that public health governance peace building responses. I'd like to see them as separate sectors. They are really intrinsically linked. COVID and weak state society relations conflict are threat multipliers for the public health response as a rather sorry, weak state society relations and conflict are threat multipliers in terms of COVID, just as much as COVID is a threat multiplier for good governance and peace or rather conflict and weak governance. Number two, rather than reducing funding for governance and peace building programming, these sorts of programs should be short up. And they should actually be mainstreaming governance and peace building conflict management programs into public health interventions, which is something we've been advocating for programming must be participatory. This is my, my favorite kind of anthem as a peace builder is around participatory programming. This has to be from beginning to end, starting with community led analysis as Sharon mentioned as a part of our community dialogue and the design of the programming itself to all really capture the nuances and intersectoral nature of the problem as well as relevant and locally viable solutions. And then finally programming must consistently embed these spaces for exchange and feedback. And as we saw in two, actually all three of the examples that Sharon gave these spaces are vital to continually build trust which helps with good governance and peace building these spaces help to monitor changes in the dynamics themselves and help other programmers like Mercy Corps to refine their approaches. So, we will take any questions that you guys have in these last 15 minutes. Thank you so much. So, we're not going to go into an audience Q&A. So if everyone can use the Q&A function on zoom to ask your questions. If people type in their questions I'd like to ask, given the general distrust between the state government and the local communities. Do you think that people will be receptive to new proposed efforts for increased government citizen communication. Sharon, do you want to, do you want to answer that your thoughts on how welcoming people are of opportunities for for governance work. So the in our government community dialogues that we do are, to what extent our community is actually receptive to those sorts of activities if I understood the question correctly. Okay. Okay, please can you, can you go about the prison so I can understand Lynn. So the extent to which local community people are receptive to activities around governance if they are so suspicious of government to begin with. Actually, yes, there is an existing distrust already with the community members and the government. So, I don't know if this answers your question, if the information from this government, if the community members are actually receptive like accepting this very information. So I don't know if that's the question. So I guess just to build on what Sharon saying, I think that people, it's a complicated question I remember one of my last interactions with local community members. One of our other activities that we were doing before COVID hit was bringing these local government officials down to the community level, and having them, them interact and having dialogue on different issues around governance. And I spoke with one of these good governance committees. Just before I left and they were appreciative. And they felt a desire to continue fighting and to continue accessing these government officials, but felt very suspicious that anything would change. And we're quite disheartened at the state of affairs. So I guess it's mixed. I think there is a lot of space to continue doing that sort of programming and you have to start somewhere in order to build trust. But as fast as it, you know, you have to recognize that you're overcoming generations worth of mistrust between government and local communities. So I think you, I think it's what communities were saying was that it wasn't important mechanism. But that they were, you know, until they see real change. They, they were, they were reticent to fully invest. Thank you. And this next question is from the Q&A section. So if you've been, so I think you've been hinting this throughout the entire presentation but how splintered is the response to COVID-19 in Nigeria, who's spearheading the effort and enforcing things like lockdowns. Is it local communities, the military or outside groups? Yeah. I mean, I think I remember seeing photos from the first weekend of the lockdown in Borno in the center of town showing like no cars in the roundabouts and only set times for people to go to market. That quickly deteriorated. So you're not really seeing very strong enforcement of lockdown and containment measures. And even while the measures were being put in place to some extent in the capital of my degree, again, you have this issue of lack of it, you know, that last mile problem. And in the case of Borno, it's many miles. You don't have those, you don't have those systems of government at the local community level. And so you see a total corruption of government officials pressure traditional leaders not to abide by the containment measures and lockdowns. Military officials who will take bribes to let you, you know, go against the interstate travel ban. So I think these measures very quickly deteriorated. I haven't been in Nigeria for several months, Sharon. I don't know what your thoughts are. If there's any semblance of lockdown left in Borno at this state. In terms of lockdown, there is no, there is no lockdown in Borno State at the moment. So I think it was just when the first case was recorded in Borno State, we just had like three weeks lockdown. That was it. At the moment, there is no sort of lockdown in Borno State. Yes. And just to, I was looking at kind of the nuances of the question in the, in the Q&A. And I think that INGOs have been the most active in trying to get communities to recognize the seriousness of the situation. But you haven't really had that enforcement coming from, from, you know, authorities in the country. Thank you. And for our next question, what does accountability look like for funds donated to fight COVID-19? So does the lack of accountability discourage donors from continuing to support both initiatives that are supposed to fight COVID and those dedicated to peace building? So I think a lot of donors were caught off guard when COVID first struck. I know that our programming that donors kind of took two different approaches, or even three different approaches to managing those funds. One was to kind of halt any non-essential programming altogether. So one of the programs that we had running was completely stopped for a period of a couple months as they kind of figured out what was what was happening with COVID and how peace building programming could be best implemented in this new context. Some donors took the approach of kind of trying these middle measures of getting organizations to reshape their proposals, still have these interventions that were maybe peace building governance or whatever the sector was, but just integrate some COVID mitigation measures into their existing programming. And then the third approach of donors was really to release new funds around COVID, which had to be, you know, stood up very, very quickly to again do this very strict public health response. So the accountability around all of these different modalities around rather the second two was a bit complex because the shift was quite fast. So I think it was challenging. The second part of the question, does lack of accountability discourage donors? I don't think that there, I think there's a recognition that COVID is serious enough to continue investing and at this point donors have been able to make that shift significantly enough and understand the interplay of everything that we were talking about around the context and the way that COVID manifests in these societies. So I think that most donors and policy communities remain committed to managing both existing programs in different sectors and these new COVID dynamics. Thank you. And for our next question, at its height, there were less than 50 COVID-19 deaths in Nigeria. So how has Nigeria escaped the worst of the COVID-19 crisis? Poor documentation. Sorry, go ahead Sharon. Okay, I think Nigeria hasn't done anything differently from what the world is doing. So basically, when the first case was reported, we took on the preventive measures just like every other country would or every other country in the world would were enough face masks and social distancing and the rest of the preventive measures. So even up until now, we still have people who still keep to this very preventive measures around COVID-19. So I do not think there's something Nigeria particularly has done differently from the world in actually preventing COVID-19. And to build on what Sharon's saying, I think Nigeria's capacity regionally was actually quite strong. A lot of people cited the example of Ebola and how Nigeria, even though it had something like 15 cases of Ebola, it was able to manage that caseload and prevent it from spreading further within the country. So it actually has quite a strong epidemic response capacity that in fact other countries around the world didn't necessarily have. The public health system generally is not fantastic, especially in areas like Borno State and again we're talking about close quarters and IDP camps. My understanding from reports by WHO and UNICEF, I believe, is that there are two factors in particular that do result in a lower incidence rate in Nigeria and that is the huge youth population. Nigeria has one of the youngest populations in the world, so you may actually have a huge number of cases that again go undocumented because of the very low testing rates and regimens, but there are very few significant, very few severe cases. And just to build on that, a lot of people in Nigeria may not even recognize that it is a severe case because many of the symptoms are so similar to malaria, which people, Sharon's had malaria like 12 times since I've known her. People just get used to living with malaria and typhoid and I remember being consistently diagnosed with this very generic the flu, which it wasn't. And so people are very used to being sick. You might not report even severe cases as COVID or even recognize that COVID related deaths are in fact caused by the virus. The second factor that was mentioned was the heat. And we know that COVID can still exist in hot weather conditions, but when you have conditions that are, you know, 95 plus the majority of the year, at least the resilience of the virus on surfaces isn't quite as potent as in other places in the world. Thank you so much. And for our last question, how has COVID-19 affected education in Nigeria? And is there anything Mercy Corps is doing about this? Yeah, Sharon, do you want to speak to that, the closure and reopening of schools? Yeah, actually, Nigeria actually, the COVID actually affected the educational system in Nigeria. But along the line, the government resorted to online schooling for kids, especially for primary school. Children, through radio, through radio broadcasts. So there are times where the children should actually sit in for this very online classes. Majorly, that's what has happened during this very pandemic concerning, as relating to education. And again, one of, it actually impacted so much on the parents, you know, having kids around and not going to school. And some parents feel the disturbance and then some drawbacks in the education of the awards. And again, gradually school, the school has resumed and then children have gone back to school. But what the major challenge is kids now do not actually, there's this drawback, the kids are not even focused. And then they do not really understand the next step again, it's more like, okay, taking them back. I mean, so back like they've never been to school. So these are the things that the Nigerian government put in place just for education. But again, I think there was no much impact that has regressed the virtual learning. So but now the school has resumed just like two months ago. So I think there'll be a great change for the kids. Yeah. But I think you also have to recognize that that many students have been affected by the last 10 years. And one of the greatest calls, you know, advocacy points for youth has been to build new secondary schools or make those secondary schools available again as you have many of those schools that have actually been taken over by the military in these local government areas and which is a massive violation. And so I think many of these students unless they try, especially in these local areas unless they travel to places for school, they've been out of that, you know, they've, they haven't had opportunities for education for for nearly a decade now so as Karen mentioned, you know, radio is the primary modality.  So that's hard enough to get the attention of, of students so over radio, there's been a massive impact for for young people over the past year. But that again is just kind of exacerbating the problem that's been in place for at least students in in Borno and other crisis affected areas and in Nigeria for the past decade. Thank you so much. And to conclude the panel. I just like to say that we all really learned a lot and we'd like to thank you for taking the time of your day to speak with us today. Thank you so much. Yeah, absolutely our pleasure and if there are any other questions or points of interest that that you guys have, please feel free to to reach out we'd be more than pleased to continue to engage always a part of the IGL family. Thank you. Thank you.


Angola has a population of 35 million people and 10 million, they are here in Luanda, the capital city, the most expensive city in the world. Angola is one of the richest countries in the whole world. We have the second largest reserve of oil in the whole Africa, just after Nigeria. We also have a very young population, beautiful ladies. And we just had the Miss Universe, which comes also from Angola in 2010, if I'm not mistaken. And you can also find some minerals like gold, diamonds and all that you can imagine. We have some untouchable places where no one ever went there.


Good afternoon. My name is Alita Hernandez. I am an intended business major with a minor and environmental science and Spanish Something I love about Cal is the inclusivity and diversity found everywhere around campus Thank you to all of our generous donors without your constant support. We wouldn't be able to call ourselves the number one public university Dr. Krischal is an urban ecologist and assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Science Policy and Management His research combines animal behavior Physiology and biodiversity science approaches to uncover how a million carnivores Adapt to life in cities. In addition his work uses environmental justice lens to help build more justice Biodiverse and resilient cities. Dr. Schell is a National Geographic Explorer a grist fixer and a Cal Academy research fellow with his work featured across PBS NPR the New York Times the Atlantic and various other outlets Please welcome professor Schell Can y'all hear me? Okay. Yeah Solid. Thank you all for joining for this lecture slash. I know it's probably extraordinarily hot outside So you wanted to come inside? I don't blame you. That was a boss move So before I get started on today's topic cities as a solution to the biodiversity crisis I first would like to begin with a land acknowledgement Before we begin this event We take a moment to recognize that UC Berkeley sits on the territory of the Huchin The ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo speaking aloney people the successors of the sovereign Verona band of Alameda County This land was and continues to be of great importance to the Muwekma aloney tribe and other familial descendants of the Verona band We recognize that every member of the Berkeley community has benefited and continues to benefit from the use and occupation Of this land since the institutions founding in 1868 Consistent with our values of community inclusion and diversity We have a responsibility to acknowledge and make visible the university's relationship to native peoples as Members of the Berkeley community It is vitally important that we not only recognize the history of the land on which we stand But also we recognize that the Muwekma aloney people are alive and flourishing members of the Berkeley and broader Bay Area communities today Which is certainly apropos because all of today's lecture is going to be us drilling into this one simple question Why cities right? Why cities? Why should we care about cities? Why should we say cities potentially are a solution rather than a problem to the many crises we face Certainly, I'm sure y'all have heard of the biodiversity crisis the climate crisis global capitalism Influencing all of that all together and it makes it feel overwhelming Right insurmountable like you don't have any power or agency to make any changes But to break the problem down so then that way we Demystify the process right make it feel like you actually have some agency We're gonna start with the cute and cuddly now Our lab studies all manner of organisms But certainly the flagship the avatar species for us in my lab are coyotes and urban coyotes in particular If you are curious These photos up here that you see no, they are not photoshopped. Yes. They're a real animal in 2007 right when I started my graduate career So, you know a decade and some change ago the longer I put this up the older I start to feel even though I'm not that old right and Apparently this coyote in downtown, Chicago Hopped into a Quiznos restaurant And when I mean hopped it sort of more like walked in like it owned the joint as it was walking in there were people eating sandwiches There are folks that are making sandwiches.  And this is this is like on state Street y'all so for those of you that are familiar with Chicago, right? Below Whacker, this is very very urban This question is one that not only are we kind of chasing here at Berkeley But one that certainly is all over the place. Sorry, let me get rid of Spotify here There we go Not only are there coyotes and drink coolers in Chicago. There are coyotes on trains in Portland Up here. There are coyotes that get a slice of pizza every other week at Huntington Beach right here You can imagine that all of these Interactions with people with built environments with these constructed areas Ultimately lead to people and coyotes coming into conflict, right as you see here now our region is no different in fact We have several videos just to demonstrate what that looks like here in the city of San Francisco So this one video here was taken up near Bernal Heights by one of the students in the lab, Tolly Caspi, which he was doing fecal transit work So some of the work that we do is trying to understand what the animals are eating and you'll notice some really kind of striking Patterns and behavior here coyotes normally if they see you they like to be at least 20 feet away And they start walking in the other direction not this individual pair that with this video as well now this video is of a coyote taken in the Observatory area of Golden Gate Park can anybody hazard a guess as to what this animal is doing? Stalking yes stalking what look at how close those people are this is ridiculous Right, they're probably no more than five feet away Folks probably across the pond think that's a dog So yes, a lot of folks say ducks But it's not the ducks It's a child Yeah, that small child right there probably about four years old this coyote was infamous He got a nickname he was so infamous Carl and Carl the coyote was so brazen that he would be out at 11 a.m 12 p.m. 1 p.m. Normally when coyotes are trying to hide or sleep being incredibly cautious around people But Carl started stalking children Eventually, he was put down last year But when they did an autopsy on the animal they found that this animal was eating a lot of anthropogenic food Think garbage food waste in some instances. We've had videos from residents of San Francisco Where they're actively buying food stakes at a safe way or a luckies and then giving that food directly to the animal So our relationship with these animals sort of needs to be fixed Here are one of the big reasons why conflict is increasing over time So a recent paper that my post doc and I and several others in the lab just put together Compiled ten years of human coyote conflict data and Found that conflict is on the rise for a whole host of reasons because of the fact that the climate crisis is reducing the amount of water that's available or The continued urbanization that's constricting the amount of habitat available for these animals or the amount of food that we provide to them I Share this story with you because it highlights some quintessential tenants of urban ecology One of the biggest ones being that human beings are the directors and the audience of this adapted screenplay I like to joke that we are the Lin Manuel Miranda of this joint, right? Not only did we cast all the cast members composed all the songs we even put together that rotating stage Which is really cool, right? We're also acting in this play We're also seeing it as it unfolds and oftentimes Ecology of the past would have us stand outside of that narrative But we today are going to break that fourth wall so then that way I show y'all how critical it is We understand our place in this narrative and there is no better way to start that portion of the story Then with this handsome a dinosaur right here now I know all the y'all I sing Jurassic Park at this point some of y'all are younger and it came out before you were born I get it, but you have homework if you haven't done it already, right? first Jurassic Park in the movie Jeff Goldman's character Ian Malcolm Talks about how these dinosaurs will eventually find their way out of these man-made enclosures that we think are ironclad But really they're just toothpicks and one of the most famous lines. He says is that life? Finds a way right well for sure life is finding a way like those coyotes you just saw in Cities so much so that the coyotes aren't the only example We have Javalina in Phoenix and Tempe, Arizona Raccoons in the Pacific Northwest smooth-coated otters in Singapore and everything in between What's remarkable about these adjustments to urban living is that we're now starting to find signatures of evolution So these animals are rapidly evolving to cope with the stressors that we have placed up against them and There are so many examples that it's hard to fit them all into slides I'll just show you many of the organisms and the most flashy examples to date Some of which include wall lizards developing more topads that is linked back to genetic traits showing their ability to climb more smooth surfaces or Rats in New York City for those of y'all that have been in Manhattan You'll know that uptown and downtown are very different from each other guess what the rats think so too So there are genetic populations that are distinct in the uptown portion in the downtown portion of Manhattan, and they don't cross right at 72nd Street And then yes, of course there is less genetic diversity for coyotes that exist in cities relative to those that are in non-urban areas now up to this point I've been giving y'all all of the feels about how Glorious it is that these wildlife are developing strategies to persist in environments that we thought were inhospitable to those wildlife species But it should be noted with these few success stories the larger narrative often is that we are in a crisis global biodiversity is Most certainly in a crisis and it helps to tell this story through the numbers So briefly the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services or IPBES Came out with a report in 2019 and part of that report states of an estimated eight million animal and plant species 75% of which are insects, which is really important right that insect base Helps to really structure the trophic or food webs that exist within our ecosystems Around one million one eighth of those species are threatened with extinction and Many of these charts, which I won't belabor the point about all of the information in each of them just to tell you that we're in trouble For those of you that remember Bill Nye the science guy I remember growing up watching Bill Nye and one of the most apropos Examples that he used of biodiversity within the ecosystem was his idea of thinking of species as Blocks in a Jenga set now your Jenga set is pretty structured and Foundationally sound when you have all the species inside of that Jenga set, but imagine you start to pull one Then two then three then more and more and more species You can start to see that this Jenga set gets a little bit more shaky and this analogy is Pretty substantial when thinking about where we are right now Our Jenga set is not where we need it to be and why is all of that important? Well, as you guys probably can see where I'm going with this Biodiversity is our shield selfishly We want to be able to stay alive and healthy on this planet for as long as possible Right and in order to do that We need to lean on all of our non human brethren in the process So biodiversity helps us to provide what are called these ecosystem services Whether they be cultural whether they be provisioning whether they be environmental health that allow us to sustain ourselves to sustain life Hence the reason that we have now started in the lab to think about the ways in which biodiversity Are linked back to public health Are linked back to ecosystem health and how what we do here not only in the present But what we've done in the past and what we do in the future is integral for us to continue so we understand the problem and This is a global one which is part of the reason why the Convention on Biological Diversity came together in 2022 to bring together this COP 15 initiative where you would have Officials from all over the world convene to think about ways that we can make decrees and targets to get to our Biodiversity goals so we stop losing so many species so we maintain that ecosystem stability and function and At the end of 2022 they came up with 23 decrees that We're hopefully going to serve as a means for us to get to where we need it to be Most of these under what's called the Kunming Montreal global biodiversity framework All talk about ways to reduce or halt how much biodiversity we are losing Things like reducing land and sea use change or restoration of degraded ecosystems or further down managing invasive alien species and reducing negative impact of pollution on biodiversity Now I could read all 23 for you and that probably would be a bore than all y'all would be asleep and we don't want that Right. So really what I want to bring to y'all's attention is an all 23 of these decrees all 23 of these itemized targets There is only one One on urban blue and green spaces. Some of y'all may be thinking. All right. So Why do we care? Well, let me give you some numbers first things first Land use change and direct species exploitation are number one and two in terms of how important and impactful they are In the biodiversity crisis So a lot of folks seeing results like this would say, okay, then definitely urbanization and development Has to be figured out. We have to figure out solutions to one of the number one threats to all the biodiversity on the planet and most folks would then jump to the conclusion that somehow The assumption is urban areas are evil And because of the way in which we have developed in the past which there is a lot of legitimacy to that, right? Our practices of urban development From the past up to the present have resulted in a whole host of negative consequences Whether it be noise pollution artificial light at night air and water pollution more invasive species so on and so on and so on But if you were to believe that then you would fall into what's called the biological deserts fallacy this idea that somehow the cities are completely devoid of nature But that's not true at all. Let me show you why First it's important to situate ourselves in this narrative more than half So 55 percent and climbing Of the human population lives in cities Here this quick map just briefly shows from 2020 and this is already again increased The proportion of folks that live in cities with the majority of people especially in north america All living in urban centers Right, so most of the people that we are thinking about when we're thinking about human wildlife interactions live in urban areas Okay, well, that's fact number one fact number two the amount of new urban land cover So that's spaces that have not been urbanized yet Are projected to increase by 0.82 to 1.53 million kilometers squared Maybe like chris. I don't know what that means at all. Can you please give me some context? Yeah, sure California the entire state of california is 0.42 million kilometers squared So the amount of new urbanized land new urbanized land across the globe is going to be at least Two times the size of the state of california Two times the size of the largest state in the contiguous 48 states That's a lot Not only that right the world's known biodiversity hotspots the areas that have the greatest abundance of new and diverse species 422 major cities. So having 300,000 people or more Are situated in these spaces. We are no different We're right there, right? Los angeles the bay area sacrameno San Diego Santa Barbara we're all In a biodiversity hotspot And because of the fact that we have so much new urbanization that is likely going to continue to march in these larger cities One of the recent projections was that 855 species are directly impacted already with more than 30,000 likely to lose Critical habitat and the breakdown for this looks like reptiles are squarely in the uh-oh. We have a problem area So we do have a problem, right? And yet cities oftentimes maligned as that problem Potentially provide us a solution. Why because most of the species we care about are here And it just so happens that these are the places where we live where we love where we breathe where we work Why wouldn't we want to have a positive benefit and impact On the places where we do all of the things That essentially constitute our lives So then the question is how how did we get here, right? Many y'all probably are thinking, okay Things seem dire, but I oftentimes tell my students and my classes It's important to take a little bit of a history lesson to see how we got here So then that way when we look towards the past we help influence our present and our future at the same time Now one of the mechas of urban ecology and the ways in which people can live in harmony with nature Tends to be the city-state known as singapore for those of you that have not been to singapore before it is glorious You should definitely go it is beautiful because they see themselves not as a city with nature around them Or as a city that has little plots of nature But rather a city inside of nature that the city operates and functions because of nature And that's important because when you share that against the backdrop of just something as simple as creating colored lines You start to really gather how immense this problem is So these two figures are just artistic renditions of climate and biodiversity loss together From 1970 set to 2018 So here at the top is where it was cooler right around 1970 And it obviously is a lot warmer today Compare that with the amount of species we had around 1970 and how many we've lost With green being more species and obviously gray here being the loss of those species So we got here somehow and part of the reason that I show this to y'all is because Right around the 60s in the 70s is when we as a community not only of scientists and practitioners But also the general public started to understand our larger impact on global climate And that was the catalyst for us to really reintegrating ourselves back into the conversation because for some context Up until this period of time in the 60s in the 70s most ecologists thought that it was Not a good idea to be kind to do work and research inside of spaces where people were because Oftentimes people were seen as destructive and malignant to many of the species that existed in those areas And at the same time climate scientists were starting to gather some data And that data were showing alarming trends the trends being that every year year over year We would notice more and more and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere And that that carbon dioxide coincided with human activity So the conclusion they came to was that there was literally no ecosystem on planet earth That wasn't either directly or indirectly touched by people That eventually led to UNESCO To create the man in biosphere program Right, so the united nations educational scientific and cultural organization Created this man in biosphere program which ran from the 70s in the 80s They try and start understanding how human activity is leading to many of the ecosystem consequences That climate scientists had predicted that then eventually led to the national science foundation Coming together and creating what's called long-term ecological research programs Which in 1998 established the first two urban Lter's one in phoenix, arizona Here and the other in baltimore and one recently in 2021 was funded in minneapolis Now it should be noted that there are hundreds of lter's that exist in the united states and there still are only three urban lter's Think about that for a second so Given all of that, right, we started to fully understand Our role in this system and I like to joke around with many of my students that global climate change essentially gave the biggest Alley you to urban ecology as a field So then that way we could start more intentionally and authentically thinking about the ways in which we are integrated in this system So that was the past right and we think all right Well, we've done as much as we possibly can to understand the past And yet we are going to turn this into a time traveling saga at this point You probably have realized i'm a huge marvel fan and I use this a lot In my lectures in order to get my students to be able to create these cognitive heuristics Right these bridges across what they know and what they're learning so in that way they could better understand it It trenches in their brain so for us we're going to use a little bit of a Avengers in-game reference here and do some time traveling again With the idea being that learning how the past Shapes the present is in fact the key to building a more just and biodiverse future And it should be noted that a concept like this has been in ecology already It's called legacy effects this idea that a species impact On an ecosystem can persist on that ecosystem even when that species is gone It's exerpated or the activity ceases all together So a good example of this is imagine agricultural fields, right? Imagine you are constantly tilling these fields over a few decades and then all of a sudden Agricultural activity completely stops It still would take anywhere from 50 to a few centuries right 50 years to a few centuries for that ecosystem and that biome to recover itself Now keeping that in mind Imagine if we were to take this exercise And take this theory of legacy effects and place it right back into the city And as y'all probably can imagine what the bay area looked like in the 1950s in the 60s It's not entirely the same today in 2023 So when we start interrogating these human historical legacies in cities Do we see any association between how urban heterogeneity how variable the city is It's somehow influencing how variable many of the species inside the city are And this is an important exercise because if we want to leverage cities as a conservation champion We necessarily need to understand What's influencing biodiversity in the first place in cities so then that way we can build solutions that help us Bring back many of the species that we lost Okay, now here's the exercise for y'all I'm gonna have all you be group here for a little bit right and the next set of slides I'm going to show you a side by side comparison of two different neighborhoods from each other So your task is to follow the trees and I'm going to have you point Either to your left or to your right when I ask you a series of questions, okay So y'all are group. I am group. We are group. Let's do this Okay So I'm going to describe these two neighborhoods for you This neighborhood right here on y'all's left This is of a township to the southwestern part of downtown Tacoma, Washington For those of you that have been to the pacific northwest and been to Tacoma You know kind of like how green this place is. It's called university place, right? The other Is southeastern Tacoma which coincidentally is just directly south of the downtown area of Tacoma. These two neighborhoods Are no more than a half mile apart from each other. They're extraordinarily close So if I were to ask you the question Which of these two neighborhoods would you expect to have higher vegetation cover? You would point to Almost unanimously everybody points to the photo on the left. Yes university place that one was easy. All right, cool second question If I then ask you Of these two neighborhoods, which would you expect to have a higher median household income? You would point to which one Yep, most of y'all still point to the left That intrinsic knowledge that you have that wisdom, right of somehow green space And canopy cover and vegetation cover also equal median household income it has a name It's called the luxury effect This idea that species richness or the number of species we're able to count in an area And biodiversity the relative weight of those species across different clades Are positively associated with wealth now We're going to dig into why that's not always the case here in a little bit But before we do I think it's important to note that this is not something that's hanging its hat on one or two studies In fact, there are multiple studies from plants to animals From those primary producers that create the energy to those tertiary consumers that consume Most of the energy like apex predators and everything in between wealth structures communities worldwide Here are some of the sightings, right some of the Manuscripts that have written about this and this is already outdated this year alone There were five to ten additional studies showing this luxury effect But what's really unique About the way that we have approached this is that these other studies oftentimes as many scientific studies do We'll take a look at one city See an effect or not see an effect and say there's nothing here or yes There's definitely something here and it seems really hard Especially for folks that aren't nearly as good at communicating the science to try and figure out. What does this all mean? well A group of us and when I say a group of us I specifically mean the urban wildlife information network this coalition of scientists and practitioners across Not only the nation but now the globe using very simple ecological tools these camera traps To monitor wildlife across our cities and compare all of the cities at the same time So rather than doing one by one by one in a piecemeal fashion Now we can compare all of the cities together and see if there are any global trends So we had this really simple question How does wealth and urbanization affect wildlife across cities? And in order to do this we set up these camera traps on these urban to rural gradients Here you see a few schematics for seattle washington chicago illinois and wilmington delaware collecting data from 2013 to 2019 In order to measure human footprint or urbanization. We essentially use what's called impervious surface As well as building densities and vegetation cover and combine all of those into a single metric Then in order to approximate income We use the cost of one of a one bedroom apartment and part of the reason we did that Was we wanted to be as inclusive as possible as you can imagine certain areas of a city don't have single family homes So how do you account for those areas? Well, if we take cost of a one bedroom apartment. We more or less approximate how expensive it is to live in certain parts of a city And Like I showed y'all earlier, right? We deal a lot in the cute and cuddly and the charismatic megafauna So I would be remiss if I didn't share any of the photos that we captured in the field Here are some from the pacific northwest and from the bay area We have a deer staring into the camera a group of raccoons. My personal favorite Is this one up here in the top right of these raccoons practicing their parkour Fantastic So what do we find? Well, this is a sort of a dull moment But it's worth saying that species richness or again the number of species unique species were able to count in an environment In relation to these income gradients varies across cities Okay, so what does that mean chris? Here is a figure from one of the papers we recently had published in 2021 With st. Louis being at the top and fort collins colorado being at the bottom Now if you are to the right of this dash line Like these cities are Then in fact, we are seeing this luxury effect meaning That the more species there are the more likely it is that the environment that that camera is in is wealthier But it's not the case for all cities, right? So you go from st. Louis down through to Tacoma and chicago and madison and here's the thing Once these blue shaded areas of the normal distribution curves start to overlap that dash line, right? Then you start to have a neutral effect or in some instances a negative effect if it's all the way on the other side Now it should be noted that this is approximating all species together So it's very possible that if we were to break this down certain species respond In certain ways relative to others Maybe for instance coyotes because coyotes are bougie are more likely to respond to the luxury effect But deer and rats could care less right Which means that we need to dig a little bit deeper wealth alone doesn't help us tell the story of the past So we have to better understand not only how socioeconomics work, but also how systems of oppression Work and how those systems then influence non-human organisms as well And perhaps one of the most profound and widespread examples of this systemic oppression Is redlining? So for those of y'all that have not heard of redlining Especially in the last few years here It feels like there's been coverage all over the map about it briefly It was the policy that was adopted and created by the home owners loan corporation And then sponsored by the u.s. government to create these color-coded maps Denoting who could live where? Based on the color of your skin So if you were black and brown you were relegated to what were called the c and d areas Essentially the yellow and the red shaded areas as you see here in the map for the east bay So these areas that you know right that you probably have driven through that you If you've spent a lot of time here in the bay area think west oakland think east oakland You see these spaces and you realize there has been chronic levels of disinvestment for decades That was designed that way on purpose This policy essentially Went on from 1930 to 1968 when it was abolished by the Voting Rights Act in 1968 The green and the blue respectively a and b areas were for wealthy white americans Now more than 230 u.s. Cities across the nation have redlining maps that look just like this And if you want to know more about the many cities that have these digitized maps You can go to the university richman's mapping inequality project that lays all of it out Just to give you an understanding of what this looks like Here are some of the cities that my lab has done work in recently to coma and seattle washington San francisco and oakland california all of which look very different but all have neighborhoods From these green to red areas So you now may be asking okay. Well residential segregation based off of race and really residential segregation at any form Is a moral injustice What does that mean for the wildlife species how on earth are they connected? Well, let's start building the puzzle First things first. There's greater air pollution in these red line areas Compared to the areas that are the green and the blue the a and the b respectively Notice the dates on the citations y'all notice the dates on those manuscripts these papers were published in 2020 and 2022 for reference Redlining was abolished in 1968 that was more than 50 years ago And we are still seeing the effects of it today on ecosystem functioning Not only Is air pollution distributed unevenly as a function of these hlc grades We also see that these areas that were redlined previously have greater urban heat island intensity Means that it's anywhere from three to ten degrees hotter in those areas Largely because many of those red line areas Do not have nearly as much urban tree canopy cover or vegetation cover And that's important because the trees As alorex would say give us life give us energy and they provide environmental cooling When they release oxygen and when they're taking up water, they also cool the environment around us They can't really do that if they're not there And many of the environments that were redlined essentially created streets that had absolutely no green space at all That concrete retains the heat so much so that we see greater intensification of many of these ecosystem hazards And all of that all of that together Influences where we see biodiversity So a recent paper by a colleague of mine, Diego Elizondo and company Created a map of all of the community science data So for instance, some of y'all may have heard of iNaturalist or eBur these community science platforms That allow us to work with members of the community to report what species are where We then can take and collate all of those observations and see where most of the species are and where most of the reports are And in almost every single city Those a and those b areas the green and the blue have greater biodiversity sampling Another paper coming out from one of my students says our estian is showing that the amount of biodiversity is also significantly reduced in these red line areas So not only are we not sampling in the areas. We in fact don't even have A appropriate amount of species there And remember what i told y'all at top i told y'all that biodiversity is our shield Right biodiversity helps us maintain our own health So what are we saying when certain folks in our urban communities don't have access to biodiversity in the other ways that some others do That is quintessentially an environmental justice issue Highlighting the fact that past societal legacies do indeed influence the present So if we ever have a hope of wanting to be able to conserve species We need to think about how we do that in cities. We need to be more unconventional We need to think about how society is integrated Into all of these practices and how we build a better more just environment not just for us But for the animals that we live with Like this coyote that's just trying to make it work that's doing a pretty good job And making it work and yet this is One of few examples where these animals are thriving We can do a whole lot more To build a system through the past present and future That helps us build that resilience Where our community is not just each other in this room But also the other non-human organisms we share this planet with And that's what helped us to develop a book Ironically about this entire talk that just was printed in the uk and should be out here later in december About urban biodiversity inequity and how we need to think of not only conservation in cities Which is our traditional approach about population genetics and making sure the animals are hardy enough to exist in changing environments But also conservation of cities conservation of the function of those cities and the ecosystem properties they're in Conservation for cities where we think about the ways in which we do this for our communities of practice We do this in service to the environments that we live in as well as conservation with cities And that one is the most crucial We cannot do this alone, right? I cannot I can do my part with the many fancy models and the camera traps that we have at our disposal But I only have a limited skill set one that is Necessarily situated in my own intersectional and positional identity And each of you have your own skills that you could bring to this table Which is part of the reason why you're here today is because I know you believe in that fact So with that, I'll just conclude to say thank you all for your time Thank you for coming to the talk and obviously go bears Thank you Hello, yes, uh, so we're just gonna kick off our um qna Session so if anyone has questions, please just raise your hands and I'll pass the microphone Yes first question Hi, um How does uh Creating biodiversity in cities conflict with building more housing That's a great question oftentimes many folks will and I'll repeat the question just for folks on the live stream The question was how does essentially bolstering biodiversity in cities potentially conflict with creating more housing So oftentimes the two are put against each other Where somehow if you have more habitat for more biodiversity species Then you are taking away many of the homes that could be for people But that sort of is a little bit of a misnomer and oftentimes when many folks that are Urban planners developers politicians tell us that I'm just letting y'all know right now. They're gaslighting us Right because there are many many many vacant homes and lots that currently sit right now That could be housing people In fact, the problem is not necessarily that biodiversity and housing are antithetical to each other But in fact that they actually can coexist with each other Really good example because we do a lot of work in urban systems and specifically here in the bay area I can tell you that we have Many encampments in almost every single park that we go to And many of those encampments have more and more and more folks that are unable to survive and live in the bay area Right. These are folks that are highly educated and still are unhoused in fact a good proportion of the folks that come to berkeley May themselves be unhoused So thinking about how we build more housing Actually is thinking about how we build more sustainable housing More housing that allows for many of those folks to be able to dwell In homes that are safe that are clean while at the same time allowing for that habitat space to exist And the amount of money we would actually save By being able to maintain homes for folks that are cost affordable Will then free up Enough habitat in green space for many of the wildlife that already exist in the city to be and stay in those cities So oftentimes we'll say well, we need to create more homes. That means we need to get rid of more habitat We actually need to do a better job of just using the habitat that we already have using the homes that we already have And creating policies and solutions that help us get there Versus saying well, we have to do one or the other Which is oftentimes a well if we Don't create housing that helps us get money. Then we are the ones who are going to lose money Which ultimately may mean we have to get out of a capitalist system that restricts our ability to do both For those of us who live in cities What are some practical ways that we can promote biodiversity aside from not feeding steak to the coyotes? What are some kind of everyday things we could do just in our own lives to help? Absolutely Yeah, so the question was what are some things you all can do to help kind of promote biodiversity In your systems as an individual and I love this question because this is the one where I get to give you guys some tangible Results from all of the empirical work we've been doing the biggest one and just as a show of hands. How many of y'all are pet owners? Okay, more than 50% So If you have a cat you have to keep your cat indoors I know you've heard that in the past, but I'll tell you all of the reasons why cats No fault of their own. They are the most efficient predators on the planet And that is per capita. They cost more than a billion dollars in damages To conservation efforts whether it be for native birds rodents herpes so on so on and so on not only that They carry diseases and not just diseases that can go to other wildlife species But diseases that go right back into you. Any all heard of toxoplasmosis?  Yes. This is crazy. There have been studies demonstrating that mice that are infected by toxoplasmosis They like getting closer to cats. So they get eaten by cats toxo is A thing so Keep your cat indoors if you have a dog and you're walking in a space that is a nice hiking area Keep your dog on a leash Right the dog in and of itself also can be a carrier of disease that hops over to wildlife Say you do all those things which if you're interested in what a catio is it's a cat patio, right? You just create those It's great for cats. I have a cat Um But also You can get involved in local organizations that are doing a good chunk of this work For instance, many of the indigenous groups that are here are working on doing indigenous plantings If you have a single family home and you have a garden plant more native Seeds right and those native seeds help native pollinators rebound oftentimes We think about honeybees as being the biggest thing we need to save But there really are a ton of other pollinators that are not honeybees That are native to here to california honeybees are not native to california Right that you can start bringing in those animals to create a more vibrant community And all that even being said just like conserving water Making sure that you are trying to do as much as you possibly can To to keep trash off of the trails little things like that go a long way But yes, keep your cat indoors Um You you have a very optimistic and hopeful attitude and I agree with you and everything makes sense, but For somebody who would say that our real issue is And this goes kind of the housing population So we can't really do much about The fact that our population is growing and eventually our our natural resources are Are going to be maxed out. So I'm wondering if you could Maybe address The perspective or the attitude that It's too late. We can do little things around the margins But unless we do something related to population growth We're going to have a really hard time creating a sustainable Community and we we already know that we're seeing mass extinctions in other places hotter drier areas, but Like as just as a practical matter on the ground What would you say to somebody who says we've just got too many people and it's too late? Yeah, that's a good question. So just to reiterate the question was, you know It feels like we sort of are already past a threshold where it's too much and the population is too great And we sort of are out of options, right? So what would I say to to folks like that? Well There are many threads and stick with me on this thread, right? The first being what oftentimes is this idea of overpopulation being the biggest threat and that Because we've already passed eight million We have no hope it should be noted That the numbers clearly state here that overpopulation is not the problem It has been deemed the problem for the last 20 to 50 years But in fact, it's actually over exploitation and not over exploitation by the many but by the few 1% right so the top 1% of earners in the globe Use more resources than the majority of most countries Think about that for a second, right the top 1% use more resources than the majority of most countries The problem is not that we have too many people on the planet. The problem is that the distribution of wealth and resources Is incredibly inequitable to the point that we are dying because of that societal and global inequity So that's number one number two and this is oftentimes me being the black panther and traveling back to the ancestral plane My ancestors were enslaved And many of them did not see the other side of enslavement They did not see the other side of not being in bondage and they fought anyway Right. I have many folks that are in my lab that are queer that are from immigrant families That have themselves had their own struggles and their parents and their grandparents and their great grandparents They fought because they knew and they understood that They may not reap the benefits that they're starting to sow But later generations will and i'm a dad. I have a five and a seven-year-old this hits home Really personally and I know that All of the work that I do It may not come to fruition. I may not be able to see us get on the other side of this hump But I want to make sure I prepare them as much as possible to continue that fight in a way that gives me hope Because there is no other option for those of y'all that are parents, you know, there is no other option You have to fight right whether it's through the pandemic or looming government shutdowns losing species There is no other option So for all of those reasons, right? I think it's important to be hopeful because If we all commit ourselves to actually saying no, we're gonna do this We're going to do it period Yeah, thank you so much for your last response. Um, I guess this is more of an objective question, but I'm just in terms of like data and like definitions When does a dwelling get considered an urban area or a city? And how do like nuances in these definitions affect your research? Yeah, so the question was how how does how do we I mean to boil it down. How is the city a city? How do we know what is a city and what isn't right and when does it transform? the short answer We still are trying to figure that out The long answer is that there are A set of quintessential categories that help us understand What is urban and what isn't and there is a gradient of what is urban and what isn't right? So one of the biggest ones being the amount of landscape that's been transformed Right, so we transform something That would have been soil that would have been potentially more fertile to impervious surfaces like buildings and roads and walkways There are also differences in the distribution of how many people Exist in an area So if there is a greater density of folks sometimes it's 5,000 sometimes it's 50,000 within a given area Then we start saying, okay. Well, this is an urban space And even then when we have all of those definitions Each city is different even here just in the bay area alone San Francisco And oakland are right there and they're so dramatically different And on the ground perspective The amount of poison oak you guys probably have noticed has increased A lot recently when we're going through and setting up these cameras We notice that there seems to be sometimes five to tenfold more poison oak In the east bay, but it's not like that in san francisco at all Because the micro climates are so different and the distribution of building densities is different that it shapes what's where So that's again the long way of me saying that there are certain properties. We look at how many people are in this space How big the green space is how complex that green space is and then what the row densities look like But even then we're still trying to figure that out I wonder if you'd like to comment at all on the effects of roadways and freeways on the decimation of wildlife and the use or misuse or non-use of overpasses and bridges and tunnels Yeah, so the question here is specifically about roads right and roadways and how they potentially constrict Or separate communities from each other and as y'all probably can imagine There is a whole subfield within urban ecology alone That looks at roadways and their impacts on animal movement on the amount of ecosystem disturbances that are created from noise And diesel particulate matter to restricting the population size and the effect of population size or essentially the genetics Of the species and some of the things that we know are kind of clear as day and repeated across studies across species That the more roads there are The bigger those roads are the harder it is for organisms to go from point a to point b habitat a to habitat b Especially the ones that can't fly and even the ones that can fly have a hard time doing so So it restricts the number of individuals that can get to either of those habitats And reduces the amount of genetic diversity And one of the things that we didn't talk about here in biodiversity Which I share oftentimes in my lectures is that we oftentimes think of the large macro organism as biodiversity But genetic diversity is also a level of biodiversity that we oftentimes don't always think about And biodiversity in cities gets constricted it gets reduced For almost all other species now it should be noted that there are some examples where certain species develop New genes they have new strategies and they're naturally selected or Nutrally selected for living in these urban spaces But yes, one of the ways in which we're hoping to combat that is either by transitioning roads from being these major huge roadways to being smaller roadways with walk paths or bike paths on either side And creating wildlife crossings. So in los angeles where i'm from the annenberg crossing was just created Over i think it was the 101 or the 405 one of those major highways In light of p 22 right the mountain lion who is extraordinarily famous for existing up in the hollywood hills So there was a huge amount of campaigning over 22 years by many of my colleagues to get that bridge started But it's not going to be built and finished until 2027 and we need a whole lot more of them Now granted the road conversation is connected to all of these other Inequity conversations We have a lot of roads because it's so expensive for people to live and work in the same spaces So folks have to live really really far away And then work back in the city which then requires more highways if folks were able to have employment opportunities That were much closer to where they live Everybody could bike Should also be a right right a human right like i would love to be able to bike And i'm a faculty member here at berkeley and i still got to drive my kids to school That tells you how expensive it is right so given that it it sort of comes down to a Michael jackson man in the mirror moment We sort of need to sit ourselves on the couch and say how do we start building better cities For everybody because and that's when we're going to be able to start saying like you know what if we build Greater public transportation make sure that the barc system is everywhere in richmond And all goes all the way down to san liandro and other places that serve all communities Then we start getting somewhere then we start building ourselves up enough to essentially put our mask on before we put the mask on of the child That is wildlife right put your mask on first as i tell you so i think the roads that's super important and Ironically roads are connected to all other things and if we build better connectivity with ourselves We can start building better connectivity within our environment We have time for one more question Bring it home. Uh, thank you so much. I just love the intersectionality of how how this is all connected and how you present it Um Also, if we live in la and want to give a shout out to tree people Which we've been involved with for a long time and I just think this work Yeah, and I guess we're suburban dwellers, right? And so I'd love for you just to talk a little bit about changing out from solid to impervious Groundcover right and and and how that can be sort of i've been interested in some of these books about Diversity of backyard, you know just gardens neighborhood gardens Yeah, so the question here being about how do we start how do we start transitioning our cities? From being something where it's just hard concrete and these impervious surfaces where nothing gets into More of these pervious surfaces these surfaces that breathe right and one fun fact for y'all that I often tell my students is that soil is way more important than we give it credit And this is me being the carnivore biologist saying soil is really important It is the third largest sink of all carbon on our planet So when we create these impervious surfaces it essentially seals The the surface where there is no exchange of carbon dioxide Meaning there are there's no possibility for the microorganisms the small invertebrates and everything else to live in those soils So there are many environmental engineers that are creating more permeable surfaces that can start to breathe And one good example that I know of when I visited with some of my colleagues in Chicago at Lincoln Park Zoo Are engineers that are transforming schoolyards to being these hard kind of like asphalt things that Really for those of y'all that have small kids, you know, they destroy shoes I'm like getting my kids shoes every other month because these hard tops are terrible But then they've transformed those systems to being more of these permeable surfaces That essentially let water come in through the permeable surface. It's really bouncy sort of like Um a play mat, but it allows for water to come in and then it builds the water table back up So then there's still some living soil underneath it and then they plant trees Throughout the schoolyard and then they have their own urban garden Right where the kids get a chance to learn about symbiosis and community relationships and how to grow things and water potential Right and food justice, which is extraordinary for k through 12 programs So things just as simple as you know, what what what would it look like if we started to reclaim our schools to make them be hubs of kind of like ecological unity And to that point one of the programs that was just launched I'm a part of called reimagining sf which has its hub at the cal academy of sciences is doing just that So through what's called their 49 squares program. They're thinking about every square of San Francisco to rebuild it back. So that way it serves essentially as a beacon for other cities in california So there are ways to do it and they may cost a lot up front, but then they're going to save us so much more into the future This was great. Thank you so much


Extromer radiation and surgery are not the only options for the treatment of prostate cancer. My name is Jason Molotoras and I'm an assistant professor in the University of Maryland School of Medicine and I work in the Green and Bomb Comprehensive Cancer Center. Today we're going to be drawing outside of the line talking about high-dose radiation brachytherapy as well as hyperthermia treatments. We know that surgery is a very good option for a lot of men with prostate cancer. We also know that extrobeam radiation is an option and in some cases brachytherapy commonly referred to as seeds is an additional option for men with prostate cancer where we introduce radioactive seeds into the prostate itself. Now while this is a good option for some men and we know that increasing the radiation dose through the use of internal treatments is beneficial for a lot of men with prostate cancer, some men have prostate cancer that doesn't work well for the use of seeds. If prostate cancer has grown outside of the prostate it can be challenging to get seeds to remain in place and deliver radiation dose to this prostate cancer. Additionally, surgery can be challenging in these situations because it can be difficult to remove the entirety of the prostate cancer. So at the University of Maryland we have initiated a high-dose rate brachytherapy program. Similar to seeds we insert catheters or needles into the prostate. However, in this situation we give high-dose radiation over the course of five to ten minutes through these catheters while the men are asleep.  In addition to doing high-dose rate brachytherapy, in cases where prostate cancer has come back we have an additional treatment of hyperthermia in which we can use to improve outcomes for men with prostate cancer. Hyperthermia is gentle heating of the prostate which we know synergizes with the effectiveness of the radiation. This is commonly done in many malignancies to improve outcomes, especially in patients who have recurrent cancers. So in summary, high-dose rate brachytherapy allows us to treat outside of the lines and hyperthermia allows us to improve treatment outcomes in the hardest to treat patients.


The judiciary staff union of Nigeria, Jocelyn Oshun State Chapter has embarked on an indefinite industrial action with immediate effect. The strike is coming on the heels of the protests on Monday and Tuesday by Oshun's Jocelyn over the allegations of maladministration against the embattled Oshun Chief Judge Justice Oyebola Adeppere Ojo. The Jocelyn members also accused her of unduly persecuting or persecuting some members of staff and denying them entitlements ranging from restoration of training exercises, areas of wardrobe allowances from 2021 to 2023, and reinstatement of judiciary staff in the state suspended by Justice Adeppere Ojo. Our demands still remain intact. One, all our members that were unlawfully suspended by the Honourable Chief Judge should be reinstated with immediate effect. By the Oshun State government, all categories of judiciary workers should be complemented, the attitude of the police this morning, and the singular act of the Honourable Chief Judge. I, Comrade Oluwa Demigola Kulei Luduli, the chairman and judiciary staff union of Nigeria, hereby declare that we should embark on industrial action. They all decided that while the investigation is on, the CJ should step aside. And semantically, there's a great difference between the CJ being subbed, being suspended, and being asked to step aside. So the meaning should be drawn alongside each other. We'll find about fresh news updates.