And so, starting senior year, like, I was feeling very much like, like, what does that even mean to me? Like, I had this, like, random year that I had to finish school. This was going to be a very normal video. I started my senior year of college this week. So you'd think that I would just make a normal going back to school video. Unfortunately, I can't do that. If this is your first video on my channel, welcome. My college years have gone a bit like this. It's hard to imagine this is how 2020 started. I did not plan on taking a gap year this year. You're wondering what living in DC is like. That's what it is. It's just terrific. I was in the middle of finding who I was. It got derailed. I moved to Scotland in 16 days.  So now I am back to some kind of reality, to my life, to something. And after two and a half years, I really didn't know what to expect and in a real way, I still don't know. And if I'm being completely honest with you guys, this is how I actually started off my senior year of college. Like in all honesty, I'm just like, I'm kind of heartbroken. I think that's maybe the best way to put it. And I'm really trying not to have that attitude. But God, it's just really hard. You just take the hammer and you just... You just take the hammer and you just get it. Yeah, just get it right in there. And then it will be fixed. So the reality is, I took my first week in chunks with a friend, getting acclimated, learning how to get around, even just doing some work. I'm here to save a chock, boys and candy canes. They can all be erased. Holding on to something, nothing in the end. But will I even gain? Think for the little thin dreams. You've gotta try to catch that light. Go somewhere else. And all of those subway cars are rolling my adventures in the city that I do and I really try. Take me to the suburbs where the ocean cleanses, waiting on a fence on this country. Hi everybody. So I had my first class and it was very interesting. I went into the classroom. I'd never been to this side of campus before. There were all these signs for the classroom that I was supposed to go in. So I was like, oh, let's follow the signs, right? And I saw this other girl walk down this hallway. And so I was like, oh, I'm just going to follow her. Like she definitely knows what she's doing. That girl just vanished. I don't know where she went. But the hallway was completely pitch black, got all the way up to the top stairs. The girl came in. The staircase behind me. And I started sharing. I was like, oh my gosh, the door is locked up here. So we have to leave. But we realized that the other door locked behind us. We got stuck in this building right before our first class. And thankfully there was a nice maintenance guide that helped us because then we got locked in another section of the building that had a service elevator. I don't even know how this happened. That's how my first day went. It was very interesting. I took the free bus in Charleston, which I've never actually done before. I've never used the transit, but there is a free bus on campus if you need to get around different sections. First day is going pretty well. Now I'm just working on YouTube content, writing on some content on my film of video really quick. It's really kind of weird that I have homework and it's day one. I'm not used to that. Not that I didn't have work at the University of Edinburgh, but I just... It was more like reading that you had to do. Yeah, it's weird going back to this learning system. I really haven't done homework, sort of like a worksheet or like a discussion post in a bit, so it should be interesting. That big crack just came. This storm is crazy. We've been having thunderstorms pretty much every afternoon since I've been back. This is definitely the biggest one that we've had. We have these in D.C. like this too. It was probably like 98 degrees today and humid. I also forgot how many lizards there are. Just like scooting about. It's a lot of lizards. I don't really like lizards. I'm not going to lie to you guys. Hi everybody. I am now going on week three of... Well, this is only week two of school. Back to my life here in Charleston. I cannot fully explain how like out of body I felt coming back to school. What's really weird is I think when I started my channel I was like, oh, you know, a lot of people will take gap years off of college and like sort of do what I was doing.   But just like talking to so many people this week. I realized just like how messed up a lot of people's college experience has been through COVID.  But like a lot of us are like still going through it in a weird way. Like, like this is weird. Like I know that this isn't how college is supposed to go.  I'm not going to feel the effects of being older because it almost feels like time was stolen from me. You know, I think a lot of us feel that way. And so starting senior year, like I was feeling very much like, almost like I didn't earn it. Like I was like, how did I even like, what does that even mean to me? Like I have this like random year that I have to finish school in a place where I have literally one friend. And I basically have to start all over again. I was so absolutely just like downtrodden about downtrodden. I just didn't, I didn't think that I would feel like I am at the stage in life. If that makes any sense. And the more that I live it and I like live my life, I realize how much I have actually changed without this place, which I don't know that's like kind of, I don't know, like we all just try to like make our own situation feel okay. You know, like everything happens for a reason. And whether you believe that or not, whether you know a very like practically brained person, we gain stuff from our experiences. I can truly say I've never felt this comfortable with myself. And I didn't think that I would feel that way. I think that coming back here, I thought that I would feel like a sophomore. Like I thought that I would feel like I wasn't ready for this or that I was like sort of over it, but I feel very, not like peaceful, but I just feel like I'm very present. And I don't know if that's because I studied abroad and having that experience like for a whole entire year probably has nothing to do with it and COVID. It's definitely affirming because coming back here, like I said in that original clip, like honestly I'm so heartbroken. Like I got off the plane. I'm so excited to see my family. Like so excited. I love my family so much, but I was only home for like three, four days before I had to come back here. I have just been like all over the place this summer and then to have like two days at home and then to come here after my travels and being away for that long. Like it was just the most jarring experience. I thought that I would feel like this was, this felt wrong, but it just feels very natural and it feels like where I'm supposed to be and it sounds like where like where I'm supposed to be. But I don't think it's because, I don't think it's because of like the universe or like some sort of things. It's just like I've had this jarring experience for the past two years of like life just being switched up on me on a dime and you know I have to do that again this year and yeah it's a familiar place I've been before but like my life is completely different than it was two and a half years ago. Like it's drastically different but like I'm not scared of it. I was scared of it like two weeks ago and I'm sure there are moments where you know the future's gonna seem really daunting but I think having those experiences of like two years just going completely off the rails I've just like developed this mindset of like it's all gonna be okay. The world can literally go up in smoke because it did and the little stuff, I don't know the little stuff just like hasn't been getting to me like it did two and a half years ago like this is like super long and boring. I guess part of the story is like if you're scared to go abroad or you're scared to make the wrong decision going forward because like heck I figure out what to do next year you know like not really afraid of it I think maybe it's supposed to be I mean that's not something I should admit because I don't want it to come across like cocky or like like I'm being like overconfident but I don't know I'm just like I'm okay you know I don't have to figure out still and uh


We're very happy to have you back with us here on Human Humane Architecture, broadcasting live from our low-hanging fruit, plentiful, paradissel islands of Hawaii, with DeSoto Brown and Martin de Spang. And we got everything here, right? Well, we think we do. Even picture number one? Even think we've got a wonderful building right in the center, that's what we're going to be talking about. Simonhead Beach Hotel, and it's indicative of what we're talking about this. So what's the next picture? So we got everything even. We got pyramids? Do we? Do we have pyramids? Do I see any up there in that picture? I'm not sure. Well, we don't see any easily. We think of pyramids. It's like what they ancient Egyptians had, but maybe we got it closer. Okay. Let's go to our ninth island. All right. Next picture. Yeah. And we have to explain this is how the locals call Las Vegas. That's exactly right because that's where many go. Eight major Hawaiian islands, and this is the one that you go to after you've been in the other ones. There's direct flights to it. Oh, yeah. And I happen to be there because we were published along with this French interior designer Patrick Girard, who did this wonderful reef inspired, by the way, top right picture, bar and lounge in the V Hotel, which is part of the, unfortunately, recently tragic mental A-bay because of the shooting. This is straight in front of that pyramid called the Luxor. And so that's what you see there. And the next picture. And we were talking that the Egyptian pyramid is the epitome of a solidity. It's solid inside. There's very little open space, but not this one. We said, you know, the little tombs there in there or something, the mummies, which we have this discussion. Right. There aren't any mummies in there, but there are just some little, some little cables, a laboratory chain, right? Exactly. Some cages in there. But this one, he is corporate America branding, rebranding a pyramid. This is hollow because it got the atrium. So all the hotel rooms are basically suspended from trusses in the corners. And so we went because we're one to learn. So we went into these egress staircases. They're all enclosed. And this is the detail. This is the scariest welding I've ever seen in a while. And I thought, God, let there not be a fire in the building because in a previous show we had another building on Vegas that was on fire, right? Right. Yeah. So this is, this is the antithesis of, of a pyramid. Solidity. Of that. Exactly. So we've been there a two next picture. Yes. What happened to you? Well, when you go in these rooms, you want to walk over and look out the window.  Ouch. Ouch. And you see people's prints of foreheads and noses and stuff against the glass. Yeah. And another criticism, next picture on my side here as the architect is that this thing is beaten by the sun the whole time. So the pyramid, again, is sort of crazy antithesis. So the sun god originally that was involved. Correct. And now here it's the air conditioning god. And it just is, it's throwing energy out all the time. Yeah. Versus the theory of the original theory where it's sort of a cosmic power plant. Exactly. Well, this is not generating power. No. It is taking power away. This is powered by the oil industry. And as you said too, it's sending out that beam of laser light every night that's spending energy. Exactly. And that facade gets pounded by the elements by the sun and the rain. Every drop of rain. So you can see the glass going bad at some point. And next picture, we always have nice suggestions for retrofitting. This is a product that I, in many ways, their products, they're too good to be true. So they're not really become mainstream. So it takes a while. This is originally, there's a little bit of my original culture, patriotism, a German company called the Plastivarca Arnold and they created this product Voltaux. And then a Spanish company is now in business with that. It's called Onyx Glass. And it's basically baked on glass, photovoltaic frittings. So these dots and different patterns you can make. So we're suggesting to retrofit that pyramid though. So it can create its own energy so it becomes its own power plant using this analogy. And those, that elements of the photovoltaic material is also a shading factor. All right. But that's true. Yeah. And let's go back to our other islands here. Next picture. Back to our islands. Exactly. And this is my dear professor and colleague, Keith Sires, who together with my other professor, Homer Pewterbaugh and another colleague have done this great introduction to structural systems. So here they introduce us to what we're going to talk about today to the phenomenon of Bedard and Buttrist. Bedard, we have that at the very top in Buttrist. We have at the bottom left. And Bedard, you can see, you were saying our termites unfortunately don't do that. But when they originally come from in Africa, they built these mountains. And these mountains are thicker at the base and thinner at the top. They're totally figured out. There's also some very biochlametic and easy breezy. Everything that we want to... Everything that we like. Yeah, exactly. We like the termites. Exactly. So next picture is then, in previous show, you pointed out that the indigenous sort of had dealt with that as well. Right. And one of the things we just pointed out is that things that are wider at the base are more stable. And so a wall, a stone wall that's particularly dry wall or dry stack, wider at the base means that it is more stable. So these walls at the Center for Wine Studies at the University of Hawaii are mimicking the way walls were built for really big hey-ow that were wider at the base. And this is typical for six seas. And this is us with World Bruder here touring it was the glorious interpretation of indigenous culture, not imitation. Right. It was interpretation versus imitation, which we like to do these days. Another show, we found these walls. Next picture. Yes. So when we went out to Makaha, you went and I went. And we discovered these remnant walls of the now vanished Makaha Valley Inn. And they too have this battered, wider at the base tapering up to the top motif that is probably mimicking ancient Hawaiian culture. Exactly. And they also did it to a column. And next picture, we also see that at another project here that we've been featured as one of our favorites. This is Pete Wimbley's Bank of Hawaii and the top right that we featured in another show is that unfortunately this plinth isn't there anymore, as I like to say, got cheese caked. Yes, it did. It looks pretty corporate American general and not that specific anymore. And here, as you pointed out, this nice sort of, again, getting thinner to the top columns, which reminds us of another even more prominent building. Next picture. And that is the Hawaii State Capitol building. And we've got two elements going on there. The columns are battered in that they are wider and tapering towards the top. And then the two chambers on either side also have that same format. Those as we have discussed is not just purely for decorative effect, although they do mimic a naturally occurring form, which we'll look at later. But they also do have this function of being bigger at the bottom. And you can accommodate more people down there where you've got the legislators and the senators sitting. As the picture on the top right shows, you can experience that lively, spatially, as sitting there. So it's not that lick and stick on the surface, it's essential, you feel it right. And what Bruder called after having seen it, he called this the best capital in the United States that he has ever seen. And this is not just because of the way it looks, it's the way it functions. I've been doing the women's walk a while ago and I experienced this power of democracy and people standing up in there and expressing themselves. As the amendments tell us we should do right, this is great. It functions very well. And again, they do these elements, the Faden City Guide basically that has this building in there. It basically points out in a very precise, short, but sweet way, it says the symbolism of this project has been controversially discussed ever since. And I think it's great, like true modernism is you can see these literal energies in there or not. It's up to you. Because postmodernism shoves it in your face, you have to look at it this way and you don't have another choice. This is more liberal, which democracy should be. So next picture, one of my experiences with this, and this is the term, the phenomenon of basically batter it, is still the tallest, because we want to get to tall buildings because we have a lot of them on the island here and this is in Chicago, this is Burnham's 1893 Monatnok building. And it's a solid, steratomic monolithic high rise out of brick. And as you see us with our merging talents down there, it's a we observe and are fascinated by the six feet thick walls at the base. And I think they go up to like three feet or something like that. So it basically does what the walls do as a building. Exactly. And this is all before the use of steel skeletal girders on the inside. Follow that because it means from the role of that build, make sure you have apartments as the most prominent because he said, well, this is made doesn't make sense to expensive. Let's use modern technology, steel and glass. And that's where we are now. So and let's go and search for towers that implement these things here. Right. And we had already found one a while ago when we were talking about the Hilton Hawaiian Village, Kaiser's mainstream Hawaii, the Astro Tower here, excuse me, the Lagoon Tower, pretty much by Edwin Bauer. Also a show with John Williams about that. And we pointed out that this there are these sort of pilasters at Taper. And you can see this being inspired by the banyan tree root. Exactly. But again, you don't have to see that. And there's also a performative benefit for that from the from the visitor side. If you want a balcony or a night that's more secluded, more protected, you go to the bottom of the building. If you want one that's more floating there in space, you go. So there isn't just a decorative benefit. And the banyan roots are not just decorative either. Exactly. They are there to hold up the tree. Absolutely. So it took that great point. It took this analogy sort of literal because it's not a literal orange. No, it's not. I think it's a functional and a performative thing. Right. And now the next picture is another building we found out. This is the Sheraton in Waikiki, which this building as the previous one, the basic building is straight. Yes. But the ends of the buildings, they play with that. So there are these very sculptural sort of sort of exotic, brutalist sort of gestures. One has the elevator and the other ones are basically just the ends of the building. And they also do that. It's hard. It's hardly noticeable. But if you guys go there, you can see that. Right. And there's a third building just next to us. Which one is that next picture? What's our next building? What's our next building? There we go. We are right here downtown at the this is the financial plaza. This was built as the Castle and Coat building. There is a flare at the base of the building, which probably was there for decorative purposes. But as you pointed out, I'm sure it does add stability as well. So you can see there's a little bit of widening at the base of the building. And this is a brutalist building with this textured concrete and a very fine example of tropical brutalism, tropical brutalism, that Timothy Schuler, who is going to be one of our hosts over the summer, is going to write an article about and also do a show with us.  And here's Will Bruder again last week, very impressed by it. Also by the landscape part, which credits back to Lawrence Halperin, whom he had known in person. So the next picture is not so good example that you contributed. Right. And this is purely decorative. We don't think that these fins really do do a heck of a lot for this building. And if you look at the picture on the top in the middle, what's cookie to me is the two facades that face outward of the building have these buttresses, if you will. But on the backside where you don't see things and people just park, they just left them off and they saved money. They value engineered that that out of the building and on the front, you see these buttresses. Exactly. And that being said, let's go to the next one and look for buildings who do battered, battered buildings, battered buildings. And here's one in Waikiki. There is one and that's on our end on the diamond head end of it. It was Suzanne on the walking tour with me. And all of a sudden there was this cigarette there.  And next picture, it also goes into the category of a previous show, Crazy Candle-Leaving Canopies, because look at how crazy and they're like coming out and then they get thinned out and you got these notches at the slabs on the side, so very sculpturally crafted, very tectonically clear. And, you know, in fact, very spectacular and sort of it's interpreting the anatomy of a pyramid, which is per se touching the ground. Massively, these are floating pyramids. That's right. That's pretty cool. That is. And next picture is showing us. I also want to give credit to the current occupant or hotel user of the building. This is called the Aqua Bamboo and you can see why. And they're basically heavily vegetating, making it in an urban jungle. It's a great experience for being in a great jungle. Right. They green it a lot. I want to give credits to that. Yeah. And next picture is our next example of that family, which is on the other end of Cuyo, on the ever end. And you know the original name. And the original name of this is the Waikiki Gateway Hotel. It is at the split between Cuyo and Kalakawa Avenues, where the Gateway Park is, and it's built in the early 1970s and very clearly, as we can see, it's got that tapering upward so that you can clearly see, as we'll see in our next building too, those two tapered ends. Yeah. And next picture here shows how that gets celebrated in the facade. You've got these sort of shadow reveals that underline the floor slabs. The one that we pointed out in the beauty and the beast show we did a while ago that can't do any more crafts wise. They were doing them very well. And then again, they get notched out at the end in a very sort of accentuated, expressed way. Next picture. And sort of he was playing with that theme of the floating zero at here even more dramatically at the bottom picture. You can see pretty heavy beams going Malka Makai and then sort of thinner, but still impressively tall beams, which are actually the bottom of these fins. Right. And so this is this is expressed structure at its best. Right. And they look like rafters. They look like rafters that are protruding out of a traditional style home or wooden buildings roof. Yeah, absolutely. And the third one of that little family here is the next picture. And have we mentioned the architect yet? We will soon. We will soon at the end of this project here of these pictures here. And this is also our permanent background picture here. Right. This is in the Gold Coast area here. And that's the Diamond Head Beach Hotel. Yeah. And that is a condo hotel combination, a condo hotel, how they call it. And it's very skinny. So it's almost an extruded skinny tower. Right. Yes. And next picture shows us that it has the same thinking as the project we pointed out in a few shows ago, which was the Bellevue on Alawai, correct. Which the building is skinny. And the building is oriented the same way that at the top picture, the circulation is on the south and the openings are very minimal and jealous. Yes. So the walkways are your shading eyebrow. Correct. Whereas the bottom picture shows the north facade where the living rooms and the lanais are and the building always stays cool. And it is not doing the mistake that the new towers do that obsessed, overly obsessed with the views and do that on the expense of being hit by the west sun where the sun sets. Exactly. And then you need the AC to basically keep yourself cool. This building is bi-climatically, literally and figuratively cool. And what I like about this building is, as I said, because of the way it's situated, you clearly see the tapering size of it and that it is a pyramid. Exactly. Because of the way you see it from the street. Exactly. And I happened to, when I wanted to take more pictures, I ran into a tenant who turned out to be German. So there was a lot of chitchatting going on. In German. In German, yeah. And she was confirming to me that, in fact, all the units have different sizes, square footage sizes due to the nature of the building being taller at the bottom and to the end. And that is, you know, if you think about providing a larger range of dwelling propositions, it's pretty interesting. But as we've also discussed too, every time you vary something like that, you are charging more money. And we will get into that touching subject exactly. So last, next picture here, which is the last picture for this project, is also referencing and attributing to our show about celebratory circulation, our last show. And this was actually our winner. We set this building to its best. It's showcasing the circulation being at the sort of narrow front end. So the facade, the address, the face of the facade, facade becomes the sort of post-fossil ascending and descending of the building. Right, right. How cool. Showing off the stairway. And of course, we'll mention the architect. So next picture, because until now, today we found out that the architect Jopo Rongstead is Mr. Ziggurat. And until then, we thought he was Mr. Skinny Towers, because most of the skinniest towers on the island, not only the square ones, but these for sure, but also some very other funky ones are authorship by Jopo Rongstead. And I happen to know the building manager of this building, which is Century Tower, just next to the convention center. And he told me that the windows are about to go bad and need to be replaced. And I said, there we go. Please replace it where this photo will take us. The building's orientation is because it's ideal for that, because every facade gets hit by the sun. Sure it does, and it has no shading. But no, it would then, because wherever there is opacity, it shades. And at the same time, this opacity creates energy, electricity that he can use to cover the rest of the building. He's got two positive attributes. You could basically biochlametically retrofit and our Doko Momo members will like, not dramatically change the appearance of the building. How cool would that be? So not so cool are the next couple pictures to pour some little water into this wine here, because Glass Tower is way back. And actually our first original Glass Tower wasn't the Glass Tower because John Graham at the very left, we ran a show about it. Our coolest commercial classic had louvers to shade the glass. They unfortunately took these off in the early 90s and thought, you know, they can just replace it with AC. And that's the way we're still building. So the building in the bottom middle is a little brooder at the IBM, how it used workshops, staring at this thing, which is done by some very respected colleagues of his who have done the Apple Store in New York. But when they come here, they ran out a little bit of inspiration and do at the bottom right, a picture I took while being in traffic, just the same old Glass Tower that's basically is hit and blasted by the sun and needs to be aced. How sad is that? And these are even the square towers that the developers even think they're not sexy enough. So next picture, they do other ones. That's right. And they make these funny shapes. And there are, as we pointed out, the architect says, the left one is inspired by Hawaiian fishing. The other one, I'm lost, maybe intestines or something like that strange ways. That's true. I don't know what that is. So we would caution the young generation to be formalists, but be performer tests, maybe. And so the next picture on a recent trip to San Francisco here with our friend Kurt Sandburne, almost activist journalist on the island. We drove far out to look at the skyline. And of course, we know the iconic Pan American. Trans-American. Trans-American thing here to say this again. Pyramid from the 70s by Pereira as the architect. But now the skyline is dominated by a new one, the very tall one that you can see there. And this is a Cesar Pelle tower. And Cesar Pelle also did work on the islands way back late sixties. These are the towers, which are on couple on the Boulevard close. All the way and University Avenue. Both buildings meaning well and certainly architecturally ambitious, but by climatically sort of not where they should be. So well, Bruder made a pitch and he matches former governor Abercrombie to say, we need a beacon. We need a tall tower, but needs to be a highly performative tower. That's setting a standard that is top notch. And and will say, as it might want to be someone like Renzo Piano, which you can see at the bottom right, this is a shard building in London. Correct. And I want to point out just really quickly that we already had an iconic tall building for much of the 20th century, which was Aloha Tower and Aloha at Honolulu Harbor, tallest building. And as we like to say, it was easy breezy in addition to being an icon. And it's a skinny tower. And so the air can go through that's the air went right through it. Perfect. This is our grandfather. That's right. Easy breezy grandfather, skinny tower. Very well. But come on, can't don't we have pyramids on the island? If we take one and we turn it really fast, that's right. That's right. Well, there is a natural form that looks like that. Let's go to the next picture and that is a cone. That's a volcanic cone. Those cones are formed from things being ejected from the volcano. And they naturally assume this cone shaped, which is stable. Yeah. And we got we got sort of tempted to think about that as far as using that sort of anatomy and not form for building a next picture. Where's that? Well, that's primitiva. That's one of the earlier primitivas. And we've got you explained to me that there are two here. The one on the left was intended to be on a slope where the terraced slope could serve as taro terraces to grow taro and that within the tower, which is tapered, there would be a mix of Hawaiian homes, people of renters, buyers, etc. And then again, a lot of open spaces for people to mingle. One of the problems with that is, however, as we've discussed, whenever you make something that's nonstandard, then there's more cost because you do not have standardization to be able to use, for example, the pre have pre fab concrete. Exactly. So I got in trouble with less campers as you perfectly indicate already because he said, Martin, you're violating one of the two must do's for for efficiency and effectiveness in pre fabrication. One is maximum unit size, which we did, but the other one is maximum repetition. And when every floor is different, you don't repeat, right? So that is critical because we're talking, we're not talking about the high end glitzy Howard Uzi stuff. We're talking about the real need on the island of social housing. So we need to look at things very serious. And that's why primitiva ended up being that straight. Extruded doughnut at the end that we see at the top right. You want to talk about the other one? And there was the other one. Yeah, the other one was in Cacaaco because Cacaaco is originally which one of our emerging talents had looked into the history of the place. And it was the salt pits, which Kamiya School brands their part as being salt area. Right. So she said, well, maybe I get inspired by that. And I said, I caution you, yes, look at that. But look at that performatively versus just formally. And then again, as we just said, you know, and this is the picture. The color picture in the middle there is basically the the location for the one on the left is basically way out West to stop the sprawl, correct? Because all these tenants that you already mentioned some and another one might be UH Manoa West, right? And not you know, UH, UH West, West, West, wow, exactly. So these could be the people who could basically sort of be compacted and comprised into that cone volcano, permittiva. And again, to, as you said, to keep the country country. And that's right. And do you do on the land? What we always did and we need to do again is planned food. That's right. Because we need to rather than building lots of small buildings. Again, concentrate people into larger buildings. Perfect. Yeah. So next picture is along the same lines of not getting taken away from form, right? Because what happened here? Well, this is was the original Honolulu Fort building on Alamoana and it's now a Chevrolet dealership. And it had those protruding rafter like concrete beams that are sticking out. But just recently they added these two supports on that we see closest to us, which again are tapered. So they are battered, but they don't really serve any function. They're just decorative. As you pointed out, that's probably nonstructural stone that's just sort of been slapped on to drywall or something and ornate with that ornated as you also saw, so perfectly called it. So next picture is another positive example of proposition here. Yeah. So what is this? Jungleism? What are we doing here? It's Jungleism number one. That was in Waikiki way back where our foreign exchange student, Liam Tran. Hi, Liam. I hope you're doing well as well as you did here because she was looking at the fabric and seeing water as being the new oil and being scarce. Right. And so she was proposing to add these sort of water towers. And the water towers are basically little power station, fresh water stations that are comprised of these horizontal bends in their troughs, which basically collect the water and distribute the water and they're spaced out. So you see this inside out picture where you got this sliced view of outside. And so again, it's from its sort of function and inhibitation design, sort of inside out design approach became a pretty interesting twisted pyramid. And that way twisting is OK, but it's not the formal twist. It's a performative twist. Right. Exactly. And what she's saying is that water is a resource to be kept rather than just dump on the ground and to flow out to the ocean. And we are rushed for the next four pictures in less than a few minutes. So let's look critical at that sort of urban fabric thing and look at that city that first did high rises, which is New York City. And when New York City began to build big buildings in the early 1920s, they came up with the idea of requiring setbacks, which will allow in more air and more light rather than having monolithic blocks. And that is why these distinctive early 20th century buildings were constructed in New York City because of that law. And next picture, do we have the same circumstances here? No, we don't. But we have some buildings. This is the Outrigger East Hotel and it's got that same kind of setback type form to it, but we don't have a jungle of high rises that requires it. Plus, we have air and light and rain all year long here. In our climate. So we don't really need to open up to more sun. We've got a lot of sun. So let's do another approach, which is next picture. And you will be visiting us here on the review on Monday about jungleism. And here we are with sort of sections of skinny towers that we sit in. And we basically, you know, designed from inside out. We check views, we check shading, we check few things. And then we might come up with solutions like this one here, Work in Progress, where you realize that when the bamboo groves and the palm basically groves, they get fuzzy up there because the crow's leaves where there's all sun and oxygen photosynthesis. That's right. So maybe buildings want to look into that, look into that, too. That can be pretty much naked down there, easy breezy, inclusive. But maybe they want to grow things up there at the top. And that would then look like next picture, a final picture here. This is our proposition of where we are right now. We're in that building somewhere in the middle and our monofunctional downtown Honolulu basically got invaded by skinnies. A lot of tall skinny buildings that look like a bamboo grove or a palm grove. Exactly. So we're going to look into that on Monday. I'll be there with us and hopefully we can get Jay on board as well. He doesn't know yet, but we will tell him soon. So with that, thank you very much for being here and see us next week. We're going to look into something. Yeah, we do next week. Don't look so surprised because I talk to doing every week until we do in the summer. Next, we want to look into Hawaii 5.0, which we have done already sporadically here and there. But we really want to dig in. I want to share with you what I split myself with because I got all the DVDs of the original series and we want to talk what a role architecture actually played, what an important role in that. So until then, thank you and yeah, stay jungly, exotically tropical till then. Bye bye.


Well thank you everybody. There are no winners and losers in conferences but you are the best audience because you were there at the beginning and you're here at the end. Thank you very much for that. I have occasionally done the last session in a conference and looked out and there's more people on the stage than there are in the audience, not so today. Now let me read you something. What has become standard practice has largely accumulated from quick reactions to crises glossed by a veneer of high sounding sentiments based on a salient myth. That's the conclusion of a recent report into how we deal with fragility, state fragility and development. And so I think it's good at the end of the conference to ask whether our standard practice for dealing with conflict legacies and post conflict recovery is like that or is it better and is it getting better. So that's what we will be talking about in the next 72 minutes I promised I would get you finished on time. So my name's Tim Phillips. I'm a journalist. I host two podcasts that deal with these kind of subjects that are called Vox Talks and Vox Dev Talks. I'm expecting a lot more subscribers after today. I am joined today by a large panel. Larger than you see here. We have three people on stage here. We have another three who will be speaking to you online. They will be talking very briefly at the beginning. We will then ask some questions. I hope that you will ask some questions. This goes for anyone who's joining us online as well. Please do ask questions. It's the last session so you cannot complain that the conference didn't deal with the thing that you wanted it to deal with if you didn't ask the question. If you do that, we will come to you and we will try and answer it. So we will be looking today at the institutional legacies of conflict, the things that have not worked and the things that have worked and how we put those together in some kind of structure that makes sense and is coordinated. And finally I hope at the end we'll get to some policy suggestions about things that we can do. So who's going to be talking about this today? Well, on stage I have with me, I'll go from this end, Elina Calcu, who is the Under Secretary of State for Development Policy at the Finnish Foreign Ministry. We have Adnan Khan, who is the Chief Economist at the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office in the UK. And you might also know him for his work at the London School of Economics and also Jean-Claude Bonnier from the ICRC. Joining us online, we will have Sukena Cain in a moment and she's the director of the Fragility Conflict of Violence programme at the World Bank. We have Ted Miguel from Berkeley and Ted, I just looked up the time in California, so I assume Ted is going to be joining us in his pyjamas. Good to see you Ted. And also Rabab Fatima, the chair of the United Nations Peace Building Commission. Now we did promise you Rabab Fatima live, unfortunately because of an alternative commitment, she cannot join us live. But she has, however, recorded a video of the things she would have said if she was live and we're going to be playing that in a minute. It's a shame that she won't be here to answer questions, but I am sure that the other people on the panel will have some opinions on what she has to say. So if we could start off by playing Ambassador Fatima's video please. Thank you Mr Phillips, distinguished panellists, distinguished participants, ladies and gentlemen. Warm greetings from New York and my apologies at the outset for not being able to join you in person. I thank the organisers for inviting me to this important discussion and for this opportunity to share some lessons from the Peace Building Commission's experience in supporting conflict affected countries in their efforts to build and sustain peace. Since its inception, the Commission has been providing political accompaniment and advocacy to countries affected by conflict throughout various phases of their efforts from addressing root causes of conflicts to preventing lapse and relapse into violent conflict and building durable peace and sustainable development. It is engaged with a total of 23 countries and regions, the majority in Africa, but also in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Pacific Islands. Throughout its engagements, the Commission has created a platform for all stakeholders to engage in discussions on the peace building priorities of a particular country or region and mobilise required political and financial support in their realisation. The Commission created the space for local actors, particularly women and youth, representing civil society organisations, academia and the private sector to participate in national peace building efforts. Partnership with and insights from regional and sub regional organisations and international financial institutions have also benefited the work of the Commission. More importantly, the Commission has founded its engagements on the principle of national ownership and listened carefully to the countries that engage with it and focused on delivering the support that they need. For example, the Commission provided a platform to mobilise funding for peace building priorities in Burkina Faso or to draw attention to the transitional peace process, justice process in the Gambia and on an inclusive peace process in Colombia or to build awareness about climate change-related challenges in the Sahel and the Pacific Islands or to drive mobilisation of resources for a smooth UN transition in Guinea-Bissau. Distinguished delegates, since the outset of the pandemic, the Commission has raised awareness about the disproportionate and multifaceted toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on conflict affected countries. The Commission was quick to adjust its programme of work, expand demand-driven and flexible engagements with affected countries and regions and call for a stronger focus on countries in armed conflict and transition situations with a view to leaving no one behind. In addition to calling for universal vaccine equity and a crisis preparedness, the Commission pushed for reinvigorated multilateralism and a shift in focus from a response-oriented system to a nationally-led prevention system, including building responsive and viable institutions at the national and local levels while promoting inclusive governance through a whole-of-government approach. There has been a growing recognition of PBC's unique contribution to the recovery efforts of conflict affected countries and this is now reflected in the PBC's programme of work for this year, 2022, which emphasises on greater impact and results. During a recent informal retreat of the PBC, the Commission discussed what that means in different contexts and how the PBC can better deliver in the face of continuing challenges from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to the reduction of vulnerability to climate change impacts, growing humanitarian crisis and conflicts, and the continued unraveling of hard-won gains in curving poverty and closing the gender divide. The retreat, the PBC members, discussed how to forge partnerships and seek innovative solutions in addressing the multitude of challenges that demand our collective response. Distinguished delegates, the Commission has the potential to set a global example in terms of effective multi-stakeholder engagement and multilateralism, leveraging the strength and energy of the different actors that it brings to the table. As pointed out in recent PBC meetings, the year 2022 marks the halfway point of the 2030 deadline for achieving the sustainable development goals and the way forward requires tapping into and working with the best of what the different actors have to offer. From the local governments to the private sector, universities and local communities and the PBC I believe is uniquely positioned to do that. Whether the Commission can remain fit for purpose in the face of increasingly complex challenges to peace building will depend on its ability to ensure timely and effective responses in support of nationally-owned peace building priorities. For example, the recent engagements of the Commission in Burundi, Liberia and Sierra Leone were designed in a way that aligned with the respective national and regional initiatives, focusing on inclusive development or sustainable reintegration of combatants, refugees and returners, or combatting challenges generated from natural disasters and exacerbated climate change. And thus, they did produce the better results. While striving to meet distinguished delegates, while striving to meet national peace building needs, the Commission will also continue to enhance its advisory and bridging role with respect to the General Assembly, the Security Council and the ECOSOM. And this unique mandate, in combination with its flexible working methods, have allowed the Commission to coordinate and scale up UN system-wide long-term coherent support to conflict-affected countries. And we remain committed to enhance this role of the Commission. The Commission will also continue to share lessons learned, identify scalable good practices and innovative solutions, and build capacities through exchanges of expertise between all relevant stakeholders. In this context, the Commission is committed to promoting South-South and triangular cooperation in addressing common challenges. There are, however, other factors beyond the Commission's control. All along, the Commission has noted with concern that adequate, predictable and sustained financing remains a critical challenge as financial flows to conflict-affected countries have come under increasing pressure, particularly with regard to official development assistance devoted to peace building. It has stressed the need to enhance financial support for countries in transition phases, where UN peacekeeping and special political missions are scaling down to avoid national authorities and local communities losing their funds at a time when they assume greater responsibilities. The General Assembly had the opportunity to discuss about this during the recently held high-level meeting on peace building financing. It is expected that action-oriented results will be achieved in the follow-up to the high-level meeting. On its part, the Commission will continue to make best use of its resources by enhancing coherence, expanding partnerships and identifying creative peace building financing and non-financial contributions, such as capacity building and technical cooperation. I thank you all for your kind attention. Thank you. One of the interesting things that caused me to look up the budget for the peace building fund of the United Nations and the commitments through 2020 to 2024 at about $500 million, which isn't a great deal when you think that actually that means for this year what they had the money that is available to spend is slightly less than the budget of Top Gun Maverick and wouldn't actually buy you the fighter aircraft that they fly in that film. Now, moving on to our live participants, I would like to first of all go to the internet and remotely to Sukena Cain from the World Bank who can talk to us about the FCV programme. Sukena, welcome. Sorry, thank you. Let me just unmute. Very happy to be here with you today. Thanks for this opportunity. Let me just probably tell you about the World Bank, which as you know, it's an organisation that was founded after the Second World War. But over the years for recovery and reconstruction, but over the years we have been shifting our focus to development actors role to address fragility, conflict and violence through their full cycle. So learning from our own experience and after extensive consultation with partners represented two years ago our World Bank group strategy for fragility, conflict and violence FCV in early 2020. And this strategy what it does is really to bring a long-term development approach to a full range of fragile situation and building on analysis and strategy in each country affected by FCV where we are committed to one preventing before conflict happens because as we all know investing in prevention, not only reduces the human toll of conflict, but it's also smart economics. If you refer to our pathway, John, report with UN, pathway to peace, on average we're saying, the report is saying that for every $1 on prevention, you can save up to 16 in terms of cost of conflicts. The other focus of our strategy is remaining engaged in conflicts and crisis situation so we can focus on protecting human capital of vulnerable groups and the institution that are in our view key to preserve the development against we need to build capacity and also trust, all of which will be needed in our view for post conflict recovery. At the stage of recovery, it's really as well essential to be aware that the challenges that led to conflict and fragility in the first place cannot be resolved by short term or partial solution in the absence of institutions that provide people with security, justice and jobs. So recovery and reconstruction do not necessarily take place before formal peace agreement and getting out of the fragility trap is not a linear path, it can take decades with usually quite a lot of setbacks. So governments need to focus on rebuilding social cohesion and on addressing the long term drivers of violence, including grievances so the country can get on a firm path to leave the fragility behind and not fall back into the same dynamics that led to conflict. The World Bank as well supports governments at this stage with a full array of analytical tools geared towards preventing and revival of conflict. For example, we have what we call the risk and resilience assessment that look at the significant risk and shocks of different kinds and serve as a basis of our engagement with relevant countries. And interestingly, our risk and resilience assessment, we do it in fragile countries but as well in more and more in middle income countries. And we have as well the recovery and peace building assessment to have a platform to help governments and their international partners to identify, prioritize and to consider recovery and peace building. Let me stop here. Thank you very much and I'm going to come back to our panelists so that we can talk about some of the challenges that there are for well for both of those programs and strategies in the near future. Adnan, do you want to start us off? By the way, Adnan, did you recognize the quote at the beginning? Oh yeah, yeah, the quote at the beginning came from our... Yes, you wrote it, so I couldn't have missed it. Okay, so Adnan, what's in the past, what sort of flaws have we had when we've tried to do big projects like this? What's gone wrong? Okay, let me first begin by thanking us since I've heard the floor, Kunal, Patricia and the organizers of this conference are coming here. Let me also start with the stopping realisation that we're discussing the puzzle of peace while it'll be literally being in the shadow of an unprovoked, unjust aggression by Russia very close to where we are sitting. But this conference is about fragile states, post-conflict states and that's something that, as Tim mentioned this morning, I work on the LSE Oxford Commission on State Fragility that you also cited. Before discussing what should be done, it's important to discuss what went wrong because the global experience with the building states in fragile societies with post-conflict recovery is not that great as we all know. And based on the work of the commission, I would say we identified three big reasons that I would say lie at the heart of this for lack of a better word failure. So those being strategies being unrealistic, being too much based on best practice strategies and also not respecting local ownership and leadership. Let me explain. Unrealistic because you look into the strategy on almost every country, any country and what we see is overloaded agendas, unachievable objectives, unattainable time frames. Just imagine Yemen after the Arab Spring national unity government, the global community asked them to implement a 10-point comprehensive reform agenda just to give you an example, one of which was a radical reform of the civil services in two years. Something that took decades, generations to achieve even in developed countries. And why that is so because commonly the standard practice has been to compare fragile societies, post-conflict societies with develop the long-term vision of an OECD country, thank Finland, and use that to generate a list of policy objectives, a long list of policy objectives, and mostly imposing that or using that to set the policy agenda in that country, a very widely ambitious agenda that is extremely hard, almost impossible to achieve in most countries given the very limited capacity that they have. Second thing which is again related to it is given this widely ambitious and very long agenda, the usual practice has been to encourage copying best practice institutions from developed countries. Call it the Curse of Denmark, but since we are sitting in Finland, let's call it maybe the Curse of Finland. Finland is great, I have huge respect for the land of the happiest people on earth, but Finland didn't become Finland by being Finland, it went through a very messy process of reaching where it is. I was talking yesterday to Mati Petrounen, I don't know whether he's here today or not, he was telling me about last century's civil war in Finland, so it went through a process to be here, a very laudable position that it is and rightly so, but it's impossible to imagine a fragile country today just taking that, just becoming Finland in one big leap. That's what we like, unfortunately most of international policy has often translated into becoming Finland in one big leap and that doesn't work and we know that doesn't work. Partly that is because of the third reason which is who is responsible ultimately accountable for achieving this and ultimately it has the only actor that is responsible is call it the local leaders, the local owners who only people, citizens and leaders in a fragile society and a post conflict society can lift their society out of the fragility drive. Others can help, international society, international actors can help or at least not stand in the way but the ultimate accountability that they have is to their own citizens and not to their actors and that is a principle that if not respected will not lead to post conflict recovery. Tony was mentioning yesterday I remember about using this overloaded agenda with one instrument and then hoping that all good things will flow and it obviously doesn't work that way. So it's not respecting local agency but also not respecting that escaping the fragility trap is a process, not an event. It's a gradual step by step process that has to be led by local leaders and outside actors can definitely help but for them to be able to help, outside actors also have to respect local agency. I'll just finish on one last thing which is for national leaders in post conflict societies to signal good intentions, their actions have to be manifestly free choices and so conditionalities even if well chosen would undermine that principle. So any strategy for helping fragile societies come out of that has to first acknowledge where we fell short in the past. So no conditionality. Okay, thank you. It's a process, not an event. You're in right at the beginning of the process providing humanitarian assistance. You also I would imagine have to work, coordinate with the sort of thing that's okay with us. How can this process improve? Well, Tim, I think it can improve on many fronts because what we see working especially with our major operations today in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, South Sudan, the Sahel, Somalia. It's in terms of nexus either it doesn't work or it works too little and too late. And one of the reason is that we don't have to wait for an elusive piece to consolidate before investing in recovery. And we see that when many conflicts of today are protracted, they resemble more chronic emergencies over time. And there are plenty of opportunities during these decades where generations in a row are affected to actually restore essential services, invest in critical infrastructure and try to support also local agency and processes as man has mentioned. So I really can say that affected communities and people they couldn't care less whether what is brought in terms of support is labelled as humanitarian or development or something else. They actually want to go on with their life and restore their livelihoods. And I think that we are now seeing, for instance, my organization, the ICRC, in partnership with, we have Tsukaina here with us with the World Bank, with the Agence Français de développement, how we can work together. And I was really intrigued by your final consideration about conditionality. And I will just say a word about Afghanistan. It took us four months to be able to pay again to deliver salaries to over 10,000 health workers working in the 33 hospitals we are supporting. So it means that midwives, doctors and nurses were not paid from mid August to mid and November. Most of them generously kept working but had really problems surviving and supporting their families. And of course humanitarian assistance is unconditional. And we see that we have today money, would you say post conflict, but let's say protracted of fragile context that are actually jurisdiction under sanctions. And we also face in terms of bringing humanitarian assistance there a number of constraints related to counter terrorism, legislation and measures. And I think carving out the proper exemptions for humanitarian action is absolutely key. It's key first to be able to bring the relief and the assistance we must bring. But then how do we support entire systems like at present we are supporting up to seven water utilities and sanitation systems in Syria, which are on the brink of collapse. And to bring a water pump in this context is really difficult in terms of getting all the necessary authorization. And I think that those who pay the high price are the millions of displaced and vulnerable people on the ground. So I think we have to reflect about that and also to reflect a bit about the criminogenic dynamics that sometimes sanctions promote within conflict storm societies, which then strengthen potentially peace spoilers in the peace consolidation process. And if I may, a final consideration is about the fact that we can do a lot to prevent the legacies of armed conflicts to be so huge. And while my organization is really doing all what it can to try to get the parties to the conflict to respect international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions. And it means protecting and not attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure, trying to ensure that electricity can still be provided to hospitals, that water can still be pumped in cities so that it is distributed to at present, for instance, in Ukraine, across the country. And it means also that we can really engage with other parties to the Geneva Conventions who have also a responsibility to ensure respect for international humanitarian law. So I think these are part of the preventive measures that we can collectively take. Just very, very briefly, Gail, when you were talking about it, it would be good to carve out those exemptions. Is that something that you genuinely think could happen or is that an aspiration that I would imagine everyone in this room agrees with? But once you get outside this room, politicians would say that's not going to happen. Well, it is happening. We have exemptions, humanitarian exemptions that we negotiated and were adopted by the UN Security Council in the case of Afghanistan. We have also worked with the European Union and other bodies imposing different sanction regimes. And it is working. The problem is that once it is negotiated, you have so-called chilling effects with banks and financial service providers who say, well, under the current provisions, we think that we might service you, but the profits we can make are very limited because these are very small markets. And the risks of any of these provisions changing over time and us facing risks is too big so that we don't take the risk. And you have also the de-risking by suppliers who sometimes simply refuse to sell and provide the necessary goods and services in fragile environments because of counter-terrorism measures and legislation and sanctions. And these are constant negotiations, which are extremely burdensome, but we do negotiate and we do fortunately reach some results in most of the instances, but it takes months. And as I was referring to in the example of Afghanistan, those who pay the price are actually the health workers who were paid before by the former authorities. They are the same workers and they are attending the same children, Afghan children and women, and because of the change of regime they had to go through and they are still going through a period where it is extremely difficult. It has huge humanitarian implications and I think that we should do collectively a better job, but we do achieve results fortunately. Thank you very much. Can we go over to Ted now? Hello Berkeley, Helsinki calling, hello Ted. Now, some of the issues that we're discussing here, these are things that you've been tracking for a long time in your research, aren't they? Yeah, good morning. It's great to, I guess, good evening over there. Great to chat with you all. I wish I could be there in person. It's been really stimulating to hear the points that are made. What I've been fortunate to work on is really trying to build some evidence base and work with colleagues to build evidence on a number of these issues. The conflict space, the humanitarian space is an area where traditionally there's actually been so much urgent need that sometimes it's been difficult to collect data, it's been difficult to carry out the kind of thoughtful research that we need to inform policy. For a number of key issues, the evidence base has often been limited. That's starting to change now and I think from a research perspective, there have been such important gains over the last decade or so in understanding a lot of the issues that have been the subject of this conference and I think the research output that's been presented really illustrates how much progress we've made. I want to just talk about two particular points where the evidence base has really emerged and I think these are issues that speak directly to issues of protracted conflicts, the key legacies of conflict that have been the subject of the conversation. The first piece of evidence or evidence base that I want to emphasize really is the growing and at this point well established literature linking extreme climate to armed conflict. So there's been a lot of discussion around how there are many protracted conflicts, how difficult it is to build up the state and avoid future conflict. Well in the coming decades as the world warms and as there's more and more extreme weather, it's going to become even more challenging. The winds will really be blowing against us in some settings due to climate change. So let me just briefly summarize that evidence there's a growing body of over 100 quantitative statistical analytical studies at this point with some of my co-authors we've assembled meta-analysis trying to combine all these studies and come up with some central conclusions from this explosion of research, quantitative research on the link between extreme climate and violence. And the main finding is there's just a very strong robust statistical relationship and I think everybody now in the conference is increasingly familiar with these patterns and how important the issue of climate change is going to be in the coming decades. But the kind of main estimates are in less changes are made in the coming decades there could be an increased risk of civil conflict in vulnerable states of 30 to 40% due to global warming alone, just as a kind of base estimate from the research that's been done. So it's just a fact that I want to put out there and you know again as we talk about getting out of conflict and helping societies emerge from armed conflict. We have to take into account this kind of economic shock, which is going to make the situation that much more challenging going forward. I know colleagues at the World Bank have been very involved in this research and I was very interested to hear the colleague. So that's one, you know, body of evidence. The second body of evidence I want to just briefly mention and put out there because I think it merits discussion really is the body of evidence about how best to achieve better life outcomes and social integration for refugees and other displaced people. Again in humanitarian situations it's often been extremely challenging to collect the kind of data that we need to best understand what policies are most effective, which approaches are most effective there's obviously so much urgency around those situations. And until recently there was almost no high quality publicly available longitudinal data on refugees to allow us to track their life trajectories and understand how to improve improve their lives that has changed again in recent years. There's been a real shift with extremely valuable partnerships between the World Bank, UNHCR with the Joint Data Center with humanitarian organizations to collect this kind of data. And there is, there has been an emerging body of evidence speaking to some of the key policies that could improve lives for refugees and other displaced peoples. And as we know there's just so many tens of millions of people in that situation today. So I just want to mention one finding from new data there. There's always a lot of controversy and hosting countries about the impact that refugees will have on the host nation. And of course we know that most refugees remain refugees for many years if not decades. So this is not just a temporary issue. Most societies that are hosting refugees will have to find a way forward between host communities and refugee communities. At the same time the political economy is often challenging and there's a lot of resistance, opposition, negative feelings towards refugee communities in many societies. But there has been some exciting research indicating what policies can promote successful economic integration. I just want to point to research by colleagues, some of whom are at the World Bank, a co-author of mine, Dr Sandra Rosso and her colleagues have studied the issue of the integration of Venezuelan refugees in Colombia. Now obviously the Venezuela situation isn't exactly central to the discussion here in the sense that there hasn't been a civil war in Venezuela. But there's certainly been a lot of political violence, instability, economic collapse and millions of Venezuelans have sought refuge in Colombia. So Dr Rosso and colleagues have studied a policy change in Colombia using high quality data, really good evidence. A policy change in Colombia that provided greater labor market access for refugees and tried to understand the effect of that not just on the refugees but also on earnings and wages for the host community. And they actually found largely positive effects, providing greater labor market access and permits for refugees not only improve their income, it had no measurable harm on the host community economically. So I think this is, you know, again just coming from the research perspective, a very exciting moment for us as we study post conflict situations because the evidence base is growing. And we actually have some findings that those of us who are researchers, those of us who are those on the stage who are policymakers can really take to host governments to give them a way forward in terms of productive ways of integrating refugees into the host community. So I just want to stop there with those two examples of how research can be really important in informing the choices here. But again, also how the evidence base continues to grow and we need to really learn a lot more to craft the most effective policies. So I'll just I'll just leave it there. Thanks. Thanks very much, Ted. Alina, I'll come to you now. What I will do after this, my plan is to go back to Sukena, because I'm sure that she'll have some reactions to some of the points that have been raised. Then after that, I'll throw it over to you. And so get ready with your questions. If you are, while Sukena's talking, sort of put your hand up and we'll get the microphones ready. But Alina, first of all, for you, from what you hear, what is it that you want and how close are you to getting it? Well, a very relevant question. And first of all, thank you wider for tackling an issue that is maybe one of the most difficult and complicated challenges that the diplomatic community, the development community, the security community, the research community phase, actually, and try to try to solve. And I think the sad story is that we have also countries that have been middle income countries that have been developing well, and then history turns backwards and actually we see lots of fragility emerging. And that's also a point, I think, where we can learn a lot from how things should improve observing the countries that go actually backwards. A few observations. And I think Johanna, the State Secretary, explained lots of things that Finland is trying to do when promoting peace and peace settlements and post-conflict situation, building stable societies after that. A few observations indeed. One issue we try to tackle when we look at what a peace settlement means. You need to have the high level agreement among parties, first of all. But you also need to have agreement within the society, within local communities and among and between local communities. We try to focus on sustainability of both levels, not leaving anyone behind when trying to promote an agreement among the sort of high level decision makers among parties and also building lots of confidence through national dialogues supporting number of actually national dialogue processes among local communities. Otherwise you leave the seeds of violence in the society, either on the top level as we've seen, for instance in Afghanistan back in 2002, or you leave seeds of violence within the communities on local level sometimes. There's lots of experienced economists here and I understand you've been looking at the economic side of post-conflict situations. I think we've tried to look at how people earn their living post-conflict times. One of the issues is how they spend their time also after the conflict. This is, I think, a key issue indeed. There's lots of criminal employment. Fighting has turned into a profession in a number of conflict areas. There's lots of trafficking weapons, drugs, even people, humans. People make a living out of having a conflict. I think this is the number one issue to be solved. Show people that there are other things to do. Look at Sahel and the broad zone up to Horn of Africa. I think if we don't find livelihoods and jobs for people, there's not going to be a sustainable piece. Then political stability. Finland's history has been referred to and indeed a little over 100 years ago we were a failed state. Now for I believe seven years back to back we have been the least failed state in an international index. They've changed the name. I think it's a fragility index these days. It used to be a failed state index before. I think on the political level what happened early on after an internal war was that we had to have a society where people can form different political parties. We learned hard way how to form coalition governments actually. We don't have a two party system. This is a country with a large number of political parties. Forming coalition governments was a tough learning curve. They were short lived in the beginning. In the end it became part of the culture, the political culture in this country and created a lot of stability. Also local democracy. There's this wonderful UN World Bank report, Pathways to Peace, which indicates how important local and regional democracy can be where people can actually address the grievances together with others. The most stable countries in the world are those that have an active thriving local democracy or regional democracy. So I think that's worth pursuing. People in all countries seem to want very similar things. You always hear the argument that you shouldn't export democracy. On the other hand, this is my 14th year in diplomacy. If I talk to people on different continents, different countries, everybody wants to have education, everybody wants to have a job, family and friends and say in issues that are important for them. We've had fragile countries where people have voted taking a personal risk for their security. So I think democratic open society is worth pursuing. There's lots of discussion on institutions. I'm sure you've been discussing this at length. The relationship between the state and the society. This is about capacity. This is about human rights, rule of law. This is about security. This is about government budget management, how to manage revenues, how to manage donor contributions, service delivery, hugely important employment jobs. Legitimersy of the government and sometimes regional governments, accountability. Very important indeed and if there's no accountability, if there's no legitimacy, I think the confidence will get eroded and you easily drift back to conflict. Gender was mentioned, young people were mentioned. I think people need to see that the government is on their side. There's a government worth being loyal to and the government with which you want to work to improve your living. And then of course, I think it was President Atisari who said always peace is a matter of will. Also a stable developing society is a matter of will. You need to have political leadership that actually wants to develop the country, wants to have a good society and a peaceful society. We all can help but if there's not this will there, if there's no political will to solve the problems, it is very hard to do it from the outside. Homegrown solutions have been mentioned here. And I think there's a one danger very clearly seen. There's a competition of values and political systems going on globally. Authoritarian governance, there's many leaders that have a temptation to imitate authoritarian governance which means you don't share power. You don't accept the fact that governments change like in a coalition government system in this country. Every party would know they are either in the government or they are out. But they have to be able to cooperate with each other over time in a coalition government. If they want to get in, they have to make compromises. They have to agree and share power with others. A final point. There's been a lot of discussion on nexus, triple nexus, international coordination and of course lots of whole government approach also. Once as a young diplomat tens of years ago I thought there'd be an agency that would serve a country in a fragile situation and come and say that I'm your state building service. I'm going to help you to take into account all the aspects and help in state building but there's no such institutions. There's a number of remarkable agencies and institutions like the World Bank, like the United Nations. There's ICRC, there's lots of important, much larger donor countries than Finland. I think nexus is one of the most important inventions we have to have in common analysis on the situations. We have to plan a strategy together. We should be able to have a very concrete plan on what to do together with the government in question or the parties in question and ourselves. And then everybody would do their share so that the sum would be larger than the bits and pieces. We have lots of patchwork still ongoing even if coordination has really importantly improved over time. There was a reference already to not doing everything at once at the same time. I think the problem is when we look back in our history that we actually did lots of things at the same time into the right direction. It took a long time. There was no leapfrogging often happening but lots of things have to move towards the right direction at the same time. I think this is the most difficult part of everything when you develop your country and start from a fragile situation. I think this is the major challenge and you have to accept that you have to prioritize not everything will happen in a fortnight. There we need lots of strategic patience. We are talking about generational changes here. You might run out of time like it happened in Afghanistan. It would have taken a generation to generations to change a country from the situation where it was in 2001. One more thing to add, proxy wars. If there's too many proxies waging a war on a territory of a country, you can forget finding a solution. I don't have an answer to this but we know a conflict can be prolonged simply because there's others who fight on your territory. We have lots of examples in the decades behind us and hopefully not that many in front of us on how proxies can destroy a good process. This needs to be addressed. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. I really want to get Sukena's reaction to all of this because we've given her quite a shopping list of things that we might like her to do. Plus said don't try and do everything at once. If we can go back to Sukena, what's your reaction to some of the things that we've heard here? You have to provide jobs, work on organised crime, you have to work with the sort of thing that Gilles is doing and facilitate that. You have to co-ordinate. Maybe you have to become a state building agency. Is that the job that you'd like? We need your sounds, Sukena. I think you're muted. Sorry about that. You can hear me well now. The first thing I would like to say here is that I'm very pleased to hear all those different perspectives that I really believe align with what we're trying to do as a word bank. So the first thing to do in my view is really to learn from the lessons of our engagement, engagement of partners in FCB settings. And something that seems obvious, but I still would like to say here is that there's no one size fits all approach that would work. Each conflict situation is shaped by a different set of food causes, you know, and that's why our analytical work is extremely important as Ted has mentioned. Because local conflicts could be around land, water extractive industries of subnational in some areas because they don't have access to resources and including as well issues of accountability, corruption, cross border conflicts when you think about the Sahel for instance.  That's why I really understanding the situation and how, by strong analytical work. The second is that, in my view, exiting fragility requires partnership so that's why it's not about the word bank, the word bank alone cannot do it. We require really alliance at different levels. One, if you look at the country level. And I think it's ananda say it requires strong national leadership that the leadership the country has the has to go to privacy. We're here to support, but we cannot do or impose or export peace and development. And it's important that you have a population that is mobilized against the fragile system that led to conflict. And we need as well as realize the backing from at least part of the private sector and civil society. So within the country, it's important to have that coalition. The second is at the international community level. Recovery requires that all of us, humanitarian development, peace and security actors and the private sector to understand and contribute to our areas of comparative advantage. For the word bank, it means that we were integrating long term consideration towards sustained development and we work with humanitarian as it was mentioned by ICRC. Before our strategy, FCB strategy, we used to think that when you have an active conflict, we need really to leave the stage, let the humanitarian deal with the conflict and come back later. And we realize that this doesn't work right because not only we lose had had had won development gain but as well our engagement becomes more difficult and becomes more complicated for the for the country. So now, as it was mentioned, we work with with humanitarian partners and security. Let me provide two examples here in the Philippines. We have, for instance, as a sitting through what we call multi donor trust fund in the areas of middle now after the peace deal signed in 2012. And our support is really focusing on service delivery infrastructure skills development and more participatory processes in an area that almost double the national average on poverty. And that's what we're seeing in middle income countries that we have those pockets of some national conflicts of national fragility that we it's important that we address as an institution, if you want to reach our target of eliminating extreme extreme poverty. Another example of partnership with with the UN is that thanks to our partnership with UN and ICRC, we've been able to deliver critical services in hope to vulnerable populations in areas that are inaccessible to us, you know, such as South Sudan beyond Juba, right, because humanitarian union have usually deeper field presence. So, for instance, in recent in South Sudan, we are financing the second phase of the with ICRC of South Sudan provision of essential health services with ICRC, as I said, UNICEF, WHO, and the other examples mentioning Afghanistan was mentioned is through our the multi donor trust fund and with our board approval to work with UN agencies and international NGOs to deliver basic services. But that being said, I would like as well to make to end with two issues. One is about the democracy and how it's important. We, I think we all agree with that, but my own experience from the bank and having been for four years. I think democracy means on different things for different people. And what we're seeing is if democracy we understanding only as holding elections. It doesn't necessarily yield to dividend, as I call it, the dividend of the democracy. For people, it won't resonate. I can give the example of Burkina Faso, they have election, nobody disputed the fairness of, little dispute at least of the fairness of the election. But yet, because the basic service of security to people was not was not a service by the government, it ended up by having a political transition and a coup that, you know, people at the end welcome for, because they felt that something different than the election needed to happen to make a change happen in their life. I think democracy is important but it's democracy not for the sake of ticking the box of having election but democracy for the sake of providing dividends to the people. What would they gain in terms of accountability and in terms of democracy. That is extreme. And then to the point made by Ted on forced displacement, this is an extremely relevant agenda. I think as someone was saying Europe is not realizing that forced displacement is not something that people choose to and it's a very complicated matter to address. And that's why we're working very closely with the UNHCR. It's part of our either window to be more deliberate about addressing the needs, not only of the refugees but as well of the host communities. Let me pause here and happy to further elaborate. Thank you. Thanks very much because we need to ask the rest of you what you think. So if anyone has a question, then stick your hand up and the microphones are coming now. And we have the first question just down here. Keep your hands up if you want to ask a question as well and then we can sort of get to you. Have a rapid turnover. Thank you very much. I'm going to put on the table a puzzle of peace. We have systematic evidence that the UNP's operation are effective, they protect civilians and they stop belligerence. However, Cyprih says that according to their data, we have reached the highest level of military expenditure in $21 billion and this has been increasing in the past seventh year. And countries such as the US, Russia, UK are those that are spending a lot of money. But the budget of UNP's keeping is only 6.3 billion whereas Norway even Norway spends more in military expenditure seven. Russia 10 times more than the UNP's keeping. US 100 times more. So we have evidence that the UNP's keeping works. We know that we can save lives but it seems that the trend is to spend more in military expenditure rather than peace operation. So is there a puzzle of peace or a puzzle for peace? Probably not that complicated a puzzle, isn't it? Adnan, what do you think about that? As far as the UK is concerned, I don't think we are playing our part both on this and being one of the largest players on development and working not just on peacekeeping, contributing to that but also in terms of addressing the fundamental drivers of conflict. So we just released our new international development strategy, which basically addresses those issues that I was talking about. It talks about narrowing of the agenda, just four big priorities, not 100. It talks about patient long-term development, so not immediate successes. It talks about working with governments, not around governments in the sense of working with policy actors and respecting local leadership. In terms of peacekeeping, yes, UK is one of the largest bilateral but also multilateral donor in the world. I think the larger point is international peacekeeping is certainly needed in certain situations. It can matter quite a lot, especially in situations where some period of temporary security is needed. Most of the experience suggests that international peacekeepers also become very unpopular, roughly seven to ten years. So that period is to be used in terms of creative attempts at state building and that's where I think lies the biggest challenge in terms of helping societies come out of the fragility during that period where we have a window of opportunity, what we call a pivotal moment, using that creatively, using that not to waste that opportunity on an overloaded agenda, but to achieve things which are feasible given the limited capacity of those countries, which are also feasible given the politically pertinent time frame and which, if achieved, can help to society, achieve maybe modestly, maybe step by step, one step out of poverty. So, as Tim mentioned in the morning, like in Tunisia, in the post Arab Spring Government, they focused on, at least at that time, cleaning the mosque. As one step that was visible, that would improve, which would clearly signal as something which they are doing to improve the lives of the people. So, in all equivalents, like we have to find the equivalents of the, of cleaning the mosque, using that opportunity that is provided by peacekeeping in environments where some temporary phase of security or international security is needed. And there are many situations like that, I agree. Eleanor, can I ask you what's the, at the moment there is a debate between defence spending and financing peacekeeping going on, and it's probably different outside this hall than it is inside, isn't it? Yes, I think we're not living in an ideal world. If we lived in an ideal world, we would have very little military spending altogether. We do have this discussion in Finland when it comes, not that much about our domestic military spending and spending on peacekeeping or crisis management, but rather on military spending and development spending. Although so far it has gone quite well from development point of view. We haven't cut anything from development. We're still trying to get a little bit more for development spending. I think if you'd ask normal people they would say that we have to take care of ourselves to be able to support others. And I think this is also an important argument. Peacekeeping, UN peacekeeping and military crisis management has grown impressively in the past decades. So we really have to admit that it has become an important activity. For instance in Africa there's lots of local capacity at the moment. And as long as there's a demand for these kind of services, there's also hopefully countries in Africa, in Europe elsewhere, who help others with peacekeeping. And I hope the spending will remain at a respectable level. I'll have to wait and see. Tony, you've got a question. So Tony Addison from Copenhagen University. There are clearly a lot of people making a lot of money out of conflict and human misery in all its forms, including the dissent into conflict as states are captured and then degenerate and then maybe ultimately go into violence. So the question for the panel is this is clearly something we can do about, something about the financial system, about the public relations companies, champion dictators, about the lawyers who facilitate hiding the money, the illicit financial flows and so forth. So shouldn't we do something about this? What do we do about it? Because intervening in societies in Africa in Asia that are not our own societies as Europeans, that's a difficult challenge. We don't know the complexity of the political forces there. But we can do something about Western banks and Western lawyers and Western public relations companies and so forth. So what do we do about the money men? What do we do, Jim? Well, it's interesting your question to me because human Italians, they look at one aspect of war economies which is survival economies. How do people survive despite the armed conflict and how can we as human Italians just support their survival strategies? But of course you have in war economies what you describe, you have how do different parties to the conflict finance their war efforts and how much criminal activities is ongoing under impunity and then what are the winners and losers if you wish. And I think it's important to understand the interrelations between the different aspects or dimension of war economies as well as the interactions between the micro level and the more macro level. So I think researchers have still a lot to contribute in this understanding but what I want to say I was referring before to the question of sanctions. I think it's quite interesting to see for instance that when we had the NASDAQ crashing with the dotcom bubble, very quickly armed groups actually seized the revenues of quasi public utilities in Kisangani and Goma to make up for the lost revenues from Coulton. And this gave an image rise to the lack of potable water and the risk of cholera crisis. And so the dilemma for an organization like the ICRC is to say okay is it our role to step in and bring back the water pumping station together with the chemicals required to have drinking water and avert the cholera or how do we then go about bringing these dots together. And I think that this is a dilemma, there is no magic bullet to go about it. But what I mentioned before is that we have to be more sensitive for instance when there has been an attempt to bring tech companies out of buying specific minerals that might be sourced from the DRC. You had hundreds of thousands of informal miners out of business for a while because of the chilling effects and we could see directly the humane consequences in terms of the survival capabilities of families who were depending on that. And I'm very sympathetic to what Adnan brought in terms of the pace needed for transitioning. And when we do think about transitioning while preserving or protecting the most vulnerable, it's also important to think about the criminogenic dimensions of certain policies which make sense from London or Geneva or New York or Helsinki, but which actually might have very negative impact when we look at the micro level in conflict zones. If I break the rules we have time for one more question, if anyone really wants to ask it, then I have no need. Oh yes, yes. Do you get the, yes, just there in the centre. Last question of conference. Thank you so much for the nice discussion. I want to relate the impact of the COVID pandemic with the Ukraine crisis. So, given that these two, let's say, crisis has led to an increase in commodity prices recently or inflation, and mostly in both developed and developing world. So, and these two crises will also lead to an increase of poverty. And given that the increase of poverty is also linked to an increase of social unrest. So, my question is, what are measures that we are planning to take to prevent this, let's say, or vicious cycle to happen. So, an increase in poverty and social unrest due to the COVID pandemic and the Ukraine-Russia crisis. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think that's good for Sukena, if you're still there online. Did you hear the question there? I did. Right. And I know that you're running out of time. So, just to thank you for this excellent question. The way we're trying to deal with the compounding risk of crisis, including pandemic, and now the war in Ukraine, is really to look at each country, but have those key principles. One, protecting lives, because you have immediate needs, whether it's because of the pandemic to protect vaccination, provide vaccination, or provide food to areas impacted by the rise of food prices. So, protecting lives, protecting livelihoods, you know, income generating activities, have some infrastructure for countries and people to continue to have their activities. But then, the third pillar is protecting the future, because as a development agency, we already need to keep a site of the future, because short-term and humanitarian is not the development. Humanitarian is key for us to a development partner, but we always need to have that long-term perspective, and knowing that, as we were saying here, that getting out of conflict is not linear. It can take decades with setbacks. So, our own resilience is tested, our own ability as institutions, as development partners to remain engaged, to continue to protect those lives, those livelihoods, and the future. So, it's about adjusting all the time our programs being adaptive, as we say, in order to respond to those needs. And now knowing that, you know, compounding crisis, climate, pandemics, war are here, unfortunately, to stay, and it's upon us now to adjust and to be more adaptive to this new normal. Thank you. That's really all we have time for, definitely. So, thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much to everyone on the panel. We better close this, we've got some closing remarks, and then I think we're done for the day, aren't we? I think we've put enough into this already. So, thank you very much to everyone on the panel. That was great.