One of our most popular videos is one of our earliest ones and that was what kind of karate's in copperkai and to this day I still get the same answer. It's movie karate. It's not real Well, they're not wrong and in fact, it's probably the most honest and realistic answer that one can give even as much fun As we want to dive into any history and analytical and what it might represent bottom line. Yes It's movie karate. So today we're gonna talk about some simple tricks that movies use to make martial arts scenes better than they should be So almost all movie karate is a lie. Yes, I'm sorry I said it even your main most favorite martial arts films chances are they are lying to you only because when it comes to making a movie Realism and a actual realistic fight. It's pretty low on the priority list when it comes to structuring a scene you know there's a specific hierarchy they achieve and that they strive for and the first thing on that list is Drama you're watching the story to get some sort of narrative across and The drama and storytelling event takes precedence So whatever happens in that scene has to advance the movie forward second priority is Choreography and that's how it's presented to us That's that's how the moves that they choose to show us because and it's actually interesting because when you look back at Previous films, you know in the 40s in the 50s and 60s It was all a lot of like boxing and fist fighting look at John Wayne He was the on-screen tough guy and it was pretty much all punches with him then, you know around the 70s 80s we had people like Chuck Norris and Van Damme show up on the scene and now we're seeing these fancy kicks now as Mary can view an audience that was kind of new kicks were fancy to us So back then movies got away with simpler choreography was turn kick this guy turn kick that guy turn kick that guy now You know fast forward a couple of decades We need something a little more than that which you see them up the ante all the time So, you know, you got Jackie Chan films now, which are just incredible to watch films like John Wick Where they getting they're getting really fancy with the choreography So you're going to see an evolution over time how films are choreographed and the moves and techniques that they choose They're on the list is Presentation there's a narrative to the scene and there's a choreography to the scene But there's also a way to present it, you know in terms of tonality and stylistic choices and how they want you to feel So it doesn't just advance the story Forward but it should invoke some sort of a some sort of a dramatic response for you whether it be to laugh to cry To get angry be happy, you know, you know cheer on your favorite actor So, you know, that's all part of engaging the viewer into the film Then after all that is taken care of then they try to make it as real as possible once the other objectives are fulfilled So realism honestly like realistic fighting if you go watch home movies or realistic fights You try to compare them to a movie they usually don't look the same Because movies have that drama structure built in that's the whole point of their existence is to tell a story So what we're gonna go over are just a couple of lies that they sell you and a couple of deceptive techniques that movies use To kind of make the action look better than what it actually is So the first and foremost one we should probably talk about is perspective the perspective that we are presented as an audience Camera placement can sometimes be everything all it takes is for the camera to be set up at just the right angle To appear as if a person is striking somebody else because when we talk about a 2d image on a screen You know all the fist has to do is kind of overlap the image of someone's face And with the right sound effect and right reaction that could totally sell the effect and in fact when that technique is used Most of the time those actors are usually you know swings are usually a foot or two away from the intended target But you can't always tell on screen So one example is the crane kick and this shouldn't be any surprise anybody who knows me that I'm going to use This example is one of the first examples But in the first karate kid film the crane kick that Daniel does at the end to Johnny If you really watch it looks like he's making contact. I mean there's no space in between it It's a clear cut connection Unless you look very carefully and realize that you know There's Daniel and Johnny in the plane and they're slightly offset and what that means is they're facing each other But they're on a slightly different line of attack But where the cameras positioned you kind of compresses the space you can't really tell so in actuality Daniel's foot is going in front of Johnny's face But on screen with the reaction in the motion blur it looks like Johnny is actually struck by the kick now playing off of The spatial compression. I want to talk about really quick the camera techniques of dollies and zooms Both have the same kind of objective to get closer to the action But they're done two different ways a dolly when you dolly a camera You are physically taking the camera and moving it forward moving it towards your subjects So if you've got a person standing in the field and you move the camera towards them They're gonna get larger because they're getting closer to the camera But the background stays the same because it's way in the back So you actually retain the distance you can kind of see the depth of the shot When you zoom Zooming a camera the camera doesn't move It's really just magnifying the image and when you magnify the image the background the sub foreground Your character your your subject they all enlarge at the same time and what and that happens It actually compresses space that looks you lose that spatial difference and it makes the image look flatter So knowing that There's a very simple technique if you're gonna do the technique of where you're gonna overlap and make it look like An actress in another actor you just add a little bit of that magnification that spatial compression and you can sell it even further So a lot of movies such as cry to kid to you know when Miyagi striking, you know the bad guys He's not really hitting them and I'm willing to bet he was probably even two to three feet away from them But the way the images compressed looks like are convincingly enough that it connects now a really interesting filmmaking tool It's called the dolly zoom and I love this effect and there's two ways you can do it You could physically move the camera forward while zooming out or move the camera out while zooming in And what that does is that keeps your subject here your person in the foreground roughly about the same size But that makes the background either stretch out in a long eight or stretch in complex It's a really bizarre effect and as example we see it in Mortal Kombat when Johnny Cage realizes You know he's among a whole bunch of dead warriors So it's usually used for more of a vertical effect or a psychological enhancement It's usually a dire situation for your character It's not your typical focus point, but it's it gives something ethereal give a little bit of an unsettling move And it's used very very effectively not a lot of martial arts films have martial artists as their protagonists And it's a lot easier to work with their choreography because they are experienced But many times you'll have actors that either have very little martial arts experience or none at all And when that's the case unless you do a super serious training regimen over and over and over the course of months to get To the point of looking convincing There's some liberties you have to take and there's a few camera tricks that are involved that can help fudge that a little bit One common technique of doing is is the shaky cam and I am personally not a fan of this But you know you want to seem to feel frantic a little bit more raw and especially to cover up actors That might not have the fighting experience is really close-up shots They're really shaking all you see your blurs back and forth and grunting and some people falling in the Maybe the casual wide shot I'm not a fan of this because that pulls me out of the action if I'm watching the film That's got a martial arts fight scene in it. I want to see what's happening It's okay to show a blurs shot once in a while But every now and then there's a movie which does it excessively and the two biggest culprits I can think off off the top My head are with the weapon one, you know between Mel Gibson and Gary B You see that drove me nuts as a kid They really couldn't see too much of what they're doing and even Batman begins There's a lot of that the later Batman films we saw better choreography But that close-up the close-up frantic raw action where it just blurs everything to me ruins the scene And that's my personal opinion some of you might like it But the shaky cam is definitely one way to add a raw franticness to the to the battle as well as cover-up actors Who might not have prime fighting experience? So those are some of your basic camera tricks the editor on the other hand has a few tools in his toolbox to take Things even further so one is The way he cuts choice of cuts, you know, he could take you know on set They film a whole bunch of different angles typically of different fight scenes the editor now has to assemble it One trick is to cut angles, especially cutting on action Sometimes when you cut on a movement cut on the action you can abbreviate it slightly Makes it look a little bit faster and it actually ties in the shots makes the edits look a little bit smoother Especially when you overlay sound it could be it could feel a lot more natural and not such such a jerky cut angle Cut angle cut so one of the tips is cutting on the action So when that punch is connecting immediately cut to the next person reacting so that helps smooth out the action sequence a little bit more Now another subtle technique. It's called speed ramping on the average most films are filmed at 24 frames per second And they are played back at 24 frames per second Every once in a while if they want to enhance a quick effect or make a strike look more snappy or all of a sudden a little bit Faster than it would have been in real life is during editing They could ramp up the frames for just that little tiny second to make it look like a faster strike One example is in Cobra Kai and a tournament scene ironically enough It's when Miguel does the crank kick and you can see it's a normal shot They sit up, but that second has foot connects There's like that quick little almost a hyperspeed whip to it and the reaction is real quick and it goes back to normal speed I'm pretty sure that's a speed ramp effect just to enhance the shot And since we talked about before the alignment if you look at the shadows on the floor They're using the same trick they use in the Karate Kid But they're just slightly off-plane from each other to give the illusion the action made contact And this was also kind of related to a trick that they used to do and they still you will use once in a while Like I said on average most films were filmed at 24 frames per second and played back at 24 frames per second One older trick and it's still used once in a while is sometimes they would film action sequences at 22 frames per second More or less and when it's played back at 24 It's sped up slightly but not sped up so much where it looks unnatural So that was a very common trick especially back in the days when they didn't have digital editing systems It was more you know real to real that was a very simple in-camera trick that they could do was film in a slightly slower frame rate So it captured the action, but when it was projected back It was sped up just a little bit enough to look a little more convincing So frame rates are a tactic as well to make something look a little bit more impressive Shutter speed is another interesting trick that's used in movie making and it's a very very subtle unless you know Exactly what to look for so for those who are not familiar the camera shutter The shutter speed refers to how long that shutter is open and closes as it's taken his picture So a camera shutter that's got a slow shutter speed the image is open the longer It's open the more light comes in it hits the chip the more motion it picks up The faster it opens and closes the less light that hits the chip and what you get is when you have a longer Exposure when you're when your shutter is open longer your move anything that's moving will trail that's where motion blurs come from because As long as that shutters open and that person's moving they're basically streaking versus a higher shutter speed will snap open and close real Quick it's going to capture more of a sharper image For example the Kingsman had a fight scene in the church if you look at it You notice there's really no motion blurs. It's almost choppy and jerky and almost a little bit surreal But that matches the tone of the scene They're also playing with the dolly and zoom is a little bit so they're giving it more of a comical a little bit More of a fantasy feel to it and that grittiness just makes it that much more hard hitting and you see a little more detail But let's look at lethal weapon for for example when they were filming with jet Lee They did say that jet Lee moved really fast on set and it was almost hard to Sometimes they had to ask him to slow down because he was moving a little bit too fast for the camera to capture him So in a lot of its shots you see the motion blur especially when he's finding rigs and mertog, you know He moves you're not seeing very crisp frames You're seeing blurs and that sells the illusion of him moving extremely fast very effective Both of them are very effective filmmaking techniques It really depends on the mood and what the intent of the scene you're trying to get across and then of course We have stunt actors. We can't forget them many times You might have a high profile actor that you know might not be able to do some stunts or even fight So they'll bring in some actors one and then this happens a lot a lot of movies Especially with dangerous stunts But there's certain ways to hide him in there It kind of stands out as a stunt actor if you never see that person's face or in the fight and many times their Their body bills will be slightly different than the main actor So what they'll typically do is they'll cut it in a way where it'll go back and forth between Stunt actor shots and main actor shots and I find that as long as you kind of Constantly go back to a face or a close-up of the main actor show him as a quick glimpse You get away with a lot more son actor shots, especially in the sequence of cuts Now environments environments are one of my favorite ways that movies can get creative with their fight scenes because it's not just about One guy versus one guy fighting. I find it much more interesting if their environment is an obstacle Everything can be a weapon. Are there are they are they going out as it is an unlevel ground Are they fighting upstairs the side of the building on the mountain? Are they in the restaurant?  I really enjoy seeing a character utilize their whole space because that adds a lot more value to me in the fight Because I'm very big on environmental awareness when it comes to self-defense. It's a big part of the discipline So when I see movies really creatively use the set pieces in the combat that just heightens the excitement for me I think it's that's I think this was great filmmaking and then we have wire effects now wire effects are very common place in kung fu films but they've you know over the past over years they've been working their way into more mainstream movies in here in America and I really think their usage depends on what you're trying to get across Wire work is often very obvious But it works very well in movies that have like a fantasy element to it or a little bit of a supernatural element to it superhero fighting Anything with magic it definitely falls into place with that if it's a more grounded story You want to use it sparingly for example jet Lee had a little bit of some wired moments in lethal weapon 4 But it was subtle it was quick And it was just enough to give him a little bit more of a a threat level increase through rigs and retog It showed his skill above there So while it was a wire effect it was subtle and it sold up that showed the moment of okay He's better than they are and it heightens the danger and it heightens the excitement So wire work when used properly can also be very effective Okay, so when it comes to multiple attackers The concept of multiple attackers is dancing the line of realism just by default because it's very very difficult to fight More than one person at a time Realistically and in movies, you know Everyone seems to be a one-man army and everyone at this point is I think pretty tired of the trope of you know A group of guys surround your bat or your main character, but they only tack one at a time He takes them out. That's kind of the old way of doing it. So what do they do now? Like how can you make it a little bit more convincing movement? Keep the scene moving if you've got multiple attackers Don't just have them standing waiting to turn have them move Maybe have one guy trying to climb and come forward Maybe have another guy trying to get around another guy Maybe your character hits one person turns it's another give this guy a second to recover but keep movement going Especially if it's a large scene just keep the motion going and when you cut with the motion Sometimes it's hard to get your bearing and as a viewer it's more exciting because you're wondering like oh, okay Well, I see this back I what about the one he was just fighting and you can play around with those camera angles But I think it's very important to keep the motion going But as an example of a movie that I think does it quite poorly believe or not as Dark Knight Rises Was actually really disappointed with the choreography in that film the Batman vs. Bane shots aren't so bad You know that they still follow the main rules. It's they're well cut the great one-on-one fighting Choreography but in the scenes to have a lot of background action Particularly when they're on the rooftop fighting and when the big the big finale at the end if you look at the background Action it is a borderline ridiculous look at this scene right here with Batman fighting Bane You see all the cops and the criminals fighting in the background Most of them are just hugging each other and doing little patty cake hits and they're just kind of jumping There's almost no fight card or choreography going on at all They're just moving and jumping with some the occasional Mimic of a move so I mean when you really watch that background scene You kind of like well that just looks silly and same thing yet like on the rooftop when Catwoman and Batman are on the rooftop fighting It's the same thing. There's just motion in the background even so far as A guy who seems to be getting beaten up by nobody and getting knocked down after fighting nobody so That's as much as I love those films That's just messy filmmaking and that kind of drew me out of the scenes because that's an example of bad background motion So you want to you want to make it convincing you want to have motion going on You want to have the right angles you want to be able to cut the scene together that sells the intensity it sells the Impacts it sells the dramatic nature again It all comes to telling that story and if there's any element in there that distracts a viewer any mistake like that or something That draws our mind well You're drawing them out of the story and you're kind of lose them So you're the primary goal is to drive that narrative forward and when all else fails if you find yourself Need to do a stunt that's too dangerous or our weapons at play or for whatever reason the logistics of the scene are just too difficult Sometimes CGI is a way to go and you'd be surprised how many times you can watch a scene in the film Or you're not even looking at real-life actors. They're just animated John Wick 3 is actually a good example of this Where there's some sequences where it's just animation or animation enhanced fighting sequences that you wouldn't have picked out normally So that was just kind of maybe a little fun way to look at martial arts films To understand that the movie camera is lying to you, you know, we we talk It's we have fun breaking down scenes and what's realistic. What's not but again It's all about selling the drama and selling the moment, you know for better for worse Where you feel it hurts the martial arts not but I encourage you now to go go watch some of your favorite martial arts scenes now And see if you can pick out any of these techniques There might be a few things that you never noticed before especially like watching background action and watch for cuts and continuity There's a lot of things that you might not have picked out the first time viewing and also as an experiment I get a lot of messages from from viewers who are talking about different martial arts scenes So we have this discussion quite a bit So I thought this would be kind of a fun look So the kind of playoff of this on Thursday if you're watching this episode today on Tuesday on this release on Thursday We're gonna release another episode taking a look at one scene from the Cobra Kai season one episode five The lunchroom scene the lunchroom fight scenes So we're gonna kind of take that and break that down step by second kind of analyze What's realistic versus what's cinematic about it and how it was framed a shot a certain way to deliver the narrative across So go ahead and set your reminder for that You know click on the bell so that way when it drops you'll be notified right away So that's it for now I hope you guys enjoyed this if you want to talk about future movie scenes if you liked the the breakdown of talk about what's realistic versus cinematic Please leave your feedback in the comments below. I would love to hear what you guys think and maybe we can do more These in the future, so thank you so much, and we will see you next time


5. ESL Classroom Halloween Decor Ideas October is here and Halloween isn't far away. Whether you teach in your country or abroad, this festival is exciting as it has specific cultural features. In this blog post, we share 5 fun Halloween decor ideas for your ESL classroom. Get inspired, and feel free to encourage your students to help you decorate the classroom. If you prefer to celebrate in style, you can pick a particular topic to decorate all parts of your classroom. Theme inspiration, Harry Potter, Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, Hocus Pocus, Casper, Ghostbusters, Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Dracula, Sleepy Hollow. 1. Halloween Porch Decor. Use all-time favorites, pumpkins, lanterns, web, and wreaths, as the basis of your decor. You can either DIY them or buy them at a dollar store. Add a black bat, cat, spider, or witch silhouettes. Mix spooky with humor if you teach younger students. If you work with older groups, you can keep decorations simple and elegant. 2. Halloween Window Decor. Create magical window decor with cutout silhouettes and light garlands. All you need is to cut out haunted houses, ghosts, witches, and rats. Secure these items on the glass with scotch tape. 3. Halloween Ceiling Decor. For ceiling decor, you can make hanging mobiles using balloons, nets, cutouts, candles, etc. 4. Halloween Desk Decor. To make the perfect Halloween atmosphere and a real sense of the holiday, decorate your desk too. Think of it as a magical place where a witch or wizard creates spells. The most straightforward ideas here could be small pumpkins, old books, melted candles, and spider webs. 5. Halloween Learning Center Decor. If there are different learning centers in your classroom, transform them into other Halloween stations, reading center, math center, science center. Are you ready to start your own teaching adventure? It is essential to decorate your ESL or EFL classroom for different holidays, especially for those not present in your students' native countries. With appropriate decorations, you'll enhance your teaching and explain the traditions of English-speaking countries even more effectively. Teach English Abroad and Online


It's a hard job indeed but it's also a lot of fun because all the papers are super rich empirically and I have a good role I think which consists of like just throwing challenges without having to solve them so it's pretty comfortable. So don't be surprised if I throw challenges but I hope this is going to be useful and in any case I've been like amazed by the amount of data that you all have and how rich in terms of evidence all the papers are so it's quite a treat for me to comment on these papers and so I will start with just a very broad remark about where we are now in the field of rubber governance and I think that's your papers really much reflect the state of this field within the field that was pioneered by people in the room and Anna as well and what I found like super interesting is that well perhaps 10-15 years ago the main question was about the nature of what arm orders and what shaved them and you sort of complexified the field by exploring the different ramifications of how what I'm orders for example shaped the post-conflict but also how rebels during wartime like deal with specific situations such as COVID or climate change so super beautiful addition to the field I'm now moving to a specific comments on each of the papers and then I will end with a big remark for all of you and all of you in the room too which reflects a concern I have with this rubble governance literature so starting with the paper by Chauvin I have been like super stimulated by the description you make of the different responses by the arm was captured by the papers I am I'm going to focus my comments mostly on Nigeria which is the case study that I know better also I may ask why you think that the comparison between Columbia and Nigeria is in fact useful I mean that's something that might be worth detailing a bit before sharing the findings actually and my main concern is about the conceptualization you offer of the crisis so you're talking about climate change you're talking about COVID and in fact we may want to analytically identify better the impacts of this different crisis like the temporality and also the spatial dimension of these two crises are in fact quite different and you may expect different responses perhaps depending on the nature of the crisis that hits the place where rebels are active so I think there's some work to do perhaps around the conceptualization of crisis themselves and their heterogeneity leading to different effects now when it comes to northern Nigeria I'm not sure we should necessarily be convinced with what people say about the recruitment process says in relation with crisis such as climate change which in the case of northern Nigeria is a super complex crisis it's not clear whether it's more rainfall or more the certification if the lake is shrinking or expanding in fact that there's a lot of controversy around the actual impact on livelihoods of climate change in the case of the lake shade chat area so asking people whether they know people who joined the armed group as a result of difficulties encountered that are linked to climate change I think is a kind of a stretch right it's hard to conclude from the answers whether or not climate change has an actual effect on recruitment now on the covid side of things beyond what she can who has declared about covid being something like mostly attached to the kufas and that good muslims should not wear masks we have little evidence about in fact the behaviors of the armed groups in areas they control with respect to the covid crisis itself and evidence about northern Nigeria and from the areas controlled by the groups is in fact very very thin and there's not so much that we know so it's hard to make conclusions about how armed groups actually behave in these zones so that would be my challenge for you Shoban moving to Martha's paper I found that the paper extremely like carefully thought and with very neat arguments and nice categorization of observations and evidence perhaps since you have many different mechanisms at work may ask how you manage eventually to identify like each causal mechanism like and whether the evidence allows you to conclude about the superiority of one mechanism over and another what I found also extremely valid and interesting and which connects with a broader finding I think in the governance literature and rebel governance literature is that whenever armed groups are challenged then the military imperative stands to supersede any other concerns and whatever you do in terms of rebel governance tends to be undermined eroded because you channel all the resources for the protection of the armed groups and the military operations now the big question I would have for you Marta is how you think the different armed groups and the Hootie case is super intriguing how they construct the threats and how they engage with science in fact so I was wondering whether you captured some narratives discourses that portray the COVID crisis in a certain way and whether a constructivist approach of the threat would be useful at all for your research moving to Anna's paper and Anna's and in fact other authors my main question is in fact about the original intuition which you based in the literature and which is a literature I don't know necessarily very very well but which I don't find so intuitive in fact you could argue that when you are exposed to arbitrariness and violence there's a demand for rule of law like you want to get rid of this violence and arbitrariness that surrounds you and demand for a stable environment that rule of law could foster and promote and so I was in a way surprised by the direction that the paper takes even though it's based on literature a second point that was interested in is the connections you make between like preferences and experience so it seems that for you the preferences derive from what you've been through right which is very very valid but preferences are also shaped by narratives discourses things that come from a very very far away and that may eventually affect the way you see the rule of law and maybe in the past the people you've interviewed like have been in touch with a form of rule of law that they were not happy with so the definition of the rule of law itself might be questionable because it might connect with previous experience perhaps it's just a degraded way of Western type or liberal democracy that people were not happy with because it would not deliver justice to them for example these are my questions for you Anna and eventually mine I think that the paper like it's super rich perhaps overly complicated analytically my my sort of spontaneous reaction when I try to summarize the main argument is okay whether what matters eventually is whether elite survives or not and maybe it's just a binary story that may be told as a way to simplify what looks like a very complicated argument and I have two questions for you is there a difference that you make between civil war recurrence and processes of escalation and de-escalation within the same conflict in the case of the twilight for example you could claim that they are like for twilight rebellions in Mali in fact it might be just the same war happening since 1963 so analytically is there a difference that you establish here and a second point that could be problematic is that you don't seem to differentiate between the wartime experience and how the war ends specifically so the war ends in a way that see a loser and a winner emerge but that's made what eventually emerges as winners or losers might not necessarily reflect the experience of wartime for example in a period of occupation by an armed group like all sorts of transformation may might have happened but it's not necessarily the case that this group that introduced changes and that's made people leave something else eventually end up as winners so maybe there's something to differentiate between the wartime experience itself and how the war ends and the type of settlements that emerge after the war and I will finish with a broad question for all of you that concerns the way we engage with history in the field of rebel governance we it's interesting that we now have projects about legacies of conflict and legacies of conflicts are studied through wartime experiences so you tend there's a tendency in the field to explain what you see by what immediately preceded right that's the way we engage with history and similarly what we do on wartime governance is generally shaped by pre-war institutions my feeling is that it's a sort of very mechanistic way of engaging history with history and what we may miss here and I know that some of you have engaged with these issues is the issue of endogeneity the kind of wartime governance that we see emerge in some places might be the direct product of history and how you create an order might might be caused by situations that pre-existed before and in fact the wartime order is just one small sequence of a longer history that may require you to go back in time and quite far away in time to make sense of all these observations also we can change the past by changing the narratives about the past and what we see now is a lot of falsification of history or reviving of all things that may explain what we observe during wartime and I think this is sort of loop here between the past and the present that we miss when we study things sequentially one like one thing after the other so yeah I mean that's a big methodological question for all of you and all of us I think which I think remains unanswered in the fields of rebel governance thank you very much again for your fantastic presentations thank you very much on that very thorough and good work on the papers for the interest of squeezing in a couple of audience questions as well I would invite those who have questions and I can see so many hands already so let's start from from here please keep them short yeah sure all you know I'm a senior fellow from the Finnish Institute of International Affairs really fascinating a set of papers maybe just comments on Marta your paper I mean the concept of governance I mean you have sort of a talk about security provision and judiciary that's like the minimalist approach and then you have the groups that have also service provision which is a more maximalist approach you know Hamas, Hispola, Taliban what have you so yeah just maybe it's maybe more a comment than a question that we have this I just liked your continuum that's the point but that links to Anna's paper and that's I'm slightly challenging the idea that you know rule of law as we understand is sort of the universal thing and this is actually one of the things that we published today in this paper understanding non-state armed groups that we put out with two colleagues at FIA and that the point here is that we premise our thinking on in in west at least on the Weberian notion of institution building and my experience after 30 years three decades of experience working in conflict settings ranging from Cambodia Afghanistan Palestine Iraq and so forth and I'm just wondering I mean isn't it the fact that often it is the exactly the judiciary and the security provision that many of these rebel groups insurgents what you whatever you want to call that that resonates among the local populations and hence their clout also so I'm just wondering you know we've been pushing the sort of rule of law agenda I used to work with the UN myself so down the throats of many populations I'm being provocative here and I don't see the results they doesn't look very good on the ground so I'm just challenging the notion that we are we are having this Weberian notion of institution building that it doesn't seem to fly but maybe you have comments on that thanks hi Adam day microphone doesn't seem to be working but that's why you can hear me from UN University I have a question for Anna which has to do with the specificity of the Colombian context it seems like the war in Colombia is largely driven by a quite illegal framework that disenfranchised the land tenure and the solution to the Colombian conflict was also quite legal you've got the land the victims restitution and land act there's a very high awareness of the legal framework versus other conflicts like when I work in eastern Congo and South Sudan most people don't see much of a legal framework to either the the conflict or the solution and I guess my question is do you think that your findings about that are that are fairly counterintuitive in some respects about the Colombian experience might actually not be easily extrapolated to to other conflicts where actually the reference points in the law and are non-existent for most people dealing with the conflict let's have one more question but if they are very quick one so let's have these two questions from there hi thanks Ben Lessing from University of Chicago just for Anna also you know I maybe went by or maybe I didn't follow it that well but it sounded almost like whatever the rebels did you know whether they were violent or whether they controlled violence either way the same prediction or something like that I couldn't quite tell so maybe you could that I think this goes to Yvonne's comments as well about what what's really the hypothetical prediction the last question there thank you so I'll keep it short down there University of Basel I have two questions one for Anna which is about the rule of law so in my view if you ask people do you want rule of law anyone will say yes but it no yep so I wanted to ask you if you could specify how you operationalize this in the survey that you did and then for the work on Ethiopia and Somalia I was wondering I'm sure you're familiar with the work of Christopher Clapham and he claims in his publications that the pre-existing state bureaucracy in Ethiopia was perhaps one of the reasons why the EPRDF managed a more or less stable transition so I wonder if yeah how you how you see that point thank you excellent so let's go brain twisting amount of questions comments and insights so let's proceed in the order that you spoke so please if you start thank you I'll keep it short because I think most the questions were to my fellow panel members but just maybe Yvonne in response to some of the things you brought up I don't disagree these really weren't designed to be case studies to compare anything across them it's just these are the places we're doing work and I should have probably set up front you know this project is really to have practical implications on the ground it's to support practitioners who are trying to run reintegration and DDR programs they're trying to be more effective they want to build peace in these different these different places it's also areas where we have access to ex-combatants so it's driven a bit by that but I do take your point there and I think you raise a really important thing to inform further work in the space this is about how we ask about questions related to climate change because people don't necessarily experience them as climate change they just might experience experience them as a really bad harm of 10 years we don't really we have to really careful we we spent a lot of time thinking about that and we try not to ever use the term climate change but I think it's a really good point for how you craft questions to really get at experiences and then just maybe one point on sort of asking other people so this is before we had access to ex-combatants themselves who are talking about climate change effects even if they don't speak about them in that way and this is talking about other people and their perceptions of what's happening and I still do think there's value there particularly in a context like northeast Nigeria I think it's different actually in the rest of the late Chad but because of how long reintegration is actually practically happening I mean almost everyone we speak to knows people personally family and community members who have gone through this and come back so they do have insights and community leaders who often broker returns they do have insights I don't think they're perfect for getting at this but I do think in the absence of other data and access to the people themselves it's at least its start but I really take I take these points of feedback to heart because we really want to get this to be stronger because I think we haven't made these links really yet we're just starting to and to find the right way to do it so thank you hi thank you even for your comments I really appreciated them and I find extremely interesting the point that you raised at the end about how the armed groups construct the threat how they engage with science for instance when it comes to the hooties it was very interesting to see how the group was using the health emergency the virus to strengthen some points of its ideological manifesto with propaganda accusing the United States accusing Israel rejecting PPEs that were brought by humanitarian organizations saying that they were ineffective and potentially harmful so it's really interesting to adopt this constructivist approach that you were suggesting to see how the group and the ideology of the group might really become another factor that affects the approach to the emergency so thank you for this insightful comment thank you Ivan for the comments just briefly so you and I think this connects to another question so you started your comments saying that you find sort of the this assumption kind of not making a lot of sense that's in part where the paper starts right so we are not we are not trying to develop hypothesis to say all these they should be right we're saying there is this big assumption let's do our best effort to think theoretically how it would work if it is correct right and so I agree with you that it's not clear how a human being responds to experiencing arbitrariness authoritarian rule it may go different ways based on the director we have on support for the rule of law it is true that you would expect a lot of these experiences to undermine support for the rule of law but the next step of course is to think about what is the process of preference formation and maybe under what conditions would people go for one reaction or the other and that's where we want to go right so this is a first paper sort of open a research agenda saying this assumption that you do see in a lot of policy debates and a lot of research where we assume there is this democratic deficit this may not be right but or may not be true and and your last point I think it's true you know in the geneticism when we started legacies there are so many issues one is pre-existing factors but another one is that a lot of things are happening at the same time I think a lot of the work on legacies focuses on violence but a lot of other things are happening and it's really hard to disentangle them and so when in the next stage when we are trying to really think about legacies on political behavior I think we really need to theorize very carefully if there are things that are in the past that are explaining rebel governance whether they could also explain what you see after the end of the war in terms of political behavior and then so I agree with your comments that well we don't know I don't know if interventions or policies to improve the rule of law is what we need and that's precisely a point of the paper saying we assume we do we want to help our research community and policymakers to investigate whether that is the case so we are not saying the opposite right we're actually questioning that the Colombian case is that is that going to generalize I'm not sure and I I think I am ignorant still about how this process is shaped political preferences and beliefs and that's why I think we need a research agenda on this and that where we unpack more of these mechanisms I do think Colombia is particular for a number of reasons but I also think that especially for conflicts that have ended recently a lot of people have been exposed to this talk of similar sort of normative values that may shape also what they think they they want or what they think they should have to tell an enumerator for example and these are things that we need to consider then your question so it's both and it's not our hypothesis like saying oh this this should be true it's us really engaging with different leaders to try to anticipate so the way in which we operationalize this and this answers the last question is exactly and they just have it here in order to capture criminals is it desirable that authorities on occasions break the law which is something that a lot of people would say yes in Latin America right and so building on that literature we expect people who have endured violence to support less the rule of law right but then we were trying to think okay maybe it's not just if they endured violence but also whether whether an armed actor was able to curb crime and so what we measure here is whether you may have lived under the governance of an armed actor but you may be very conscious about how good the armed actor was in reducing crime and in my field work this was very very often the case people were really happy that no one would take would steal or rape someone in their community that doesn't mean the group didn't commit acts of violence right it's different and you could have both you could have a community where there were massacres and homicides by the group but where crime was zero right and so we are developing these two different hypotheses and interestingly we find that none of these make people want their major to break the law in order to curb crime so I'll stop there thank you thank you very much for the comments and thank you very much for your question and I think you're explain but I think your question about Christopher Claffham's work actually speaks to the challenges of grounding the study of rebel governance in history and the endogeneity of rebel governance so the argument is in the Horn of Africa you have highland and lowland society and these two types of society have extremely different tradition of the state dating back to centuries ago and and I think there is some truth to the fact that this long-run tradition of the state influenced both the forms of rebel governance and the stability of the of the post-conflict government but at the same time I think there is a little bit of a risk of not only over emphasizing this argument about the tradition of the state but also sort of like essentializing political culture as if he was static never changing there's one way to look at this question which is there is a Somali province in Ethiopia that is this like that borders Somalia and so maybe like one day maybe I'll get to that but if you compare the government like so when the TPLF came to power it started to extend its governance system to the Somali region of Ethiopia and so I think it's it's it tells us that like political culture has some explanatory power but not but doesn't explain everything in the sense of like the Somali province of Ethiopia is not ruled that the same like isn't governed by the same governance system as Somalia like it's it shows that the Somali political culture does not preclude administration by institutions that are independent from the clan system so I hope this answers some of your question and then thanks so much for the comments I very much agree with your point about when do you decide when it's like one conflict or several conflict and when do you decide when you have achieved stability I don't know yet which is why the quantitative part is still a work in progress


So, first, I would like to turn to you, Catherine. You are one of the co-authors of the Global Sustainable Development Report from last year. So, in this report, you outlined six entry points and four levels to help implement the SDGs. So, how do you think these entry points and levels can help Nordic societies to speed up the implementation of the SDGs? Thank you, Martin. I actually hope very, very much that this will stop or help us to move from thinking about the individual SDGs, because if you think about it, there's nothing special about any of the SDGs. We knew in 2012 that we had challenges in all of those boxes, and indeed, we actually had UN agreements for most of them on women, on peace, on water, on climate, on biodiversity, and so on. So, what's interesting about the SDGs is the fact that they're brought into a single framework, and that means that it's the interactions between them that are in focus and not the individual SDGs themselves. And in reality, where sustainability happens is in the interface between the goals that make life better for people, that is to say one, two, three, four, five, six, which is poverty, hunger, health, education, gender equality and access to water and sanitation, and our use of the global resources, which can be boiled down to climate and biodiversity. And it's this tension between the fact that you buy improvement of one, two, three, four, five, six by selling off 13, 14 and 15, which is where we really need to concentrate all of our efforts. And all of the other SDGs can actually be assigned to different tools that we can use to relieve the pressure between the two endpoints here, the two groups of goals. And so, by identifying six areas that need transformation, and those areas are about people, they're about the economy and finance system, and about the governance system, they're about food system, energy system, cities and peri urban areas, and our access to the global resources. If we look at those, how do we use the different SDGs to achieve relevant goals there, make a transformation? I mean, the goals themselves aren't interesting. It's the transformation of these different areas that are interesting. And I think we have to change our thinking entirely around the SDGs. It's not about having a meeting focusing on SDG 14 or whatever. It's about understanding the interactions between them and reducing the negative interactions in them. And in the Nordic countries, in the Northern Europe countries, I mean, we go around and we say we're number one or number two. Sweden and Denmark compete about being number one or two to do the SDGs. When, in fact, we're no closer to achieving the SDGs than any developing country. But our challenges aren't on 123456, they're on 12, 13, 14, 15. In addition to this Global Sustainable Development Report, we also have a paper by by Jeffrey Sachs et al. from last year, The Six Transformations to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. And this paper sort of outlines a similar approach, in a way, but with transformations instead of entry points. And although there are some differences between these two reports, they have many similarities and essentially try to focus on how to achieve these by reducing sort of reducing the actions into specific areas. So, John, I would like to ask you, the subtitle of the Sustainable Development Report is The Future is Now, Science for Achieving a Sustainable Development. So how can science in general and SDS in Northern Europe, in particular, help to speed up the implementation of the SDGs in the Northern countries? Challenging questions, Martin. First of all, reports are quite important. They are definitely a step forward, trying to really define the at least entry points. But in Jeffrey's papers together with colleagues, the actual transformations that we need to go through to reach the global goals for sustainable development. But having said that, they are quite widely defined these areas. And if we focus in on the Nordic conditions, it's definitely the case that its reports have, they are described to fit the global needs, I would say. And we have a need to really specify better what the conditions are and what we need to do in the Nordic countries in relation to these transformations. The emphasis on the different entry points need to be really addressed. And so I think we have a lot of work to do to better define the transformation that we need to go through to actually achieve a sustainable development with the goals at 2030 to begin with. So I could see that we in our members, I could see a specific things we could actually do. We could really go through and sort of take the next step from these reports and papers and try to define much better what are the conditions in the Nordic countries with respect to these different aspects. So I could, I haven't talked to you about this, but I could see that we could form interest groups, team groups across our national borders that are addressed in different aspects of these questions about transformations. Hopefully that could lead to reviews, development and potentially joint research programs in the future. I would really like to see if that could be done. Otherwise, I would say this question, as I understand it, relates to how we are dealing with the research science at universities and research institutes. And I think that a couple of things we need to think about is that we we should definitely continue as we do to a great extent. But at the same time, we need to be relevant on the right time scales. So we may need to increase the activities where we define the research question together with the surrounding society, businesses, et cetera. So we have these different methods, co-production, co-creation, methods that we really define the questions together from the beginning instead of the scientists starting and then after X number of years come up with a conclusion that may perhaps be valuable. We should be in contact from the beginning and through the processes. I think that this is something we need to do more. And it also relates to research policy interactions that need to be more efficient. And in general, we need to transfer knowledge much faster. And as sort of final word on this question, we need to break down a few barriers and be better at partnership and working together across different borders. One of the aims of the SDSN Networks worldwide is to support the implementation of the SDSN, of course, in particular through solution initiatives and long term pathways, as we said. And these long term pathways demand a well functioning interface between science and policy, just as you mentioned here, Jan. So I would like to ask Kajsa from the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science. And of course, you are allowed to also introduce yourself if you want to. But Kajsa, you have experience in the science policy interface, quite substantial experience. So how do you think SDSN Northern Europe members can contribute even more to the science policy interactions? OK, thank you, Martin. And thank you for the opportunity to have a few words here. I'm Kajsa Korore-Koroki from University of Helsinki, Institute of Sustainability Science, actually the first sustainability science center in our country. And I also work as a program director for three huge research programs on sustainable development funded by the Finnish Academy of Strategic Research Council and all those, the kind of new focus and the aim in those research projects is to produce knowledge which is society-relevant, which kind of test it, they test the new methods of co-creation and co-production knowledge speed, really, really interesting past two years. But if we go to the question that you were asking from me, of course, there are very many and different ways and models to work in the science policy interface. You can find a kind of platform models. You can get researchers can get assignments directly from the government, for example, to produce different kind of recruits. There are nested activities, like, for example, in our institute, this kind of science policy activities are inbuilt in our work. There are science panels. Maybe the IPCC is one of the most known and they're national ones. Like, we in Finland have a climate panel, which is very, have a very good position in the science advice, and that says that it's written, it has a position, it's written in the law that it needs to be heard when the climate decisions are made. And the different dialogue models and so on. And I think it very much depends on the context. It depends on the issue, what works best in which situation, of course. For example, our researchers, and also when the researchers get the funding to do research, policy briefs, for example, are required more and more to be one of the outputs of the research. Not only the scientific articles, but that you need to produce some policy briefs. And it's, but it's not enough that you produce a policy brief. It's also very important to take care that you organize the event where you discuss those findings with those whom the policy brief is targeted. That we have noticed in our activities that it's really important to end to build very confidential connections and relationships between researchers and decision makers in all of the levels of decision making. For example, we have very fruitful ongoing collaboration with our Institute and the Finnish Prime Minister's office where the National Sustainable Development Coordination is carried out. And it has resulted, started with a very small activities, but it has resulted with many, many interesting initiatives and consultations. And I think that the SDS and members in all the Nordic countries can contribute in many ways in various levels in science policy interactions. It's not only the national level that you easily think that you need to work with the parliament or the ministries, but also many local universities can very effectively work with the provincial or municipality level decision makers. And I think my experience is that the researchers just should be active, that it's usually the people in ministries or people in the municipalities are really pleased if they are contacted by researchers who would like to collaborate with them and provide and also go create a new knowledge with them. Thank you, Kessa, I fully agree. And I think that, I mean, in Finland, you have, as I understand it at least, quite good interactions between science and policy, at least if there's, I've been visiting some of the events that you talked about, for example, and also the fact that the government is actually, the prime minister is actually responsible for sustainability in your country in a way. So maybe you have easier, an easier situation than the other Nordic countries to some extent, but I think it's interesting that you bring up these different levels and we also have the level of the Nordic Council of Ministers. I mean, the Nordic level here that we could also think about. Universities, of course, also have the important task of providing high quality education, including education in sustainable development. And I think this is a very important task for SDS in Northern Europe. It is to stimulate the development while all our university students in our countries graduate with a good knowledge in sustainable development. So, Anik, you are the vice-rector of NTNU in Olesund. And in your opinion, how should universities organize the education in sustainable development to ensure that our students graduate with good knowledge in this area? Should it, for example, be in the form of a mandatory course in sustainable development? Or should we rather try to integrate sustainable development throughout all programs and into courses in a more integrated way? What is your view on this, Anik? Yes, thank you. Thank you for the question. And I also want to introduce myself very briefly. I'm a professor in sustainability. We focus on environmental management and life cycle assessment. And NTNU has an overall program on sustainability. And until 2017, I was the director of this program before I became the vice-rector at the campus we have in Olesund. Olesund is in the west coast of Norway. And since then, the NTNU merged with the university colleges in 2017. And NTNU in Olesund is now what we say the most industry integrated campus of NTNU. So this is a bit of the background when I try to answer your question. And for young students, the SDGs are visible symbols of what they should consider in their knowledge building or sustainability development. However, I think it's important to single out what is most important for their own field of studies. Today, all students have examined philosophical and in this course, they learn to discuss problems and issues in life of different use of knowledge, science, ethics and politics. And in here, they should also perhaps reflect more on the sustainability development issues and reflect critically on sustainable development and relate this to their own disciplines. Here also a reflection on ethical challenges related to their own disciplines could come in much stronger, I think. So, and so today your second question about mandatory courses in sustainable development. At NTNU, we do not have specifically mandatory courses besides EXFIN for all students, which is similar for all students. However, we see more often that sustainable development becomes integrated throughout courses where it is relevant. And development becomes integrated throughout... So first, I would like to... ...examples can be in studies for the maritime sector. For example, since we are on the coast, our students learn about the impact of new consumption in vessels and how new technologies can be introduced to use this. And also, they learn how the import of, for example, new combustion speed of the implementation of these. And this way, they will learn to reflect the STGs which are relevant. For example, number 14, life under water, and number 13 on climate. And this way, they learn how to integrate concern on a natural way into their daily courses. And also another example is, for example, the life cycle thinking. We have the STG number 12. And they learn how to take responsibility along the production value chain and integrate also systems thinking into their models and in their programs. So this is, of course, a great importance for implementation in their new courses. And also how to integrate this into sustainability strategies in firms they will collaborate with. So my conclusion on the questions is that the best effect is to integrate sustainability aspects into the courses and gradually change courses contact according to this. However, additional to this, some universities have special programs already and at NTNU, we have had a special program on industrial ecology already for 20 years and educated a few hundred experts already and hope to, and they are now sitting in important positions in governmental organization and industry. So there are many ways to integrate this. So yeah, I think this is enough for me now. Thank you so much, Annik. I also want to clarify that. I think it's good that I didn't mean that it has to be done in one way only, so to speak. It's good that you mentioned that we're relevant. So we should, of course, allow many different models and modes to do this in some sense. Sometimes it might not be relevant for a student that is studying algebra to learn about some of the SDGs or so. We need, of course, to do this in a sensible way. Thank you so much for this. Is there any of you who want to comment on the first round of questions? So I would like to open up for some short participatory interactions here. Yes, Catherine. Yeah, I'd like to violently disagree with you on the last comment that you made. Of course it's for people who study algebra to understand the challenges of the society they're a part of. And the university's greatest responsibility is to make sure that its graduates are prepared to be able to contribute to the discussions and the challenges that society has. So I disagree. I don't think there's ever a situation where it isn't relevant. You might definitely have a point here, Catherine, of course. I guess I'm influenced by my own teaching experiences from a department where I talked about environmental effects of shipping and some of the students there, they were simply there to learn how to drive a boat. They were not interested in how some crab feels in the sea or something like that. So, but for sure SDGs concern everybody, of course. Please go ahead. Yeah, just to continue from, I fully agree with Catherine. And one thing that I want to tell you all is that our university is now starting probably in two years. We're now planning it as one of the first universities the world to kind of obligatory sustainability science course to all newcomers at the university. It applies to mathematics students and the medicine students and everybody like IT skills or ethics or whatever you need to study that you should go, you will go for one sustainability science course. It will be a huge course because we have 3,000 newcomers every year, but they are now planning it and our university is like very committed to start it in two years. Yeah, I just want to comment this since I brought in the term relevant because I think many of our students when they're at the university now they have had a lot about the SDGs from high school and they are prepared to understand this into, they're prepared to learn more about what is the most relevant for their own field of study. So I think we should consider both ways but to learn how this contributor can impact their own work in the future. I think that's stimulating them to also learn more with work for other areas as well. So, both, maybe. I just want to add that quite often nowadays the students know much more about sustainable development than the teachers. The teachers have their specialties and their different disciplines and sometimes I wonder if the students who maybe should flip classes, classrooms, et cetera. But the challenge is really how to, again, work across borders between disciplines. How do we make it possible to bring in aspects that were never in the courses that are relevant for sustainable development but in the classical courses that we are giving how can new aspects be included? I think there are a number of challenges there. I will go ahead and move on from the discussion we had about education to discussion about course mapping. And many universities have mapped and labelled their courses and programmes according to the SDGs. So, for example, students would know more what will be taught in different courses. And the Sustainable Science Centre at the University of Copenhagen has, for example, chosen to do this. So, Catherine, could you first summarise, briefly summarise the rationale and the criteria for the mapping that you did. And secondly, give your view if such mapping and labelling actually improves the quality of the education itself.  And if I was going to do it today, I would do it differently. But the motivation for doing this was the fact that when I went to, as a representing the Sustainability Science Centre and talked to institute leaders, they said, oh, but there's lots of sustainability in all of our courses. And when I talked to the students, the students said, but there's no courses anywhere that have anything to do with sustainability. So there seemed to be a lack of a bridge here between the two. So what we did was we went through all of the course offerings at both bachelor and master's level in all of the faculties and tried to see three different people do it. And they all tried to see if they could find something in the pencem and the goals of that course that was relevant for an SDG and then put it in so that you can, what happens today is that if the student, a potential student goes in and says, I want a course that's relevant for SDG 10, then they push a button and they can see all of the courses that are relevant for SDG 10 at the university. It was an interesting exercise because, of course, before we put it on the net, we went back to the teachers and said, is it OK to plot your course as being relevant to SDG X? And many of them said, oh, but my course has sustainability. Or what are the SDGs? So we clearly, there was a mismatch there as well. So that's also been very useful. I, based on my previous input, today, if I was to do it again, and the person who's going to do this is listening in, so I hesitate to come with it, but I think we need to revisit this because, again, I don't think just finding out a course is relevant for a single SDG is particularly interesting. I think what's interesting is how research or courses can contribute to competences that can be used to transform the systems that we talked about earlier. And at this very moment, we're in the process of remapping all of our research at the university so that it's put in the context of can it contribute or how can it contribute to transforming one or more of the societal activities that requires transformation. I would like to extend that approach or go back and visit courses again once we've got the research mapped out in this transformation arena. I'd like to go back and try and look at education in terms of transformation and not just in the context of SDGs. But given the time that we did this at and the fact that there wasn't that much awareness, at least among the teachers, about SDGs, I think this was a really useful exercise, and it doesn't have to be removed yet. I just think it needs to be evolved in the coming time. Thank you, Kater, so do you also think that this has, in some way, informed the teachers and maybe even put some pressure on the teachers to improve their education about sustainability? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. There's no question about it. And first of all, they said, oh, but is this relevant? And could you come and give a guest lecture and help me understand? And so yes, absolutely. It's been a way of getting the teachers involved. And the funny thing was that when the university itself did a film last year about how wonderful we are for the SDGs, and it was the Central Communication Office of the university that was responsible for this. And they did some tapes of the Rector, and we'd supplied the Rector with text of what he should say and where he advertises the fact that we've done this mapping. And the head of communications said, oh, no, we haven't. Oh, get that out. It's not in them. So yes, we have. So it also was very important in terms of helping the leadership of the university to understand just how many links there already are to sustainability, or at least the SDGs, in our existing curriculum. That's great news. More or less exactly what I wanted to hear or sort of anticipated to hear. You didn't give me a text. Thank you, Catherine. So also in addition to education, of course, universities perform research, and they communicate about their research and the SDGs. And hopefully they also worked to improve their own operations to align with the SDGs. And Kaysa, you have published an article about realizing the SDGs in the University of Helsinki, last autumn. So this was published in Sustainable Development Goes and Institutions of Higher Education. I'm sure we can put a link to this chapter in the chat. But Kaysa, could you briefly describe the conclusions made for your university with regards to this? And do you also think that these conclusions are sort of valid for other Nordic universities, so in other Nordic countries? Yes, thank you. Yes, we did the kind of SDG mapping in our university, University of Helsinki, but not the kind of whole research and all the research we have and all the teaching we have. But the kind of new, we mapped the new research and teaching openings in the university that are like strategic openings starting from 2015. And then we, 2015, 16, 17, 18, and we also mapped the university operations and activities from those years. And the results of this mapping showed that, of course, the quality of education, the SDG-4, is the goal that was clearly important for all the new initiatives, also in own operation, which was not really surprising. And also the SDG-17 partnerships and the SDG-3 health and well-being were strongly kind of emphasized in the initiatives. But what was interesting was that the SDG-1, no poverty, SDG-6, clean water and sanitation, SDG-5, gender equality, were not considered almost at all in research activities, not at all, and in teaching given very little emphasis. However, these are like the main major sustainability challenges globally. But we, as a country, we compared the report where we evaluated the Finnish, as a country, the Finland's performance. We are performing very well in these SDGs, of course. So you can ask that, can university, that we are, anyway, committed to contribute to global development as a university. So raises the question that we should also think about these SDGs in our strategic planning, if we want to have a global impact, even in our own country, these are already taken care of. And also one another finding was related a little bit of this, I noticed in the program that we will have a presentation on times higher education, university impact ranking, also here in this webinar. And that ranking focuses on 15 SDGs, excluding the SDG-1, the poverty, no poverty, SDG-2, zero hunger, clean energy and clean water and sanitation, 15 life on land and SDG-4, the life below water. And why this exclusion was done was, it was decided by the higher education institutions that were consulted. But our mapping kind of showed that also the universities could play a significant role. For example, piloting the new energy solutions like we have solar panels in many of our building roofs at the moment and so on. So it's difficult to say how applicable these results are for other universities. I guess the quality of education is like obviously core in all universities globally. But I think at least for us, it was quite useful exercise that made us to think that how we should take into account that global aspect more explicitly in all of our activities. So leaving no one behind is perhaps something to think about here for your university. Okay, although SDSN doesn't accept businesses as members, we are definitely encouraged to develop collaboration in partnerships with businesses. And Anik, I know that you have worked quite a lot with corporates of social responsibility, business models for sustainability and green innovation. How can we as universities and as a network interact more with business without compromising our academic standards of objectivity and transparency? And that's one. What's your view on that? Yes, CSR, it's about responsibility. And again, the SDGs put attention to areas where this should be practiced. For example, in SDG number 12, responsibility is part of the title of the goal. And it's about how companies can show responsibility about upstream and downstream in the production value chains and also how to give information to the consumer about the impact of the products both on the environment and the society. So, I think it's well connected to the SDG. This was just an example. And that, Antenny, our vision is knowledge for about the world and we should therefore develop knowledge of importance for all sectors that contribute to achieve our vision and also the SDGs. And by talking about CSR and collaboration with companies, it's about also how to help the business to better see their role to achieve the SDGs in a more holistic system. As I mentioned in my presentation, that Antenny campus in Olisund is one of the most industry-integrated campuses. We have double as many from industry at campus as from academia. And it's for all its natural that all our students also learn how to work with their business. And my experience from this is quite positive. The students learn from companies and we also learn about what's important importance in our courses and training for industry and the development of work, working places for the students in the future. But of course, there is sensitive information that companies do not want to share. And this can sometimes be a discussion on how much we could share both ways. But in such cases, we have the mechanisms where we can protect information that students get insight in during their master thesis, for example. And students are also trained in the ethical principles and how to work in collaboration with external partners. So as an example, we have a study program in the bio marine innovation. And this means that the students need to work very close with industry and with companies. And in fact, we're quite proud of our students here. They have been winning the European Championship and also Norwegian Championships in young entrepreneurship through their student enterprises. So they are trained during their study program also to work as business, so to say. So I think this is important and close integration between the industry is important to develop also understanding of sustainable development in companies. So we have tested this out and we feel very comfortable with working with industry in this way. As you all know, the Nordic countries ranks very well on the STD index. As we also have been described here previously. But we do perform quite poorly on some of the STDs. For example, 12, 13, 14 or 15. And we also have a very bad negative spillover score. So negative spillover effects are, for example, environmental damages in other countries that are connected to our consumption here in our countries. So we have clear problems with this. And Jan, I would first like to ask you, how can the STS and Northern Europe members and the STS and network address negative spillovers? And secondly, what kind of research is needed for societies to have control over their negative spillover effects? Is there any quality assurance that science or research can contribute with here? First of all, I think Catherine already mentioned here that we need to consider these kinds of aspects. It looks, we look at the STG index for our Nordic countries. It looks much better than it actually is. Quite often we are consuming, for example, what is produced elsewhere outside the natural borders. And it looks much better than it actually is. We are globally connected and that is not really being addressed as much as it should. I think that also we know fairly well how well we do with the STGs, but it's quite difficult to quantify the effects when it comes to spillover effects. So I think there are a number of scientific questions there, trying to get a better grasp of understanding how it works and how to measure if we are going to do anything about it. And in the end, also, if we look at transformations to try to improve this, it gets quite complicated. And in the end, we need to really think hard about how to balance economic, social, and ecological aspects across national borders. So there are a number of interesting research projects that should be carried out in this field. And Justin's last thing, what might be that, I think we need better tools to understand and emphasize spillovers, like in daily life, if you go and shop in, you would like to know, to some extent, at least where do the products come from? How does it influence the world, not only within our national borders? So not a list of explicit projects for research, but a few ideas, Martin. Wonderful, that concludes the third part of the SDSN Northern Europe session, Martin. Some concluding remarks from you. Yes, I would just like to thank you so much. Dorothea and Jorge and everybody else who's been involved in this great event. I think we've had a lot of interesting questions and discussions behind the screen, so to speak. And I just want to say that we've enjoyed this very much. And please don't hesitate to get in contact with us on our website or on social media or whatever. Maybe I can show those addresses on the screen very quickly or how are we doing on time, Dorothea? Are we? We are perfectly on time for our next session to start, so I would invite you to paste this in the comment section, but not share your screen. We will do that. Thank you so much, everybody, again for this and have a lovely afternoon or morning or evening or wherever you are. That's for sure. Our attendees are all around the world at this time. So thank you, everyone, from the SDSN Northern Europe for joining us today. This concludes our session on sustainable development from the Nordic perspective, and we're all leaving this with lots of youth for thought. And I just ask everybody to mute their microphones, getting a lot of feedback noise. Yeah, just saying thank you to our colleagues from Sweden on leaving us with so much to think about in terms of the Nordic perspective on sustainable development.


Os ydych yn ymlaen, mae'n cyfrifio'r economiaeth. Mae'r ddweud o'r ddweud o fod yng nghylch y Uniau Oedden a Ieuf oedd yn Brytyn yw unrhyw o'r oes yn ymddangos cychwynol. Ond yna'n gwneud yn ysgrifennu'r gwrthodau sydd yn ei wneud, But, in return we were going to be members of this thriving, prosperous dynamic trade block. No-one still credibly argues for that in Britain anymore. Being part of the EU gives us certainly less self-government, but it also gives us less prosperity. This isn't just about the euro crisis, although I can't help noticing that many people who 10 years ago said we would face economic ruin if we didn't abandon the pound. The same credibility as a Greek government bond. This is about something far more fundamental than simply the Euro crisis. When we joined what was to become the European Union in 1973, it accounted for 40%, almost 40% of global output. Today, it accounts for 25% of global output. By the mid 2020s, it will have shrunk to 15% of global output.  Jim O'Neill, y cysylltu'r economist o Goldman Sachs, dwi'n cael ei wneud i'r wneud, yn ymgyrch gyda 4.1%. 4.1%! Mae'r bwysig o'r ysgol yng Nghymru yn y dechrau sy'n dechrau sy'n dechrau, a'r dechrau sy'n dechrau sy'n dechrau sy'n dechrau, mae'n cael ei ddweud o'r ysgol yng Nghymru. Yn ddweud, yw ysgol yng Nghymru sy'n dechrau sy'n dechrau, ac mae'n ddych chi'n ddweud. Yn ymgyrch gyda i'r trwyddon o'r ddweud, yw ysgol yng Nghymrae. A rwy'n dechrau sy'n ddweud, yw'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ffordd o'r ddweud sy'n ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud i pan-european gweithiau. Felly, mae ar gwrthwynt pan-european, ddweud o'r ddweud, felly byddwch nhw'n cael ei wneud. Why did the Lisbon agenda a decade or more ago fail? The Lisbon agenda we were told was going to make Europe the most dynamic and competitive region of the global economy? How's that worked out? Now if you listen to the Whitehall man drowners in Britain they will be quick to tell you that trade with the EU remains important. I totally agree. Although with every set of economic trade statistics it becomes clear that Europe is a principal market, no longer the principal market, it's vitally important that we still continue to trade. And that is why we need a free trade agreement with the EU. If South Korea can have a free trade agreement with the eurozone, then Britain ought to be able to have a free trade agreement with the eurozone. If the Swiss are able to do four and a half times more trade with the EU from outside than we manage from within, then by definition we can get a better deal. The UK is Germany's single biggest export market. I think we'll have a lot of clout. Can you seriously imagine that people in Britain are going to not want to buy German produce, German manufacturers, German cars because we're outside? Now, you often hear the establishment views saying, ah, but they would discriminate against us, they would direct tariffs, they would direct barriers. The most trade that Britain does with Europe is already covered by World Trade Organization rules. But even so, just stop and think about it. In 2010 Britain bought 52 billion pounds more goods and services from Europe than we sold to Europe. 52 billion pound of trade deficit. That gives a lie to the myth that EU Member States would want to restrict cross-channel trade from which they are the principal beneficiaries. It is a nonsense. Now, we have to be in a single market, says the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, says the Foreign Office establishment unthinkingly. Really? Imagine if you may very crudely that my hands represent the totality of British GDP of economic output this year. This is 100%. 80% of that 100% is people in Britain buying and selling stocks to people in Britain, people selling haircuts on high streets, taxi rides around British towns and cities. 20% of that 100% hinges on trade overseas. Of that 20%, less than half, 8% of the total hinges on trade with the EU. Why on earth are we 100% complying with rules and regulations when only 8% of the economy hinges on that trade? Surely it's possible to comply with single market rules when you're selling to the single market. Why should a business in my constituency wanting to sell to Russia face obstacles erected in Brussels? Why should a business in London wanting to sell to India or America have to comply with single market rules designed to facilitate trade with Belgium? But business wants it, is the answer I often hear. We hear this again and again, usually from government officials who haven't ever run businesses. And certainly I don't deny that British Confederation of British Industry, the CBI, their leadership does want it. Now, put aside the fact that the Confederation of British Industry and its previous incarnations has been wrong. In the 1920s they were wrong about returning to gold standard. In the 1940s they were wrong about nationalisation. In the 1950s they were wrong about state planning. In the 1970s they were wrong about prices and incomes policies. In the 1980s and 90s they were wrong about the ERF. Put all that aside, the CBI represents a very narrow view of business. Their latest survey asked the opinion of fewer than 400 people. I think instead one should look at an organisation like Business for Britain, a much broader based organisation which after 1000 business leaders in July for their opinion. And they found that in nine key areas business leaders by a clear majority want powers to be returned from Brussels to London. Most want a fundamental renegotiation of new terms, new arrangements. Most found that the cost of complying with the single market outweade the benefit. Even the CBI, if you look at the data in their survey, even the CBI data shows that most members recognise that if they were to leave it would alleviate the regulatory burden on their businesses compared to whether we remain in. Business in Britain is at best divided. I have no doubt there are some big corporate interests who have spent their marketing budgets over the years not trying to persuade willing customers to buy their goods but to buy political draft in Brussels to lobby. I have no doubt that some of those big corporate interests have a vested interest in the Brussels gravy train. And certainly this explains why lobbying is one of Europe's growth industries. But we must not confuse the interests of a few big corporate interests with a dog in Brussels in the Brussels fight with a broader UK commercial interest. Now you probably sitting there by now thinking it's all very well this Caswell fellow telling us all of this. But you're just one back bench MP. Guilty as charged absolutely. I am just one back bench MP. You're correct. But it no longer matters what people like me think or what people like David Cameron think. Ultimately it's a question of what British diplomats think. It's ultimately now a question of what people think. The beauty of a referendum is that what matters is what the whole 60 million British people now think. What chance is there of a referendum? Well when we last met when I last met some of you. Not even David Cameron was on board with the idea. It seemed a very radical ultra non mainstream idea. It's rare now to find someone who actually actively opposes a referendum. I think it's going to happen for the following reasons. Obviously if David Cameron wins in 2015 he said there's going to be one in 2017. But I think the chances are much greater than that of that being a referendum. There's a chance I think Ed Miliband will be forced to concede one before 2015. Even if he doesn't even if he does not concede a referendum in 2015 and even if he does win the general election. I think he's going to be required to hold a referendum of some sort afterwards. The euro crisis means profound changes coming. The core eurozone countries are going to fuse into a block. Banking union is coming. I think Charles was absolutely right when he talked about the situation being dangerously unstable. There is a huge element of instability in the status quo. Britain's current relationship with the Europe that is fusing into this core. That is going to have big implications for Britain's relationship if the rules are changed. Already on the statute books there is a law very clearly that says if there is a change in Britain's relation with the EU there must be a referendum. But fundamentally I think there's going to be a referendum for the same reason that I think David Cameron came around to the idea of a referendum. You're probably told by the sort of people who write the FT that David Cameron was forced to sign a referendum because of beastly backbenchers like me. No, not really. I think he was forced to do it because it's right in principle. It's fundamentally right to have a referendum. Even Labour MPs, true to the tradition of the Labour movement, are starting to recognise that there needs to be a referendum. I think momentum is becoming unstoppable. Those who oppose a referendum look weirdly anti-democratic. If there's one thing I would like to impress upon you, I'm not killing myself that I'm going to convince anyone of my argument here today. But if there's one thing I want to impress upon you, don't make the mistake of believing that the debate about Britain's membership of the European Union is about Tory backbenchers like me. Don't make that mistake. Don't make the mistake of misdiagnosing what Euroskepsism is. This idea that if Euroskepsism fitted the caricature of it being this narrow-minded reactionary force, where does it keep going? British Euroskepsism is not a right-wing phenomenon. It is not a movement that has portrayed caricature. It is not against change. Actually, it is a profoundly pro-change anti-establishment, anti-state-square movement. And it's certainly not anti-foreign. What is British Euroskepsism? It is a skepticism of the idea that the lives of millions of Europeans investly arranged by grand design. It's a doubt about the wisdom and the idea of being beautiful. If individual politics big was beautiful and if ground designs worked, why hasn't Euro created huge prosperity? Why isn't it causing economies to flourish rather than imposing on millions debt and despair? If big was beautiful, why is Singapore so much wealthier than Indonesia? Why is Hong Kong more prosperous than China? Why is Switzerland richer by some measure than the European Union? We skeptics believe that it's the mid-twentieth century assumptions about the size and scale of nations' faiths that are outdated. In the age of the internet, the whole world is about to look away. It is the European Union that is out of date, finding assumptions by gone age. With Amazon and Israel communication, proximity to markets has never in human history been less important. Instead of us asking how we're going to get different member states to use the same currency, I think the digital revolution means the key question is how soon are we going to see multiple currencies being used in any one jurisdiction? I think it is the assumptions about monopoly money that are coming to an end. Modernity, the rise of modernity of the industrial revolution, meant big units, everything got big, architecture got big, bridges got big, countries got big. Those that didn't. The Dutch Republic was superseded by England, which was in turn overshadowed by Prussia and America and Russia. Everything got bigger. I think in the digital age, there's a premium not on a common-day scale. I think the premium is on niche, on flexibility, on niche markets, on niche manufacturing. Euroscepticism, I think, owes much more to the ideas of Hayek.com than Colonel Blimp or Alff Garnett. I think it is about fundamentally changing the way we do government and the way we govern ourselves, and owes much more to questions about what the digital revolution means, the way we organise society than it does to any notions of sovereignty or the constitution. Exiting the EU is a necessary precursor to the changes we want to make at home. We need a, I think, a localist revolution. We don't want to bring powers back to the even festering and white force, so the same incompetence who preside over us in white war can have even greater cause to mess up. We want to bring powers back home so that we can pass them outward and downward. We want to decentralise the British state. The British state, I think, has been catastrophically badly run in my lifetime, in my parents' lifetime, because power has been exercised on account of it. And I think that needs to change. I think the really interesting question is not what the EU is going to look like after a British exit. Instead, it is what is Europe going to look like if more than just one country decides to exit. Will there be a cool Euroland? Will it involve Germany, Austria, the Netherlands perhaps? Will France be part of that call? Would it perhaps be a confederation of smaller states? 50 Singapores across Europe perhaps? How could we safeguard what we want, the free movement of good services and with some caveats people? After the single market, how can we actually go about ensuring we have a proper free market where producers can produce without having to do so under licence? Even if Britain leaves the European Union, we're still going to be there. Europe's still going to be there. We're going to need closer ties and I think we can have closer ties. But I think that needs to be based on three axlids, three non-negotiations. Three things that if David Cameron instantly manages to secure a renegotiations will change my mind. One is we need the ability to negotiate trade deals with the rest of the world on our own. We urgently need to open ourselves up to the world of growth. Secondly, we need to only have to conform to the single market rules when we're selling to the single market. If you go into a shop in most European countries, there are products there made around the world. Yes, if you're selling to a country, you have to conform to local standards. I think if you're selling to the single market, you should have to do so too. And thirdly, I think we need to address the issue of European courts. Actually, in my words carefully, European courts having jurisdiction in Britain. We need to curb judicial fear and bring back the African Union term. I'll finish with these thoughts. What chance of David Cameron getting his new deal? I agree with the chance. I think the chances of anything substantive happening are pretty slender. I will just observe this. First of all, I think David Cameron has left himself quite a lot of wiggle room to come back and say, I tried, didn't get anything, I'm going to leave the outcome pain. Study carefully what he's said with me, but I think he's left himself that wiggle room. Secondly, I think that so long as we leave it to British diplomats and opera officials to try to negotiate a new deal, it ain't going to happen. I simply don't think that they're on the same page. Whatever they're telling you, I think there's a tremendous disconnect between what they may be telling you and the debate that's going on in London. Britain, I think, has been kept in the European Union by stringing us along with the idea that it's about to change. I grew up all my life listening to people saying it was about to come our way. The High Water Mark of Fenderism is about to change. We had that again today. It's not. Once people realise that, I think it's over. I support a renegotiation for a simple reason. 40% of people in opinion polls will vote to come out. 30% will vote to stay in. 30% have been decided. The 30% that are undecided need to come down after the discussion and debate into our column. In order to do that, we need to try and renegotiate in good faith. If we fail to renegotiate in good faith, I think it makes it far more likely that we will achieve the majority we need to win an outfit. There is a profound disconnect in Britain between what the official mind thinks about Europe and has long thought about Europe and what those people outside SW1 think. But it's not an excuse to do British failing. The official mind, the mind of diplomats of officials throughout Europe, is fundamentally undisconnected from the opinions of the countries they report to represent. I think it's a much more profound problem of the disconnect between the official mind who wants a certain arrangement for Europe and ordinary Europeans who don't. I suspect that as digital technology leads to more accountability for those officials who make public policy, it is ultimately the will of the demos that will prevail against those who today have a cratos.