Xi and Putin had been meeting yesterday and today, the meeting, I think over the weekend. Russia and China, those are fascinating meetings. Fascinating meetings, I'm sure. I mean, here's Putin who is losing a war in Ukraine, a war he should have won in a week and expected to win in a week. It's a year later and, you know, 200,000 Russians down dead and injured and clearly losing Finland. Turkey and Hungary just approved Finland to join NATO, so Finland would definitely join NATO, much longer border than Ukraine has with Russia. Suddenly Russia has a northern NATO member and NATO has a much longer border with Russia than it ever had before. At the same time, Sweden will see what happens. Probably Sweden won't happen before the elections in Turkey in May. I think at that point they'll vote Sweden in. Another end, Xi, who I think feels pretty good, just elected basically for lifetime and as a dictator of China, China's economy seems to be rebounding, you know, not significantly but rebounding.  Russia doesn't manufacture really anything. China manufactures to the world, is the manufacturer of the world. China has real innovation and real tech and actual progress. Russia is decadent and behind and can barely produce the weapons it needs for the border it can't. I mean, one is an economy to equal the size of the American economy. The other is a shrinking economy with a shrinking population. Both the shrinking population with Russia has been shrinking for a while and is accelerating. China's only started shrinking. You know, one wonders how the conversation went. Clearly Xi has the upper hand. Xi is in the driver's seat. He can decide how much help to give Putin and how much help not to give Putin. He can calibrate the debate. He has all the cards. He has all the cards and the real question is, and I don't know the answer to this, the real question is how is he using those cards and for what purpose? I would also note that Xi is using a lot of this. We saw his getting the agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. But Xi is using all this to emphasize, I think, to the United States. This is more of a signaling to the United States than anything. The United States, if you want a Cold War, you are on. Game on. I'm going to do this from a position of power. I'm going to create my own coalition. I have a standing in the world that is significant. The United States, I think the signal here is clear that from Xi's perspective, the United States is a decaying, a shrinking power. China is the rising power on the horizon with rising influence in the world. And he is trying to signal to the Biden administration that you guys are weak, you guys are irrelevant, and you guys better think twice about your aggressive moves against us because of who and what I am. This is all thanks to Biden's weakness, but it really started with Trump and Trump basically groveling before Putin.  It's a sign of weakness in America for a long time. It's not like Obama was strong. Obama was weak. Russia was weak in China. They're all weak, and the Chinese know this. I think, ultimately, China is weak as well, just like Russia was. But that requires real thinking to figure that out. And Xi is playing to the West's fears. And he's going to leverage this in the next few years as much as he can to establish himself globally and to emphasize the weakness of the West.  Clearly in decline as much as... And Xi is going to capitalize on that. People admire America, people respect America, people want to come to America, people love America, they love what America represents. But when they look at what actually is happening, they look at the behavior of our politicians and our political elites. It is truly horrific. Somebody said, I don't give Russia's perspective. Because Russia's perspective is wrong. And Russia's perspective is not based on facts, not based on reality. It's based on mysticism. And I've talked about this a lot. I've talked a lot about the Russia's perspective. Just read or watch Dugan and read and watch Putin. And there's no there, there's no positive there, there's no value there. And look, Russia is without question. The Russia and the Putin administration are declining powers. And this is an attempt somehow to salvage their decline, both as a country and as a regime, the Putin regime. It's an attempt to somehow, you know, somehow make Russia relevant again on the world stage. And they have, but now their weakness is even more evident to the world. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to IranBookShow.com slash support.  Also, if you'd like to see the Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who already subscribers and those of you who already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.


Hi everyone, Joe for Jasper's Case Breaks dot com, coming at you with a dual case break of 2023 hip parade baseball autographed limited edition series 20 dual case random team break number two from Jasper's Case Breaks dot com. We don't have any more hip parade baseball, but we do have more hip parade football if you want to check that out, Jasper's Case Breaks dot com. Big thanks to this crew for making it happen. Thanks to the people who bought their spots straight up. Congrats to the people who won their spots, who won their way in via those mini box breaks. And then we have all 30 teams in, no combos, let's roll it, randomize it, snake eyes, easy. One and two. We've got Simon down to Chad. And then snake eyes, two times for the teams, one and two. Now remember trades are allowed, we've got red socks all the way down to the cubs.  Jeremy with the Marlins, Eric with the Rangers, Matt with the Mariners, Nancy with the Giants, Christopher with the Blue Jays, Michael with the Angels, John with my Dodgers, Jeremy with the Nets, Jimmy with the Yankees, Chris with the Twins. Matt with the Diamondbacks, Jeremy with the Cardinals, Christopher with the A's, Eugene with the Padres, Miranda with the Pirates, Luke with the Royals, Chad with the Tigers, Matt, Reds and Guardians, and Chad with the Chicago Cubs. So let's alphabetize these by team really quick. We'll clean that up a little bit. We're going to pause the video when we come back. We're going to see if there's any trades and then we'll have the break. Stick around, BRB. All right, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. No deals were done. You're on a true Tuesday hit parade baseball, limited edition. Brandon team break number two. Once again, thanks everybody. So the list remains the same, just like you saw on the previous screen. So Matt, you got official last bottom mojo. That's why I have this little star next to me. You got with the Brewers, 70% of the time last bottom mojo hits 100% of the time. That's what they say. All right guys, Christopher helping me on here, thank you sir. I'm excited to see what's inside of this. My first hit parade. Yeah, I'll let you do the second case. Goodness. Let's see what we've got here. Got our hip parade knife right here to help us out. Just a little cover right there. And we have Boba Chet from Origins. Nice, 74 out of 99 rookie on-card auto. Nice. That's going to go to Christopher in the Blue Jays with a spot he got straight up. I'm going to toss that. Speaking into existence, that's a future Dodger right there. Ooh, I wouldn't mind that. All right, next up is a thick one. It's literally me. What do we have here? From Immaculate Baseball, it is... Nice, the big dumper. Great patch. It's a rookie on-card autograph, 6 out of 10. Nice low number as well. T-H-I-C-C-C. That's going to be Matt with the Mariners. Sweet. This is awesome. Just never know what you can get in these boxes. It's so cool. And Limited is their base version of it. They got Limited, there's Platinum, and I think Sapphires are highest level. I'm already happy looking at Limited. I know. The higher levels tend to have more rated cards in there. But sometimes, every once in a while, you'll find a rated card in Limited. All right, next up is Votto-Matic. A Votto-Auto. Nice, and of course, out of 5s and under, get the train whistle. This is from a definitive. And that's going to be for Matt and the Cincinnati Reds. All aboard, the Big Hit Express. Sir. Yeah, Emerald is not as common though. I think the Limited, Platinum, and Sapphire are like regular releases, and then Emeralds are usually special editions. I think they're kind of in between Sapphire and Platinum range, depending. And we've got another Blue Jay, another Boba Chet. Nice, that one. That is from 2017. Boba Chet, nice. From Bowman High Tech. I miss this. Tendly should bring back this tech product here. Christopher, with the Blue Jays. Nice. I think they also have VIP versions, and I've seen Chairman editions. So there's special runs for print runs for the different product names on them. And they only make 100 cases. They only make limited number of cases. We're seeing some legendary stuff right here. All right, next up is Paul Goldschmidt. Wow. From an old Platinum set from 2010. That's pretty great. And that's still Diamondbacks edition, Paul Goldschmidt. From way back when Matt, with the Diamondbacks, that's with the spot that you won as well. Congrats. Spot that you wanted that mini box. Onwards. Free spot can go a long way. And that was what, $30.99 to play. Not that bad. To win $110 spot, end up with a Goldschmidt autograph. Not bad. Not too shabby. Next up is Carlos Correa from Inception Baseball. $90 out of $99. Oh, Astros. From 2013 Bowman Inception Baseball. Let's go to Eric. That's awesome. Congrats to Eric.  We have Riley Greene. Greene cracked ice. 11 out of 18. And that is for Chad and the Tigers. That's where the spot that you won. Nice. These guys make this as easy. Detroit Tigers. The shipping team knows who Riley Greene is, but just visually, when they're flying through, it makes it a lot easier. All right. Next up, we've got Tom Glavin. Nice. 21 out of 49. Nice autograph from Diamond Kings Baseball, John, with the Braves. You do get these every once in a while. I like the grade on that. That is a 959. Got Beckett. And it is, oh, I miss this guy. Wow, World Series Champion. World Series Champion, World Series MVP, former Dodger, Corey Seeger. Two-color patch and autograph. Rookie Jersey signatures from 2016. 36 out of 49. Beautiful part. Let's take a look at the grades here. They're all 95, centering edges, corner surface, all a 95. And his autograph, a nine. I'll take that any day. That's World Series MVP. Nice. That goes to John. Congratulations. And the Dodgers. Nice, Dodgers edition. All right, 10th and final box. And Christopher's got another case for us. Always nice seeing the graded cards in limited edition. I wonder why these had some weight to it when I was looking. Yeah. All right, got 10th and final, landscape mode card. It is, ooh, nice one-soto around the Diamond Jersey and on-card autograph. Love the penmanship here. Looks like that's gold. And it is 19 out of 50 from Pristine Baseball. Eugene with the Padres with the spot that he won in the filler. Nice. Congratulations. There you go, Eugene. And there you go, everybody. First case in the books. Christopher will do the second case. Jumping in, doing the second case. Jump in. I'm excited for this one. Do you kind of saw how I ripped open that first case? I did. Kind of follow that pattern. Here we go. You can see things right here. Excited to jump in and do this one. Now, show everything right here. And as you can see, ladies and gentlemen, there is nothing in the box. Empty, not hiding anything from you. Showcase in that there is going to be all of these beautifuls right here. So we have six, seven, eight, nine, 10. And we have 10 boxes in these ones, right? Yeah? That's right. There we go. So let me get that on camera so you can see all the 10 right there. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. Adding up to 10. Here we go. It is Greg Maddox, premium ink from Flawless. Atlanta Braves going to John right here. Congratulations. Beautiful. Flawless Greg Maddox. There it is. It's like, what did I do with my knife? All right, ladies and gentlemen, who do we have here? Nice. Cincinnati Reds, Joey Vado going to Mac. Vado, Vado. Yes. That is cool. 2023 TOPS, industry conference. Something you don't see every day. Nice. Keeping it rolling. Oh yeah, that's an exclusive from the yearly. That summit gathering? Yeah, they used to do it in Arizona. Top conference for the weekend. Yeah, it's like the Bowman's version of the national, right? No, it's not. It's just like, I think it's like a short three-day conference where they just sleep into one of those before. Oh, OK. They just talk to the executives, come out and talk. We just take some meetings over the course of the weekend.  Pretty cool. Clayton Kershaw. Nice. Wow, nine out of 10. Kersh right there. Something you don't see every day from 2020. That is cool. Clayton Kershaw. Los Angeles Dodgers. My squad going to John. Congratulations on that. Keep this rolling. Here we go. And it is? These reckless close-outs? Christian Yellich. 51 out of 110. Otto, this is cool. Yeah. This is going to be a TOPS tribute autograph card from 2020 TOPS tribute baseball. Going to Matt from the Milwaukee Brewers. Enjoy this one, Matt. That's cool. Go on. Get rid of that. See what we've got. Ooh, a graded car? Ooh, definitely a graded car. 9.5 with a 10-auto. Who is it? None other than the captain, Derek Jeter. Wow. New York Yankees, 47 out of 50 ultimate signatures. This is cool. 9.5, 10, BGS. What are the subgrades? So it's going to be a 10 on centering. It's going to be nine in the corners, 9.5 on the edges, 9.5 on the surface. This is really cool. Not bad. That's awesome. Yeah, congratulations. This one is going to you, James, with the Yankees. Nice. That extra spot, got him this. What are you? Those extra spots come in handy. So those of you who didn't believe in the extra spots, then maybe you'll believe in them now. Believe. Cool rips, cool pools. And we still got five more boxes. Let the good vibes continue. Oh, thank you, sir. Here we go. Show the empty boxes, too. Yep, that's OK. Here we go. Sometimes they pack a couple in the box. Josh Lowe, 91 out of 99. Top's Chrome Black.  Josh Lowe, 91 out of 99. Beautiful right there. Tampa Bay Rays. This one is going to you, Christopher. That's cool. The next one, here we go. Oh, it's a big one. Who could it be? Nice. Yuri Perez, 28 out of 49 immaculate signatures. Check that out. That's pretty cool. Miami Marlins right here. He's got the fish.  Oh, the extra spots. That extra spot got him this. All the extra spots. Got a beautiful card right there. Enjoy it. Empty box. Last few boxes. With this kind of lead, I'm going to be OK with resting a little bit our stars. Get the young bucks in there. I'm going to have a back-to-back small. Memphis just won out of 14 El Rondo, so. All right, here we go. 14 over, huh? Yeah. Ooh, a super thick card. Well, I didn't know I wanted my, like, freaking 30. Yeah, a super thick card. It is. Still can't let that happen. Cedric Mullins, rookie. Nice. This is National Treasures, 22 out of 49. You know, speaking of NT, we got free orders of National Treasures basketball in the store right now, jaskyscasebreaks.com. There we go. Always be closing, Christopher. There we go. It comes out tomorrow. That's right. Jason, Jasky, going live. Three breaks. 10 AM, Pacific. And not just that. We got a Tops Chrome 2023 update dropping tomorrow. I mean, look at that. Baltimore Orioles going to Christopher. You hold that until you see a Tops card come out. See? You see what I mean? I'm promoting the NT because we pulled NT. You mentioned Todd was of no need for that. Wait until you hit a nice Tops card. They're thinking Tops.  The King's tomorrow. Let me hear that. Back to back. Oliver's King's rough start to the season next time. What's the name of Todd? Fox. Jared Vanderboot's up. Who's up? Torrey Prince is back. I think Vanderboot's up. What do we got right here? Star signings. Tigers. Justin Verlander with the Detroit Tigers in this one from 2007. Is that an old upper deck set? Yeah. Star signings with Justin Verlander. That's cool. All right, Detroit Tigers. That's awesome. Exactly Rex. It stands for Always Be Christopher. We'll get there, though, one day. I'll be able to say that, but I got to earn it first. So Chad, enjoy this card. And here we go, empty box. Let's knock these out right quick. Sweet.  Just right here. Who is it? Mark McGuire, going, going, gone. Nice, St. Louis Cardinals. Mark McGuire, 32 out of 50. There you go. And this is from Cardinals Edition. Yeah, 2023. Sweet. All right, Cardinals Edition. St. Louis, this one is going to you, Jeremy. Sweet. Nice, congrats, everybody. All right. And that's going to do it for our 2020 box. That empty box. Here we go. Just making sure. Just making sure. Keeping it appreciate it. That's it, folks. Thanks. That was the dual case break. Tipped for a baseball. Appreciate it. Limited edition. That's it. Have a good night, everybody. It's Jasky's casebreaks.com.


In this video, I'm going to be explaining Backrooms Level 75, aka the Gallium Caves. This level is one of the rarest levels out there, and it's also pretty much one of the deadliest levels out there as well. This level is very disturbing, so if you enjoy that kind of thing, you're going to enjoy this one. Thank you for watching. Let's get into the explanation, shall we? Level 75 of the Backrooms, or the Gallium Caves, has been given a Class 5 Survival difficulty for its very unsafe and unsecure environment, but it is devoid of entities, which is always a nice thing to not have to worry about, but the layout of the level is dangerous enough to where that doesn't matter. The level was discovered on March 3rd, 2019 by a now-deceased MEG operative, and the description of it reads as follows. Level 75 is a massive group of narrow, interconnected caves made entirely out of gallium. Now gallium is a chemical element, and in this level, it takes the appearance of a bluish-gray metal that is very soft. In fact, it's soft enough you could cut it with a knife. It's solid at room temperature, but when it's heated ever so slightly, it'll melt into liquid metal. I know you didn't click on this video for science class, but all of that was important, trust me. So gallium is the only material on this level. There is no stone, no dirt, no rocks, no fiber, nothing else that would be in a normal cave is here. It's all gallium. And as of right now, only approximately 10 kilometers of the level have been discovered. But it could be far more expansive, we don't know. The temperature inside of the cave here varies from 50 degrees Fahrenheit, or 10 Celsius, to 95 degrees Fahrenheit, or 35 Celsius. And it typically drops and rises in temperature every three-ish hours. That's important because the melting point of gallium is approximately 86 degrees Fahrenheit, or 30 Celsius. And since the caves heat up and cool down, they are in a continuous cycle of melting, solidifying, and melting all over again. Just you being in the enclosed space of these claustrophobic caves with your radiant body heat is enough to start the melting process. Since humans' body temperatures are hot, you know, like over 95 degrees, we radiate a lot of heat. A lot of heat comes off of us. And if you're touching this gallium with your hands or your knees or your feet, it'll inevitably heat it up to above 86 degrees Fahrenheit, and it'll start melting. The good news is that not all areas of the level are heated and cooled at the same time, which is nice, I guess. But if you are crawling through the cave or you're walking, and you start to feel gallium dripping down on top of you, you've already sealed your fates and can no longer escape. Because by that time, the cave section you're in will melt into a soupy, hot metal goo. And ultimately, suffocating the wanderer under literal tons of metal. When the gallium then cools down and re-solidifies, it'll be in a completely different shape. Since it always drips and melts in different ways, this means that the layout of the cave constantly changes and can't be mapped. It also means that there are wanderers alone trapped inside of the walls and floors of this cave, entombed forever in these metal graves. Well, that rhymed. That's pretty cool. Alive, alone, unable to scream for help, slowly sinking deeper and deeper into this melting gallium liquid. Okay, with that wonderful thought inside your head, let's move on. As I said, the shape of the cave system changes because of the metal dripping and cooling in different ways, but it also does because of the strong wind inside of the level. This wind is what heats and cools down the specific sections of it, and since gallium is very bendable under heat, when the warmer air blows through the cave, it'll warp and change the tunnel's directions into completely different areas. The tunnels here are still very small, and they're typically no wider than 5 meters and no taller than 2, which at maximum means they're no taller than 6 feet tall, and no wider than 15 feet wide. You might have to crawl around in several parts or hunch over if you're tall, and that's what the danger is because you really can't move fast if you're crawling. You can't sprint on your hands and knees, but yeah, just good luck. The entire time you're exploring the level, you will experience pitch black surroundings, and if you don't bring a flashlight with you, you'll be crawling through melty metal goo with no way to see, which would probably make it even worse. This level is the only known source of gallium in the backrooms in its metal form, which theoretically it could be used for conductors or electronics or even weapons in some regard, so some people have come here with a goal to mine the gallium and take it with them to make that kind of stuff, but most of them end up getting too cocky and not making that level before it melts, and they sink down, never to be seen again. Since the environment here is so harsh, not even entities can live here, which is I guess, like I said, one less thing you gotta worry about, but on that same note, there are no colonies here either, so if you do manage to come here, you are all alone in these claustrophobic caves with no map, no tools, nothing to help you get out.  To enter the level, you can choose one of five methods that have been found so far. The main one is you can be on level eight, which is a cave level in and of itself, you probably hadn't knew that, but you can find a silver cave, like a silver passage in that level, walk through it and at the end of it is a pathway to get here. Or you can pick one of the others that's listed, but those are much, much harder to achieve, and to be honest, I'm not really worth it because you gotta be like way on on level like 400 to come back here, which why would you do that? That's dumb. Importantly, to exit the level, you need to find a patch of orange gallium and touch it to be sent to level 16. Now, this is the most common method, but there are three other ones that you can try to use that involve finding specific hallways and specific passages to get deeper into deeper levels, but those also require you to get deeper into this level, so that wouldn't be very smart. Don't recommend that. Find the orange patch and you're gonna escape. I think this level is genuinely such a good and terrifying concept and it's terrifying in practice. I mean, imagine getting sent and stuck in a level where you have to crawl around in your hands and knees while every surface around you heats up because of your body weight and it eventually starts dripping on you and forming puddles of this metal that you simply will get stuck in like glue and you'll start sinking and sinking the longer and more you struggle. I think that's horrifying. Live it like if you enjoyed it too. I think it's a great addition to the lore and I think it's an example of a level that does not need entities or something like that to be dangerous. Just the environment here of this level makes it very, very dangerous and I know that there's a ton of cave levels inside the back rooms and I've got over like three of them myself, but this one is so unique that I think it stands head and shoulders above the other cave levels. I might even like you more than level eight, but anyways, I don't wanna get on a tangent or anything. Those are just some closing thoughts. Thank you for watching till the end of the video. If you did enjoy, check out my other videos since I post this stuff all the time and if I were down there turn notifications on if you wanna be notified, maybe. YouTube tends to never send notifications out anyway, but if you wanna possibly be notified, click it while you're down there. Also leave a like and check out my other channels as well if you want more from me. I have a third channel named Spookly where I upload like internet horror and mystery and ARG and analog horror type stuff. It's really cool over that. I do like almost window goon style videos, but like with my own personality, I really enjoy videos over there. That's my baby channel. Trying to get it to 100K by next year, so if you wanna help out, any one more horrifying content from your boy, check that channel. I also have Tugly, my second channel where I kinda just do whatever. It's kinda just like a random posting channel, but if you want some more funny stuff, check that one out. Nevertheless, enough shameless plugging. I appreciate you all and I love you all and I will see you in tomorrow's video for another day of Brugmas Peace.


Right guys how we doing welcome back to yet another reaction video today? I embark on my latest and greatest video series. I'm assuming I'm not going to be here for too long But today we crack into the top 30 NFL play sorry not NFL I've been watching too much NFL lately the top 30 NBA players Ever would you believe and today's video is titled? watching a certain player I I'm lead to believe it will be number 30 on the list Alan Iverson until I'm impressed So today's video is titled watching Alan Iverson until I'm impressed and Prior to getting into the video. I'm going to do you guys You know a service I'm lead to believe You know most most people would would come into this type of video Watching a certain player watching something until they're impressed and they're able to be you know 10 seconds long 15 seconds long 20 seconds long if they want to keep you here for any length of time It might be even 60 seconds long But there's certainly not going to give you any sort of context any sort of background information on the player And that's what I want to do. So today. I've got a website. It's called complex.com They have ranked as of 2022 the top 30 NBA players of all time so what I'm going to do I'm going to read out the spiel that they have given for the great man Alan Iverson number 30 of the best NBA players of all time and it says and I quote It upsets me that people might be shocked that Alan Iverson is included on this list AI is unquestionably a top 30 NBA player ever. Just look at the accolades 11-time NBA All-Star NBA MVP three-time first team all NBA four-time NBA scoring champion Okay, member of the NBA 75th anniversary team the list goes on But Iverson's cultural impact on the current and even future generation of NBA players are more meaningful than his numbers on the core And I'm I'm assuming when they talk about cultural, I'm thinking his moves. I'm thinking his crossovers I'm thinking the fact that you know, even in the world of rugby NFL They they look at you know guys like Alan Iverson, you know his his the way that he Because I've watched a little bit of basketball. I haven't watched much but I have watched a wee bit of basketball I do know Alan Iverson haven't watched and played live, but I have seen a few of his crossovers and they were just something else They were absolutely something else. So either way we continue Where were we? Where were we LeBron James has called him the the pound-for-pound best ever That's something else Dwayne Wade has said AI is part of the reason he wore number three during his career you could go on and and and With former and current NBA stars talking about why Iverson was so great and means to so much to them for myself Whoever this is I'll never forget game one of the 2001 NBA finals to this day That is still one of the most amazing individual performances on a basketball court that I've ever seen For a guy his size to go out and drop 48 on the road against the heavily favored Los Angeles Lakers, which I'm assuming included Fisher Shaq Kobe and the rest of them being that it was 2001. I might be wrong. I might be right. Who knows it's straight up unbelievable either way guys Alan Iverson the first video off the list Watching Alan Iverson until I'm impressed And you know what we got to do we got to go to YouTube we got it, you know right in Alan Iverson highlights this is exactly The way that we're gonna do this, you know throughout the series. We've got 30 players to cover and look at the end of the day I Will go with the top video.  I mean, I feel like I could I have to be you know on a good day I feel like I could probably do that. So let's continue Well, he's got pace he's certainly got pace oh Am I impressed am I impressed? Bit of an up-and-under I don't know. I think I need something else. What do we got? Oh look at that?


Charlotte, and many thanks to all of you for joining us from all over the world today to share stories on community-led nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation, or some of us call ecosystem-based adaptation. We also look forward to discuss with all of you where we can learn from those community-led nature-based solutions for building back better from COVID. The session is co-organized and supported by 12 amazing partners who have bought a diversity of experience and expertise from Asia Pacific, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It probably takes me two minutes to read all their names, so I'm just going to post it into the chat box so you can see. We also look forward to learning from all of you by making this session as interactive as possible through many meter dedicated breakout room interactions and the chat. So as a start, please do introduce yourself in the chat box to everyone if you haven't done so already. And I'm Xiaoting Ho-Jiong, Senior Researcher at IED, and I'll be your moderator today. And sorry if you see me darting my eyes and switching my head all over the place.  And I think we all know that COVID, and actually this meeting is the result of COVID, that we were going to meet in person, but we actually meet virtually. So it has really impacted all of us in very different ways. It has exposed some of the entrenched vulnerability and inequality in our society and showed how challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, and pandemic and the risk to public health also interlinked. So for example, COVID disproportionately impact already marginalized in the poor communities as they may lack access to medical and social services. They're also more vulnerable to sharp price changes in local markets, disrupted food supply chains and job and income losses. But on the other hand, COVID has also reviewed some useful lessons on how we can build a better future where where society is more prepared to adapt and respond to risk like pandemic and climate change. We have also seen, as you seen in some of the photos, if you were here with us earlier, how working with nature to build communities long term resilience to climate change is also helping communities to be more resilient to many of the pandemic's impact. So leading up to the session, we worked with members of the FIBA network to collect inspiring stories from communities. So you have seen some of the photos and the videos before and we will even maybe you can post the link to the Flick account so people can also view it after the session. But coming back for today's session, we will start by sharing stories from three communities. We hope you will also share your stories in the chat box and the latest romantic meeting exercise. We will then have a panel of local governments and the policy experts to start us off on a discussion on how we can learn from those community stories to inform policies to build back-to-back from COVID. We hope all those stories and discussions then can help pave the way for more in-depth discussion among all of you in the breakout rooms. We will not have a lengthy report back in the plenary afterwards, but again, we'll try to use Mentimeter to pull your reflections before we close the session. So just a final reminder that one of the few advantages of not meeting person but virtually is that it gives us different options to engage with each other and allow more conversation to flow in this short 19 minutes. So throughout the session, please feel free to share reflections, ask questions to each other and the speakers via the chat box. And this session, as well as the chat box content, will then be recorded and shared on Hover platform after the session. So do interact with each other whatever way you feel comfortable. So that's enough from me for now, and we really want to hear from the community themselves first. Jenna, could you start preparing the video please? So first, we will hear from Mrs. Xiuying Zhang, a farmer and a plant breeder from Yunnan, China. She will tell us her stories were recorded video produced by China Pharmacy Network, who has been supporting Xiuying and her communities in China. Xiuying and the colleagues from China Pharmacy Network actually with us in the session today. Xiuying, maybe you can just wave your hands so some participants may be able to see you. Unfortunately, Xiuying doesn't speak English and many of us here, I assume, don't speak Chinese. So the video is prepared to help us overcome this translation challenge. So Jenna, could you please play the video please? I'm a farmer and a farmer. Back then, in our village, we didn't have a place to live, so we had to take care of our ancestors, so we had to take care of our ancestors slowly, so that they could live longer. Later on, we had a teacher from China Pharmacy, who came to China Pharmacy, and we picked up the most important part of the tradition, and I began to do this, to protect the tradition. From 2013, I started to do this. Slowly, the weather changed a lot. Every year, it's not just about the weather, it's about the rain. Before the rain, the weather changed a lot. The weather changed a lot every year. And the rain, as long as it rains, there's no rain or humidity, so we can't solve it. But the tradition is that at least we can solve it. I think it's a bit too hard. I think it's a good idea to share it with you. Because the color of it is different. This one is embroidered in No. 1. This one is made of stainless steel, and the texture is better. This one is made of copper, and this one is made of copper, and the texture is better. In fact, our knowledge is not complicated. It's easier to make, and it's real. It's made of copper, and steel, and copper, and copper, and steel, and then it's slowly becoming the point of the boss. I've been doing this, and this is a memory of a generation. Because my father also liked to make this piece of copper. And then I met the teacher of the Chinese Academy, and he gave me a special talk. But he was a fan of mine. I made a piece of copper myself, and we've built a house in the city of Baosan, and built a house in the city of Shandong. It's more important to build a house here. Because the boss can take care of the house. The family has a lot of children, 目前金人的有100兰竹,玉米有50脊竹,小麦七八竹,还有水道一七八竹,还有食材类,肚类这些都有。 我村里的这些金人也在做我的这些传统脊竹,然后比较伟低的这些材料给村里的这些金人。 一期期间,在我的竹子坑里,也足够可以费钱给大家,也没什么太大的影响。 竹子像神秘一样,有了一个人的神秘一样,就能一竹竹竹竹。 所以我一直在保留这种传统脊竹。 Thanks so much for showing at China's Mama Seed Network for such an inspiring story that shows how community-based diverse seed banks not only help communities deal with climate change but also help them ensure access to seeds for sowing during COVID-19. I think there's also a hidden story there of the importance of women for championing nature-based solutions. So the last frame of the video, if you remember, shows many of the active women farmers who are two champions of nature-based solutions. They care for their seeds, their family, their community, and they're willing to work together. So they're caring nature and the long-term vision and a genuine concern and love for the environment they live in and the culture they have is what has been going this collective effort of working with nature to adapt to climate change in China. So now we will travel from the mountains in Yunnan into the rural Nepal. Next Mr. Namao Adhikari will be our next storyteller. He's a program manager from Kanchang Nepal, a sister NGO of the International Ring Harvesting Alliance. Mr. Namao is an expert in water resource management in rural communities. Over to you, Namao. Namaste everyone. My name is Nirmala Adhikari. I'm working at Kanchang Nepal for International Rainwater Harvesting Alliance as a program coordinator. We have been working together since 2013 in Nepal. As the start of COVID pandemic, Kanchang Nepal were providing local water resource for schools, homes, and farms. We helped community harvest rainwater. We helped channel rainwater flow access across the land. One man has rainwater resources can be used for drinking, hygiene, and sanitation purposes, and even for farming. With the spread of COVID-19, it's vital for hand hygiene especially. Kanchang Nepal set the benchmark for rainwater harvesting in schools in our region. We built rainwater harvesting system in 9 schools in Kaskir district. So children have water tap and do not have to work to spring to collect the water. We run educational activities at this school to teach children about natural processes. Children planted more than 1000 saplings and was them grow in their school premises. They learned that open defecation also affect local water quality. This year we will construct our 10th blue schools in Kaskir. In one of our blue schools, Bishosanti Higher Secondary School is being used as a quarantine facility during this COVID-19 pandemic. It has a water tank that can hold over 40,000 liters of water. The rainwater fields, toilets, and tapes for hand washing. The resources have been used by communities when they rebuild after a recent earthquake and at the election of our school were pulling station. The viruses is bringing people back to Kaskir. The field in our rural community are contributed by more hands. But people coming home from the cities are more likely to transmit the virus in our communities. So local authority asked them to quarantine at Bishosanti before they go to their families. During our blue school program community realized the benefit of rainwater harvesting. They want to use rainwater for irrigation as well as for drinking. We are working to retain more rainwater encasement. We draw on local indigenous knowledge to compact water scarcity in middles. Using this knowledge, we are restoring and same properties to plant rain in the ground. Creating local nurseries and reforesting barren slopes. This water wisdom helps community to care for themselves now and beyond this COVID crisis. Thank you. Hello. Hi. This is the things that I would like to share about these activities that we have recently in Kaskir. It's a mountainous country. We have a different methodology to adapt with natural-based technology and natural-based activities. Thank you. Great. Thanks for those beautiful photos and bring us to your communities to see how they are caring for trees and helping each other. I think this again was a nice gender message in the first story. And here there is use being involved by getting the schools also prepared to join you in those integrated water management activities to help the community to access water in drought but also during COVID for hygiene purposes. Helping the young and educating the young to champion the nature-based solution in future. That would be great. And then next we would want to welcome Mrs. Muzondah Kapena. She will take us all the way from the mountains in Asia to the drylands and forest in Africa. Muzondah is the chief executive officer from Zambia National Forest Commodity Association, which support local forest communities in Zambia. Muzondah has over 20 years experience working with those local communities. So we're really looking forward to hearing from her. Thank you very much, Jouting. My name is Muzondah, as Joutin has said, and I would like to say that I'm very grateful to be online with everybody. And I hope that everybody can understand my English. The people of Africa have, for a long time, used indigenous knowledge systems as their way of being resilient to shocks, shocks from the climate change issues and shocks from all kinds of other causes. Climate change is already impacting Africa very, very badly. And for Zambia, it has impacted the Zambian communities in a very large way as well. And as such, we need to take stock and account for the losses. But at the same time, what the Zambia National Forest Commodity Association does is that we work with our forest-based communities to remind each other on what indigenous knowledge systems have been used in the past and how those can be remembered and used now in prosperity for the future. As such, urgent action is needed to properly sustainably manage our natural environment. As you can see from this slide, there's an old man. Most of the old people in the villages are the source of information we have. He's able to identify what is already commonly used in the communities as solutions for the COVID and for other ailments that have come on board due to climate change. The next slide, please. In this slide, it continues to show that we've acknowledged that we don't have any new information to share with the communities. Instead, we are using the indigenous knowledge systems approach where we sit through community conversations with the women and the men and ask them how they survived in the past in times of drought and in times of floods. Right now with COVID, it's amazing to learn that most people are using ash from their cooking stoves as a hand sanitizer. And you can see from the same slide that there's a collection of herbs which is used as a herbal infusion to steam their bodies each time they come from activities in the urban areas or each time they come into contact with urban dwellers. This is being cognizant of the fact that COVID in Zambia was more widespread in the urban areas than it was in the rural areas. So our learning point there is that what is being done right in the rural areas that we need to do across the country to protect ourselves from COVID and from other emergent diseases and shocks that may have come about through the effects of climate change. Next slide, please. From here, we are learning that the use of the Masau fruit, Masau in botanical terms is called Zizipas moritiana or in short the Indian jujube. This particular forest fruit has a lot of micronutrients which should not be taken for granted. People of Belwangwa Valley have used this fruit for time immemorial as a supplement to vitamins and also as a very strong immune booster. They are able to harvest it sustainably and to dry it in the sun and later on to pound it and make a paste which then can be stored with a shelf life of 12 months. So this is then used as a sweetener, as an immune booster and it's able to be eaten from the babies to the old people. What this has done is that though they may not be food due to the droughts which Malawi and Zambia faced in the last rainy season, they are able to still supplement their diets with the nutrients that are needed. They don't have to go into the pharmacies like the urban people have. They just go into the forest as their pharmacy and pluck what their ancestors ate. I was privileged to eat some of it and it's very, very nutritious. What we have done as an association is that we are looking at value addition to see exactly how these foods and first supplements can be packaged and stored for sale in urban areas and across the country. As a natural source of vitamins, micronutrients and antibodies good enough to preserve ourselves against diseases like COVID-19 and anything else that may come due to the effects of climate change. Next slide please. We're also working very well with the rural communities of the Luangwa Valley, the Gwembe Valley and the Luangwa Valley where we have a lot of tamarind. Tamarind is a very resilient forest root which has over 50 uses. In the local languages we call it Wusika, we call it Wembe or we call it Kawawasha. This also has a long shelf life and it has multiple uses ranging from edible to commercial. In some areas it's also used as an antiseptic hand wash or as a wound dressing. So what we have done as an association in collaboration with FAO under the forest and farm facility program is that we are looking at value addition to be able to package these particular fruits as you can see from the picture into marketable products which will then be a very strong supplement for not just for eating as a food or as a juice or as a sweetener or as a jam but also as a soap, as an antiseptic and as whatever else that it can be used for. And as I said at the beginning, we're not teaching them anything new. We have taken the step of the learners and the community is our mentor. They know exactly about the shelf life, they know about the handling. The only interventions which we are going in with is to assist them with the primary processing so that it's hygienic and deficient and also to remind certain communities where they were actually cutting down the trees and harvesting in that way to start harvesting sustainably. That way we'll be able to share this treasure not only within Zambia but across Africa in a methodology of reminding each other what our forefathers did that we have forgotten to do. And we believe as an association that that's the only way to have sustainable mitigation against climate change and the shocks that come with it. So from the Zambian National Forest Commodity Association, we believe that these value addition processes are possible and that they are sustainable because it all starts with the first communities and the market is all over the world across Africa and across the whole world as the nature-based solution. Nature-based solutions are basically there for us to remind each other on what ecological ways are possible for us to face the shocks that we have experienced, not just because of COVID-19 but because of unsustainable development that is going on not only in Zambia but across the globe as well. I'd like to thank you all for listening and I hope you enjoy the presentation. Enjoy the day. Thanks so much, Musonda. It's really inspiring to hear diversified income from diversified value-added forest product can make local communities more resilient to climate change. But also interesting to hear that with those diversified herbs and the forest product, that also means they have a more diversified use. So the herb boat sanitizers for rural communities in COVID is a really good example. And I think both you and also showing also showed us the importance of traditional knowledge and learning from decades of experience or centuries of experience of working with nature to adapt to change is really important. So now we want to hear from all of you. So Jenna, if you can go to the next slide, please. So we're pulling exercise in Menti meter. So please go to Menti.com and enter the digits 5374674 and use up to three words to describe how nature has helped you all the communities you work with to adapt to climate change and cope with COVID-19. The question at Menti code is displayed on the slide. If you don't work directly with any communities, you're also welcome to draw on the speaker stories to shape your answers. So if everyone could do that. And we should see the polling result coming in on the slide. And if you have any questions on how to do that, do feel free to ask in the chat box. Hi, Jenna, have you enabled the result to show? Yes, it should be. Sorry, this is one of the incidences with technologies we need to. I do have it on. So while Jenna try to get to the Menti meter slides ready, please keep on entering your inputs. We'll try to get take a moment to load that slide. And with that, I just don't want to really delay the session too much. So while Jenna loading the slide saying it's loading, it could take a moment. Yeah, please do bear with us. And at the same time, I did see some speed, some questions for the speakers as well. So now I think there will be a question for you. So do feel free to respond to some of the questions in the chat box as well. And, and at the same time, I just want to say the next step in the session. Since we have heard some of the evidence and experience showing that the community champion nature based solutions can help us not only adapt to climate change but also respond better to other societal risks like the pandemic. The question has been raised the many times and been discussed in the last two days of CBAs are often why then having those practices being scaled up. And what are the main challenges for scaling them up and what are the opportunities we have now to scale the solutions up. And I think the next panel we're going to really discuss them how can national and subnational policies help, especially as countries thinking about the policies for building back better from COVID. So we, we will show you hopefully the meta meter result. Not great. Thanks. And it's really great. I think in the, in the middle we really see again, like indigenous knowledge coming up really strongly and that also relates to our question how to scale it up and how we actually harness that indigenous people's knowledge. And the importance of resilience and working with different ecosystems. I can see mango forest and some of the much smaller funds coming up. Great. We will share the final result with all in the world cloud and keep your good inputs coming. But with that, I just want to introduce the next panel who will take us to that question about the opportunity and the challenges of scaling up and then the how national and the subnational policy can help. And we have three panelists that will be joining us today. Next slide, Jenna, please. So the first is Johnny, that part of India, the forestry officer from forest farm facility. Johnny and the forest farm facility has been enhancing the organization and the capacity of local people to improve livelihoods and respond to a diversity of societal challenges, including climate change forest farm facility also support those local organizations to collectively advocate for better policies. So Johnny, if you can probably enable your video and audio now. So based on the story you have heard from communities and the participants just now, could you share some quick reflections to the two questions that she on that show on the screen Jenna next please. Great. And I know FFF work around the world, but it's, we would really appreciate if you can share some insights also from Latin America to complement the other speakers expertise. Johnny over to you please. Thank you. Chautine and also I want to thank to the colleagues from the first panel. This video from the China network and the presentation of Nirmal from the Alliance of Nepal. The presentation of Musonda from the Sambia Forest Community Association were really inspirational. I want to reflect a little bit on what we have here and seen from this first panel. And I see an opportunity on this collective action to respond to COVID-19 and recovery. And as a challenge that is at the same time an opportunity this enhancing the capacities of local communities. So let me explain a little bit this my my two point so I don't know if you agree with me but this COVID crisis has helped us to reflect and see that the these health issues and climate change are in many ways interconnected. And from the forest and farm facility perspective I would want to emphasize that for us this community social capital. Cohesion, trust, institutions, governance mechanisms inside the organizations have been fundamental for these communities to respond to this COVID-19 but also to adapt to climate change and other shocks. These elements to my mind are very essential for these collective actions. The forest and farm producer organizations are very critical local actors to be on the ground lasting solution for changes like climate, economic and social changes, but including this health crisis. These producer organizations can offer services and information enhancing the capacities of their members as we have seen in this case of the alliance in Nepal and the Sambia cases of this community association to keep up their business and livelihoods also to shape better policies. Also, they offer the possibility to restore and sustain landscapes at landscape level. In addition, they could provide solidarity and social support systems between their members and they manage this traditional knowledge that was mentioned in the first panel and lead also collective responses to the recovery. In many cases we have seen in Latin America and also can understand also in other parts of the world, they provide the only organized response to the local needs. And these organized producer organizations, they are setting up already also not for the future, many innovative initiatives also in Latin America. They support their members during the crisis, like in communication campaigns in the local language, not only national also the language that are spoken by the indigenous people and so on. Also innovative logistic and marketing solutions that we have supported in Ecuador and Bolivia. We have seen in specific social and health and health service for the people who are affected in the and also people and households. We have seen in Latin America that this collective action has been keen to keep the virus out from entering to the communities but also for attending the sick people, sharing available food, growing food locally, finding ways to access market despite of all these lockdowns everywhere. For both for selling and also for buying goods. I think that this real and concrete benefits of investing in enhancing these capacities is a very good investment. Investing in strengthening these capacities of these local people can deliver sustained improvements to rural livelihood. Recovery from COVID but also build long term resilience. I want to also to point out following in terms of a scale, we have seen also local cases, but to do to reach a scale. It's very important this second and third grass wood organization for both purposes. One is for this economies of scales in processing marketing procurement technical services. Among others, but also that these organizations are able to influence governmental policies. At national sub national but also international levels as for example for advocating in this stimulus packages recovery plans of the country. To finalize I want to go to the second question about the policies and I will try to be a shorter so in the long term. Considering all that I have shared. A key government policy to respond all these challenges is to build institutional capacity of these local organizations through different kind of technical assistance trainings exchanges, but also creating policies that encourage community actions and enterprises. Those policies can be for example, a national and also some national level incentives. What, and I want to say one in Latin America said differentiated policies, not everyone could receive all this and they should be policies addressing these people in incentives. Governmental procurements addressing the products are coming from these producers, low in administrative barriers, but also making finance available tailor made to this kind of person they don't have the salaries they don't have properties they don't have but they have many things to offer. And this finance should be tailor made to them. Great Johnny sorry just quickly reminding with little bit lack of time. So we can come back to some of the Johnny's really great thoughts. And just because of time it's really great that Johnny you highlighted how those challenges integrated interconnected and communities experiencing them at all at the same time. It's good to think about how policy can support those strong community based collective organizations, which is key for innovation mobilizing collective actions and the promoting integrated solutions for long term change. Next, could we move to Mrs. Vanessa Fred, the assistant secretary secretary of the division of marine resources of the Department of Resources and Development for the government of federal states of Micronesia. She has supported the engagement of communities in protected area systems that contra and regional levels and it's an advocate for holistic approach. And before we also invited Vanessa just want to remind everyone Johnny there's some questions for you in the chat box please use the chat box to respond and all the also all the participants. Please also put in your comments and your reflections to those two questions as well. Okay, with that, Vanessa over to you please. Hello, can you hear me. Yes, perfect thank you. Hello everyone my apologies I will not be activating my video due to bandwidth. So I will continue just with audio. Thank you very much everybody. Greetings for Micronesia and my humble respects to you all. Thank you and the Nature Conservancy for this opportunity to share our story and experiences here in Micronesia. Thank you to panel one speakers. I really enjoyed the great examples of how communities are adapting across the world, and especially utilizing knowledge and practices that have existed within their society over the many years. I'm from the island of the app in the federated states of Micronesia, which I'm sure many of you will probably Google. But I'm now based in Pompeii, which is the capital of FSM, and I'm working with the national government on sustainable natural resources and management. With my response to the questions at hand. I would like to sincerely thank all of my family mentors, community leaders colleagues and teachers. Those who are no longer with us, and those who are still fighting for a better world for our future generations. All I have learned has inspired, guided and grounded and shaped the career and life that I know that is now my reality. Thank you all as I continue to learn. Thanks again for this opportunity. I will now proceed to responding to those two questions. And I'll just speak to both of them together. And then we can get into more detailed discussions in the breakout groups. Thank you. So to begin, the FSM is blessed to not have any COVID-19 cases to date. And fortunately, that our government reacted when it did and closed our border back in March. And one we figure out how to best deal with this global situation. Usually, as a small island nation, we consider our isolation a challenge. However, in this case, it has been an opportunity. And our homeowners have relied on our environment and natural resources, not just for existence, but for economic development and integration that we are still striving to balance and keep sustainable climate change adaptation and COVID-19 pandemic are new. And we are working to better understand it and how best to utilize what we currently have and use external technical and financial resources to better adapt and cope. There is no substitute for an intact apex functioning environment, national and subnational policies to support communities by integrating state supported livelihood and quality of life components into project level activities. These projects must be centered at the heart of the communities and address the needs that matter most to them, which include making sure that their families are safe, fed and healthy with strong and unconditional support from local and state governments. These would include access to clean water and stable water and energy infrastructure, improved community or family levels, sanitation facilities, the opportunity to address these challenges and have promote opportunities that include small scale agriculture and aquaculture interventions. Once these basic needs are addressed, the communities can focus on traditional concepts and realities of conservation and environmental protection. Natural resources are used primarily for the sake of supporting livelihoods. When basic needs are met, then the discussion and action to protect nature can be seriously addressed and communities can move forward in a progressive manner to address real needs that are in harmony with nature and sustain. Fortunately, our people understand that we must take care of the environment as it has served our basic needs over the years. Needs are evolving based on new lifestyles and expectations. At the same time, challenges and threats are intensifying. Government leadership must understand the capacity of its environment, natural resources and people to best build on, reinforce and strengthen traditional knowledge and practices through innovative programs and policies that are realistic, applicable and sustained into the future to truly build environmentally friendly resilient communities that are working with nature. This knowledge, this wealth of knowledge must be captured and complemented supported by data to best inform decision making to address the challenges now and into the future. Thank you. Thanks so much Vanessa for highlighting that local communities actually have deep understanding of the need to work with nature to adapt to the challenges based on traditional knowledge but so important to ensure and for government to support their basic needs and again pointing us to the traditional importance of traditional knowledge. Thanks for that. And then last but not least, we have Alfredo Coro, the vice mayor of Saago Island in the Philippines. He's a champion of partner driven approach in development and he has used such approach to ensure more efficient and effective local governance and enhance the local community resilience on his island. So Alfredo over to you. Thank you. The thanks as well to the earlier presentation as they were really inspiring. The basic premise of nature based solution or any development framework is that it would address the needs of the community. Several countries including my own the Philippines have strong and relevant policies that support nature based solutions, although not explicitly stated. These policies can already help local governments and communities to better respond to risk like climate change and other risk like COVID-19. The gap is in the appreciation and implementation of policies from the local leaders and therefore the communities they represent. Their experience, the support of NGOs like rare help us frame the localization of the policies and influencing behavioral change of the constituency. The main challenges we observe in sustaining community champion nature based solutions are local leadership embracing owning the nature based solutions will work for their community. If the local leadership government or civil society will not support nature based solution, it will be hard to implement anything. Access to the science for better decision making and deciding on the right nature based solution for the community. Science plays a key role in ensuring that we are planting the right flora and nurturing the right pona just because we are nature based does not mean anything for nature is allowed. Communicating nature based solution and its benefit to the people influencing behavior to accept nature based solution has to be done regularly and sustainably. And regardless of age must go on the idea that nature based solution programs will benefit them more. Enforcement of nature based solution solutions policies are often challenged and integrity of the leadership must be consistent. Proper planning helps in avoiding potential violators of laws and policies. Enforcement of innovative solutions in all sectors and public services to align to nature based solution. Education, health, road development, housing, social protection must be attuned to nature based solutions to capture a whole of government community approach. Currently financing nature based solutions is the hardest part since convincing financing support provides investments and NBS currently needs to be very creative. National government and private financing are very limited and in the private sector side often on CSR initiatives for now. Our experience in the municipality of Del Carmen addressed all of the mentioned challenges and develop an entire public service delivery framework around nature based solution. The story of a large conglomerate with no business in our community that believe in the idea of carbon sequestration with a 5000 hectare mangrove forest became our financial ally. The story of cow village whom we empower the whole community to manage and echo tourism destination employing all 400 families in rotational duties and conditions of improved health, education and environmental indicators. The story of manjari was very active in all methods of destructive fishing and accepted the national nature based solutions framework. After household level discussion of sustainable practices and its benefits. He now participated in our community based ecotourism program to become a tourist both operator and marine garden. The story of Gina, our environmental officer who relentlessly pursued our vision of stopping illegal fishing and illegal mangrove cutting until we achieved 90% reduction in illegal fishing and zero illegal mangrove cutting. All our experiences collectively allowed us to manage through the COVID pandemic and economic health livelihood crisis in the last six months. We have enough fish and marine resources, even if there was 150% increase the number of Fisher folks securing food for our families. We are not worried of storm surges since our mangrove forest is vast and wide in a traditional medicinal practices of sources we can use to address common illness and totality climate change, pandemics and the new normal are I believe best managed with nature based solutions. Thank you. Thanks so much Alfredo again highlighting the importance of partnership but also reminding us financing sometimes a big challenge, but it's really exciting to hear some of the good examples of how public and private financing for multiple benefits from nature based solution like carbon ecotourism fishing and how important it is to make sure those whatever financing mechanism benefits go to the local communities. And thanks all the panelists and again there's a really good chat going on in the chat box and at the same time we also want to hear more from you. So we would like break into smaller groups for now for 30 minutes. So we can hear give you all the opportunity also to reflect on two simple questions showing on the screen now Jenna next slide please. The two questions are what did you hear from the panels that resonated with you most. Please also share why those resonated with you most. Jenna I don't think it's a right slide and then what did you learn today that will be useful for you to implement in your communities or work beyond CBA. Please also try to explain how you're going to use the lessons learned. And we're just going to post those questions into the chat box in zoom because it's having trouble of showing on the slides. And then you will also get those questions from the facilitators once you get into the group. So you will see a join button pop up on your screen shortly and the please kick join and then after 30 minutes will reconvene in the plenary. So see you in 13 minutes. Charlotte could you please assign the group please. Great. I think welcome back for those already is back we hope you had a good discussion so unfortunately we're running a little bit short of time. So we wouldn't have a detailed breakout back and we're going to skip the mentee that we have prepared before. But I really encourage everyone to go to the chat box and then share one of the biggest learning that you had found the breakout group today can be really short or some keywords, but just really helpful to know kind of what are really resonated with you in the breakout group discussions. And for each of the group we also have been assigning people to take notes. So your rich discussion will be captured some somewhat as well so but at the same time please do use a chat box to share some of your reflections. Charlotte are we all back always still waiting. I think we're all back now. So yes, I think just carry on. Great. So we only have a very few we actually is at the time but we do want to use this last few minutes to have a final reflection with all of you. You can see on the slide we especially want to learn from all of you what's the biggest lesson you learn today that will you will take forward in your community or your work beyond CBA conference. And with that I want to invite back so our excellent speakers to share their reflection on this for under one minute and all the participants again please feel free to use the chat box to share your reflection. And with that I just want to invite first to each team song each team represents China's pharmacy network. She didn't speak but she was mentioned many times by showing in her video as inspiration for her community to work with nature and diversify the agriculture production system. So each team over to you one minute quick reflection please. Okay, thank you for the chance that if they are the biggest lessons I would like to say the biggest inspiring today for me that to hear the the voice from different communities and different countries globally that they are doing this local community actions community based adaptations and give a supporter to the traditional knowledge and diversified food and medicines those are quite inspiring me. And so this is also the big lesson that we want to further enhance our community based action and community based adaptation to all the climate changes and the crisis. And this is the big lesson we would like to do. And the second one I want to emphasize here is that for the policy we did also discuss in the group that we in support those kinds of communities based adaptation. The policy really need to be more more participatory more integrated to address the real need of community support communities. The last one most I think is a very important one is that the communities need to be further collaborated and not not working towards each other and working together at a local regional and even global south levels. Working together to adapt to the change to the crisis. This is the key for the solution. Thank you. Great collective actions and a stressing number. Okay next in the mall. Last on the one minute conclusion biggest lesson for you please. This is a really great opportunity to me for to know more about this. Mr best solutions and basically I just mentioned about this. The closing remark is that how can we cooperate this indigenous knowledge into the scientific knowledge. If we can cooperate this in between this knowledge definitely this should there. We can go with this and natural based solution efficiently in that way and I understand more about this indigenous knowledge that can. That can fill the gaps over the scientific knowledge. Thank you. Great comparing this people's knowledge and scientific knowledge. Great. Next Musonda please. My one minute is that it is possible to combine traditional knowledge with scientific knowledge. It is possible to repackage the nature based solutions into acceptable packaging standards by partnering with the standards Bureau and partnering with the agencies that focus on research. All this is impossible. All this is possible because the women in the villages who have this knowledge are not writing it or documenting it in any way so we need to preserve this knowledge and make the best out of it. And also the forest hold everything that we need so we all need a consented effort to learn from what the local people know and take it to step forward as a nature based solution with empirical evidence and marketing strategies. Thank you very much. Great. Again we are dependent on nature and then them also from those local traditional knowledge is important. Next Johnny please. Thank you for the opportunity to listen this very good stories and also be part of this sharing in the panel in the breakout sessions. To find the solutions to the current global challenges we don't need to go to the sky. The solutions are on the ground and also are local. The stories that we have here and all this experience and the discussion today show that strong communities and strong forest and farm producer organizations have proven potential to be both transformational and also sustainable. They need the government and don't know investment to enhance their capacities. Thank you over. Thanks strong produce organizations actually strong local collective organizations is so important for everything and then next Vanessa please. Hello everyone. So just lastly, I just want to thank everybody I learned a lot. Thank you again for the opportunity. I think lastly I just want to reiterate that you know we must not forget that we, no matter where we're working for an NGO for the government, we must always remember that we are part of a community. And that, you know, we understand and we know that our governments have limited capacity and have their own challenges. And so that, you know, we must learn and work together. And that the community has the leadership and the networking and working together can be the best solution and a resilient force in all of these challenges moving forward. Thank you. Thanks collective actions equitable partnerships and understanding each other's challenges very important and Alfredo last words. One minute first thank you for the opportunity that you allowed us to share a story and for the other groups that shared the stories. For me it's really focused on local governments and local communities, and by focusing on them and capacitating them with the right science, the right science, teaching them how to communicate the way what we're doing now how to share their knowledge so that people would be inspired and would listen what they have done and it can be replicated. And lastly it's about leadership and the leadership has to understand the nature based solutions and communities are key. National leadership and local leadership both they have to start appreciating the value of indigenous technologies, the value of the role of communities of every actor in in in our society can contribute to building a better community for all of us. Thanks. Perfect note to end down need to keep telling our stories and work together and many of you here are the leaders to make the change actually happen. And I just want to thank those people who also share some really good examples in the chat box, for example, agriculture, new tool for risk assessment and designing adaptation activities in the forest sector please do have a chat and do check those chat box. And thanks to all of you for a very informative and constructive discussion. Sorry for some of the tech glitch, but I hope you still enjoy the session. I definitely did and unfortunately we have run over a minute, but we hope we can continue the discussions through the CBA online platform. For example, you can go to the Flickr album and view more stories from communities and they keep telling their stories and you can add your reflections and add your story there as well. You can continue the discussion on the chat section under the session on Hover platform. You can arrange meet up with speakers and people you met in the session which you haven't really had a chance to discuss but you want to network with them. You can also find all of us in the participant list and now you all know our name and send us messages if you have any feedbacks on the session or any further queries. So we hope to continue to hear from you and learn from you beyond this session and beyond CBA. With that we'll officially close the session and thanks everyone for your time.


Miniaturization of diagnostic tools for biomolecular detection has become increasingly important due to its ability to reduce costs and increase efficiency. One such tool is nucleic acid amplification, which can be used to detect a limited amount of targeted molecules. Microfluidics are being used to miniaturize this process, allowing for faster and more accurate results with smaller sample volumes. Isothermal amplification methods, which do not require thermal cycling, are also being explored as alternatives to traditional PCR. These methods offer simpler designs and reduce complexity, making them ideal for miniaturizing nucleic acid amplification. This article was authored by Giuseppe Spotto and Laura Maria Zinoli.


Hi everyone, I'm Mary Kachorek from Legal Services State Support in Minnesota, which Jane just mentioned. And so we spend all this time and money creating these great new resources and tools to better serve our clients. But are we doing enough to make sure that we're actually getting those tools to our client population? And even if we're doing enough, could we be doing even more? So up north in Minnesota, the frigid north of Minnesota, we've spent some time thinking about how we feature projects and resources on our statewide public information site, LawHealthMN. So you just launched a new project and it's getting kind of low traffic. What if you changed how you showcase it on your website? This sounds like a good idea, but there's still a few things to consider. First, what changes are you going to try? Will doing this negatively impact traffic to other parts of your site? How are you going to measure the impact if you do try something? And how much time and staff resources is this going to take? This is where using an A-B testing tool can be really useful. Who here has heard of A-B testing? Hands in the air, yeah? Who's actually done some A-B testing? Less hands in the air? A couple? Okay, awesome. Brian in the corner, great. So A-B is a way of conducting controlled randomized experiments with the goal of improving a website metric. We've been using A-B testing in our TIG project to find the best way to post our Document Assembly Library on LawHealthMN. Everybody seems to do this a little differently, so we decided to run some tests to see what setup drives the most clicks to our ATJ interviews on LawHealth Interactive. One thing we looked at was the button we use on our homepage. So we've used button A, little green, on the left for a while, and it's been doing a fine job. But what if we change things up? What if we made it blue? Added a new icon. Took out our weird made-up name form helper. You guys see where this is going? Yeah, maybe? Okay. So here is our experiment. For a month, half the people coming to LawHealth saw our homepage with our test button in blue. And then the other half of the people saw the same page, but with the test button in green. Any guesses as to how it comes out? Who thinks blue is going to win? Oh, okay. Yeah, some people? Well, blue won by a lot. After a month, we saw a 747% increase in conversions to our Document Assembly page. Thank you. It's all too little blue. But the takeaway from this is pretty obvious, right? Use the blue button. But of course, we did not stop there. We started looking at all of these links on our right-hand navigation bar. What if we change the order? We guessed moving things lower on the page would decrease conversions, but by how much? Maybe it's worth it if we get more hits to the other resources that we're also looking to push. In addition to all this crazy fun we're having on our homepage, we've been testing out some other ideas for posting Document Assembly interviews on LawHealth. How much content on a staging page is too much content and causes users to drop out? Do you really need a whole page devoted to the technical requirements to run A2J? There are some great resources out there on LSNTAP and elsewhere about web accessibility for low literacy users. We're using some of these resources already to help guide this project, but there's also all of you brilliant people out there. This project is still in progress, so if you have an idea, please let me know and we can run it in the next round of testing. All right, so how did we do all of this? The wise people at LSE recommended that we use an A.B. testing software and we decided to go with Optimize.ly. Any of the three A.B. testers use Optimize.ly? Yeah, great. We'll talk. We'll talk Optimize.ly. There are a lot of other A.B. testing tools out there. Optimize.ly is just great for us for this project. Once you learn the basics, Optimize.ly is really easy. They have an editor tool that guides you to select the container you want to modify and then gives you a few options for changing things up. If you know HTML, great, you can just edit away. For the rest of us, they have tools to help guide you to make a link or text or color or all these different kinds of style changes. You can edit existing content like this login button here or you can add a new content just for your experiment page. You can play around with where things show up on the page. Again, you just select your container, drag it around and then see where you want it to go. The tool also lets you scale containers to make things show up bigger or smaller on the page. Tracking your goals is pretty easy. You just select the parts of the page that you want to track. For our home page example, we made a lot of click goals because we wanted to see how changing up just a few things affected the rest of the page. If you want, you can track page views instead of clicks. If it optimizes automatically tracks engagement, that's someone just clicking on any part of your experiment page. Optimize gives you a lot of flexibility about where your experiment will run. You can set up a simple match if you only want your experiment to show up on one or a few URLs.  That's what we did with that first example because the right navigation carried through to the whole site. You can target your audience or who gets to participate in the experiment. I'll play around with this, but I can see it being really useful if you're trying to optimize part of your website for a certain community of users. You can see language, device, location. There are a lot of different variables you can choose from depending on the project and who you're serving. Tracking your results is super easy. You can just start or pause your experiment whenever. You get a nice summary of the unique visitors and the days running. You can see how your variation stacked up against the original or baseline version of the page here. You can see one and two beat three in that one goal they had set up. What's the cost? Everything we've done so far has been in a free starter account. You can pay more to get more functionality. I'm like a solid B web administrator. I'm not a coder at all, and I was able to learn it all pretty quickly. Now if we have an idea to try something, I can set something up in like a half an hour, which is pretty cool. To sum it all up, this has been a really good use of staff time. It's been unexpectedly a lot of fun. I think that there are a lot of possibilities for how we can use A.B. testing to better serve our clients. Thank you. Thank you, Mary.


The State of New York is about to introduce the U.S.'s first cryptocurrency task force. Comprised of stakeholders such as technologists, consumers, investors, blockchain companies and academics, the task force will study the regulation and use of crypto and submit a report by the end of 2020. The announcement was first made by New York State Assembly member Clyde Vanell, who is also chair of the subcommittee on Internet and New Technologies. We interviewed Clyde and asked him to tell us more about the task force. Well, I was interested in Bitcoin. I mean, I think that first heard about it in, I don't know, the early 2010s or something like that. And so, yeah, I heard about it for a very long, you know, a while back. And I used to work for a state senator where, you know, while I was working for him, I used to, you know, look at, we were trying to find out what was going on with Bitcoin. And that was back in 2014, 2013, 2014, when I was blessed enough to get in this position as a New York State Assembly member in 2016, you know, it was, you know, at that time a lot of stuff had been changing in the blockchain space, in the crypto space. So when I first heard of Bitcoin in, you know, around 2010, 2011, Bitcoin was the only token out there.  I also, you know, have some tokens, so, but a lot have proliferated from them. But one day I was sitting in this office and I said, I wonder what are the different ways, because I heard that there were, I saw that there were some Bitcoin ATMs around New York City. So I said, I wonder if there are any Bitcoin ATMs, it was the closest one to my office. So I typed it in, in Google, and I saw that there was one a block and a half away from here. Is it still there? It's still there. And that's the one I did the episode. I did the episode of me discovering that, that Bitcoin ATM that was all impromptu at the moment where I found that ATM a block and a half away from here. So if you look at a golden, you know, if you look at the fable of a golden goose, there was a goose that laid golden eggs and every day it laid a golden egg. Every day it laid a golden egg.  If I open it up, I want to get all the eggs out. And when he opened it up, he killed the goose, no more eggs. If we over-regulate, we can kill that goose. And cryptocurrency blockchain technology has the potential to lay golden eggs for a very long time. We need to make sure that we take care of the goose so that it can continue to lay eggs. But we don't want it to, we don't want the goose to go around killing other goose, right? We don't, also we don't want to feed the goose too much so it becomes too big. So I think that we have to make sure that we come out with regulations that protect the goose, keep bad stuff from messing up the goose and to allow it also to continue to lay the eggs. We're happy that the governor, Governor Andrew Cuomo, signed into law to be able to put together a cryptocurrency, what we call it, a digital currency task force where we are going to get stakeholders from around the industry, from technologists to exchanges, to coins, to investors, to consumers, to the New York State DFS to be able to get in a room to help figure out what the proper level of regulations are, to help figure out to define what these different tokens are, how do they use, how are they going to be used in New York to define and to figure out how to use blockchain properly in New York and they're going to put together a report to help guide us on the right levels of regulations in this state. What's great is that in conjunction with that task force, California has a blockchain workgroup and that was signed into law around the same time and with California study and New York study and what have you, we could try to figure out the proper level of regulations and the proper use of blockchain for the two biggest states but really for the country and maybe the world. So a lot of people talk about the bit license and speak about it in negative sense or what have you and we have to find the right level of regulations. But New York was the first municipality, government source in the nation and in the world to protect its investors, to protect the regular consumers. Back when New York State came out with the bit license in 2014 when they were looking at it, we were in a world where if you had, if you had, you know, Bitcoin and you purchased Bitcoin on an exchange like Mt. Gox and it was compromised, you had no recourse. None. New York State under the DFS, Department of Financial Services, in a short, you know, deliberately and very smartly came up with the bit license. They had, and people, you know, and there's controversy around it or what have you but I'm happy to be in a state where New Yorkers are protected. If you are, if you're in exchange in New York and New Yorkers buy cryptocurrencies, you are protected here. Now that was four years ago, right? There's a lot changes in four years. So the definition, that was, and at that time, Bitcoin was the only player in town, right? Now we have, I don't know, how many coins, right? How many tokens? Now we have different kinds of tokens. Now we have security tokens. Now we have utility tokens. Now we have, we have a whole host of, you know, so the world has changed a whole lot and so that's why this tax force is important to look at, you know, not where the ball is but where it's going. But I think that New York is a great place for crypto currency. I think New York is a great place for blockchain technology. So the crypto landscape in the U.S. is interesting. So there are certain states that are wide open, that's right? So I don't want to name any, but there are certain states that are wide open and say, look, any blockchain company, any blockchain business, come on, we love you. There are states that are saying, you know, you want to pay taxes in crypto? No problem. You want to pay whatever, you know, in crypto? No problem. And there are states that are not speaking about it at all. So you have the whole gamut, right? You have the whole gamut that's out there. New York is the empire state. I know, we like to brag about that, but I think we are. We're the big apple with the empire state. But there's no doubt we are the financial capital of the world. So we can't be the wild, wild west. We can't say, whatever goes here, goes here, right? Because the world is watching, not only are other states watching, the world is watching, right? When we came out, the bit license has been used by many states and many countries as a model for regulations. So being that that's the case, being that we have to be careful, deliberate, and exacting on how we come out with these, with regulations and our approach toward, you know, toward cryptocurrency and our approach toward blockchain. I can't speak on the SEC, that's federal government. I can't speak on the SEC's potential decision on allowing Bitcoin electronic traded funds. But I will say that in the space of cryptocurrency trading, you've seen two years ago the commodities exchange in Chicago, right, trade in Bitcoin. You've seen the New York Stock Exchange relax their view towards cryptocurrency. You've seen many of the established financial institutions have and include cryptocurrency and blockchain related divisions. So in a relatively short time, that can be, it seems like a long time for folks, for the impatient young people in the space. But in a relatively short time, the acceptance of cryptocurrency in traditional finance, it's been happening on a very fast pace. I know people are impatient, people think it's taking a long time, but it's not really taking a long time. Keep in mind, we have to look at the context. This is an asset, if I can call it that, that is 10 years old. That's a new thing, right, that was developed very fast and that's changing very fast. So for the SEC, for these established older financial institutions to adopt these assets at this point is unheard of. So Wyoming did it. I think Ohio just recently said okay. I think, so it's interesting if you look at my YouTube episode where I tried to buy pizza with Bitcoin, when I actually went to go buy it, I couldn't do it because I didn't want to spend my Bitcoin on a $2 pizza and then have it be $10 later on. So what's interesting is that I don't think crypto is in a place for currency, and this is my personal opinion. This is my personal opinion, this is not the opinion of the government. I don't think crypto is in this place until, but what's interesting, generally speaking, generally speaking, there are tokens that are called stable tokens that are, I think they're called stable tokens. I think that's what they're called, excuse me if I'm wrong, but there are tokens that are pegged towards with the dollar, for example, right, that don't have the volatility. If that's kind of tokenized, then I can see that huge is currency easier. But also I don't see, I don't know if Bitcoin would be the standard to use as currency. When I went there, when I went to go buy the pizza, I would be more willing to spend Lite Coin on a pizza than Bitcoin. So saying all that, I don't know if we're in a place yet to have general acceptance of accepting crypto for taxes. How long do you think it will take? I don't know. I'm looking at these stable coins and seeing that that's interesting to me, to see if you have these tokens that are pegged towards, I say the US dollar or some other kind of fiat currency, what that means. So people are investing in people investing significant amounts in cryptocurrency. These are wrapping their business around that technology. So because that's the case, it's very important to protect folks' investments, right? So whether you invest in something big or small, it's important for you on one hand for consumer protection and for investor protection to make sure that you guys are properly protected. So that's one thing. That I don't think is too small for us to regulate. And they probably meant larger scale, wider scale. I don't know what the context of that question was because I respect the folks and I respect that conference. Another thing also is that also companies that are doing activities around the space also want to make sure that they are properly protected and that they can grow. So I think finding the right kind of, the right level of regulation for them is important and I don't think it's too small for us to talk about and think about. I don't want to assure people one thing or not. Like I said, as how I define the way I view crypto, I view crypto as a great potential that has a great potential, a great potential in the technology, great potential to be able to exchange value with and I think that it's a golden goose. And the way I view it is saying things that we properly, we find the right level of regulations so that we don't kill it and that it will continue to provide eggs for us. But this is not a new thing, I'm sorry, it's not new that we're dealing with new technology. I can imagine us having this same interview back in 1996, talking about the internet and you can say, oh my gosh, what are you going to do about the internet? Or how are we going to start, what's the proper level of regulations? Now keep in mind, we're in the internet world maybe 20 years into the internet world and we're still trying to figure out what to do with privacy. We're still trying to figure out what the right levels of protections you need and what are your rights with your personal data, right? California just came out with a set of regulations. Europe came out with a set of GDPR less than a year ago. So 20 years later, we're still trying to figure out the internet and we have to figure this out. 20 years later, it's still relatively new so with crypto, I think we're in a similar space but even earlier.


Many of you may have heard or seen Lieutenant General Dindo, the Surgeon General, and Medcom Commander with Command Sergeant Major Hef, Medcom Command Sergeant Major. See, Army Medicine is Army strong. In Army Medicine, this is not just a saying. It's a culture and a mindset that permeates from the three-star general down to the private. The Longstool Regional Medical Center Best Warrior Competition is all about conserving the fighting strength and the Army warrior ethos. I will always place the mission first. I will never quit. I will never accept defeat. I will never leave a fallen comrade. Let it be known.


In 1988 I arrived back from university to the family farm and that's really what I had planned to do for the rest of my life was to farm here. Shortly before I arrived back, Dad had put a borehole in really for the purpose of getting water for our livestock. We happened to also put the house onto this supply of water. We all commented at the time how much of an improvement the water was and how good it tasted. And it was around about that time when water was suddenly starting to hit the shelves. We all sat down one lunchtime, we thought, click, yeah, let's have a go at this. Now we're employing something in the order of 180 people. We are a really significant employer in this rural area. Back in 1997 when we incorporated the business, I think our turnover on the farm was about 500,000 and the turnover on Radney Hills was about 500,000 and that now is still 500,000 on the farm and it's 40 million now on Radney Hills. I like building it and like seeing it grow so bring it on.