Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. This show is based on my books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game, and it's about leadership, character, and creating a superior culture of excellence. My special guest today was a judge for our Intermediate Court of Appeals, Vice President for Legal Affairs and General Counsel at the University of Hawaii, and former president of St. Louis School. He is Judge Walter Kiromitsu, and today we are going beyond leadership. Hey, Walter, welcome to the show. Thank you very much, Coach Rusty. It is my honor and pleasure to be with you. Oh, it's my honor to have you on the show, Walter, and it's been so great. For the last few weeks, we've been able to really get together and talk a bunch, and you're someone that I greatly respect. I hold in high esteem. But I want to first ask you, Walter, I know that you attended University of Hawaii for college. How was it back then? When I attended University of Hawaii, I really appreciated being back home. I first went to St. Mary's College in Muraga, California for my freshman year, but I decided to transfer back home because I missed home, and the University of Hawaii at Manoa just was a perfect fit for me. The students were very diverse. They were very proactive, and I just enjoyed being at the university. And then I majored in Japanese language and literature, which was very, for me, it was a perfect fit because I spoke a little bit of Japanese. And the best part about my majoring in Japanese is that's where I met my wife. She also was majoring in Japanese literature, and so we started dating. And that was the best part of my UH education. Now, Walter, after UH, you went to law school at the University of Michigan, and that's one of the top law schools in the country, right? That's what I heard, and so I was afraid I might not be accepted. And so I applied at three different universities in the Midwest because I wanted to experience life in the Midwest. So I applied to University of Chicago, University of Notre Dame, and University of Michigan, and luckily, Michigan selected me, and I was able to enroll there and was elated. But when I started law school, I didn't realize it was so difficult. It was a totally different language from Japanese language and literature, and I had to learn the process of legal education, but I quickly picked it up and fortunately graduated from University of Michigan Law School. Wow, that's very impressive, Walter, and you have a beautiful family.  What's the biggest thing that you admire about your wife, May? I would say, Rusty, that the best word I can select to describe May is she's selfless. She just puts everybody else as a priority before herself and including myself, so she has totally dedicated her life to help and promote and advance myself as well as our children and our family. So this 2022 will make our 59th anniversary. So on July 20, 2022, we'll be married for 59 years. Wow, I love hearing that. We're going to have to celebrate, Walter. That's going to be awesome. And you're going to be first on my invitee list. Yeah, that's what I like to hear. And I'm definitely going to be there to celebrate with you and May. And Walter, as a judge, you wrote over 50 published opinions. What would you say is the toughest part of being a judge? I would say the word discipline. You need to have extreme discipline to be a judge, especially at the appellate court level, because at the appeals level, we hardly hear any oral arguments. So we just don't interface with the lawyers. We read all of the briefs, the appellate briefs that the lawyers submit. And then at the intermediate court of appeals, which we call ICA, at that level, at the time that I served, there were four judges. The chief judge was Judge Jim Burns, who passed away, Corinne Watanabe, and Simeon Akoba, and myself. So out of the four judges, we used to rotate in panels of three on each case, and each panel of three would discuss the case and arrive at a decision. Of course, two out of three at least, but most of the decisions were unanimous because we thoroughly discussed the merits of the case and pretty much achieved consensus at the end. And then one of the three judges wrote the published opinion. Now, the criteria for whether a decision becomes published is whether or not the three judges feel that the particular facts and merits of the case deserve to be a judicial precedent. So if we feel that there's new frontier or new law to be established, then the three of us decide, yes, let's publish it and select one of us to write the opinion. Wow, that makes sense. So apparently it happened 50 times for me during the time that I served on the ICA. That is just absolutely incredible that you have over 50. And Walter, you attended St. Louis for high school, and what kind of experiences did you have back then in high school at St. Louis? At that time, Rusty, St. Louis was just a high school from ninth grade to 12th grade. And at that time it was in the late 1950s. So therefore the St. Louis school consisted primarily of Marianist clergy. What I mean by Marianist clergy is there's an organization called the Society of Mary dedicated to honor the Virgin Mary, mother of God. And so the Marianists, let's see, they were, I would say about 95% of the staff, faculty and administration were Marianist brothers of clergy, including the head of school who was a Marianist brother or priest. During the time that I attended, there were two brothers, a brother, a Gerber and a brother, Oliver IU, who were presidents or headmaster of the school. The most influential impact that the St. Louis education had on me was the Marianist influence. They were dedicated to educate the young people of Hawaii and at St. Louis we're still all boys and we still are all boys, but for 175 years the Marianists have run or operated St. Louis. And this last year, 2021 was the 175th anniversary. Wow, that's such a tradition, Walter. And you became the first lay president of St. Louis and you were the president for nine years. And I remember back then there was some major challenges that you had to deal with. But what were some of your proudest accomplishments? I would say they're falling to several categories. The first and foremost need of St. Louis school at the time that I became the first non-clergy president of the school was the facilities and the structures were very outdated. They were at least all over 80 years old and just needed major renovations. So the first category of achievement or accomplishment was in the category of capital improvements. During the time that I served Rusty, the first major building that we were able to build was the Clarence T.C. Cheng Learning and Technology Center which was a five-story educational building, new brand new building and it cost about $12 million to build. So we got help from the Clarence T.C. Cheng Foundation for half of that amount. And then we had to raise the other half which we did, we matched it. And so the $12 million construction costs were covered through fundraising. The second major facility was what used to be called the Gerber Fieldhouse which was the athletic center for all of the major sports. And so the Gerber Fieldhouse was over, I would say over 80 years old at least. So the engineer who inspected the premises said, Walter, what you need to do is you need to demolish the Gerber Fieldhouse and replace it with a new athletic center. So I picked myself off the floor and decided we need to raise the necessary funds which came out to be $15 million to build a new athletic center which Dr. Glenn Madaris, my successor is completing. So we were able to raise $15 million half of which was again from the Clarence T.C. Cheng Foundation and we're able to match $7.5 million to complete the cost, estimated cost for the new athletic center. The new athletic center is open now from early 2021 or mid 2021. And so it's able to, it replaced the old Gerber Fieldhouse. So those were two major capital improvements. The second area was academics. And fortunately during my nine year tenure, I was able to hire Pat Hamamoto. We used to be the DOE superintendent and I convinced Pat to come on as principal for the school and she agreed thank goodness because I treated her to breakfast and she basically turned the academic curriculum completely around and improved it. She aligned the curriculum to the faculty background of faculty members. And so we had a faculty and curriculum that matched and she enhanced that to improve the curriculum to include technology, include robotics. And so she made a huge impact on the academic improvement of the school. So those are the two major areas that I can recall. Well, I absolutely love hearing these insights and the Clarence T.C. Cheng, you know, learning center and the gym. I mean, it's absolutely beautiful. And Walter, why, you know, when you reflect back, why were you successful as the leader of St. Louis school? Trustee, if I had read your book beyond the lines before I accepted the president position at St. Louis, I would have relied on the four P's. People, process and performance. And the fourth P was purpose. Yeah, that's great. It's the three four purpose, process and performance. Lining up my career at St. Louis along those, the model of the four P's. The first was the people. The people at St. Louis were just amazing. We had faculty members that were passionate, were dedicated, experienced and qualified. We had administrative staff that were totally supportive and very patient and dedicated. And then we also had the board of trustees who perfectly aligned with the administration to support and assist us all the way. The fourth people group was the St. Louis Alumni Association. Rusty, that group is an amazing group. They're housed in the St. Louis Alumni Clubhouse on Sheridan Street in Moili Lee. But the St. Louis Alumni Association stepped up to the plate and helped the school immensely. So the people made a difference. Now the purpose, we specifically aligned ourselves with specific goals, what we wanna achieve. And like I said, Catholic improvements, the academic curriculum, maintaining the athletics. And so there was a well-balanced educational plan or purpose. And then the process itself just developed. We just had an end goal and we had to work backwards like you said, one percent at a time. One serve, one set, one game, et cetera. So we had that process, we developed it and then resulted in goodness with the help of all the people in the performance or achievements that we were able to achieve. Wow, Walter, I'm impressed that you know the four P's from my book. And Walter, I mean, it makes sense. I mean, that's really the framework for success and that's what you did. And I wanna ask you about Marcus Mariota because he was at St. Louis while you were president. And what kind of impact does a Marcus Mariota have for St. Louis School? Marcus Mariota had a huge impact on St. Louis School and also for the state of Hawaii. When he was in the sixth grade at Nuono Elementary School, sixth grade, mind you, he wrote a letter apparently that was preserved over the years. And that, oh, I'm sorry, that's the fourth grade. But when he was in the fourth grade, he wrote that letter and the letter said, my dream is to go and attend St. Louis School one day. And ever since the fourth grade, he kept that commitment and he enrolled at St. Louis in the seventh grade.  Of course, by the time he was in high school and especially his junior and senior years, he was the outstanding quarterback for the food championship football team. Now thereafter, Marcus attended University of Oregon, as you know, and he became an outstanding quarterback. And because of his influence, the St. Louis team went to cheer him on to win the Heisman in New York City. So there was a contingent from St. Louis that attended the Heisman ceremony. And fortunately, I was able to attend as part of the team of supporters. And fortunately, Marcus won the Heisman Award in New York City in that particular year. And since then, he has been a superstar for St. Louis School, for the state of Hawaii and just absolute gentlemen, totally supportive of St. Louis. He later, after he started his professional career, built his own foundation to help the students in Hawaii, especially at St. Louis School. So he established a scholarship financial aid foundation to help the youngsters of Hawaii. So Marcus Marriota is just magic. We're just fortunate to have someone like him. I totally agree with you, Walter. I mean, he is such outstanding character and he's definitely a role model. And about what every St. Louis student should be like. And Walter, Dr. Glenn Maderos, why was he the right leader to succeed you as St. Louis president? And what's the biggest thing you admire about Dr. Glenn Maderos? Dr. Glenn Maderos, he, we're fortunate, or St. Louis is fortunate to have someone of his character and his background. The most impressive thing about Dr. Glenn is his charisma. He has charismatic qualities that provide leadership for the students, administration, the faculty and the alumni. Second is his humility. He's one and raised on the island of Hawaii. He has ever since been very humble and respectful of everyone he associates with. And the third quality is he has experience. He has a PhD in education. He knows what he's doing. He's a good teacher and also now he's an outstanding administrator. So St. Louis is fortunate to have someone like Dr. Glenn. And I hope he maintains good health so that he continues for a long time at St. Louis. Everything you said there about Dr. Glenn, I completely agree. I mean, you and I are friends with Dr. Glenn. And yeah, I mean, he is such a great person and such a great leader. And I couldn't see anybody better than him to succeed you there, Walter. And Walter, I wanna ask you about my books. You talked about the four Ps earlier. And I feel so honored that you like the books. What are some things that you liked about it? This is the book starting in 2017. And then this is the book in 2020. I like both books. They're excellent. Now, if I had known the contents of this book while I was serving as president, I would have made a better president and been more successful. But now in retrospect, reading these points that you made, the thing that resonated the most were the four Ps because it fits well with life in general. Everything we do pretty much falls within those four Ps of people, purpose, process and performance, peak performance. The other aspect that I liked about the book beyond the game, beyond the game, we're talking about coaching, about not necessarily just merely knowing all of the fundamentals of what you're coaching, but how you coach and how you provide guidance and how you share with that with the people on the team. And that's what I'm most impressed with your books is that you always talk about greatness. How to achieve superior greatness. And the other part is you don't leave it at that point where you achieve greatness. You say, we must, we have a duty to share that greatness with others. Those two points really resonate with me. Walter, you're going to be my agent. But you know, my commission is free, so you shouldn't have any hesitancy. Well, I feel so grateful that you really, you love the books. And Walter, if we're looking at all schools, public and private, what can we do to really enhance and improve the level of excellence across the board with everyone? We really need to improve the relationship between the private schools and the public schools in Hawaii. The private schools have an association called the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools. Of course, the public schools have the Department of Education and their board. What would be wonderful is if there's further or more collaboration between the two groups. And for instance, one idea that I was thinking of is if the two private and public schools can collaborate to establish a mentorship program for students. It doesn't matter whether they're in the private school or public schools, but to have a mentorship program that is jointly promoted and put together by the two entities for the benefit of our students in Hawaii. For example, in the athletic circle, we have the OIA, which is a sort of a partnership between the private and public schools. And finally, they're merging together so that public and private schools can compete with each other. And there should be further enhancement of that merger. But if we can do that, the same type of partnership for academics and for technology and for the development of students, that would be wonderful. And I volunteer to help with that. Yeah, I like seeing your vision like that, Walter. And you're right. I mean, because it's happening in athletics, there's no reason why it can't happen in other aspects of the schooling, right? It's so true. Now, Walter, as a leader, everyone has their own style. How would you describe your leadership style? In looking back as to being a leader, I kind of traced back to St. Louis and we were taught at St. Louis when we were students of a phrase, a Latin phrase called memoir at Fidevas, mindful and faithful.  Mindful of our duties to society, to other people, and faithful to our core values, character, integrity, humility and respect. So that phrase memoir at Fidevas has stuck with me and kind of been my model to provide the leadership I could provide. The other phrase that has developed is what I learned at the university. And that phrase in Japanese is, shakai no tame ni yakuni tatsu hito ni narinasai. Which means become or strive to become a person useful to society. And so that has been impactful for me is am I being useful to serve others? And if so, then I need to pursue it, I need to achieve it, and then I need to go forward. So those two concepts have pretty much guided my style of leadership. I like hearing that, Walter. And Walter, before we wrap up, I wanna ask you one more question. How do you define greatness? The greatness to me is, again, going back to that being useful to the society. So everybody has different skills. Everybody has different experiences. Everyone has different qualities. Within the framework of that particular individual, if that person can achieve superior enhancement or achievement of his or her qualities and skills, and they can do it following the four Ps, that I would say that person has achieved greatness. And secondly, according to Beyond the Lines, if that person once achieves greatness, can share it with others, then that's the ultimate achievement for that individual. So it doesn't matter whether you're president of St. Louis School or general counsel, it matters what that person has, or what qualities that person has, that skills that person has, and whether that person utilizes the skills to achieve greatness. And that's greatness, how I define greatness. I like that definition from you, Walter. And I really wanna thank you, Walter, for sharing your wisdom.  And I feel so honored to just to know you. And thank you for taking time to be on the show today. Rusty, it's again my honor and pleasure. And the only regret is I didn't get to know you sooner because I didn't know how great an individual you are when having read your books and listened to your achievements. It's incredible for someone of your young age to achieve so much and willing to share it with others for forever. So thank you very much, Rusty, for the honor. And I'm here anytime, no charge, anytime we can interview, I'll be here. I'm gonna take you up on that, Walter. Thank you. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit rustycomory.com and my books are available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I hope that Judge Walter and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha. Aloha.


So we're here at the Embedded World in 2018 and who are you? Hi, I'm Steve Gustenhoven and I'm here from IOTI's. We're here with a connectivity solution as part of the ST Partner Program. We're really happy to be here at Embedded World today on our stand and at the STM32 Fan Zone where we're showing off a new product that's called the Tap and Link Primer. So you connect with their development board right here. You have your solution here. What is that? So the solution is actually a radio module that includes an NFC device, the ST25. Can we open this up? Sure. Can you show the whole module what it is? Sure, sure. Right there. So this... This like... What part do you have in here? So inside this module... So the module is a board that includes an ST25 DV NFC device and the STM32 L4 microcontroller. Is this this one? Exactly, and that is this board here where you see all the interfaces and you'll see the NFC antenna that runs the perimeter of the device. Now the specialization of IOTI's is to provide what we call plug-and-play connectivity for embedded systems based on microcontrollers. That connectivity is a combination of a microcontroller that allows us to exploit different types of interfaces on a board, including, for example, the debug interface on this application board. So for here, for example, we have an STM32 L4 application board. It's a discovery board that we've taken off the shelf from ST and we have connected that board to our RF module via its debug port. So what we call the SWD port. Now what that allows us to do is it allows us to provide a radio module that implements by configuration only. So that means that the user, instead of developing code to implement Bluetooth low energy or NFC devices, what they do in fact is they transfer a configuration to this module and that configuration tells the module what addresses it should access in order to show different types of variables and it tells it what types of profiles should have access to that information. So is this an active NFC? Yes. So it can basically show any tag you want through the system here? No, in fact, in this device, we're an NFC tag and we're using that NFC tag to initiate communications with a smartphone and to pair the BLE interface in this case. And so for example, we simply tap the smartphone and here we have a smartphone interface that's based on information on this board. The information coming from that is coming from variables that are related to the RTC on the application board in the STM32 F4 target and essentially we've rendered those as a clock on our smartphone application. Now keep in mind that because we've connected on a special port, the debug port, we have both the ability to read and write information in the STM32 memory. So from this application, we can continue to monitor the evolution of these variables. So here we have the time that's evolving and we can also write the information. So that means we can log into this application and change the time in the RTC application. Now, this technology in particularly the Tap and Link Primer is a solution that allows us to bring a connection that connects to a smartphone as we've seen on our smartphone application to provide a user interface but a user with a primer, when they configure their primer, will also configure their primer to send data directly to a dedicated cloud interface. So in essence, by using the debug port, we allow users to quickly and rapidly develop their IoT proof-of-concept whether they want to simply deport the user interface to a smartphone or if they want to do remote monitoring of information from their application on a cloud-based interface. So how is it to be a STM32 partner, right? Right, exactly. So we're here actually as an ST partner, as I said before, on our stand and in the STM32 fan zone and we're very happy to be part of this program because it's allowed us a level of collaboration on this project as we move forward implementing the NFC, Bluetooth, and the microcontroller part of our design. Now we're to a finished product and we're promoting that product to the STM32 community and via the ST partner program. Anybody who's developing an NFC-based IoT product will be working with you? In fact, anybody who's working with an STM32 microcontroller can use our solution to bring NFC and Bluetooth Low-Net Energy connectivity directly to their application and without modifying their original firmware. They'll simply configure the module, plug it into their application and they'll have a connectivity channel that can take them to a smartphone and to the cloud. So you have some real-world implementations already? Yes, that's correct. For example, this is a proof of concept that we did with a company called HydroLogic. The HydroLogic machine is the machine that's used to measure water levels in industrial systems. Now what we've done on that system is actually a pure connectivity case for IoTIs where our module is actually connected directly to a debug port that's present in the system. Nothing has been done otherwise to modify the electronics or the firmware of this product. We simply configured our module so that we bring an NFC and a Bluetooth connection to this device. So we simply tap a smartphone to engage the NFC and our module tells the smartphone what application files to load in order to have the user interface. And is it going to tell you how much water is left? Right, and so in this case it's a simple application where we've looked at recuperating certain values like the water level that's reported here, the temperature and the voltage. And we can also give that value different representations which is one of the pleasures of working on smartphones is there are a lot of resources that you can do to animate what your variables represent. And for example, if I adjust the probe depth we can see that my water level changes according to that positioning. Now one other thing we can do on the smartphone is we can also treat data so we can manage the data and establish, for example, a history of data established strictly on the smartphone. So here you see a curve of the latest data and you can see that the water level has varied and that is all information that's been gathered and logged on the smartphone. I think every trade show should have this because it's not very nice when you come to the water machine there's no more water. Absolutely, and in fact, in fact next year maybe we'll have a display with a big red light that says the water is getting low and maybe a map or something to bring people to the water. Okay. And there's some other demo right here that's using a different kind of solution right here. Okay, so as we mentioned before on our tap and link tools or on our tap and link modules we were connecting to a debug port or a serial port. In this case we have an industrial system that allows us to connect to a system bus so it can be an RS232, RS485, Ethernet, CAN or USB port. And in this case we provide both a module that can be left in place on the industrial system or there's also a module that's portable that runs on its own battery so you can bring the connectivity to the device that you want to connect to. So it serves as sort of connectivity dongle in that case. So you turn things into IoT. Absolutely. And that's what IoT is all about. IoT isn't just about making things connected but it's about removing all the barriers that we can so that you can make your objects connected as quickly and as rapidly as possible without running additional risks. And the tap and link primer is the ideal way to go and take your application boards, IoT's them and discuss the IoT around a concrete example of an IoTized application so you can talk with marketers and technical design teams around a functional example and not talk about theories about the IoT.


Number one, I would say, are you replicating in the therapy session your interaction at home? Do you mean like when you go to typically what people think of marriage counseling if they've never been, where you go, you sit, and you basically start complaining about your spouse and then you end up screaming at each other and the therapist is basically just sitting there? So is that what you're talking about? Yes. It's pretty much the same thing at home? Right. So if you're doing the same thing at home as you're doing it in the therapy office, you're going to get the same results and that's, you know, pretty lousy, the same results that made you come to therapy in the first place. So the therapy office has to be structured differently. The first thing that I tell couples when I do a two day private retreat with them is that before everything, the most important thing over all of the issues that you have is safety. If you don't have safety, you can't interact. So creating an environment with emotional safety where, and what we do is we have a couple facing each other, this, they're not talking to me about each other, they're talking to each other.


Good morning, everyone. I'm Louis Putzel from C4. And as Paolo said, this presentation is a synthesis. It's not of all the cases of the day. It's the cases that are sort of the extra sectoral cases, those that are beyond forestry, beyond timber that we put together as part of a project to inform the timber sector and to go a little bit beyond and broaden the vision of a project. But just to go back a little bit to explain what we mean by formalization, more or less, everyone has all of the presenters will have a slightly different take on it. But we mean more or less codification of practices and policies and laws in a written legal code. It has to be recognized that many non-written practices in customary law are also very formal. So we're not saying that those are not formal, but that we're just using this definition of formalization. The informal sector really hit the international development world in the early 1970s. And it was mostly an issue of labor and the rights of laborers and increasing the potential for laborers to profit from activities in a sector where many were operating informally and didn't have a lot of benefits associated with formality. And of course, we recognize De Soto's work, which has to do with, which is grounded in the idea that formalization of especially rights to land is a way to both address problems of rural poverty and also of poverty, starting with urban and later rural, and also to bring credit and economic development to informal sector actors. Now just looking down later on, the discourse around informality has extended to environmental work conservation, et cetera. And I found it interesting, there were a couple of sources that sort of suggest that the reason we need formality in sustainable development and in forestry, et cetera, is because without formality, we can't tell what's going on. It's a question of being able to monitor flows of resources. And I'm going to claim that the reasons for formalization of sectoral activities are very important to the outcomes. If it's for poverty, if it's for labor rights, if it's for conservation, the outcomes are going to be different in those different sectors, and in those different areas and on the others. So a conservation oriented formalization might have different effects on livelihoods than a livelihood based formalization might have. Now going back to the seeds of this work, the Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade Program of the EU and Voluntary Partnership Agreement Process, it was recognized several years ago that in order to look at informal timber trade and to formalize it, it was important to understand not only all of the legal norms in the forestry sector, but also the customary systems and those related to human rights. And there was supposed to be a review of all of those before implementation of voluntary partnership agreements. And so far there's been shortcomings in understanding customary systems in this process, in the VPA process. So we decided to pull together some lessons from other sectors to try to better inform the EU process of forming voluntary partnership agreements with timber producing countries. And these are the cases, the extra sectoral cases that have been done. And the people who did these are all here to present them. One is on non-timber forest products formalization processes in Southern Africa, processes of formalizing co-management of Brazilian Amazon inland fisheries that the authors are here. Conflict Minerals in Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, land tenure, natural resource extraction. So these are cross cutting cases. And my colleagues will all be up here to present these afterwards. The goal is to do a synthetic comparative analysis, giving context of the different sectors, and looking carefully at the drivers of the formalization process. So what is the rationale and demand behind them? And what are the driving institutions and interests behind them? And then looking at what the different instruments are. How are they executed? How are they done? How does formalization happen? And then outcomes and potential risks. OK, so I'm basically now going to focus more on the various sector specific cases. The first one being non-timber forest products in Southern Africa, and this is an interesting case because non-timber forest products in Southern Africa have been a source of a lot of work on looking at rights, at community rights, at indigenous rights. And a lot of modification of laws has happened largely in response to some global regimes, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention on International Trade and Endangered Species. And these large global regimes, they interact with legislation at the national level and subnational level in the countries of Southern Africa. The fisheries cases is very interesting, largely, and you'll hear more of this from Toby McGrath, but largely it's interesting as a comparative case. And now in this set of studies, because it was very much based in social movement, so it had a little bit more of a grassroots social driving force behind it than some of the other cases. And one of the motivating factors behind fisheries was behind the formalization of fisheries in Brazil has been the interest of communities to better manage their resources and partly to exclude outsiders from over-extracting. And then the three T's are tantalum, tin, and coltan, considerate, and what's the other one? Tongsten, sorry. Yeah, so I get it. And this study is done in Great Lakes region Central Africa, Rwanda, and Democratic Republic of Hong Kong largely as the source of those minerals. And this is also a very interesting case for comparison where you have some very compelling human rights issues and conflict issues that are a rationale for formalization of the sector as opposed to conservation, for example. And if we look at these cases comparatively, to some degree there's some kind of a gradient. They all cross more than one. They all cross these lines. But from human rights interests, to livelihoods interests, to the interests of having a sustainable resource base and environmental interests, so they form an interesting group for comparison to each other. And if we break down the drivers of formalizations in terms of their rationale and demand for the formalization, we see that largely NTFPs in Southern Africa, for this sector, the driving forces have been to prevent over exploitation, to promote equitable benefits sharing, and to bring more revenue to the state. Whereas in the fisheries in Brazil, we have to prevent fisheries conflicts and access by outsiders. And there were technological changes introduced largely from outside and from the state level, which increased extraction. So mitigating those effects is part of the reason for formalization, the rationale behind it. And in the Great Lakes region, Congo, DRC, Congo, and RONDA, we have financing of armed groups, human rights abuses, health risks, lost tax revenues. And then we have very different levels in terms of driving institutions in interests. And I'll show you this slide to illustrate that. So in South Africa, we have a very broad range from indigenous movements to these large global regimes. In Brazil, we have from grassroots movements to local NGOs, so a little bit less international pressure coming to bear, but some international scientists and NGOs, and largely scientists and some assistants coming to interface with these processes. And in DRC, RONDA, we have a relatively heavy involvement of international trade, usually not just trade, but also human rights and UN peacekeeping, et cetera, coming to bear on national processes. And less grassroots local interest in the process, or at least involvement in the process. And from our cases, we are able to describe a number of instruments of formalization, how formalization is executed and technically executed through changing how land titles are granted, permitting systems, concession models, et cetera, to some occasionally banning informal activity when the formalization effort isn't working, or for other reasons, and trade-based instruments to certify products as extracted, traded, creating these different mechanisms to monitor, to control, to verify, and to prevent illegal flows of material within countries and more between countries. In terms of outcomes, it's very hard to simply present these outcomes at this time. The outcomes are very complex, both in terms of how effective they've been and what still remains to be done, but in NTFEs in Southern Africa, one thing that you can see is that there's been a lot of activity, lots of changes in many, many different laws across the legal system of each country, and not just in terms of national law, but also subnational laws, local bylaws, et cetera, and those interfacing different ways with customary laws. And it's a very diverse and kind of labyrinthine outcome of efforts to interface with these higher-level regimes, such as the CBD. In the mineral sector, you have lots of mechanisms. It's very technical, many technical mechanisms to monitor and control. Many of them have been designed, and there are great hopes for them, but they haven't yet really been implemented. And it's going to be, there are many challenges to how they will be implemented. And then in fisheries in Brazil, you have these adaptive systems of state national laws to integrate home management. To look at some of the main points from the cross-cutting cases, we see differences between where colonization has happened versus where it hasn't. Where socialism has happened versus countries where there had been no socialist experience. And there are many different, some of the effects of one phase carry over into the other. And the authors talk about the memory of people and the memory of the system, and how the memories of past can come back and affect future outcomes. And in the formalization of resource extraction, we have some of the outcomes are criminalization, et cetera. So the authors forgive me for mentioning all these things, but these are the points that we can sort of pull together in a synthetic fashion. And from all of this, we come with a very substantial list of risks of formalization that need to be taken into account when an international development agency or regime attempts to create a formalization program in order to achieve specific outcomes, for example, in sustainable resource management and conservation. So a lot of these effects, a lot of these risks that people face, some of them are also environmental, but people risk expropriation. Collective practices that are not necessarily negative can be negatively effective. Conflicts can increase, especially if memories of what people had in the past come back to bear on their perception of their rights and what they think they should still be able to do that they're no longer able to do. There are numerous types of potentially adverse effects on women in the international resource sectors, including, for example, having to interface more with male bureaucrats and law enforcement people as one example. Economic losses from the sector, the whole sector can experience a major loss, especially if there's a ban or a moratorium. And then one very prevalent effect that's obvious in many of these cases is that small scale operators often lose out in favor of larger scale. OK, so there are a range of other things, potential new forms of corruption, enforcement failures, et cetera, formalization. And that's where I'm going to leave it. And let my colleagues go into much more depth on all these cases. And thank you very much.


Welcome to Teens on Topic. I'm your host Emma Arnson, and today I'm joined by Grace Hoppe, Owen Carr, Yissa Shake. And today we have a little bit of a controversial topic, as pretty much always. We are talking about the Green New Deal, but before we get into it, let's see what the Davis adults have to say about it. I am standing out here, and I have a couple of friends who are Native American who have gone in to speak. And they have a letter here, which I would like to read, that talks about the impact of this on Native communities. Okay, we ask you to sign to the Green New Deal. It's important for the future of Mother Earth and our future generations that we deal with this important climate emergency so that the burden does not fall entirely on our children's children. Our ancestors taught us to think of everything in terms of how it will affect the next seven generations. Solutions such as the carbon tax and dividend will help to curb pollution by imposing taxes on polluters. We can use this tax money to provide green jobs and sustainable solutions to help heal the planet and begin mitigating the damage we humans have already caused. Our future children should not have to bear the cost of the terrifying and damaging effects of climate change exacerbated by our reliance on fossil fuels. And this is a very fine example of things going on all over the world, and that is that the wealthy developed countries have really created this crisis. And the people who are living in poverty all over the world are the ones who are going to be the most impacted. I think that it's going to be a lengthy process, and I'm projecting that it may be in the future because we are not going to give up. Even if the current Congress rejects it, we will probably still be fighting for it after that. Great. Thank you so much. That was very interesting seeing someone who's so passionate about a topic, even though it was not specifically what she said, I could tell obviously that she was one in favor of it and two that she really cared about the topic, but before we talk about what she said, Issa, do you want to explain what the Green New Deal is exactly? Yeah, so the Green New Deal is a resolution in both the Senate and the House introduced by freshman superstar, super famous Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York in Massachusetts under Ed Markey. It's been introduced in both houses. Basically, it outlines goals for Congress over the next 10 years, as is written in the resolution, to fight climate change as well as other things. It's all under the guise of climate justice, economic justice, social justice, everything that this new class, not the entirety of the class, but a portion of the new class of Congress has won elections on being really progressive. And so it's a non-binding resolution. It doesn't do anything. It's not going to create anything. But according to frequently asked questions document released by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's office, there are five goals that are expanded upon in the resolution. One is net zero greenhouse gas emissions. This is all over the next 10 years, which is kind of crazy. Net zero greenhouse gas emissions. Number one, number two, creating millions of highway jobs and ensuring prosperity and economic security for all. Number three, investing in infrastructure and industry to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century. Number four, clean air and water, climate and community resiliency, healthy food. Number five, promoting justice and equality by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression by frontline vulnerable communities. So you see it goes from climate all the way to themes that are found in the social justice movement. Like preventing oppression. Like, I don't know. This kind of confuses me just because it goes from, hey, let's do something to help stop climate change or whatever. And then it's like, oh, okay, now in the same thing to stop climate change, let's also stop oppression, you know, just because while we're at it. Like, also we talked about this a little bit. It's the thing about a resolution, a non-binding like thing that they're doing, just makes, in my opinion, makes no sense. It's like, okay, Congress, why waste your time just doing something, hey, just because why not? Well, you could use your time to actually vote on a law that would make a difference for the country. I think one thing is people might want them to take a stance and have their views on a subject put out so that individual supporting them or individuals opposing them could have something to say, like, you support this, whether it's good or bad, possibly. But couldn't that just be done like on a personal level instead of the whole entirety of Congress doing it? I agree. There's probably different ways for them to handle it and put more positive movement towards an issue. So if they did want to do more steps towards fixing climate change, if that's something they believe in, I do think that there's a different way to do that than having a resolution that's not going to do anything. I think the resolution could be helpful. I mean, I don't know any specifics on how it would be helpful and to be fair, I don't know a lot about the Green New Deal. But I think that just having a stance of, like, hey, this is a serious issue that we need to address, I think it's important to have, especially when certain members that are heading the United States might have an opinion that is slightly against it. I think when there is a thing that comes out that we're like, yeah, we believe in climate change, we think it's wrong. We think that there should be something done about it that I think that could be helpful, especially when people are like, oh, okay, the United States is doing it and might persuade other countries. I agree. I think opening conversation and having stances is a good way to start anything. I think, sure, it's great to start a conversation with a stance. I think that this is 100% the wrong stance. The Green New Deal is radical as we outlined with the Five of Things. It's physically impossible to get to net zero emissions in 10 years. You see the leading proponent of the bill, Alexander Hazyokorto, saying at some convention that we only have 12 years left. So the lady in our video who was reading the letter said, we can't leave it up to our children's children. No, AOC is saying that we can't leave it up to ourselves in 12 years. So there's a lot of, I mean, she is a neophyte, right? This is all new. But the fact that this has gotten widespread acceptance from the Democratic Party without really setting out to do any of this stuff, to me, it's seen as a political move. But it also shows me the danger in what these guys are talking about because if you're looking at the FAQ, let me just back up and talk about the FAQ because there is some controversy around this. This document, which is right here, was released by the Office of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on their website and to National Public Radio. And people on Twitter had a great day reading through it because throughout the thing they talk about, at one point they say we won't be able to stop cows from farting that much in the next two years. And at one point it talks about guaranteeing prosperity for those unwilling, sorry, unable or unwilling to work. And so the Office of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came out with a variety of reasons as in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez kind of misled us in a tweet saying this was, people are putting out fake versions, which they were, but as jokes following this, she was trying to leave it like, oh, that's fake too.  We didn't mean to put it out. And then finally they were like, oh yeah, we put it out. But it was a mistake and we're going to change this. However, I do think it's important to look at that FAQ because when you look at the dry bill, despite its radicalness, it looks like a bill. So you're not going to understand how bonkers this idea is. And so if you're going to talk about solutions that are moving off of specifically carbon emissions, people have proposed carbon taxes, which that's a controversial proposal in itself. But they're saying, oh no, you can't, the FAQ says, no, you can't simply tax gas and it's not part of the resolution either. You can't just tax gas. You have to subsidize all these alternative markets, which we've seen when power subsidies have been a horrible waste of money for the federal government. Nuclear is not a part of the Green New Deal, despite the fact that nuclear energy is one of the most effective ways to create energy without emissions. And there's this whole talk that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been talking about since her primary against Joe Crowley about FDR and great things being done. And so you really see this as the messaging as sort of like a war, right? A war for the world, not ending in 12 years. The idea that we're in such a crisis is something that goes back to FDR, right? So FDR during World War II, that's when government has most expanded power, right, when people are willing. When you're in a state of war, the country goes together and we're willing to create these massive programs. And I think it's interesting how they're talking about the Eisenhower and the Freeway and FDR and the number of planes built during World War II and the New Deal, which is the name of the resolution as a reference to. But personally I think this is a horrible, horrible idea a radical one that totally, it talks about remodeling every building in the United States. How is the government going to force everybody to remodel their buildings? I think it's just a plot line in the timeline of the Democratic Party getting more and more radical in fighting individual rights and private property basically, right? Because she calls herself a Socialist a Democratic Socialist. But I don't know how you guys feel about this.  What can the buildings be, like, remodeled to that would make it more, like, better for the environment? Right, so like eco-friendly, right? So you're going to have, I don't know, recycling bins. Like solar panels, I'm assuming. Yeah, solar panels, stuff like that. Again, this is not law at all. It's just stuff that's been put out there. I mean, that's not really, like, an actual, like, remodeling, though. Like, just adding a new, I guess, way of getting energy to the building. That's not, like, remodeling the building entirely. Like, hey, we should make this more aerodynamic or whatever. Well, I, like, I haven't read it, but from how it was explained to me is that, like, different aspects of the building will be changed. I kind of just assumed solar panels were an aspect of it, but I think it's also having to do with how, like, energy would be kept in the building. Like, make sure that, like, heat couldn't get out as easily. Just to, like, save energy on that sort of aspect. But I don't think, again, that's definitely a pretty radical idea of forcing every building in the United States. Yeah, I think what the goal of this is really to, I mean, it's not a goal because it's not, like, a real action, but what it is is we're going to basically reorder the entirety of American society, right? Because we're going to take people out of jobs in, I mean, the resolution, the resolution talks about, the FAQ talks about having high speed, the resolution talks about having high speed rail throughout the nation, which, it makes a lot of sense, right, to have high speed rail going through Wyoming. Sorry, sarcasm. It's really not something that works. We see in California, days after this FAQ is released, that even from Bakers, even from Bakers Field to Los Angeles, it's hard to have high speed rail. And so we're going to move people out of these things. We're going to have tons and tons of federal spending. We're going to give them new jobs, remodeling houses, and turning the entire place green. And the idea that this is the crisis of our day, it makes sense if you really believe that, but Democrats have had power in the last 10 years. I mean, since the 1980s, I've been told that the world is ending in 30 years and 20 years. And yet, whenever Democrats have had majorities, they've done nothing, right? In 2010, Ed Markey, who's the sponsor of this in the Senate, did a sort of a cap and trade effort. And that's, a lot of pollsters have attributed that as part of the widespread losses in the midterms. So this is not a politically savvy thing once you get to your general elections. This is pushed by a fringe in the Democratic Party, and it's becoming accepted by the mainstream in that party. But once you win your primary, or once you win a district in New York, it doesn't mean that you're going to be able to win larger swaths of the American public, which you're trying to persuade, right? You're not just trying to stick to your New York 14 bubble. The thing that confuses me about this really is, you mentioned that it's named after FDR's New Deal, which was put a bunch of organizations in place to help in a way control the economy while the Great Depression was happening. But this, I don't think it's right to have it named after that because it's not really doing anything. It's more of just like, hey, there's this issue and let's do something about it, but it's not actually doing anything about it. It's just outlining stuff that needs to be done. A much better idea would probably pick one thing, like as much coal as being used. I don't know the exact numbers or anything, like how much is being used. But monitor how much coal is being used in general, and try to find out a way to, I guess, cut down on the amount of that, and I guess focus on putting laws into that, like one issue at a time, instead of just going, well, the environment's changing. Let's change it all at once without it doing actually anything. Well, I think a couple points on that, right? So the FDR's New Deal, it was a bunch of laws, right? So I think what they're trying to do is they're going to outline this now and then within the next couple of years, within the next couple of terms, implement parts and parts of this. And then on your coal thing, I think the Obama administration really did a lot of that, right with the Clean Power Plan. They put a lot of coal mines out of jobs, coal miners out of jobs. And I think it's not great, we don't see great results on the government, does intrude into the market like this. Coal is already on its way out. It's not necessary for the government to go in and start taking away people's jobs, destroying communities in places like West Virginia, which are heavily reliant, Pennsylvania. I don't think it's necessary for government to get up on this hype. We want an election, so we're going to completely reorder society in places where we've never been to, right? We're going to just completely rearrange everything that happens in West Virginia sitting here from D.C. There's a lot of this sort of technocratic looking from above elitism, hidden in this, I think. Yeah, like when you mentioned like coal is already on its way out or whatever, the government is trying to control it more. That reminds me of like one specific organization in the New Deal, the AAA, the American something, I don't know. I actually know what's called the abbreviated to the AAA, and what it did is the government paid farmers to kind of, hey, don't plant crops. And so there's less crops, people will start paying more for them, so it'll boost the economy. And they were essentially trying to control supply and demand. And eventually that was like considered the biggest failure of the New Deal. Like, hey, this didn't work at all. It paid a bunch of people to not do anything, essentially. And it essentially rewarded people for not doing anything. And like controlling supply and demand, which was not the best idea. And that was one of the organizations that did fail. Yeah, I think that's definitely some of the things in the Green New Deal, right? So the FAQ asked about cap and trade, which is what Ed Markey pushed. It's somewhat market-based. It's somewhat supply and demand-based. And the resolution says, no, we're not going to do cap and trade because that assumes that the market, when we talk about the market, we're really talking about the people are going to do this by themselves. We need state, the resolution is basically the same. We need state interference into basically what people do with their lives to control this huge crisis, which I think is climate change is an issue. It's caused significantly by humans. But there's definitely, it's definitely being overblown by people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey, who I just want to plug here. Ed Markey, despite his, he's known for climate change and then for being an anti-roller coaster advocate. Let's just take everything he says with a grain of salt. Well, thank you all for being on the show with me today. I think we talked a lot of interesting things about the New Deal. I know it'll be interesting to see how the New Deal changes or how, or excuse me, the Green New Deal. How it, if it has any effect, if it passes. What's going to happen? So I'll keep my eyes out and maybe we'll have another episode on this. But tune in next time to watch another exciting episode of Teens on Topic.


Welcome to the Tick Mill Update, I'm Kiana Daniela, the founder of the Investiva Movement. On Monday, we found out that the U.S. manufacturing activity rebounded in January. China's central bank took its first concrete steps to cushion the economy by cutting rates and injecting liquidity as the markets take a hit by coronavirus. And as a result, oil prices fell to the lowest in more than a year. We also found out that the Eurozone manufacturing sector contracted but at the lowest rate since April 2019 and that Australian jobs as increased by 3.8% in January 2020 following a 5.7% fall in December 2019. On Tuesday, we'll be getting the new Zealand's employment data and the Reserve Bank of Australia's government low gives a speech in Sydney, which is why today I'm going to look at the Aussie dollar pair, which is struggling to break below the key support level of 0.6689. The last time the pair saw prices below this level was March of 2009 after the extreme sell-off during the 2008 market crash. RBA's governor speech could finally release the signals to either push for a break below this level or bounce back off in a brand new uptrend. That being said, trading this risk event could be very risky as we can only guess which direction the pair can end up going. Very short-term traders with high risk tolerance could try to catch a few pips right after the risk event during the volatility, but if you're a long-term trader, I'd stay off the risk event and wait for the market to set a concrete direction. With that being said, do you think the recent weakness in the Aussie has already been priced in the price and what traders will take profit on a buy, the rumors sell, the news reaction, do you think? Head over to the comment section and let me know. Of course, trading the financial markets involves a risk of loss and you should only trade the money that you can afford to lose. If you like this video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the Tick-Mill YouTube channel. I'll get back to you with more updates tomorrow.