[Axel van Trotsenburg] Good afternoon, everybody. Good morning and good evening. It's a pleasure to have you here and welcome to a session that is under the title, “From Analysis to Impact: Connecting Climate and Development in Over 40 Countries”. The background of it is that the World Bank is not about only climate financing, but it's also about good analytics. We feel we need to have good analytics to make an impact. We have started a whole series of country climate and development reports that is trying to evaluate policy options for governments, particularly as they go having short-term challenges, as well as to see how that path to net zero by 2050 is evolving and what challenges the country may face. We started that series last year. Last year in Egypt, we presented a first summary report. We have now a second synthesis report that we will present in a moment. But before we do that, let me introduce also the panelists who have kindly agreed to join me here. First on video is Mr. Nicolas Kazadi, the Minister of Finance of the Democratic Republic of Congo. [speaking foreign language] Then we have João Paulo de Resende, he's the Special Advisor for Climate Change Economics in the Ministry of Finance of Brazil. As you know, Brazil has assumed the G20 presidency, so welcome. Then we have Jennifer Sara, she's our Director for Climate Finance. She has been working day and night to get ready for this, but it is very good that she can also share a little bit some of the reflections on the CCDRs. Before I turn questions to the three panelists, let me invite Stéphane Hallegatte. He's our guru or senior advisor, but he's actually the guru of the CCDRs. He has been overseeing all this work from a qualitative point of view and has given the intellectual guidance. Stéphane, the floor is yours.
[Stéphane Hallegatte] Thank you very much, Axel, and it's really a great pleasure to be with you today to discuss our second country climate and development report summary. This year, the topic has been development, climate and nature in crisis. This year, our reports will be based on 42 economies covered by our CCDRs. It's about twice as many as we had last year. Let me start briefly with a little bit of our progress covering low and middle-income countries. [CCDRs now cover 42 economies] We started a year ago with country climate and development reports. Now we have reports covering more than half of the population in low and middle-income countries. We have about three quarters of the GDP of those countries. In terms of emissions, we cover two-thirds, but also two-thirds of the disaster losses of the last 20 years. The novelty in this second wave of CCDRs is that we now cover 56% of tropical forests. We had only 10% last year, so we have a big change here. What I will show you today are the main findings of a global report which is trying to pull together the findings of all of those CCDRs. I want to say it's not your average global report. This is based on individual CCDRs with individual teams, individual quality control, individual engagements in each of the countries. What we're doing is to pull all of that together in this global piece. I'll show you five main messages and I know you're never supposed to have more than three, but there is so much value and so much content and granularity in those reports we ended up with five. Bear with me. I will go very briefly through those five points. [On screen text] Message 1 Development and resilience are mutually reinforcing: development contributes to resilience, and resilience is crucial for safeguarding development gains from increasingly frequent crises. But countries are not capturing readily available opportunities to adapt to climate change and improve people's lives, health, and safety by building more resilient economies.
[Stéphane Hallegatte] The first one is the synergy we see between development and resilience. We need development. We need poverty reduction to make people resilient. You cannot be resilient if you're living in extreme poverty and you don't have access to basic services. But at the same time, we need resilience to safeguard development gains and not to just walk them back every time we have a crisis. What we find in CCDRs is that countries have readily available opportunities to improve people's lives, health, safety with interventions that boost adaptation and resilience. [On screen text] Adaptation offers great investment opportunities, but it alone cannot completely prevent climate impacts. Private sector investments are insufficient, in part because of the lack of supportive legal framework and financial solutions. Even the most efficient adaptation cannot replace global emission reductions, especially in high-income countries and other big emitters.
[Stéphane Hallegatte] Just to illustrate this point about those investment opportunities in adaptation and resilience, here you see economic impacts in a few of the CCDR countries with current policies and with our recommendation in terms of adaptation and resilience. Basically, you can gain between two and eight percentage points of GDP thanks to those interventions. It's a really good investment. What we find is that the private sector is not investing enough and that's largely because of a lack of supportive legal framework and the right financing tools, but the private sector could play a much bigger role here. We also find that even if you assume perfect adaptation, if you do everything right, you cannot cancel all impacts of climate change, which means adaptation is important. It cannot replace a reduction in global emissions, which, of course, have to start with high-income countries and the biggest emitters. [On screen text] Message 2 Low-emission development can foster similar — or even faster — economic growth and poverty reduction as current development pathways. This requires a supportive enabling environment and macroeconomic context, well-designed policies, management of negative impacts in some sectors, communities, and regions, and stronger financial and technical support from high-income countries.
[Stéphane Hallegatte] Speaking about low carbon developments, we're looking at low-emission scenarios in all of the countries, and we find that we can have this low carbon development with the same or even faster economic growth But that depends on many conditions. You need the right enabling environment. You need the policies to be well designed. You need to take care of the losers in the transition and you need more support, finance, and technologies from high-income countries. [On screen text] Low-emission scenarios can reduce GHG emissions by 73% by 2050 with similar — or even faster — economic growth than current pathways. Higher impacts on consumption makes it imperative to manage negative impacts in some sectors, communities, and regions. All CCDRs discuss options to do so, such as labor or reskilling policies, strengthened social protection systems, or regional transition roadmaps.
[Stéphane Hallegatte] Again, just as an illustration of this point, here you see the impact of moving to low carbon development in our CCDRs and you see for all income levels, from low income to high income, we have our first CCDR in high-income countries in Romania this year. You see that in most countries what we have is a faster GDP growth in those scenarios. That's because of all of the synergies we find with cheap renewable energy, energy efficiency, for instance, clean cooking and its impact on health. A lot of those synergies together means that we can do more growth with less carbon. You see also that for consumption, things are a little bit more balanced. We have some places where we have a loss in consumption and it reminds us that we need to take care of the impact, especially on the poorest, and the reports go into the toolbox to do that. It can be labor policy, it can be social protection, it can be transition roadmaps, but this is an important part of the picture. [On screen text] Message 3 The private sector has a key role to play in meeting investment needs for resilient low-emission development. It can also deliver innovation, faster technology adoption, and new business models. To incentivize private sector involvement, countries will need to develop an appropriate legal and institutional framework and provide adequate concession resources to mitigate credit, foreign exchange, or market risks when it is needed.
[Stéphane Hallegatte] Our third message is completely focused on the role of the private sector. The private sector has a key role to play to meet investment needs in resilience and low carbon development, but it's not only a question of private capital. It's also bringing innovation, technologies, inventing new business models we need to be more efficient. That again, requires policies, a change in the institutional and legal framework. But it can also be supported by concessional finance, especially to mitigate some of the risks. We're talking about credit risks, foreign exchange risks, or market risks. When it's needed, concessional finance can help the private sector step in. [On screen text] How much more investment is needed for resilience and low-emission development? These investments would deliver major development gains above and beyond resilience building and lower emissions.
[Stéphane Hallegatte] This is an estimate from our CCDRs of how much investment you need to make development more resilient and low carbon. We have more countries than last year, but the key message is the same. For upper, middle-income countries, it's a manageable increase, like 1%, 2% of their GDP. If you go toward lower-income countries, the challenge becomes much more complicated and those countries will need more help. What we see also is that those investments do not only bring more resilience and less carbon, they also bring better developments, better health, better quality of life. [On screen text] The private sector has a key role to play in meeting investment needs for resilient low-emission development
[Stéphane Hallegatte] Our reports are looking at the role of the private sector to meet those needs. What you see here is from sectors going from industry at the top to water at the bottom, how much CCDR assess can we have the private sector invest and meet those investment needs? In some sectors, like industry it’s mostly private, of course. In some sectors, you can see water, it's mostly public. But what you see also is in many sectors, it really depends on the country. If you look at CCDRs themselves, as I'm sure you will do, you'll see that it's very different the recommendations in different countries because countries start with very different places. [On screen text] Message 4 The CCDRs identify opportunities for countries to strengthen their legal, institutional, and regulatory framework and ensure they spend existing resources better, including by repurposing energy, water, and agriculture subsidies, and through trade policy reforms. This would require improved governance, better spending efficiency, and proper considerations of political economy barriers.
[Stéphane Hallegatte] My fourth message is on spending better because we're talking quite a lot about how much more investment we need, but our CCDRs also identified opportunities to spend better the resources we have already. That's a really important part of the discussion. Of course, we discussed about repurposing subsidies in energy, water, or agriculture so that they can achieve the same development and social economic gains, but in a more efficient way. More efficient for public finance, more efficient for the environment. We also talk about trade policy reforms and we flag the obstacles which are largely political economy obstacles. [On screen text] CCDRs identify many opportunities to spend existing resources better. This includes the repurposing of energy, water, and agriculture subsidies and trade policy reforms.
[Stéphane Hallegatte] Just to illustrate this point, we looked at all of the recommendations in CCDRs and we classified them between the ones that require more spending and the ones about spending better. You can see here for countries at all income level again, about half of our recommendations do not require more resources. They require a better use of these resources and it's a really important point. [On screen text] Message 5 To achieve global climate change and development objectives, addressing forest loss, boosting carbon sequestration, and working with nature are vital. Action on land use in five CODR countries alone could reduce annual GHG emissions by 2.7 GtCO2e by 2050, representing almost 6% of today's global emissions. But there are economic, distributional, and political challenges to achieving this, and success requires securing international payments for the ecosystem services forests provide globally.
[Stéphane Hallegatte] Finally, my last message I told you at the beginning that now we cover more than half of tropical forest in the world. We identify a lot of opportunities linked to land use and forestry. In just five CCDR countries those policies could reduce emissions by three gigatons of CO2 per year. It's about 6% of the way to net zero. But we also identified the challenges and challenges at the domestic level, but also, the need to secure a way to get international payments for the services that those forests bring to the population at the global level. [On screen text] Low-emission scenarios increase forested land by 65 million hectares by 2050. Success requires more than investments: a whole-of-economy approach covering land use management, agriculture intensification, job creation, etc.
[Stéphane Hallegatte] Just to give you a sense of what we're looking at on the left, you see with current policies, what we expect to see in terms of forest area in the world, in those CCDRs, we're talking about a loss by 50 million hectares. On the right, you see those low-emission scenarios with instead a gain by 7 million hectares. It's more than 60-million-hectare difference. That would, in total, over the whole period, we're talking about 60 gigaton of CO2 of emissions that could be avoided just in those countries. But what CCDR flagged is, it's not only something that will be achieved with forestry policies. It's much more of a whole of economy challenge. If you want to ensure people have alternative jobs, food security, and a project for the development, you need also to look at agriculture, you need to look at services, you need to look at a full development plan and not only at the forestry sector. I'll stop here. It's a lot of content, but I'm really looking forward to the discussion with our panel. Thanks again for your attention. [Audience applauds]
[Axel van Trotsenburg] Thank you, Stéphane. What the study has in common with this session is that time is not on our side. For the panelists, what I will suggest that your answers are limited to about three minutes so that we can go to two rounds. We cannot cover everything. Let me first go to Kinshasa, to Mr. Kazadi and ask him about how useful these CCDRs have been for your country, identifying the problems, but also helping this internal discussion to look for policy options to improve climate policies in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Over to you.
[Nicolas Kazadi] Thank you, Axel, and thank you for the invitation to join this important group. Yes, the CCDRs are very relevant for us from many reasons. We have launched, last month in Kinshasa and clearly it is aligned with our vision, supported by our national adaptation strategy. We call DRC a very important country when it is related to climate challenges, because for me, we will consider that there is no difference between development challenges and climate challenges, especially for countries like DRC with what it represents in terms of forest, in terms of clean energy potential and in terms of strategic minerals. For all these, it is clear that we have to work effectively. This CCDR is bringing us very clear views on options and it comes at a very good time because we are starting a new development cycle, starting next month, next year in January. This will completely impact our new development plan for the next five years. What we get is findings on the CCDR. It is first that we cannot afford inaction because inaction for our country will affect our growth and we may lose the 4% to 10% of domestic growth product by 2050. If we remain in inaction, we may put an additional 16 million people within poverty. Clearly, we need to work. As you said, we need to work fast. Again, we consider our country like a solution country. At the time, we don't have any time to waste on forest protection and also on energy. We have a big divide on energy supply. All these are affecting forests, are affecting development. We have a big divide on all that is in regard to infrastructure. That means that, clearly, we need a big push in investment. We already know that this investment can not only come from the public sector, even if we are making tremendous effort these years. We need to speed up our reform agenda to have a better business environment to attract good investors. Not the potential projects that are missing, it's only a matter of legal support and reforms that can attract good investors to speed it up. What I can say is that the time for us is to solidate what we have talked about in recent years to deepen our reforms and to accelerate reforms to produce growth. This growth should rely on both public and private investment. All these elements, we find them in the CCDR and especially on energy, we have the biggest potential for clean energy in Africa. With Inga development for example, now is the time to go into action. We don't have any reason internally or at the world level to delay again such a project, which is a big contribution to the protection of forest, the development of Africa on a basis that is climate-friendly.
[Axel van Trotsenburg] Thank you very much. I think we get your message of urgency, but also of huge investment needs, but also, huge opportunities, as you just mentioned, for example, that the Inga project could mean for your country. Let me now turn to João and ask you a little bit about how you see the value of the CCDRs in the case of Brazil.
[João Paulo de Resende] Okay, thank you, Axel. Thank you for having me here, for the invitation. As of the very beginning of the current administration of the Brazilian government, Mr. Fernando Haddad, who is the Minister of Finance, asked a few of his advisors to draft up a plan to tackle climate change associated with development, with precisely the wording that Stéphane used here, which is a whole of economy approach. My colleagues had been working on this, I came in a little later, since the very beginning, drafting up a plan. By May or June, I was already part of the team. I was introduced to country director, Mr. Zutt by Miss [unintelligible] here, at Belém, where COP30 is going to be. And for a German, he started talking about this development plan.
[Axel van Trotsenburg] He’s Dutch.
[João Paulo de Resende] His Dutch, not German. My fault. It's very similar. It's just like Brazilians and Argentinians for you guys. Very different, by the way. Very different. So, Mr. Zutt mentioned, “Well, you don't need a plan because it's all in there.” Kind of like joking. I didn't believe him because I wasn't aware that the report had come out already May. This was June or July, I think. I went there and took a look and I was impressed. I was impressed because I would say 80% of what we were doing through a completely independent route was exactly what was at the CCDR. Of course, there's a little bit more there, which I believe has to do with the way we see how development in Brazil should go on. But all the major targets and the most pressing issues were very well, precisely reflected at the CCDR. You don't need it. It's unnecessary. Not exactly, because there's two important things here. The first one... Actually, there's three, I think. The first one is there is a lot of quantification that we hadn't done yet and we're still doing, and it's in there. That was helpful. You can see by Stéphane’s presentation how deep the analysis is. Second, it gave us a reassuring feeling that we were on the right path. That was important because sometimes you're doing these things and you think you're alone, thinking, is this really something workable? Am I being foolish here to try this? And then you see that reflected in the world [no signal, cuts off] document. That gives us a lot of reassurance and also reassurance, and then that's the third aspect, to the public speech to the country, because, again, this is not a crazy idea. This is something that can be done. This is something that needs to be done. It has the expertise. It has the support of such a renowned institution like the World Bank. It's easier to sell the plan having that support from the World Bank. This is the story.
[Axel van Trotsenburg] It’s good to know. What you add to what I just mentioned in the case of Congo is maybe the validation value. What also is important is that maybe some of the comparative and then also quantification parts that are important. Let me now turn to Jennifer. Now, you have seen 38 CCDRs being published for 42 countries. When you look a little bit around them and you get feedback, what are some of the three, four points that you are hearing often in the dialog? What do you think was valued and where do you see maybe some new challenges?
[Jennifer J. Sara] Thank you. That's a great question and very much just building on the two previous speakers. The appreciation for the deep analysis and the quantification and that's very, very important. But also, that the results are showing that you can deliver climate and development together. I think that's very, very important. The additional value of the World Bank, having done 38 countries, 38 CCDRs in 42 countries, is that's the global knowledge exchange. We can look at what's working one country, what we've learned from one country where we might have high emissions trajectory and a country with low emissions trajectory and trends with countries with high forestation levels. How do you share your lessons across big countries and small countries? Is that not working? Okay, thanks. That's the important thing, the global knowledge. How do you take the global knowledge of the deep analytics? But most importantly, I think is translating it back into the country. These are [no signal, cuts off] Bank documents that are prepared with the country, but then how the country can internalize them. As you mentioned that, it's really how do you incorporate them into your long-term strategies, into your NDC's long-term strategies, and translate and operationalize the CCDRs? Through the CCDRs, bring in other stakeholders in the country, the private sector, the public sector, the community groups, so that there is an all economy and all society approach as you prepare your climate and development pathways. That's very, very important to bring the global knowledge, but how do you operationalize it in the country? Then from there, what are the most important policy reforms that you could take and what are the most impactful investments? That's another area we're just sharing across countries that really you can leapfrog over looking at successful policy actions that work in one country and be able to implement them in another country. For example, in Uzbekistan, after the CCDR, one of the actions the government took was to do major policy reform on gas subsidies, so repurposing gas subsidies. There are different examples of ways that you could take a policy lesson from one country to another. You could take operators... Again, what investment programs work the best and how do you crowd in and leverage different forms of investment to achieve the biggest impact from the CCDR?
[Axel van Trotsenburg] Thank you. Let me now go to a second round. As you heard from Stéphane in his presentation, this second round has a lot more on forestry. Maybe last year we didn't have so many countries covered with important forest challenges. This time around it's much more comprehensive. I would like to turn back to Kinshasa and as the minister, how he sees there the opportunities and also the challenges for the forestry in your country?
[Nicolas Kazadi] Yes, sure. Excellent. Forests in DRC are a very good blessing for the country and also an opportunity for our development and the climate challenges. Our forest contains around 35 gigatons of CO2 accumulated and stored. Our country is among the few countries that are net carbon sink, removing an estimated 822 megatons of CO2 per year. It means that this shows how important it is to bring a good development, a sustainable development to the population if we want to keep the growth for it as an asset not only for the country, but for the world. This is the main challenge. Currently, we consider that our forest has a value estimated to 6.45 trillion US dollars. If that is the case, it means that if you want to keep that asset for the world, for the sake of the world, we need to invest in that country. It is first our responsibility, but it is the world’s responsibility since we consider it as a world’s asset. That is the point. On that we can build the best strategy to do it. What we see so far is that we are not treating it as we should. For example, the last initiative that we signed at the COP26, I think, we raised 500 million dollars two years ago, and so far, we have been able to spend only 30 million US dollars out of that. It means that we have some problem. As we said, enough inaction will kill us. Not only the development in the DRC, but it will impact the world on our climate challenges. That is the main message that I can say. The good news is that we have started moving in the right direction with the World Bank and some other key partners. The funds of the ODA are growing. Reforms internally are moving in a good direction. We need to go a bit faster, but we can make it. This country can absorb billions of dollars. It has a particularity, the debt ratio is very low, under 20%. We have a lot of things to do.
[Axel van Trotsenburg] Thank you very much. Let me turn to João. Now with the government of President Lula, there are a lot of renewed focus on the forestry sector. How do you see some of the challenges, but also the opportunities?
[João Paulo de Resende] Yes, we have been remarkably able in a very short amount of time to reduce deforestation as this number has been running around. They change every month because you measure every month. But the whole marked number that we're using is a reduction of 50% in deforestation in this year compared to the same period of last year, around 50%. I'm emphasizing this because to point out that it's possible to be done, right? As an opportunity, it's perhaps, for what I've seen so far, at least…
[Axel van Trotsenburg] Can you just say how that was done?
[João Paulo de Resende] Mostly by command-and-control mechanisms. We still have not been able to implement large scale incentives, payouts for people to preserve. We're working on that both nationally and internationally because we believe, and this was one of the other points that I wanted to make, which is forest extending, they pay out a service to the whole community, not just to the country that holds that forest because the climate is interconnected and many countries would be affected if, for example, the Amazon rainforest came down, completely down. That's something that we've been trying to work with the international community. There's going to be briefly a session just in the next hour in the Brazil Pavilion regarding to this Minister Marina Silva, who is our Minister of the Environment, will be announcing something along those lines. That's an opportunity. It's also an opportunity because, as I was going to say, for what I've been able to measure, the cheapest way to withhold carbon is by reducing deforestation, at least in Brazil. It's a lot cheaper than any energy alternative. It's a lot cheaper than any agricultural change of better practices and environmentally friendly practice. It's cheaper that way, but it's also challenging because, I don't know if many of you know, but it's large forest regions like the Amazon, and I'm sure like the Congo region and the DRC are somewhat of a Wild West in terms of property and titles and what belongs to whom and who has a right, for example, to be paid to preserve. This is the major challenge. We'll need certainly satellite imaging, artificial intelligence, all kinds of technology that we can use, and also a lot of human effort to... This is the basics of any policy that you do, any regulation and any attempts to keep the forest standing. You have to find out who is responsible for certain parts of it. That's perhaps the greatest challenge, I think.
[Axel van Trotsenburg] Thank you. Let me turn to Jennifer, and again, on the forestry, maybe what are we doing? Are we doing a little bit also on carbon credits? Maybe just say a word or two on that.
[Jennifer J. Sara] Yeah. On forestry, that is really important. That's the question, how do you keep forest standing? I think in both these countries, it's a really, really important issue. What are the incentives you could provide to communities to also to conserve the forests? We've been doing just before earlier this morning, we actually announced all the work that we've been doing on high integrity carbon markets in the forestry sector. The World Bank has been working on this for more than 20 years. We were finally coming to in [no signal, cuts off] 15 countries where there are credits for countries themselves, supporting them really to put in place these high integrity credits. What does that mean? Just that you mentioned the importance of all the environmental standards, the uniqueness, the permanence of the credits, how do you measure them, how do they [no signal, cuts off] accredited? But really importantly, the social standards. You mentioned property rights, which is one of the biggest challenges, but also looking at the indigenous populations who live in these forests, how will they also be able to benefit communities, the benefit sharing plans? That is actually very important. Axel, what the Bank has been doing for many, many years were small projects around the world. We now have 15 countries where we've come to scale, where countries then can choose where they do generate these credits. Do they actually want to use the credits for their own NDCs or do they also want to participate in the carbon markets, either Article Six or the voluntary markets? That's something the World Bank is supporting countries to make to help them if they were to choose to sell them, what's the best way that they could sell them? The value of very high integrity credits in the forestry sector is something that is so incredibly important, especially for these two countries. How do you maintain that integrity? How do you go to scale? Then how do you make sure you compensate the communities and the beneficiaries? Then again, how does it become part of the global solutions? Then who's going to pay for these? Is it through carbon credits? Is it through other types of nature-based instruments?
[João Paulo de Resende] Maybe a little of all of them, right?
[Jennifer J. Sara] Or they'll try everything together. But the integrity, Axel, is the most important part of the whole equation.
[Axel van Trotsenburg] Thank you. We are running out of time. But one thing just to note, this was a general session to get started on the CCDR discussions. We will have discussion of individual countries in the next couple of days. Please, follow the agenda and then you can attend that. Now, I will turn to all of them and ask for one sentence only, what they expect. We started yesterday with a bang, I would say, and a very positive that the “Loss and Damage” fund was launched. The Bank will provide the support in the creation of this financial intermediary fund. I think that is a good progress as of the start, but I just wanted to turn back to all of you and starting in Kinshasa, what would be your hope of the outcome of this COP28? Minister Kazadi, over to you.
[Nicolas Kazadi] Thank you. The most important thing is to raise awareness, if needed, on the urgency to invest in DRC, not only to help the Congolese people, but to help the entire world. As I mentioned, for the CCDR itself, this makes that it requires 10 billion US dollars by 2035 of investment. A figure that we can compare with our 64 billion from the [unintelligible]. It means that, as we repeatedly say, that it is very urgent to invest on a public basis and on a private basis. On a private basis, the potential for credit carbon is huge. But we need to invest in the way we've managed to forest to get the best value of our credit carbon. That is the main problem, it’s huge. We have made some small progress in the recent few years, but we need to accelerate. Thank you.
[Axel van Trotsenburg] Thank you very much. João.
[João Paulo de Resende] I would say that it's important to keep in mind that forest preservation in low-income countries represent an opportunity cost. There are several economic activities that could be developed in those areas that will not be developed. Then people that live in those communities and in those regions will not have job opportunities and the ability to raise their income. It's an international problem and needs to be dealt internationally with the help of the international community. You cannot expect the country by itself to solve this problem related to forests, and I'll leave this as my only message.
[Axel van Trotsenburg] Thank you. Jennifer.
[Jennifer J. Sara] This is COP. We came in a couple of weeks ago with a very dismal stock take, but then started like you said yesterday, that the “Loss and Damage” fund will become operationalized. That's good news. I think what the COP what we really want to do is how do we come together to stay to the 1.5, stay to the Paris Agreement, and we also take into account all the adaptation and the needs, especially the most vulnerable. For us, it really is, let's not forget COP is about negotiations, countries are negotiating, and we want to stay within the 1.5 degrees.
[Axel van Trotsenburg] Thank you very much. I think also what the CCDRs want to show is, yes, there is a huge problem, but we can deal with it. You just mentioned there are opportunities and I think what is necessary that this type of meeting also rally the support that we can actually do it, and that we also need to have the political willingness to organize the necessary resources for the investments that need to be done and hopefully we can make some progress. Let me express my appreciation to Mr. Kazadi for having taken the time in Kinshasa, but also, João for joining, also Jennifer and all of you, thanks for listening, but also join us in the country events where we discuss them more in detail and then keep on pushing on the climate front. Thank you very much.
[Nicolas Kazadi] Thank you. [Audience applauds]
