Podcasts about united nations development program

Timothy Massad is currently a Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown Law School and a consultant on financial regulatory and fintech issues. Massad served as Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 2014-2017. Under his leadership, the agency implemented the Dodd Frank reforms of the over-the-counter swaps market and harmonized many aspects of cross-border regulation, including reaching a landmark agreement with the European Union on clearinghouse oversight. The agency also declared virtual currencies to be commodities, introduced reforms to address automated trading and strengthened cybersecurity protections. Previously, Mr. Massad served as the Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In that capacity, he oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the principal U.S. governmental response to the 2008 financial crisis. Massad was a partner in the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, LLP. His practice included corporate finance, derivatives and advising boards of directors. Massad was also one of a small group of lawyers who drafted the original ISDA standard agreements for swaps.Howell Jackson is the James S. Reid, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. His research interests include financial regulation, consumer financial protection, securities regulation, and federal budget policy. He has served as a consultant to the United States Treasury Department, the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. He frequently consults with government agencies and congressional committees on issues related to financial regulation. From 2023 to 2024, he was a Senior Adviser to the National Economic Council.   Since 2005, Professor Jackson has been a trustee of College Retirement Equities Fund (CREF).  He has also served as a director of Commonwealth, a non-profit dedicated to strengthening financial opportunities for low and moderate-income consumers. At Harvard University, Professor Jackson has served as Senior Adviser to the President and Acting Dean of Harvard Law School. Before joining the Harvard Law School faculty in 1989, Professor Jackson was a law clerk for Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall and practiced law in Washington, D.C. Professor Jackson received his J.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Harvard University in 1982 and a B.A. from Brown University in 1976.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an BA in political science from UCLA and a master's in journalism from Columbia University.Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina.Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King. Web design and social media promotion support is provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O'Neill .  

Send us a textProf. Dr. Islam Abou El-Magd, Ph.D. is the President of the National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences, Egypt ( https://www.narss.sci.eg/professor/47 ), which focuses on applied research using earth observation and geo-informatics in environmental-related issuesProf. Abou El-Magd is also Counsellor for the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research for Space Technology and African Affairs ( https://mohesr.gov.eg/en-us/Pages/home.aspx ), which is responsible for all related education, science and technology in Egypt with Africa either on bi-lateral, multi-lateral and AUC agreements. Prof. Abou El-Magd has been involved in developing many international, regional and national Geographic Information System (GIS) projects in different disciplines. He was a GIS consultant for the Centre of Environment and Development for Arab Region and Europe (CEDARE), Arab League. Prof. Abou El-Magd spent five years of his career in the UK as a GIS Program Coordinator for the University of Southampton and Gifford Excellence. He has been selected as an international consultant for a short-term consultancy to some of the UN Programs, including the Food and Agriculture Organization in Saudi Arabia, the World Health Organization in Sudan, and the United Nations Development Program in Kuwait.Prof. Abou El-Magd is also general secretary of the space council of Egypt, which is responsible for setting up the policy and strategy of space and earth observation applications in Egypt. He represents Egypt as a focal point in some European-African space initiatives and partnerships such as Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES). He was also a co-chair of the Implementation Plan Working Group – Group on Earth Observation that developed the ten-year implementation plan for GEO (2016-2025). Moreover, He is also an acting member of the African Space policy and Strategy by the Space Working Group that developed the African Space policy and strategy. Finally, he is the Vice-President of the African Association of Remote Sensing and the Environment, the largest remote sensing and geo-informatics association and network in Africa.Prof. Abou El-Magd chaired the high-level national committee to strategize and develop the National Space Program, which the Egyptian Space Agency ( https://www.egsa.gov.eg/ ) currently implements. He was also appointed for a short period as the Vice Executive President of the Egyptian Space Agency before being appointed president of the National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences, which was the cradle of the Egyptian Space Program.Prof. Abou El-Magd has an MSc, University of El-Mansoura, Egypt and Ph.D., School of Civil Engineering and The Environment, University of Southampton, UK. #ProfDrIslamAbouElMagd  #RemoteSensing #SpaceSciences #Egypt #GeographicInformationSystems #SatelliteImagery #DisasterMitigation #SandDuneMovements #AeolianProcess #Dengue #MedicalEntomology #AquaticBiology #Fisheries #AedesAegypti #GreenhouseGases #GeothermalEnergy #FishingZoneDetection #Sardinella #Geosciences #GoldExploration #ArchaeologicalSites #SandStorms #Sinai #RedSea #STEM #Innovation #Science #Technology #Research #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities #IraPastor #Podcast #Podcaster #Podcasting #ViralPodcastSupport the show

How does the weather influence your daily decisions, from your morning routine to your mood? Randi Stipes, CMO of The Weather Company, understands the profound impact of weather on consumer behavior—and how to harness it for deeper connection and trust with their customers. In this episode, we explore how The Weather Company collects and leverages consumer insights to enhance user experience, inform marketing strategies, and shape content creation. From data-driven storytelling to innovative brand collaborations, Randi shares how her team turns weather-driven moments into meaningful connections. Full Episode Details  Randi joins host Zontee Hou on this episode of Social Pros to discuss how The Weather Channel is using weather data to drive trust with their audience and customers. She explains how weather is the "ultimate contextual accelerant", influencing consumer behavior in unexpected ways (like how a temperature drop in the Ohio Valley can actually boost ice cream sales!) Randi also shares insights on why B2B businesses need a weather strategy, how The Weather Company is working with content creators to showcase real-life weather impacts, and the brand's partnership with the United Nations on the WeatherKids campaign, a global initiative to inspire climate action through future forecasts. She also highlights the growing role of social in driving brand authenticity and why every marketer should nurture a strong relationship with their CFO to align strategies and impact -- and gives one of the best answers yet to our "If you could have a video call with any living person, who would it be?" question with a heartwarming story you won't want to miss! In This Episode: 2:16 - The Weather Company's new brand platform, and the process of rolling it out to achieve their business goals 5:15 - How the brand works with content creators, and how they fit into The Weather Company's ecosystem 7:52 - The different audiences the brand is targeting with their content creator approach 10:38 - How The Weather Channel has changed over the course of its history,  and how Randi is preparing her team for the coming evolution of the digital landscape  13:48 -  How the brand is thinking about that personalization to give their audience a better expereince 15:52 - Important points for all marketers to keep in mind when building towards registration and ensuring customers see the brand as an ongoing partner in their lives  19:37 - Things that will be really valuable for The Weather Company and all marketers to think about when collecting information about how customers behave so that a better story can be told to them  23:14 - How to think about insights that serve  B2B partners, and  why every B2B business needs a weather strategy  28:4 - WeatherKids, a joint program with the United Nations Development Program and the World Meteorological Organization.  31:38 - Who Randi would most want a video call with, and the wonderful story explaining why 36:02 - Randi's advice for aspiring social pros Resources  Download The Weather Channel app Follow The Weather Channel on TikTok Follow The Weather Channel on Instagram Visit The Weather Company website Visit The Weather Channel website Visit SocialPros.com for more insights from your favorite social media marketers.

How do we keep climate action alive in a fracturing world? “Today we live in an age where we actually have the solutions– technologically, economically, financially speaking– but what we are not doing is acting on them,” Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Development Program tells Akshat Rathi. In a conversation recorded at COP29, Steiner talked about how some countries– including Uruguay, India, Kenya, China, and Bhutan– are moving forward with innovative climate solutions even when international financing isn’t readily available. He also called on the developed world to find better ways to fund sustainable development. Explore further: Past episode with climate finance expert Avinash Persaud about getting money to the places that need it Past episode with Achim Steiner about the role of the UN Development Program Past episode with science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson about the role of the United Nations Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Sharon Chen and Jessica Beck. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Marianna Poyares is a Fritz Fellow at Georgetown's Center on Privacy and Technology. She is a critical theorist working on the ethics of new technologies of migration and border enforcement. Trained as a philosopher and with a background in human rights policy and advocacy, Marianna has worked, among others, with the Brazilian National Truth Commission, the United Nations Development Program, the International Rescue Committee, and the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility. She has taught at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, The New School, and CUNY. She holds an M.A. in Philosophy and in International Relations, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy.Brazil is going through challenging times. There's never been a more important moment to understand Brazil's politics, society, and culture. To go beyond the headlines, and to ask questions that aren't easy to answer. 'Brazil Unfiltered,' does just that. This podcast is hosted by James N. Green, Professor of Brazilian History and Culture at Brown University and the National Co-Coordinator of the U.S. Network for Democracy in Brazil. Brazil Unfiltered is part of the Democracy Observatory, supported by the Washington Brazil Office. This podcast is edited and produced by Camilo Rocha in São Paulo.https://www.braziloffice.org/en/observatory#activities

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female elected head of state in an African nation and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate joins Mike Shanley to discuss the role of aid donors, localization, and women and development. This episode was recorded live at the Society for International Development-US Annual Dinner on 13 November 2024.   BIOGRAPHY: Internationally known as Africa's “Iron Lady,” President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is a leading promoter of peace, justice and democratic rule. She grew up in the Liberian capital of Monrovia, where she married and had four sons. President Johnson Sirleaf later moved to the United States where she earned an accounting degree from the Madison College of Business and a Masters Degree in Public Administration from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. In her efforts to bring justice to her people in Liberia, she has spent more than a year in jail at the hands of the military dictatorship of General Samuel Doe and had her life threatened by former President Charles Taylor. She campaigned relentlessly for Taylor's removal from office and played an active and supportive role in the Transitional Government of Liberia as the country prepared for elections in October of 2005. President Johnson Sirleaf was a presidential candidate in the 1997 Liberia general election where she finished second in the field of 13. Before that, she served for five years as Assistant Administrator and Director of the Regional Bureau for Africa of the United Nations Development Program as Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and was the first woman to lead the United Nations Development Project for Africa. She served as the Chairperson of the Governance Reform Commission of the National Transitional Government of Liberia until she resigned in March 2004 to accept the nomination of the Unity Party of Liberia as the party's leader. In November 2005, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected President of Liberia and became the first woman to lead an African nation. In the elections she defeated popular world-class soccer star George Weah with an impressive 59.4 percent of the vote. In October 2007, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civil award, for her personal courage and unwavering commitment to expanding freedom and improving the lives of people in Liberia and across Africa. And in 2010, as the only female and African Head of State, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was named by Newsweek Magazine as one of the World Top Ten Leaders.   LEARN MORE Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Aid Market Podcast. You can learn more about working with USAID by visiting our homepage: Konektid International and AidKonekt. To connect with our team directly, message the host Mike Shanley on LinkedIn. You can learn more about the Society for International Development-US online here. 

A global survey of 75,000 people revealed that 80% of participants want their governments' climate action commitments to be stronger.  The poll, conducted by the United Nations Development Program, GeoPoll, and Oxford University, asked 15 questions in telephone calls to residents of 77 countries representing 87% of the global population. According to the survey, 89% […]

In this episode of Better Thinking, Nesh Nikolic speaks with Professor David Blustein about the complexities surrounding the psychology of working and its profound impact on mental health, while shedding light on the challenges posed by work poverty. Dr Blustein is a Professor and Golden Eagle Faculty Fellow in the Department of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology at Boston College. Dr. Blustein is the author of The Psychology of Working: A New Perspective for Career Development, Counseling, and Public Policy and The Importance of Work in an Age of Uncertainty: The Eroding Experience of Work in America. He has been instrumental in developing psychology of working theory, which represents an inclusive and social justice-informed perspective on the role of work in people's lives and in their communities. Dr. Blustein has contributed numerous articles and book chapters on psychology of working theory, unemployment, career development/counseling, psychotherapy, decent work, dignity at work, precarious work, relationships and work, social class, race, and other aspects of contemporary working. He also has consulted with national and international organizations, such as the International Labor Organization, OECD, and the United Nations Development Program. Episode link at https://neshnikolic.com/podcast/david-blusteinSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Zimbabwe is facing long hours of power cuts due to its dilapidated infrastructure and the impact of recurring droughts on hydropower. To help, the United Nations Development Program is installing solar panels on government-owned health facilities. Columbus Mavhunga reports from Bulawayo

The United Nations says the number of people impacted by the landslide in central Papua New Guinea stands at more than 7,800. Authorities are still cautious about giving an exact number of casualties, as international partners including Australia, begin a precarious recovery operation. SBS's Tys Occhiuzzi spoke to Nicholas Booth, who is the United Nations Development Program's Representative in PNG, about the current situation.

Each year, the United Nations Development Program produces the Human Development Report. This is a compilation of country-level data around education, health, and economic security that aspires to give a more holistic understanding of a country's development beyond economic indicators alone. UNDP has been putting this Human Development Report together for decades, and while some countries would sometimes register advances or declines in the so-called Human Development Index, the global trend was always one of unrelenting progress. Until COVID. The COVID years resulted in global declines along the human development indicators for reasons explained by my guest today, Pedro Conceicao, Director of the Human Development Report Office at the United Nations Development Program. As Pedro Conceicao explains, the most recent report shows that, globally, the Human Development Index is registering progress, but that progress is not as sharp as it was prior to COVID. We discuss this trend and much more about the Human Development Report.

From malware developers targeting child exploiters with ransomware, to major cloud services exposing credentials, learn how digital vigilantes and technological oversights shape online security. Featuring insights on the United Nations' latest ransomware dilemma, uncover the intricate web of cybersecurity challenges faced globally. URLs for Reference: Malware Dev lures child exploiters into honeytrap to extort them AWS, Google, and Azure CLI Tools Could Leak Credentials in Build Logs United Nations agency investigates ransomware attack, data theft Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_daily_decrypt/ Thanks to Jered Jones for providing the music for this episode. https://www.jeredjones.com/ Logo Design by https://www.zackgraber.com/ Tags: cybersecurity, ransomware, malware, cloud security, digital threats, cyber vigilantes, tech giants, United Nations, cyber attack, data theft, CryptVPN, AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, CLI tools, BleepingComputer, The Hacker News Search Phrases: Cyber vigilante justice malware extortion Cloud CLI tools security vulnerabilities United Nations cyberattack investigation CryptVPN ransomware against child exploiters AWS, Google, and Azure CLI tools leaking credentials Impact of ransomware on global organizations Cybersecurity threats in cloud computing Cybersecurity tactics against illegal online activities Data breach at United Nations agency New trends in cyber threats and digital security Transcript: Apr22 Malware developers are now targeting individuals seeking child exploitation material, employing cryptVPN ransomware to extort them by locking their systems and demanding payment, as revealed by Bleeping Computer. What methods are these developers using, and why do I want them to succeed? Leaky CLI, a vulnerability discovered by Orca in AWS, Google, and Azure CLI tools, is exposing sensitive credentials in build logs, putting countless organizations at risk of cyber attacks. What measures can organizations take to prevent sensitive credentials from being exposed by build logs? Finally, hackers have infiltrated the United Nations Development Program's IT systems, stealing sensitive human resources data from its global network dedicated to fighting poverty and inequality. You're listening to the Daily Decrypt. Malware developers are now turning their tactics against individuals seeking child exploitation material, specifically targeting them with ransomware designed to extort money by feigning legal action. This new strain of malware, dubbed CryptVPN, was recently analyzed by Bleeping Computer after a sample was shared with the cybersecurity researcher MalwareHunterTeam. CryptVPN tricks users into downloading a seemingly harmless software, which then locks the user's desktop and changes their wallpaper to a menacing ransom note. The ploy begins with a decoy website that impersonates. Usenet Club, a purported subscription service offering uncensored access to downloadable content from Usenet, which is an established network used for various discussions, which unfortunately also includes illegal content. The site offers several subscription tiers, but the trap is set with the free tier, which requires the installation of the CryptVPN software to access the supposed free content. Now to be honest, I feel like I don't even want to give away these clues to any child predators that may be listening. So I'm going to stop there as far as how the attack works, but I'm really glad that attackers have found this vector because people who are partaking in illegal activities have a lot to lose and are often pretty scared, you know, unless they're complete psychopaths. And and so if someone's able to get the information or lure people into these websites You know, this reminds me of something that happened to me back in my single days. And those of you who know me personally can validate the authenticity of this story, but it might sound a little crazy to just an average listener. But swiping on Tinder, matched with someone, they didn't really want to chat too much, they just wanted to start sending nude photographs. And I personally, it's not my thing, but let's just say I'm not going to unmatch this person for offering. And so nude photographs came through, there was no exchange, but they did ask for photographs of myself, which I was not interested in sending. And in fact, I wasn't really interested in pursuing anyone who would just jump in and send nude photographs. So I stopped talking to them. And about a couple of days later, I got a phone call from a Someone claiming to be the police department, saying that they had gotten my number from this girl's dad, and she's underage, and now they have proof that I've been sending nude photographs to this underage person. Well, I don't know. They accused me of that and that never happened. So immediately I knew it was a scan. But let's just say hypothetically that I had sent pictures to this person. I would be pretty scared receiving this threat. Because my whole life would change, right? If I became a child predator or a sexual predator or whatever it's called, then like a lot of stuff changes. And at the time I was in the military, so that was the end of my military career or whatever. So it's a very similar to that. If you're doing something wrong. And you get caught in a trap, you're very likely to pay the ransom. So first of all, don't mess around with children online. Don't do illegal sexual things. And you have nothing to worry about with this scam. So please stop doing that. Don't do that. And you've got nothing to worry about, it's been recently unveiled that command line interface tools from the tech giants such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud are susceptible to exposing sensitive credentials in the build logs, presenting a substantial security hazard to enterprises. This vulnerability is a Which the cloud security firm Orca has dubbed Leaky CLI, involves certain commands on the Azure CLI, AWS CLI, and Google Cloud CLI that could reveal environment variables. Roy Nizmi, a prominent security researcher, highlights in a report to the Hacker News that, quote, some commands can expose sensitive information in the form of environment variables, which can be collected by adversaries when published by tools such as GitHub Actions. In response, Microsoft has proactively addressed this security lapse in its November 2023 update, designating it with the CVE identifier 2023 36052, which carries a critical CVSS score of 8. 6 out of 10. Conversely, Amazon and Google view the exposure of environment variables as an anticipated behavior, advising organizations to refrain from storing secrets within these variables. Instead, they recommend using specialized services like AWS Secrets Manager or Google Cloud Secret Manager, which is a great recommendation. Furthermore, Google has advised users of its CLI tools to employ the dash dash no dash user output enabled option, which prevents the printing of command output to the terminal, thereby mitigating the risk of data leaks. Orca has also identified several instances on GitHub where projects inadvertently leaked access tokens and other sensitive data through continuous integration and deployment tools, including GitHub actions, CircleCI, TravisCI, and CloudBuild, which is always going to be a problem. Take those. Pull request reviews, seriously. Nimzy warns, if bad actors get their hands on these environment variables, this could potentially lead to view sensitive information, including credentials, such as passwords, usernames, and keys, which could allow them to access any resources that the repository owners can. He added that CLI commands are by default assumed to be running in a secure environment. But coupled with CICD pipelines or continuous integration, continuous development, they may pose a security threat. This ongoing issue underscores the critical need for heightened security measures within cloud computing environments. Go out there, get you a new cloud job, my guys. Finally, the United Nations Development Program, or UNDP, has launched an investigation into a significant cyber attack where intruders compromised its IT systems, resulting in the theft of critical human resources data. So, human resources data sounds It's pretty benign to me, like, the way that that's framed seems like nothing, but think about what the data Human Resources has. It's the crown jewels. They've got your social security number for your W 2 form, they've got your previous jobs, they've got your address, they've got your email address, they've got everything. So Human Resources data is nothing to bat an eye at. The agency, which is a cornerstone of the United Nations efforts to combat poverty and inequality worldwide. Confirmed the breach occurred in late March within the local IT infrastructure for the United Nations. Following the detection of the breach on March 27th, thanks to a threat intelligence alert, UNDP acted swiftly. Quote, actions were immediately taken to identify a potential source and contain the effective server as well. As to determine the specifics of the exposed data and who was impacted. The ongoing investigation seeks to fully understand the incident's nature and scope, as well as its impact on individuals whose information was compromised, but to further complicate some matters, the eight base ransomware gang, a group known for its broad attacks on various industries, claimed responsibility for the data theft. On the same day as the breach, they added a new entry for UNDP on their dark web leak site. The documents leaked, according to the attackers, contain a huge amount of confidential information, ranging from personal data to financial records and employment contracts. This cyberattack is not the first the United Nations has suffered. Previous breaches have struck the United Nations Environmental Program and key United Nations networks in Geneva and Vienna, showcasing ongoing vulnerabilities within UNIT systems. Meanwhile, the 8Base group, which claims to target companies neglecting data privacy, continues its surge of attacks, having listed over 350 victims on its data leak site to date. So if you're listening and you know your company is rejecting some data privacy protocols, maybe use this story as incentive to get them to pay more attention to this. That's all we got for you today. Happy Monday. Thanks so much for listening. Please head over to our social media accounts, Instagram, Twitter, Twitter. com. Youtube Give us a follow, give us a like, and send us a comment. We'd love to talk. And we'll be back tomorrow with some more news.

In this informative conversation Alexandra chats to Tom Dawkins from StartSomeGood and LendForGood. StartSomeGood is a social enterprise which helps people design, launch and grow social impact projects, and LendForGood, a new crowd-lending platform for impact enterprises.StartSomeGood provides fundraising and community infrastructure for social entrepreneurs and designs and delivers impact accelerators and capacity-building programs for partners including Optus, ING, the United Nations Development Program and the City of Sydney.Tom is the host of the Good Hustle social enterprise design course, which has graduated over 200 social enterprise founders. The goal is to give emerging social entrepreneurs the skills they need to successfully launch and run their impact businesses, including the strength of purpose and resilience to survive the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey.Tom was previously the founder of youth non-profit Vibewire, the first Digital Communications Director for Ashoka in Washington DC, the founding Program Director of the Australian Changemakers Festival and a founding Director of the Social Enterprise Council of NSW and the ACT (SECNA). He is currently a Director of the Centre for Social Impact.In this conversation we talk about impactful investing, the concept of the missing middle in business, the very interesting concept that we as humans have a hard time keeping both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations in mind simultaneously, which explains the reason why it is easier to get pro bono work than low bono, and the importance of purposeful parenting. You can connect with Tom over at LinkedIn and learn more about StartSomeGood and LendForGood. You can connect with Alexandra and the Circular Entrepreneurs over at The Circular Entrepreneurs and on Instagram and Linkedin.If you want to work with Alexandra, you can find 1:1 coaching packages here.In order to keep growing this beautiful community I would love for you to follow, share, rate & review the podcast.XxAlexandra Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hope you're wearing your PPE for this one! Mimi Casteel of Hope Well Wine is speaking with Miguel Altieri, one of the modern pioneers of agroecology. He has written more than 330 publications, including a book: Agroecology, the Science of Sustainable Agriculture & Biodiversity… Miguel is a hero to many of us who have practiced in the field and his bio is very extensive. In addition to being a professor emeritus at UC Berkley, he also served as a scientific advisor to the Latin American Consortium on Agroecology and Development and general coordinator to the United Nations Development Program in Sustainable Agriculture, Networking, & Extension. He's worked in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and is now farming in Columbia. Folks who support The No-Till Market Garden Podcast... Johnny's Selected Seeds for vegetable, flower, and cover crop seeds. Visit the Growers Library for a wealth of growing resources. RIMOL Greenhouses for high-quality greenhouses and high-tunnels. Certified Naturally Grown a grassroots, peer-to-peer, holistic certification. BCS America for two wheel tractors + implements, on sale through the end of the year! ... and, as always, our work is powered by the individual growers who support us every month over at patreon.com/notillgrowers. You can pick up a copy of The Living Soil Handbook if you don't have one already, as well as a No-Till Growers hat or other merch, check out our YouTube channel, and you can ask you questions or share your insights into ecological market gardening on our free growers forum at notillgrowers.community.chat Find Farmer Jesse at these upcoming conferences... Marbleseed Organic Farming Organic Association of Kentucky Utah Food and Farm Conference Dallas Innercity Growers Summit Organic Growers School Jackson's GoFundMe for tornado damage

William H. Foege, MD, MPH is the Emeritus Presidential Distinguished Professor of International Health at Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University and the Gates Fellow at The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He is an epidemiologist who worked in the successful campaign to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. Dr. Foege became Chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Smallpox Eradication Program, and was appointed director of CDC in 1977.In 1984, Foege and several colleagues formed the Task Force for Child Survival and Development, a working group for the World Health Organization, UNICEF, The World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Its success in accelerating childhood immunization led to an expansion of its mandate in 1991 to include other issues that diminish the quality of life for children.Dr. Foege joined The Carter Center in 1986 as its Executive Director, Fellow for Health Policy and Executive Director of Global 2000. In 1992, he resigned as Executive Director of The Carter Center, but continued in his role as a Fellow and as Executive Director of the Task Force for Child Survival and Development. In 1997, he joined the faculty of Emory University, where he is Presidential Distinguished Professor of International Health at the Rollins School of Public Health. In 1999, Dr. Foege became a Senior Medical Advisor for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 1999, Dr. Foege resigned as Executive Director of the Task Force for Child Survival and Development, and in 2001, he retired from both Emory University and the Gates Foundation. However, he remains active in both organizations as Emeritus Presidential Distinguished Professor of International Health and as a Gates Fellow.

This is a very spécial épisode of Ellen Wasylina's speech at this Sustainable Development Forum that took place in Baku on November 16, 2023. The National Coordinating Council for Sustainable Development of Azerbaijan, the Ministry of Economy of Azerbaijan and the Delegation of the United Nations Development Program in Azerbaijan jointly organised the Sustainable Development Forum on the topic of "Sustainable finance and investment". The topics of climate financing, green development, in in biodiversity were discussed. Here are the three Questions she addressed during the panel discusssion on Biodiversity investments Question 1 : How does the relationship between biodiversity and national and global security impact the agricultural sector? Question 2 : In addressing agricultural resilience, particularly in the context of women's roles, how can we leverage biodiversity considerations?  Question 3 : Furthermore, to enhance the value chain and attain economies of scale in farming, how can sustainable practices and biodiversity préservation be integrated effectively ? --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mediterranean-sustainable/message

"At the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, we study how people respond to climate change. So what do people around the world understand or misunderstand about the causes, the consequences, and solutions? How do they perceive the risks: the likelihood and severity of different types of impacts from sea level rise to the health impacts? What kinds of policies do they support or oppose? And then what kinds of behaviors are people engaged in or willing to change to be part of climate solutions? There are lots of different things there, but our ultimate question is answering why. What are the psychological, cultural, the political reasons why some people get engaged with this issue? While others are kind of apathetic and some are downright dismissive and hostile, or at least they are in the United States, which thankfully is not the case in most of the rest of the world."Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide.https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitzhttps://climatecommunication.yale.eduwww.yaleclimateconnections.orgwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"So the why really depends on where you are. People are not all the same. There is no such thing as the public. There are many, many, many different publics within a state, within a country, within the world, right? So one of the first cardinal rules of effective communication is know your audience. Who are they? What do they know? What do they think they know? Who do they trust? Where do they get their information? What are their underlying values? And it's only once you know who they are that you as a communicator can go more than halfway to try to meet them where they are not where you are. Where they are. That's so easy to say, but it's actually so hard for so many of us within the climate community to do because we're steeped in this issue. We want to talk about things."Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide.https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitzhttps://climatecommunication.yale.eduwww.yaleclimateconnections.orgwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"At the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, we study how people respond to climate change. So what do people around the world understand or misunderstand about the causes, the consequences, and solutions? How do they perceive the risks: the likelihood and severity of different types of impacts from sea level rise to the health impacts? What kinds of policies do they support or oppose? And then what kinds of behaviors are people engaged in or willing to change to be part of climate solutions? There are lots of different things there, but our ultimate question is answering why. What are the psychological, cultural, the political reasons why some people get engaged with this issue? While others are kind of apathetic and some are downright dismissive and hostile, or at least they are in the United States, which thankfully is not the case in most of the rest of the world."Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide.https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitzhttps://climatecommunication.yale.eduwww.yaleclimateconnections.orgwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"So the why really depends on where you are. People are not all the same. There is no such thing as the public. There are many, many, many different publics within a state, within a country, within the world, right? So one of the first cardinal rules of effective communication is know your audience. Who are they? What do they know? What do they think they know? Who do they trust? Where do they get their information? What are their underlying values? And it's only once you know who they are that you as a communicator can go more than halfway to try to meet them where they are not where you are. Where they are. That's so easy to say, but it's actually so hard for so many of us within the climate community to do because we're steeped in this issue. We want to talk about things."Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide.https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitzhttps://climatecommunication.yale.eduwww.yaleclimateconnections.orgwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

But at the same time, the world is building new megacities that are going to house tens of millions of people, and we now have the opportunity to build them for the 21st century. We don't have to follow the same design patterns of the past. So, this now opens up enormous creativity, experimentation, and innovation. One study has found that the single thing that makes people most unhappy in America is commuting time, being stuck in traffic. That makes people more frustrated and depressed than anything.”Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide."Cities are going to be core to solving this problem. However, the whole world is vulnerable to climate change in different ways. So cities are going to be critical. Let's not forget we already have 8 billion people on the planet, and it's growing.And so there is a lot that we need to do to both retrofit our existing cities, which is expensive and hard because they were laid down, sometimes, hundreds of years ago with different assumptions about how one should live. For example, L.A. was built on the highway and based on the automobile, so it's very difficult for L.A. as a city to now go, okay, we want to get back to providing rail transit for everybody. And they're doing it, but it's expensive, and it's hard to retrofit but essential work that has to be done.https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitzhttps://climatecommunication.yale.eduwww.yaleclimateconnections.orgwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"So the why really depends on where you are. People are not all the same. There is no such thing as the public. There are many, many, many different publics within a state, within a country, within the world, right? So one of the first cardinal rules of effective communication is know your audience. Who are they? What do they know? What do they think they know? Who do they trust? Where do they get their information? What are their underlying values? And it's only once you know who they are that you as a communicator can go more than halfway to try to meet them where they are not where you are. Where they are. That's so easy to say, but it's actually so hard for so many of us within the climate community to do because we're steeped in this issue. We want to talk about things."Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide.https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitzhttps://climatecommunication.yale.eduwww.yaleclimateconnections.orgwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

But at the same time, the world is building new megacities that are going to house tens of millions of people, and we now have the opportunity to build them for the 21st century. We don't have to follow the same design patterns of the past. So, this now opens up enormous creativity, experimentation, and innovation. One study has found that the single thing that makes people most unhappy in America is commuting time, being stuck in traffic. That makes people more frustrated and depressed than anything.”Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide."Cities are going to be core to solving this problem. However, the whole world is vulnerable to climate change in different ways. So cities are going to be critical. Let's not forget we already have 8 billion people on the planet, and it's growing.And so there is a lot that we need to do to both retrofit our existing cities, which is expensive and hard because they were laid down, sometimes, hundreds of years ago with different assumptions about how one should live. For example, L.A. was built on the highway and based on the automobile, so it's very difficult for L.A. as a city to now go, okay, we want to get back to providing rail transit for everybody. And they're doing it, but it's expensive, and it's hard to retrofit but essential work that has to be done.https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitzhttps://climatecommunication.yale.eduwww.yaleclimateconnections.orgwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"At the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, we study how people respond to climate change. So what do people around the world understand or misunderstand about the causes, the consequences, and solutions? How do they perceive the risks: the likelihood and severity of different types of impacts from sea level rise to the health impacts? What kinds of policies do they support or oppose? And then what kinds of behaviors are people engaged in or willing to change to be part of climate solutions? There are lots of different things there, but our ultimate question is answering why. What are the psychological, cultural, the political reasons why some people get engaged with this issue? While others are kind of apathetic and some are downright dismissive and hostile, or at least they are in the United States, which thankfully is not the case in most of the rest of the world."Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide.https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitzhttps://climatecommunication.yale.eduwww.yaleclimateconnections.orgwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Landry Signé, senior fellow in the global economy and development program and the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution and executive director and professor of the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University, leads the conversation about Africa on the global stage. FASKIANOS: Thank you and welcome to today's session of the Fall 2023 CFR Academic Webinar series. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today's discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/academic. And, as always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We're delighted to have Landry Signé with us to discuss Africa on the global stage. Dr. Signé is a senior fellow in the global economy and development program and the Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings Institution. He's also a professor, executive director, and the founding codirector of The Globalization 4.0 and Fourth Industrial Revolution Initiative at Arizona State University's Thunderbird School of Global Management, and distinguished fellow at Stanford University's Center for African Studies. He serves as chairman of the Global Network for Africa's Prosperity and is also the author of numerous scholarly publications and several books. His most recent is entitled, Africa's Fourth Industrial Revolution. And it was published by Cambridge University Press this summer. So, Dr. Signé, thank you very much for being with us today. I'm going to throw you a very big question, and you can take us in the direction you would like, by talking about the important challenges and opportunities facing countries across Africa. SIGNÉ: Hello, everyone. And thank you so much, Dr. Irina, for so kind an introduction. It's a pleasure to be with all of you today. So when it comes to Africa, I want to highlight a few key trends why Africa is playing such an important role in the global sphere. So the first thing that I want to share to everyone is Africa's transformation is more substantial than what most people will think. And this is for many reasons. One is that, especially pre-pandemic, trade and in and with the rest of the world have grown for about 300 percent, which exceeds the global average of a little bit less than 200 percent. So that is a key dimension to highlight. And this is also driven by the competition between emerging countries, such as, of course, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, China, and more established and industrialized nations such as the United States, France, and others. So that is one of the key trends that I want to highlight. So Africa is richer and is transforming much more than what most people will be thinking. So the second trend that I also want to highlight, why Africa is so important in the global sphere, is that by the end of this century Africa could reach about 40 percent of the global population. Listen, I said 40 percent. So this is incredible, especially as the continent represent now only about 17 percent of the global population. So that is a key dimension to take into consideration when speaking about Africa, how Africa engages with the rest of the world. A third trend that I also want to highlight is really the rise of global partnerships and the competition, as I highlighted, between emerging and established powers. So, as a matter of fact, between 2006 and 2016, for example, China trades with Africa surge with imports increasing by 233 percent, and exports increasing by about 53 percent. This is a substantial growth in engagement. And if we compare—so with Russia, for example, it was about 142 percent of change in imports from Africa and about 168 percent change in exports with Africa. So in comparison, and with the rest of the world was only about 56 percent for change in imports and 18 percent for change in export. So this is another key trend. And a country like the United States still needs to expand and to do much more in terms of those engagement. This also apply with—to the countries in the European Union in general. So another trend that I want to highlight is really the, let's say, fast urbanization that we see on the continent. So the continent will be growing from about five cities—will reach about five cities of more than ten million inhabitants, in comparison of only three in 2015. And will exceed fifteen cities of more than five million inhabitants, in comparison of about five to six in the recent year. So another point, when people speak about Africa, I want to speak about industrialization in Africa. Of course, we have to acknowledge the diversity of the continent. Some would say fifty-four member states, because we have about—those other ones recognized by the United Nations. But don't be surprised if you also hear people mentioning instead fifty-five countries, because the Western Sahara is also consider as a member of the African Union. So when speaking about industrialization, people may—some people may consider Africa as deindustrializing. But that is because they're not looking at one of the things that we call at the Brookings Institution industries without smokestacks. Those industries are important because they have similar characteristic when they compare to traditional manufacturing. And those similar characteristics include, for example, the tradability, they are labor intensive, and the store—they absorb a high quantity of moderately skilled workers. But they are also—they also have a high level of productivity. Irina, you mentioned my book on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. I want to connect, because when people speak about digitalization, innovation, they will mostly think about the Silicon Valley. They will think about some of the emerging nations—Israel, India—in addition to the U.S., of course. A key dimension to highlight is that in the 1990s New York City had more mobile phone subscribers than the entire continent of Africa, where now the continent has hundreds of millions of mobile phone subscribers. So in addition, we have disruptive innovations such as mobile banking, with M-PESA, for example, which is a digital application allow—which allow to provide banking services, digital banking services, to African citizens. This is another illustration of the important dynamics with Africa. Let me finish with about two or three additional points, and I'm looking very much forward to the conversation. I will highlight the critical importance of regional integration. We have, for example, the African Continental Free Trade Area, which was adopted in 2018, ratified by a sufficient number of country in 2019, and was officially launched in January 2021. And that is an incredible speed from the signing to the coming into force of the second-largest trade organization in the world, or let's say trade area in the world, after the World Trade Organization, of course, in terms of number of countries. So this is a key dimension. And another trend to highlight, despite some of the challenges that we see in many African countries in terms of democratic retreat. The overall trend is that African citizens want democracy. So they want accountability. But they also want democracy to deliver. And let me finish with a trend related to business. The combined consumer and business spending in Africa will reach or exceed $16 trillion U.S. dollars by 2050, and about $6.7 trillion U.S. dollars by 2030. So Africa really is a place with phenomenal opportunities, despite the challenges that we see. Climate change affects Africa more than other regions, for example. Some of the most vulnerable countries in terms of state fragility. We have, as I also mentioned, some democratic recession. But despite those challenges, the continent is really growing and is really transforming at a very important pace. And I enthusiastically look forward to engaging, to answering your many questions. Thank you so much. FASKIANOS: Thank you very much. That was a great overview. Obviously, this is such a big topic. So now we're going to go to all of you for your questions. (Gives queuing instructions.) Alright, so the first question we're going to take is from Pearl Robinson. Pearl over to you. Q: Hello. Very pleased to meet you. I have a question, something I'm going to ask you to do. I'm at Tufts University. FASKIANOS: Thanks, Pearl. Q: Can you use this wonderful, optimistic introduction, and connect it with a discussion of the wave of coups in the West African Sahel? Because I find myself having to talk about both. And I thought that you began with the last decade's narrative of Africa's growth and opportunities. And today, everybody is talking about democratic decline and all of these coups in the context of everything. So I'd like you to put your talk onto an introduction for me to talk about the coup situation. SIGNÉ: Absolutely. Thank you so much for the question. So I have studied the—also the democratic situation in Africa from the—from the independence to the last decade. And one of the reasons, of course, when you have democratic interruption, there are serious reasons to be concerned. And this is mostly related to the ability of democratic governance to deliver. Typically when democracy is promoted with many of the Africans, one of the key argument which was chose is that democracy allows citizens to have a better standard of living, deliver economic outcomes, education, health, security, good governance, less corruption, among others. And many of the countries which have faced a coup are countries—when you think about Mali, we think about Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, among others—there are countries where citizen are facing serious economic—a serious economic situation, deteriorated by the pandemic, of course. They are not the only country but deteriorated by the pandemic. You also have a question—the security question in the Sahel especially, with violent extremism. But I want to put things in perspective because democratic development is a slow-moving process. And although it is very unfortunate some of the development that you are seeing in terms of coups, when you look at Africa in the long-term perspective, when I was looking, for example, in the 1980s, almost the entire continent was red. Red, meaning authoritarian. But now the majority of African countries have elections. More than half of those country have free, fair, and transparent, meaningful elections. They are able to choose their government. And this so I'd just highlight those point, to say I classify those countries—I had them in four categories. So one was the uninterrupted democracy. So the countries which once they become democracies, they remain uninterrupted democratic. And those countries are outperforming overall, economically speaking and with many of the other benefits of democracy that I've mentioned. But the countries which are interrupted are mostly the countries where democracy is not necessarily delivering wealth. But will that change the broader trend on the continent? I don't think so. So I think, yes, we have to acknowledge those challenges. We have to act vigorously to address them to reduce the negative impact. But those are not necessarily—I don't think that that makes Africa a hopeless continent, as depicted by the Economist in the early 2000s, as discussed before. I'll pause there. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take a written question from Tanisha Fazal's student Jack Drouin, and they're at the University of Minnesota: Will Africa as a whole ever compete at the same level as the United States and China in international trade and production? SIGNÉ: So the idea behind the African continental trade area is to make Africa stronger internationally when dealing with the rest of the world, while unlocking also the potential of trade within Africa. For example, when African countries trade with one another, more than 40 percent of products exported are manufactured products. Which mean that they create jobs and opportunities for young people, for women, for the economy. They accelerate industrialization. And when African countries trade with the rest of the world, about only 17 percent of those countries—of those—of the products exported are manufactured products. So the idea really behind the African Continental Free Trade Area is not just to grow African trade with—and improve countries' trading with one another. But it is also really to make Africa stronger when engaging with other countries. As a matter of fact, Africa still represents less than 3 percent of global exports. So this the reason why when I engage with some leaders, some are wondering if whether the AfCFTA was really needed. There is no doubt that the African Continental Free Trade Area was needed, because partnering and coming together to engage with them makes the continent stronger. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I've never seen so many questions. So I'm going to go next to Fordham IPED. They have their raised hand. It's the International Political Economy and Development Program at Fordham. Q: Hi. My name is Julisha. I'm a student here at Fordham in the IPED Program. And thank you for your presentation, Landry, if I may call you that—I'm sorry, Professor. My question is—and I come from the continent. My question to you is, you seem very optimistic about Africa, as we call it. But why exactly? What gives you this optimism, given the fact that different countries have varying problems, and also we've got different levels of infrastructure and productive capacities? And then also, we haven't had that much success in relation to the regional FTAs. So why optimistic specifically about this one? Should we focus more on maybe building stronger regional bodies and then come together as one consortium? SIGNÉ: Thank you so much for your question. I don't think that it is either/or. And you have to put in perspective also, again, when—I like to look at things from a historical perspective, putting things in context. And when we put things in context—again, I mentioned, for example, before, in less than a couple of decades Africa went from being a continent almost full of authoritarianism, to a continent where in perhaps the past six, seven years you have had an incredibly important number of countries which where the incumbent lost the election or was changed through an electoral process. So those are important gains not to overlook. When we also speak about poverty, for example, so we are also seeing positive—although, and I published an article at Brookings about it—why, despite the fast economic growth just before the pandemic, the continent had an important number of poverty. The key dimension here was poverty in terms of percentage of the population went down, but the continent is also growing at a fast rate, the population of the continent. So which means that even if you're in relative number you have a reduction of poverty, in absolute number we can still have an important number of poor. But if you also put that further in context, by removing—of course, you could not remove them—but by considering Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo, which are countries with the highest concentration—not the highest, but an important number of poor, the picture related to poverty on the continent will be very different. Another reason of my lucid optimism is that Africa—more than 50 percent of the African—close to 60 percent of the African population is below the age of twenty-five. So what this means, that everything is possible in an incredibly short duration. You probably know what we have named the Cheetah—what George Ayittey has named the Cheetah Generation. So the generation of young Africans who are dynamic, they are innovative, in opposition to the elephant who are moving slowly. So this is also another characteristic. When you look at innovation and you look at entrepreneurship, the general entrepreneurship survey globally, when you compare Africa to the rest of the world, the percentage of optimism, of interest in innovation, in entrepreneurship, of willingness and of respect for the field is also higher in general. So, again, I understand why most people will be focusing on challenges versus opportunity. But you also know, like me, that when in 2000 the Economist wrote that article about a hopeless Africa, in 2011 they wrote another issue about Africa rising, apologizing about their previous assessment. Because six to seven of the world's ten fastest-growing economies in the first decade—the first fifteen years of the twenty-first century, were located in Africa. So yes, we have numerous challenges. But most countries, which were at the level of development of many of the African countries, have also had challenges. So. yes, we have to address those challenges. And that is also part of what my work does with the Brookings Institution—identifying how to bridge the gap between the policy intentions and the implementation outcome. And a part of doing that is also to shift the mindset from looking exclusively at the challenges that Africa is facing, to also think about what are the opportunities? How can we identify those opportunities? How can we transform those opportunities into reality, into positive outcomes? Because the young generation in Africa deserve it. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next written question from Dayanara Miranda, who's an undergraduate student at Lewis University: My question is, besides agricultural and mineral resources, what other markets can African countries enter to grow their economies? SIGNÉ: So, that is another extremely important question. And let me say, overall Africa—so, it depends as to whether we are speaking about the consumer spending, household consumptions, or whether we are speaking about business spending. In terms of household consumption, by 2030 the continent will receive about $2.5 trillion U.S. dollars of household consumption or consumer spending. And some of the largest sector include food and beverage because people need to eat, but also include housing, healthcare, financial services, transportation, and education. So to put things in perspective, African countries will be growing faster in some of those sectors compared to the growth of other developing economies. Now, if I also think now about the business-to-business spending, so the continent will be home of about—of more than $4 trillion U.S. dollars by 2030. Of course, the largest area for that spending will include agriculture and agri-processing. But we will also have manufacturing, construction, utilities, transportation, wholesalers, and retailers in terms of resources. So, yes, a place—Africa is an important business destination for people who are, again, open to identify opportunities and to manage the risk. Of course, have risk, but those risks also exist in Latin America, exist in the Middle East. exist in the broader—in the broader Asia, and also in the—in some of the advanced economies. So, again, I think, like, a change of mindset is important. One of the reasons why China become the first trade partner of Africa, the first investor in infrastructure amount order, is because while other countries were looking at the challenges that Africa is facing, China and other emerging countries were looking at opportunity and how to manage their risk amount order. Of course, that is not to say that the Chinese model of engagement is necessarily the right one, but it's just to say that the difference of mindset may explain why some country may be identifying more opportunities than other. But I'm also very happy to highlight the fact that recently, the U.S. administration has also been very much active—much more active in terms of engaging with Africa from an economic perspective, from an opportunity business perspective, including the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act. Thank you. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to take the next question from Dorian Brown Crosby. Q: Yes. Hello. Thank you, Professor Signé, for this discussion. I'm from Spelman College. And I do have a question regarding remittances. Can you speak to the current impact of remittances that those in the diaspora are sending to African countries? And how is that affecting Africa's economic trajectory? Or even speak to a specific country. Thank you. SIGNÉ: Absolutely. Thank you very much for the questions. Remittances are playing a key role in Africa. In some of the countries they are exceeding even, let's say, the official development assistance. So that is a key point to highlight. Perhaps the nuance that I want to bring is that most of the remittances are sent for consumption, for family consumptions, among others. A shift that we may want to see happen is to turn—(inaudible)—to increase perhaps those remittances, and especially the category of remittances, shifting only from consumption, for productive use, for economic use, for entrepreneurial activities, as well on the continent. But, yes, remittances are key for development. They are extremely important. They are making a difference. And I connect with that question with the notion of diaspora. The rising role of the diaspora is also one of the key trends. Of course, I didn't—I wanted to be brief in my preliminary comments, but diaspora are really playing a key role in fostering the relations between Africa and the rest of the world. They play the role of investor. You have also the remittances, as you have just mentioned. They are diplomat. In addition of the higher representation that we are also seeing of people of African origin in international organizations, whether we speak about the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization, the International Finance Corporation, among other. So there's really a trend where the diaspora playing a key role, both financially to remittances and have an increased demand, also for investment. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to combine two questions, two written questions, because they are along the same lines. One from Thomas at Oklahoma State University and Kihoa from Adelphi University, and it has to do with China: China's trade with—China's aid to Africa, is it purely altruistic? Should African states be receiving Chinese aid? And should Africa be giving aid to historically authoritarian regimes? And then the second question is to have you talk a little bit about the Belt and Road Initiative, and how that initiative is influencing trading partners with other Western countries. SIGNÉ: Absolutely. Thank you for the important question. So let me—to further speak about China in Africa, some key trends to highlight is that, first, you have an exponential growth of exports to Africa, increase imports from Africa, substantial lending to African countries. So China is already one of those, the major lending on transport, power, and mining, the Ex-Im Bank is really leading the way in terms of loans. I do prefer to speak about development versus assistance, development finance instead of developing assistance, or on the longer term, a growing trend in terms of FDI. So China is dominating also the important investment on the continent. You have an important presence of Chinese workers, and forgot—not to forget the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, which remains critical to an action of the multiplication of the of the Confucius Institutes on the continent. Despite that important presence, a key element you mentioned is that per Afrobarometer survey, African citizen still prefer the U.S. model of development to the Chinese one. So this is an important dimension that I want to highlight. And whether China is altruistic, it's important to mention when we speak about the commitment, they are not necessarily—China is a country with its own national interests. Perhaps the way of doing business is different, but they are not acting toward Africa, from my perspective, from an altruistic perspective. They're really looking to achieve interest, whether from a geopolitical dimension, economic interest to secure especially energy, power, mining, oceans, agricultural lands for food security in China, among others. And many of the other countries in the world are doing the same. So I'm not—so, of course, we are speaking more about China, but most of the countries when they're acting globally they are acting in alignment of their interests. And probably Jentleson, for example, has mentioned when we speak about the U.S. foreign policy as some of their drivers, which include what are the—of course, we have power, we have peace, we have prosperity, and we have principles. So foreign policy decisions are usually, let's say, the result of a tradeoff between either power consideration, peace consideration, or security consideration, economic consideration, and principle consideration, which could include democratic development, and, of course, humanitarian intervention, and so on. So it depends on which country we are talking about. And to just connect it to the broader Belt and Road Initiative, I think that, of course, it is part from my perspective of China ambition to become the next global power. And in my conversation with many of the African leaders, their main concern—including head of states and head of governments—so their main concern is given the gap, the infrastructure gap that we have on the content, financing gap that you have on the continent, China is providing an alternative and China is acting quickly. However, many of the leaders with whom I'm engaging will prefer to deal instead with, for example, the United States. The United States is probably acting slower than some of the other players. But this is also because of the democratic process and the compliance mechanism, among others. But despite that, I think that there are still tools which can allow to be compliant, to respect the democratic principle, but also act faster, with more agility. And we are having conversations. I testified before the Senate on some of those questions, before the House of Representatives, before the U.S. International Trade Commission, sharing perspective on how the U.S. can further leverage its strength and the alignment to advance U.S.-Africa prosperity. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next oral question from John O'Toole. Q: Well, thank you, because my question directly kind of follows off of that. So that's very fortunate. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. Q: So my question was related to, like, Africa on, like, the global security scale. So, like you said, like, Russia and China are investing heavily, are—and becoming, like, major players, some might argue, in an attempt to be, like, first to market, in a way, in terms of being, like, colleagues with Africa. And you can't really pick and choose who your partners are, especially if the people you want to work with, like the United States or the EU, aren't moving as fast. But is there a concern that growing relationships with China and Russia could morph into a global security conflict? And that some African leaders might be afraid of becoming perhaps the next Lumumba where they're characterized as, you know, perhaps a communist pawn, or something? Is that part of the thought process? SIGNÉ: Thank you for the important question. So it's important to highlight a few considerations here. Typically, when many of the more established powers, whether you're speaking about France, the United States, UK, when they are engaging with many of the African countries they take into consideration the principles that I mentioned before, whether we speak about democratic principles, human rights consideration, humanitarian consideration, among other. So those are really key dimensions that are taken into consideration with more traditional African partners, although it is not uniform. So you will also have the same country which will be trading both with some of the authoritarian countries. But when doing so, they will often bring the question of democratic governance, of human rights in the conversation. And the difference there with countries such as China or Russia, is they are decoupling trade, investment, and principle quotient of democracy—democratic quotients, human rights quotients. For obvious reason, when you look also at your level of democratic development, or at the situation of human rights in your—in your countries. So now, what are the potential risk for the continent? I think that the—many of the—we have seen the presence, whether in an official capacity or in an unofficial capacity of foreign forces in Africa, including from Russia. So to what extent are they influencing the political sphere? To what extent are they fueling or contributing to fuel some of the insecurity and conflict that we have, as we say, in the Sahel? Or to what extent are they helping those country to address some of the challenges faced? I think the growing support that we have seen for Russia, or China, or for some of the emerging countries is related to a narrative, which may not always be founded, but a more appeasing and more respectful narrative that they have when engaging with some of the African countries. But that doesn't mean that they are acting in a way which better advance the interests of those countries. And African leaders are often in a complex situation where they don't necessarily—some of them, of course, will be very clear in terms of their preferences for Western countries. And others, in between, where they want to be certain that they will not be dropped, if I can use the terms. And this is because historically, even some of the best partners of the West—and we look at the case of Niger, when the military coup happened, so despite some political discourses the West was not able to do much. So those are elements which create also a certain level of insecurity on the continent. So yeah, your question is extremely important. And I think that there are risks which are associated with the—with the growing involvement of those emerging powers, like China, especially as it is shifting or has shifted from the economic quotient to a more security, military quotient and cooperation. But some of the countries with which they are cooperating, or perhaps even most of those countries in terms of military engagement, are not necessarily countries with their reputation or leaders with the reputation of—or with the best record in terms of democratic progress or in terms of human rights. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next question from Zachary Billot, a student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas: How will increased environmental challenges related to climate change impact institution and governmental efficacy in Africa? Can Africa be expected to transition to green energy if there isn't substantial foreign investment? SIGNÉ: Absolutely. It is extremely important. Thank you for the question. It's extremely important to highlight the consequences of climate change on the continent, especially in the fragile countries, in the fragile regions, especially also when combined with governance challenges. So many of the conflicts in the Sahel—and I publish a—I co-published a report with Brookings on the question on how—on the nexus—on the climate change-security-development nexus. So many—if climate change doesn't necessarily—the relation between climate change and conflict is not necessarily causal, but there is a strong correlation at least when it comes to exacerbating initial conditions in regions where you have poverty and where governance is already quite weak. So the question is, yes, climate change is increasing the likelihood of conflict, especially in an area where we already have bad governance, or poor performance. And how to address some of those questions? Of course, we have involved also in drafting the human development—the Sahel Human Development Report, where the topic is on using energy to unlock Africa potential to contribute to sustainable development, how we can leverage in a sustainable way. And, yes, I do believe that the continent has a path. So of course, I will not necessarily disclose the findings, because they will have to be officially launched by the United Nations Development Program later this year, early the next one. But there is a clear path for Africa to achieve a greener future, especially as the continent has, I would say, the luxury of learning from what has been done on the negative experiences of some of the advanced economies. But also on capitalizing on technology to achieve those goals. Now, you mentioned about investment. Yes, that is an area where global partners who have committed, including the United States, France, Canada, among others, to support a greener revolution, economic revolution, energy transition, industrial development on the continent also have to play their part. Of course the global community, the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, among others. So Africa has the potential to achieve it, but not alone. With the collaboration of global partners, including some of the biggest polluters. FASKIANOS: Great, thank you. I'm going to go next to Alicia Hoffman. Q: Hello. How are you? I have a question regarding some previous legal agreements that were put forth between the ACP countries and the European Union. So my question is, I would like for you to highlight and discuss the role of the comprehensive legal agreements such as the Rome Agreement, that is now defunct, the Lomé Agreement, the Cotonou Agreement and now the post-Cotonou Agreement, which was just finalized last month, and get some of your opinions or your thoughts about the post-Cotonou Agreement in fostering the economic development of African countries. And also mitigating the issues dealing with migration and even human trafficking that kind of were not really addressed clearly in those earlier agreements, such as the Rome, and Lomé, and the Cotonou. SIGNÉ: Thank you so much for the extremely important question. So I think that to put things in context, as you mentioned, the Lomé Agreement, the Cotonou Agreement, and other agreement, when we look—again, I like to look from an historical perspective. So we clearly see that if a single agreement was almost having the impact of a magic stick, Africa will be in a different position now. So all those agreements, of course, and some of those agreements are benefiting, at least per the perspective of some of the African countries, they are benefiting more the European Union countries and France than perhaps, per se, in the absolute term, the African countries. Because many of the key players in those countries in industrial development, among others, are foreign corporations, which are originating from those countries. But let me instead speak in a in a broader perspective. I think that the responsibility for Africa's development really lie primarily with African leaders and citizens. So it's a notion that I think we should really come back to. Of course, when we discuss then the relation within Africa and the rest of the world, Africa has been historically in a situation where it was abused—from slavery, to colonization, and so on. But as you have seen in in my permanent record, I'm also part—most of my work consists not only at looking at those structural asymmetries that we can see on the continent, but at giving back the responsibility, accountability of the African leaders, despite the asymmetrical relation they may be having with some of the other part of the world, still have the power and the responsibility to better deliver for their citizens. So, yes, I think that the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), as I mentioned, also represents an opportunity to address some of those challenges. But, of course, some countries will—we also have the political economy of the AfCFTA, in the sense that some country—and the ones which are the most advanced, economically speaking—the most enthusiastic about accelerating the implementation. But the beauty of the AfCFTA is that they also acknowledge some of the country we may potentially be left behind and have specific growth or special and differential treatments allowing the countries with more challenges to be—to be developed. So, again, I think that, yes, it's extremely important for Africa when engaging with the European Union to really find a configuration which would unlock the industrial development of the continent, and not necessarily just rely on the primary goods, among others. FASKIANOS: So, thank you. I'm you're going next to Charlotte Langeveld, who's a lecturer at Ocean County College: To which identity do the young African people prefer to be associated with, ethnic or national identity? While national identity is superficial and ethnic is real, it has consequences for the future of the continent. SIGNÉ: So yeah, so that is probably a specific survey should be developed and in a systematic way to provide a definitive response to that question. But we have different, again, multiple belonging. Like some African citizens, especially young people, will want to be presented as African, even beyond your nation, or as global citizens. But it is clear that ethnic—the ethnicity continues to play a role on the continent, because although younger Africans speak less than the previous generation local dialects and languages, so it is important to also highlight that it is part of a broader cultural system. So I don't think that it is either/or. So if you think also about citizens of the Africa—of the European Union, are French people considering more French than European, or more European than French? I would say it probably depends, but that multiple belonging remain valid. And although the comparison is slightly different, are Californians believing that they are more Californian than American or are more American than Californian? So, but understanding also the potential implication of the question is that it is extremely important to keep—in nation-building to go beyond the questions or the notions which are dividing, to focus on the common values, and systems. So I don't think that's a problem for young people to have multiple belongings or ideas of belonging. What is—what could be a bad thing is to use those differences for discrimination, for poor governance, among others. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to go next to Kimberly Pace. Q: Hello, Landry. It's nice to see you. I have—my question is—hi, University of Alaska, Anchorage. My question is regarding women and girls. My question is, you know, given the role that violent extremism has had in Africa, what is the effect—what do you think is the effect on the economic and political opportunities for girls and women across African countries? Would love to hear your response. SIGNÉ: Absolutely. Hello, Kimberly. And so great to see you. And so I'm looking forward to following up after this session. So this is an extremely important question. There is no future of Africa without a full acknowledgement of the critical importance of women and girls, and not just economically speaking, politically speaking, in all the spheres of society. Just speaking economically, the gross domestic product of the content in some country could be increased by more than 50 percent with the full—or, about 50 percent—increase from 2 to 48, 49 percent with the full integration of women in society, in the economy, among other. So, and it is incredibly painful to see how in some countries, especially in situations of conflict, some of the first victim—the main victims, are girls, are women, or young people in as well, in general. So it is therefore extremely important, I think, to further empower women. But when you speak about empowering women, most people will think about empowering them politically, in particular. But for my conversation with many heads of state—former head of states, including President Banda or President Gurib-Fakim, so in our conversation it appear clearly that one of the best way to empower women politically is first to empower them also economically. Because when you're empowered economically you can organize a campaign, you can be a fully contributing member, and you can be independent. So, yes, addressing conflict, human rights challenges, will be a way to further protect women, because when you have war, when you have civil conflict, they are typically the most vulnerable people and they are often the one who are the most abused by a protagonist. So yeah. So I fully concur to the fact that we have to act in a more vigorous way to protect women, to create opportunities for women, and to empower women. And some of my best models, not to say most, are women. And starting with my mother, my sisters, and yeah. So I couldn't agree more with you. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next question from William Decourt, who's at Hamilton Lugar School at Indiana University: You mentioned surveys indicating widespread support for democracy across the continent. How have you seen public opinion in Africa responding to or shaping norms of liberal governance on the continent? And has it been affected by other challenges, such as the recent coups, influence from Russian mercenaries, and perhaps from increased Chinese investment too? SIGNÉ: So, just to be certain that I understand, and thank you so much for the important questions, is also about some of the trends on the continent related to democratic support, and the overall political situations. One of the reasons, and please, Irina, feel free to engage and follow up as needed. So one of the reasons why we have seen coups, of course, some—you have to put things in context. I mentioned that before. Many of the African citizens really want democracy to deliver. And not just democracy to deliver—if you live in rural contexts. At the origin of modern states is the social contract, which require that while a citizen will be giving up some of your fundamental—some of your rights, you will receive in exchange from states basic public services and goods, including security, economic opportunities, among others. But when those are not delivered, whether in a democracy or in a nondemocratic regime, that is when you have more challenges. Which could lead in some cases to a military coup, as we have seen, because then coup leaders may justify that—may justified their action by the imperative of restoring security or bringing about economic opportunities. So I think that is a point that I first want to highlight, to insist on the fact that, yeah, so the—those surveys show that on one hand, Africans want democracy. On the other hand, they want those democracies to deliver. And sometime even in democratic countries, some leaders are not necessarily governing in the way which is aligned with accountability. And those are the reasons why some coup leaders will also be supported by some citizens as an alternative, not to restore a long-term authoritarian system, but perhaps organize a transition. But from my perspective, it's one of the reasons why I think that—for many reasons. But one of the key reasons why I think coups even in a very contested context are extremely bad is one of the best predictors of a coup is a previous coup. So once military got involved in politics, even after a successful short-term transition and return to power to the civilians, the likelihood of having another coup is high. So that is one of the reasons why I think it's very important to invest in citizen, and invest in democratic development, and also invest in making democratic countries, African democracies, African democratic countries, deliver better for their citizens. FASKIANOS: Well, Landry, we are unfortunately out of time. And I apologize to all of you who had wonderful questions, we could not possibly get to them all, and raised hands. So we will just have to continue the conversation, and organize another conversation around these important issues. But, Landry Signé, thank you very much for being with us today. We really appreciate your comments and your analysis. And you can follow Landry on X, the app formerly known as Twitter, at @LandrySigne. It's spelled S-I-G-N-E. And our next Academic Webinar will be on Wednesday, October 25, at 1:00 p.m. (EDT) with Stephen Biddle, who's an adjunct senior fellow here at CFR and professor at Columbia University, to talk about military strategy in the contemporary world. And in the meantime, I'd encourage you to learn about CFR paid internships for students and fellowships for professors at CFR.org/Careers. Please visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org. We have been posting a lot of content there in light of the Israeli-Hamas conflict. So there are a lot of resources on our homepage that I commend to all of you. And again, Landry Signé, thank you very much for being with us today. SIGNÉ: Thank you so much, Irina. And thank you so much for the wonderful questions, conversation, and to the incredible team which has put everything together. FASKIANOS: Thank you. (END)

Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide."At the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, we study how people respond to climate change. So what do people around the world understand or misunderstand about the causes, the consequences, and solutions? How do they perceive the risks: the likelihood and severity of different types of impacts from sea level rise to the health impacts? What kinds of policies do they support or oppose? And then what kinds of behaviors are people engaged in or willing to change to be part of climate solutions? There are lots of different things there, but our ultimate question is answering why. What are the psychological, cultural, the political reasons why some people get engaged with this issue? While others are kind of apathetic and some are downright dismissive and hostile, or at least they are in the United States, which thankfully is not the case in most of the rest of the world."https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitzhttps://climatecommunication.yale.eduwww.yaleclimateconnections.orgwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide."So the why really depends on where you are. People are not all the same. There is no such thing as the public. There are many, many, many different publics within a state, within a country, within the world, right? So one of the first cardinal rules of effective communication is know your audience. Who are they? What do they know? What do they think they know? Who do they trust? Where do they get their information? What are their underlying values? And it's only once you know who they are that you as a communicator can go more than halfway to try to meet them where they are not where you are. Where they are. That's so easy to say, but it's actually so hard for so many of us within the climate community to do because we're steeped in this issue. We want to talk about things."https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitzhttps://climatecommunication.yale.eduwww.yaleclimateconnections.orgwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide."So the why really depends on where you are. People are not all the same. There is no such thing as the public. There are many, many, many different publics within a state, within a country, within the world, right? So one of the first cardinal rules of effective communication is know your audience. Who are they? What do they know? What do they think they know? Who do they trust? Where do they get their information? What are their underlying values? And it's only once you know who they are that you as a communicator can go more than halfway to try to meet them where they are not where you are. Where they are. That's so easy to say, but it's actually so hard for so many of us within the climate community to do because we're steeped in this issue. We want to talk about things."https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitzhttps://climatecommunication.yale.eduwww.yaleclimateconnections.orgwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide."At the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, we study how people respond to climate change. So what do people around the world understand or misunderstand about the causes, the consequences, and solutions? How do they perceive the risks: the likelihood and severity of different types of impacts from sea level rise to the health impacts? What kinds of policies do they support or oppose? And then what kinds of behaviors are people engaged in or willing to change to be part of climate solutions? There are lots of different things there, but our ultimate question is answering why. What are the psychological, cultural, the political reasons why some people get engaged with this issue? While others are kind of apathetic and some are downright dismissive and hostile, or at least they are in the United States, which thankfully is not the case in most of the rest of the world."https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitzhttps://climatecommunication.yale.eduwww.yaleclimateconnections.orgwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide."Cities are going to be core to solving this problem. However, the whole world is vulnerable to climate change in different ways. So cities are going to be critical. Let's not forget we already have 8 billion people on the planet, and it's growing.And so there is a lot that we need to do to both retrofit our existing cities, which is expensive and hard because they were laid down, sometimes, hundreds of years ago with different assumptions about how one should live. For example, L.A. was built on the highway and based on the automobile, so it's very difficult for L.A. as a city to now go, okay, we want to get back to providing rail transit for everybody. And they're doing it, but it's expensive, and it's hard to retrofit but essential work that has to be done.But at the same time, the world is building new megacities that are going to house tens of millions of people, and we now have the opportunity to build them for the 21st century. We don't have to follow the same design patterns of the past. So, this now opens up enormous creativity, experimentation, and innovation. One study has found that the single thing that makes people most unhappy in America is commuting time, being stuck in traffic. That makes people more frustrated and depressed than anything.”https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitzhttps://climatecommunication.yale.eduwww.yaleclimateconnections.orgwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide."Cities are going to be core to solving this problem. However, the whole world is vulnerable to climate change in different ways. So cities are going to be critical. Let's not forget we already have 8 billion people on the planet, and it's growing.And so there is a lot that we need to do to both retrofit our existing cities, which is expensive and hard because they were laid down, sometimes, hundreds of years ago with different assumptions about how one should live. For example, L.A. was built on the highway and based on the automobile, so it's very difficult for L.A. as a city to now go, okay, we want to get back to providing rail transit for everybody. And they're doing it, but it's expensive, and it's hard to retrofit but essential work that has to be done.But at the same time, the world is building new megacities that are going to house tens of millions of people, and we now have the opportunity to build them for the 21st century. We don't have to follow the same design patterns of the past. So, this now opens up enormous creativity, experimentation, and innovation. One study has found that the single thing that makes people most unhappy in America is commuting time, being stuck in traffic. That makes people more frustrated and depressed than anything.”https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitzhttps://climatecommunication.yale.eduwww.yaleclimateconnections.orgwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide."At the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, we study how people respond to climate change. So what do people around the world understand or misunderstand about the causes, the consequences, and solutions? How do they perceive the risks: the likelihood and severity of different types of impacts from sea level rise to the health impacts? What kinds of policies do they support or oppose? And then what kinds of behaviors are people engaged in or willing to change to be part of climate solutions? There are lots of different things there, but our ultimate question is answering why. What are the psychological, cultural, the political reasons why some people get engaged with this issue? While others are kind of apathetic and some are downright dismissive and hostile, or at least they are in the United States, which thankfully is not the case in most of the rest of the world."https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitzhttps://climatecommunication.yale.eduwww.yaleclimateconnections.orgwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Washington Post climate correspondent Tim Puko speaks with Gernot Wagner, climate economist at Columbia Business School, and Reina Otsuka, United Nations Development Program's Digital Innovation for Nature, Climate and Energy lead, about the role of technology in finding solutions to address climate change. Conversations recorded on Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023.

Dr. Helen Stewart holds a Ph.D in sociology from Brandeis University.  She was a post doctoral scholar at Harvard University and served as lecturer and professor at Wellesley College,Brandeis University, Harvard University Extension and various other universities in the US. She was academic administrator and consultant to many individuals and companies in the United States and abroad. She has worked as an arbitrator/ mediator, interpreter in French for the US Department of State rural sociologist for the United Nations Development Program in West Africa, public speaker in the U.S., Europe, the Caribbean and South America, and was a radio personality in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2013 Helen published Seven Seconds or Less: From Gut Feeling to Bottom Line in Challenging Areas of Business, a book about applied intuition for mergers and partnerships, human resource management, new product development, and other important aspects related to business.  She resides in Honolulu, Hawaii where she is currently working on a book of essays called Grits and Granola, The “granola” component offers a worldview that may help diminish the re-emergence of intolerance across continents and cultures. Her third volume is an “annotated memoir” from her perspective as a black woman in America, as an African American whose formative years were spent abroad as what is now called a “Third Culture Kid,” and as a human being immersed in contemporary spirituality. Helen's website can be found here:  https://drhelenstewart.com/

Join us for a captivating yet informative episode about what Geopathic stress is and how it affects us with special guest Alex Stark, a renowned Geomancer, Shaman, Feng Shui Expert, and Architect.  In short, Geopathic stress refers to disturbances in the earth's energies that can significantly impact our lives. In this episode, we explore what Geopathic Stress is, how it affects us, and the potential remedies it offers. Geopathic stress manifests in ways similar to high forms of stress experienced by our bodies, leading to illnesses or imbalances. From sleeplessness and infertility to cancers, headaches, and larger mechanical failures in construction, the negative effects of Geopathic stress are far-reaching, but not impossible to remedy, heal, and cure. The magical component to land healing is that as we heal the land, it heals us in return.  In this episode, we explore how Geopathic stress can influence the behavior of animals and attract or repel certain behaviors, how humans react to it, and how it can affect us mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. We explore these themes more in our Online Geomancy & Land Healing Certification course, where you can gain practical insights into areas with geopathic stress, implement effective remedies, and utilize dowsing techniques to identify these problem areas. Ultimately, we provide actionable practices on transforming environments to foster support and well-being. By becoming a skilled geomancer and equipping yourself with the knowledge to remedy geopathic stress, you'll be able to assist clients struggling with infertility, aid farmers in improving livestock and harvests, and provide valuable support to families experiencing conflicts and challenges among many more benefits.  Don't miss this episode as we unravel the mysteries of Geopathic Stress and uncover the transformative power of Geomancy. Tune in to expand your understanding of this field and learn how you can make a positive impact on the well-being of individuals, communities, the collective consciousness, and the environment at large. We would like to gift you with our FREE Geomancy mini-course, where you can build a foundational knowledge of Geomancy and Land Healing, get a taste of our teaching style, and more importantly, start implementing these transformative healing practices in your own life. Join our in-person Land healing events for 2023 and 2024 here, and continue to grow with like-minded individuals who want to heal, rediscover and reconnect with Mother Earth. Alex has spent years studying how the Earth connects and communicates with us. He shares deep knowledge about the differences in the land when it is in its natural and healthy state with those that have gone through trauma and pain. He also gives us wisdom on what impacts can be made to the land and how it makes a difference to the people living on it. We uncover interesting knowledge and get to know the land on which we live more.  Alex Stark is an internationally recognized European Geomancer, Feng Shui master, Architect, Oriental Astrologer, and Native American Earth Healer. As such, he advises on issues of design and placement for built environments and issues on personal transformation.  Alex is a recipient of a Ford Foundation Scholarship for Cross-Cultural Studies and was named Scholar of the House by Yale University. He's been a consultant to the United Nations Development Program in Public Health and Regional Planning. WEBSITE: www.alexstark.com/

According to the United Nations Development Program, 54 countries, accounting for half the world's population, face such critical debt burdens that they simply cannot finance climate adaptation and mitigation on their own. Most of these same countries are in the most climate-vulnerable regions in the world, setting them up for compounding disasters. At the same time, every nation on earth is being asked to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels – which enabled the richest countries to develop their economies. So how can those in the developing world make the transition to a clean energy economy while centering economic justice?  This episode is a collaboration with Foreign Policy's Heat of The Moment podcast. Guests: Ani Dasgupta, President and CEO, World Resources Institute Featuring stories from Amy Booth and Elna Schütz for Heat of The Moment podcast  For show notes and related links, visit https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

According to the United Nations Development Program, 54 countries, accounting for half the world's population, face such critical debt burdens that they simply cannot finance climate adaptation and mitigation on their own. Most of these same countries are in the most climate-vulnerable regions in the world, setting them up for compounding disasters. At the same time, every nation on earth is being asked to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels – which enabled the richest countries to develop their economies. So how can those in the developing world make the transition to a clean energy economy while centering economic justice?  This episode is a collaboration with Foreign Policy's Heat of The Moment podcast. Guests: Ani Dasgupta, President and CEO, World Resources Institute Featuring stories from Amy Booth and Elna Schütz for Heat of The Moment podcast  For show notes and related links, visit https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a lively and inspiring evening with longtime friends and fellow activists Danny Glover and Gus Newport. The Rev. Dr. Dorsey Blake will moderate. The three men will share stories from organizing communities for more than 50 years and why they are dedicated to the development of what Martin Luther King, Jr., called The Beloved Community. The three men are dedicated to community development and human rights, topics that have never been more relevant as safety, public health, asset development, and education continue to be priorities in our communities. This will be a special evening of storytelling for people of all ages. You don't want to miss it! Glover and Newport were both raised by working class parents who were active in labor unions and in their communities. Because of their parents' and grandparents' strong influences, they became involved in civil rights and community support as well as anti-apartheid and other international peace and human rights organizations. About the Speakers Danny Glover is an award-winning actor, starring in many well-known films such as The Color Purple and the first Lethal Weapon. He has also gained respect for his wide-reaching community activism and philanthropic efforts, with a particular emphasis on advocacy for economic justice, and access to health care and education programs in the United States and Africa. Internationally, Glover has served as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Development Program from 1998–2004, focusing on issues of poverty, disease, and economic development in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, and serves as a UNICEF ambassador. With a degree in economics, his first job out of college was with the Berkeley planning department. His next job was with Model Cities for San Francisco. He has traveled worldwide seeking peace and understanding. Eugene “Gus” Newport is a social justice activist, grassroots leader, community and economic development consultant, and has worked for several foundations and served on the faculties of MIT, Yale, UC Santa Cruz, U Mass Boston, and Portland State. He was the two-term mayor of Berkeley, CA (1979–1986). During his tenure he served on the advisory board of the U.S. Conference on Apartheid and the Committee on The Question of Palestine. He served as the American representative as vice president on the World Peace Council. Dorsey Odell Blake has served as presiding minister of The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples (San Francisco) since 1994. Fellowship Church was founded in 1944 as the nation's first intentionally interracial, interfaith congregation by Dr. Howard Thurman and Dr. Alfred Fisk. Dr. Blake has extensive field ministry experience with interfaith groups addressing justice and peace issues. Recently, Dr. Blake was the keynote speaker at the Nineteenth Annual Daoist Gathering and served as chaplain for the Institute for Religion and Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 15: Vaquita: Conservation Summary: The vaquita is balancing on the edge of extinction. With only 10 left, can we save these beautiful porpoises? Join Kiersten as she talks about the conservation efforts surrounding the vaquita.   For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.   Show Notes:  https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/science-data/vaquita-conservation-and-abundance https://seasheperd.org/milagro/ Robinson, Jacqueline; Kyriazis Christopher; Nidenda-Morales, Sergio; Beichman, Annabel; Rojas-Bracho, LOrenzo; Robertson, Kelly; Fontaine, Micheal; Wayne, Robert; Lohmueller, Kirk; Taylor Barbara, and Morin, Phillip. “The critically endangered vaquita is not doomed to extinction by inbreeding depression.” Science, May 2022: Vol 376, Issue 6593, pg 635-639; DOI:10.1126/science.abm1742   Vaquita: Science, Politics, and Crime in the Sea of Cortez by Brooke Bessesen Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp Vaquita Conservation Organizations porpoise.org   Transcript (Piano music plays) Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife. (Piano music stops)   Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I'm Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we'll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating.    This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won't regret it.   This episode continues the vaquita and the fifth thing I like about the vaquita is how much effort we are putting into conservation of this species! Regrettably, this will be my last episode about the vaquita. I wanted to do a full ten episodes but we know so little about this animal that I could only gather enough information to do five episodes. Also, a word of caution about this episode, it will be hard to listen to and it was incredibly emotionally for me to write, but this is an important part of the vaquita's story and must be told. Have some tissues handy.   At the posting of this episode, in December 2022 there are only 10 vaquitas alive in the Sea of Cortez. They are the only vaquitas alive on the planet. There are no individuals in captivity. We have the slimmest of chances to save them from extinction and the odds are not on our, or their side, but we haven't given up.   Conservation efforts concerning the vaquita began in 1972 when the United States gave them protection under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. In 1975 Mexico also listed them as endangered. By this time, it was determined that the gill net fishing in the Sea of Cortez was greatly impacting not only the totoaba fish the nets were intended to catch but also the vaquita.    According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's website gill nets are described as a wall of netting that hangs in the water column, typically made of monofilament or multifilament nylon. Mesh sizes can vary depending on species that you wish to catch but they are designed to allow the fish' s head to get through but not the body. As the fish struggles to get free it gets more and more tangled keeping it captured until fishermen retrieve the nets. This type of fishing is not manned, it is a passive form of fishing that means fisherman can come by at different times to retrieve the fish caught in the nets. Commercial fisheries have been using this method to catch the totoaba, a fish that can grow to 6 feet long and is in great demand in Chinese markets, since the 1930s.    These nets are huge risks to oxygen breathing animals that live in areas where they are used. Animals such as sea turtles, sea lions, dolphins, whales and porpoises can all die when caught in these nets because they become trapped under water and suffocate.    In 1996 vaquita were listed as critically endangered by the International Union of Conservation of Nature, aka IUCN. In 1997, the first reliable estimate of the vaquita population was obtained through a cooperative Mexican-American survey. A total of 567 individuals were estimated by this survey. In 2008 another survey found only 245 vaquitas. This is a loss of 57%. That's 322 individuals in eleven years.    Now gill net fishing for totoaba had been outlawed in 1975 because of the severe decline seen in this species, but the swim bladder of this fish can bring a very high price on the black market, so fisherman were willing to risk punishment for the huge payday. In 2010 the totoaba were listed as critically endangered by the IUCN. Gillnets are still used illegally to catch this fish and these nets are also the main reason vaquitas are balancing on the edge of extinction.   In the last episode, I mentioned the Sea Shepherd Organization and the conservation efforts they are involved in. Let's start with two projects focused on helping keep the vaquita safe in the Sea of Cortez.   Operation Milagro is a program in which the Sea Shepherd ships work in conjunction with Mexican authorities to crackdown on illegal fishing in the Sea of Cortez. The ships go out on daily tours looking for illegal fishing activity. When they spot someone or something suspicious they contact the Mexican Navy to investigate further. This is a band-aid on a fatal wound but the volunteers of Sea Shepherd are willing to do everything they can to help this marine mammal.    Another project they are involved in, now that gill net fishing has been outlawed in the Sea of Cortez, is retrieving ghost nets. These are nets that have been abandoned by fisherman but still remain in the waters. They may not be used for fishing anymore but they still pose a threat to the aquatic life in the sea.    Sea Shepherd ships use specialized equipment to find these nets and haul them aboard freeing any animals caught but still alive and untangling those that have perished. They throw these individuals overboard with heavy hearts knowing that they may help feed other animals in the water. The nets are dismantled and sent to an organization that is making shoes out of them. Parley for the Oceans has joined forces with Adidas to turn ocean trash and gill nets into running shoes.   The question that haunts conservationists is whether all of this work is too little too late? With only ten individual vaquitas left on the planet, are our efforts to save them from gill nets even worth it?   For those of you that remember the basics of high school genetics you probably know that when you have a small pool of mammalian genes, inbreeding can cause some serious problems. If animals, especially mammals, breed with family members that have genes that are too closely related it leads to genetic diseases, infertile offspring, underdeveloped offspring that may not survive, and other serious problems.    A new study looking at the genetics of the vaquita sponsored by NOAA Fisheries, UCLA, University of Washington, United Nations Development Program in Mexico, the Center for Research in Ecology and Evolution of Disease in France, and Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences in the Netherlands may have an answer for us. The study published in May 2022 used tissue samples collected by Mexican researchers beginning in the 1980s. In an article on the NOAA Fisheries website, Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, a co-author of this study, is quoted as saying, “Genomics gives us clues into the species' past but also lets us peer into the future. Despite the small numbers, the species could recover if we stopped killing them.”   What the study reveals is that the vaquitas population has always been small, compared to other marine mammals, fluctuating between 1,000 to 5,000 individuals over a period of 250,000 years. Why does this give researchers and conservationists hope for their survival? Quoting from the NOAA Fisheries article, “Smaller populations have less genetic variation from one animal to another, and fewer harmful mutations. Over time, when two animals with harmful traits occasionally mated, they produced compromised offspring that likely died. That process gradually purged many harmful traits from the population.”   The scientists involved with this research ran computer simulations based on the archived vaquita genetic samples. The simulations found that if we immediately stop the deaths of vaquitas in gill nets, they have a chance to recover. We can still save this amazing mammal from extinction, if we stop using gill nets in the Sea of Cortez.    I hope that they next thing we hear r about the vaquita is that their population numbers are on the rise. If not they will most likely become extinct by the end of 2023.   Thank you for joining me in learning about the vaquita.   Please visit porpoise.org to find out even more about the vaquita and to discover what you can do to help this unique animal.   Join me next week for a look at our first misunderstood animal, tarantulas.   (Piano Music plays)  This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

With the rise of AI-robots, in taking over repetitive tasks and even more activities in the future, there is a now an empath robot, with evolving emotional intelligence. It is seen as a viable solution, in supporting the world's aging population. Her name is Sophia. She is the world's first robot citizen and the first robot, Innovation Ambassador for the United Nations Development Program. She is used for research, as part of the Loving AI project, which seeks to understand how robots can adapt to users' needs, through intra and interpersonal development. Kellee talks with Ben Goertzel, who was the Chief Scientist of Hanson Robotics, the company that created Sophia. He is now the founder and CEO of SingularityNET, a project combining artificial intelligence and blockchain to democratize access to artificial intelligence. Dr. Ben Goertzel is a cross-disciplinary scientist, entrepreneur and author. He leads the SingularityNET Foundation, the OpenCog Foundation, and the AGI Society which runs the annual Artificial General Intelligence conference. Dr. Goertzel also chairs the futurist nonprofit Humanity+, and serves as Chief Scientist of AI firms Singularity Studio, Rejuve, SingularityDAO and Xccelerando Media, all parts of the SingularityNET ecosystem.  As Chief Scientist of robotics firm Hanson Robotics, he led the software team behind the Sophia robot; as Chief AI Scientist of Awakening Health he leads the team crafting the mind behind Sophia's little sister Grace.Dr. Goertzel's research work encompasses multiple areas including artificial general intelligence, natural language processing, cognitive science, machine learning, computational finance, bioinformatics, virtual worlds, gaming, parapsychology, theoretical physics and more.  He has published 25+ scientific books, ~150 technical papers, and numerous journalistic articles, and given talks at a vast number of events of all sorts around the globe.Before entering the software industry Dr. Goertzel obtained his PhD in mathematics from Temple University in 1989, and served as a university faculty in several departments of mathematics, computer science and cognitive science, in the US, Australia and New Zealand.

In Kofi Time episode 8 part 1, podcast host Ahmad Fawzi welcomes Mark Suzman, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to discuss how we can advance the fight against poverty. Mark discusses how Kofi Annan's concept for the Millennium Development Goals was a necessary milestone to reduce poverty and brought unprecedented progress in the area of development. Mark and Ahmad talk about Kofi Annan's approach to sustainable development - that of combining a long-term vision with short-term goals. How can we reignite Kofi Annan's global endeavour to collectively eradicate poverty once and for all? About Mark Suzman: As CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Mark Suzman leads the organization in service of our mission – to help every person have the opportunity to live a healthy, productive life. Knowing that we cannot achieve that mission alone, he brings a deep commitment to building partnerships and ensuring that the culture of the foundation directly enables the impact we aspire to have. Mark serves as a member of the foundation's board of trustees in his role as CEO. Mark's upbringing in apartheid South Africa instilled in him a desire to use the advantages afforded to him to help tackle injustice and inequality. He began his career doing that through journalism, writing for the Johannesburg Star and then the Financial Times, where he covered international trade policy, welfare reform, and political issues, including the historic 1994 election of Nelson Mandela. In 2000, Mark joined the United Nations, where he was part of the effort to implement the Millennium Development Goals under the leadership of then Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He held multiple positions at the UN over his six-year tenure, including senior advisor for policy and strategic communications in the Office of the Secretary General, and policy director in the Office of the Administrator of the United Nations Development Program. Mark joined the foundation in 2007 as director of Global Development Policy, Advocacy, and Special Initiatives. Prior to becoming CEO, he served as managing director of Country Offices, president of Global Policy and Advocacy, and chief strategy officer. In these roles, he built and oversaw the development of the foundation's offices in India, China, Africa, and Europe, and managed the foundation's relationships with government, private philanthropists, and civil society. He also implemented a new system for how the foundation measures impact and manages tradeoffs across its strategic priorities. Mark holds a doctorate in international relations from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He earned his bachelor's degree, summa cum laude, from Harvard University.

The United Nations Development Program issued a new report this week that once again sounded the alarm on the urgent need for debt relief in the world's poorest countries. The UNDP said 54 countries are at risk, with African countries accounting for almost half.Zambia, however, is among a handful of countries that is actually making progress in restructuring its debt. Finance Minister Situmbeko Musokotwane says he's optimistic that a deal can be finalized before the end of the year and China has played a critical role in the process.Bloomberg reporters Tom Hancock and Matthew Hill have been covering the Zambian debt story from Hong Kong and South Africa respectively and join Eric to explain why there's so much global interest in how China responds to this particular crisis.JOIN THE DISCUSSION:Twitter: @ChinaGSProject| @stadenesque | @eric_olander | @mattstephenhill | @hancocktomFacebook: www.facebook.com/ChinaAfricaProjectFOLLOW CAP IN FRENCH AND ARABIC:Français: www.projetafriquechine.com | @AfrikChineعربي: www.akhbaralsin-africia.com | @AkhbarAlSinAfrJOIN US ON PATREON!Become a CAP Patreon member and get all sorts of cool stuff, including our Week in Review report, an invitation to join monthly Zoom calls with Eric & Cobus, and even an awesome new CAP Podcast mug!www.patreon.com/chinaafricaprojectSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Child marriage is a common practice in Nigeria rooted in traditional, economic, religious, and legal conditions that affect girls and women one way or another.According to the United Nations Development Program, early marriage hinders a girl child from achieving her full life potential, although some people think there are advantages to marrying early.In this episode of Nigeria Daily, we look at the pros and cons of early marriage as some women share their early marriage experience.

In this episode of Beyond Aid, Jake Kurtzer speaks with Aarathi Krishnan from the United Nations Development Program to understand the ethical implications of innovations in the humanitarian sector, and the way in which foresight and future planning can inspire an optimistic worldview.

Earlier this year, the United Nations Development Program released a special report entitled “New Threats to Human Security in the Anthropocene”, which details some of the unique, large-scale issues faced by human society in the 21st century. These are problems that require collective, comprehensive action. Unfortunately, such action has been difficult to achieve.A reason for this is the global decline in institutional trust - the kind that facilitates buy-in and civil participation from communities. When institutions lose trust, the people they are supposed to serve feel less secure and less willing to engage with them, which makes it even more difficult to promote collective action and social cohesion, further worsening the situation, which further degrades trust, and so on. Between a government and its people, the building blocks for this trust relationship are the tiny, everyday interactions that citizens have with government services. So how can we best design these services to build trust?Joining the Buzz this week to discuss is Eddie Hartwig, the former Deputy Administrator of the US Digital Service, and currently the Chairman and Partner of the Service Design Collective.Follow Humans of Public Service on Instagram!Register for ELC 2022 here!Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on Twitter @ACTIAC or visit http://www.actiac.org.

Aisha Jumaan is the Founder and President of the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation. Jumaan has over 30 years of experience in public health, including in viral vaccine preventable diseases, cancer research, maternal & child health and nutrition, and women in development. She worked with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for over a decade. Jumaan also worked in her native home, Yemen, with the United Nations Population Fund and the United Nations Development Program. She also participated in health-related program development, evaluation, and training activities for the Peace Corps. She has served on the faculty of Emory University, as well as Sana'a University. Jumaan is currently working as an Independent Consultant coordinating health- projects in Yemen. Do something about it: https://bit.ly/leaveyemen

Get your daily briefing of the latest Caribbean News Headlines. Learn more about the happenings and events of the region every weekday.Caribbean Headline•Former St. Maarten Member of Parliament Sentenced To 40 Months in Prison For Tax Crimes•UK Govt. vows to keep watch on Guyana Procurement System•Factory Workers in Haiti on Strike for Higher Wages•Inter-American Development Bank sets record funding in 2021•United Nations Development Program and Government of Dominica support preservation of  indigenous Kalinago communitiesThese and other stories on today's Pulse of the Caribbean-Caribbean News Round Up for Friday, February 11, 2022.

Welcome to Valuable Conversations with the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. Today's guest is Wolfgang Drechsler. MPA students Maria-Nikol Stoykova and Justin Beirold talk to Wolfgang about his life and work. We discuss how he got into public policy, his interest in non-western public administration, and the complicated history of non-western PA in Nikol's home country of Bulgaria. We also talk about Wolfgang's recent advocacy on protests by civil servants in Myanmar, and his experience as an advisor to governments and leaders around the world. Wolfgang is an insightful and funny guest, and we hope you enjoy! Guest Bio: Wolfgang is an Honorary Professor at UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, Professor of Governance at the Department of Innovation and Governance at Tallinn University of Technology, as well as an Associate at Harvard University's Davis Center. Dr. Wolfgang Drechsler has been Ad­visor to the President of Estonia, Executive Secretary during the German Reunification, a Congressional Fellow as well as a Senior Legislative Analyst in the United States Congress. He serves or has served as an advisor, especially in the areas of public management reform and innovation policy as well as e-governance, for national governments and international organizations, such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Council of Europe, SIGMA, World Bank, European Union, Inter-American Development Bank, and United Nations Development Program; he has worked, in different capacities, on the national development plans of, e.g., Estonia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Peru, Brazil, and Norway. His academic focus areas include Technology, Innovation & Governance; Non-Western paradigms of governance, especially Buddhist, Confucian, and Islamic (Southeast and East Asia); and Public Management Reform generally. He also has a strong background both in heterodox economic theory and in classical political philosophy. He is the author or editor of more than 20 books and journal issues and well over 100 scholarly articles. - Follow Wolfgang on Twitter: @wjmd - Read Wolfgang's recent article: ”New development: Myanmar's civil service—Responsible disobedience during the 2021 military coup” (2021) (Link) Learn about our student hosts: -Justin Beirold (Link) -Maria Nikol-Stoykova (Link) Follow IIPP on Twitter: @IIPP_UCL https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/ Production and music by Justin Beirold

Blending a formal background in marketing, strategic partnerships, and social impact expertise, Kookai brings her experience in using impact evaluation, numbers and stories to help organizations capture untapped growth opportunities. Prior to joining Pangaea Ventures, Kookai launched an award-winning startup in Thailand and was a partnership consultant at the United Nations Development Program. Kookai is an active speaker, mentor, and contributor to the startup communities globally. She holds an MBA from the University of British Columbia in Entrepreneurship and Innovation and a Bachelor of Arts from Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. When not investing, you'd find her scuba diving in the tropical oceans or hiking in the great outdoors - conquering the next mountain summit.

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, Sarah Maston, Senior Solution Architect at Microsoft, discusses the development of the animal conservation initiative, Project 15. Download Transcript Here 00:00 Pete Bernard: Welcome to the IoT Unicorn podcast. This is Pete Bernard from Microsoft, and this podcast is for anyone interested in the long-term technology trends in the IoT space and the journey from here to there. So let's get started.   [music]   00:21 PB: On this episode of the IoT unicorn, we talk to a very interesting person doing very interesting things, and that's Sarah Maston of Microsoft. We talk about Boston University where we both went to school, a little bit about nutrition and nutrition technology, but we spend quite a bit of time talking about Project 15, which is an open platform effort that her and her colleagues have been championing. It's an anti-poaching platform that's been adopted by a number of NGOs around the world, and we talk about that and the technology behind it. So please join us.   [music]   00:58 PB: Sarah, thanks for joining us. We've had a lot of different guests on the show from silicon partners to telecom, internal Microsoft, I think you kind of fall into the category of very interesting Microsoft people that are doing very interesting things, so I'm gonna tee that up. Maybe you can give us a little bit of an intro yourself and sort of some background.   01:18 Sarah Maston: Sure, it's funny, when I look at my cats, I don't know that I'm that, they think I'm that interesting, but thank you. [chuckle] I'm really happy to be here. Where did I come from? So I actually have a really long history in the database space. I started out making data warehouses before that was a thing, that kinda grew, and so I started out as a medical programmer, actually, at a company called Meditech in Massachusetts.   01:56 PB: I see. Oh, where in Massachusetts, by the way?   02:00 SM: Ah, they were in Natick, but I lived in Arlington, I went to BU.   02:04 PB: So interesting, interesting... Oh, you went to BU? Oh, I went to BU also.   02:08 SM: I did, once upon a time. Oh, yay!   02:10 PB: I was a BA/MA BU grad, isn't that weird?   02:12 SM: Go Terriers!   02:12 PB: No, I was gonna say... Yeah, go Terriers. I was gonna say I had, my first job out of college was in West Natick.   02:19 SM: Oh, interesting.   02:19 PB: There was a little shop called The Bit Bucket computer store, and my professor from BU, my assembly language professor actually ran the company, The Bit Bucket, and we built computers, branded computers, and I was his first engineering hire, and it was in West Natick. I didn't stay there that long, 'cause it was kind of like a weird job, but yeah, The Bit Bucket, I remember West Natick... Yeah, Natick's a nice area. That's cool.   02:49 SM: So I was gonna say did they have a lot of Twinkies, 'cause I believe that the Twinkie fact... I don't know. I think it's in Natick...   02:57 PB: Oh, the Twinkie was there?   02:58 SM: I'm unclear.   03:00 PB: I think that was it, I know there's Necco Wafers too was out there.   03:01 SM: Oh, delicious, delicious.   03:01 PB: I'm not sure where that is, yeah.   03:03 SM: Yeah, no, I actually have a degree in psychology and women's studies from BU.   03:08 PB: Fantastic.   03:09 SM: So, a little bit...   03:10 PB: Fantastic, okay. Go Terriers, yeah. Okay.   03:13 SM: Okay.   03:14 PB: There you go.   03:15 SM: Back to this.   03:15 PB: We should have cleared that up in the pre, in the preamble before we started recording, but that's okay, now we know, so that's good.   03:21 SM: Thank you. Yeah, so I did a lot of data warehouses, and I put myself actually in Harvard's night school to kind of get out of data and start learning more Java-ey, getting into more programming stuff, because I had a really weird side hobby then as well, where I had been really sick in my late 20s, and I started studying nutrition, and I ended up creating what was a graph database of food, and I wanted to go and put myself in Harvard 'cause it was easier to learn how to code it than to sort of explain it. And so that journey led me to... I actually invented that over at IBM a couple of years ago and working at IBM, I met a colleague there that had come to Microsoft and so how did you come to Microsoft? Well, I had a friend, and then I met the IoT group and they... It was funny because I hadn't, I was kind of the first person in the group that hadn't built a computer to be.   04:44 PB: Right, right.   04:45 SM: Wasn't a hardware person, and but when they brought me in to start talking about that bigger data conversation, so that's how I got here.   04:57 PB: Interesting. Yeah, cool, so obviously you've been here, I think a couple of years or two years or...   05:01 SM: I have.   05:02 PB: Just about that. That's exciting. Yeah, so that's an interesting path, I think a lot of people get to Microsoft through professional connections, personal connections, there's all sorts of different ways and so you were involved in nutrition and...   05:16 SM: I was.   05:16 PB: And kind of analyzing that. Is that still a big kind of passion of yours, personal nutrition and things?   05:22 SM: I, well yes, personal. Once I designed the graph with the team there, which was the connection of food to disease through phyto-chemicals and the reactions in your bios, kind of like a Facebook of food. I had spent so much... Honestly, I had spent so much time on that in my life that the IoT space and starting to learn more formally about that was so exciting, and a lot of my data colleagues in my circle, same thing, because sometimes you can be doing the same thing and database, database... What's new? And so this was actually really fun, and it was in the beginning of when I got here, my job was a lot of enablement. We were gonna teach people how to use Azure and how to use Azure IoT and etcetera. And that's my fault that I'm having a notification 'cause clearly I...   06:25 PB: That's okay.   06:26 SM: I could have turned that off.   [chuckle]   06:30 SM: But what's interesting is that I... This, it's kind of a strange story in the sense that I... It's not that strange, but I was outside and of my apartment and I saw a lot of smoke and I freaked out, and I ran into my building to save my cats and long story, very short, lots of stress, but the next day, I ended up designing a safety platform that could use IoT to speak differently in a crisis, and so that's really something that whenever I talk about my journey to Microsoft and learning something new is that it was so great to have the space to be like, "Hey, I have an idea." But anyway, that's another story. [chuckle]   07:26 PB: Fascinating. Yeah, I do actually, I use the... I'm kind of a Fitbit fan, and I use the food logging on Fitbit, and it gives me a macro-nutrient breakdown and stuff, and so I've been kind of on my own health journey in the past year or so and feeling good, feeling fit. And part of it is kind of analyzing what I ingest, and I feel like we're just sort of at the beginning of a lot of that science like I would love for the data I'm putting into the Fitbit system, which I guess is now Google, just to get even more analysis of that over time. So it's fascinating kind of measuring what you put into your body and how your body is working, and we had a Dr. David Rhew from Microsoft's chief medical officer on a few weeks ago, and talking about COVID of course, but also just more of the intersection of health and technology and very early stages of really taking advantage of that kind of combination, so...   08:24 SM: No, that's true. It's my work, it was... My work pretty much focused on just taking stuff we do with process, architecture and analysis, and then data, of course, but if I think back when my hair was much browner, I just thought what's breaking when it came to metabolic syndrome, and it was... Well, what happens when I do this and then how does your... And what does your intestinal villi do? And so basically connecting those dots to go through the process architecture of digestion and then to make sort of the data model of that. And to say, "Oh, when you eat oatmeal, the pectin and beta-glucan, pectin from apples and pears comes in, it absorbs bile salts." Basically, all those different processes and then how those can combine and really... Back in the day, I created what's called a food program, and that's also known as a diet, but a food program that would layer what foods to eat, how to change your internals to do what it needed to do. And I guess my own doctor took notice because I lowered my cholesterol 90 points in under three months, so...   09:48 PB: Wow.   09:49 SM: Then I made a system that did it, and so that was really... And I met a lot of really cool people in that journey. Then unfortunately, I got sick from stress, but when I came out of that, here I was, and then I invented some new stuff.   10:12 PB: Good, so let's talk about some new stuff. You've been sort of very, very busy, not only being a new... Fairly new Microsoft employee, but also building up something that is referred to as Project 15 for probably some of our listeners are probably familiar, but why don't you give us a little bit of a recap of the origin story around Project 15 and where that's at?   10:40 SM: Sure, I'd love to. I do a little project in the... Although it's a little bigger now, in my spare nights and in weekend hours with a few friends of mine here at Microsoft and... Alright, so the origin story, once upon a time, it really speaks back to that incident with the cat, and essentially, I made a safety system that could use IoT devices to speak to a community within an emergency. So if you thought about some of the stuff that was going on, you have to go to Twitter to find hashtag, you have to go... You don't really know what's going on. There are so many systems getting good data to first responders, but for us, we don't really know what's going on. So that project became known as Project Edison. And so it went for about a year, we built that with a partner, Insight, and we went on the IoT in Action global event tour and talked about it, and I talked about safety in every context you could imagine.   11:55 SM: I talked about safe retail, I talked about safe cities, I talked about safe schools, safe workplaces, safe buildings. And then, actually, I met a guy who does anti-poaching and his name was Eric and... Eric Dinerstein, and I realized in one of these very stereotypical, I was at the cafe with my colleague Daisuke, and I started drawing, and I said, "Anti-poaching, it's the same use case as a Project Edison safety case," and he looked at me and I said, "Well, it's a population that can't defend itself, and it's someone that you wanna stop or making it less impactful, using devices, and then people you need to talk to to get help. So maybe we can get other people that were like us to have this aha moment that scientists are remaking these wheels that we've already made in the commercial space." And so, that's how Project 15 started, which was like, what do we have in our world that we just don't know the use cases of the scientific world. And the second person I met was another professor, Wasser, Dr. Sam Wasser, and he was at U-Dub, and he also was involved with trying to prevent animal... The tracking of tusks and things, illegal trafficking, and I learned about a pangolin from one of his research fellows, which is a tiny, cute, little, scaly animal, and...   13:42 PB: Okay.   13:43 SM: I had never heard of a pangolin, so cute. And they're slow. And the problem is, is that their defense mechanism is that if you scare them, they turn into a ball.   13:55 PB: Okay.   13:56 SM: And if you are...   13:57 PB: Sounds fair.   13:58 SM: Right, I do the same thing.   14:00 PB: Yeah, I can relate to that.   14:01 SM: I'm just gonna be a little ball over here, but and that works for lions and tigers who are like, "Oh, that's a sharp little ball," but it doesn't work for, poachers will just make a noise, it curls up into a ball, they pick it up, they put it in a bag so.   14:21 PB: I see.   14:22 SM: That's our most poached animal on the planet, actually.   14:25 PB: Oh no.   14:26 SM: Anyway, but I thought, "Well, what's the difference between shoplifting a sweater at a store and shoplifting an animal?" And so that was really where this started was, can we just think about this?   14:44 PB: Right, right. Fantastic. And I think, and I did see you had a segment on a recent video, it was like a United Nations gathering of interested parties around the equator initiative, and I guess I was labeled on YouTube. But can you talk a little bit about that. I mean you're getting some pretty good NGO type of engagement off of project 15.   15:13 SM: Yes. So that was super exciting. I would be... I'll just, full disclosure, I was very nervous, but... And I was a little frustrated with the pandemic because I think I could have gone to the United Nations in another reality.   15:32 PB: Yeah I know.   15:33 SM: But virtually, was very fun and so what happened was, is so we put up a video because we had support from my CVP and my management tree, and pretty much everyone in the group that I was in was very supportive of Project 15 right in the beginning. And so we put up a little web page, and I used to call it the bat phone, because we wondered if anyone would call from the scientific realm, and we actually started meeting NGOs. We had... People used our web page to get in touch with us and two of the people, one of them is... That we started working with, is Red Panda Network, which is a fascinating, wonderful organization. Another one is called the Zambezi project, and the third was a woman who runs the small grants program at... The United Nations Development Program has different sections and small grants is a department that funds scientific projects and that are all very, very much sustainability focused.   16:55 SM: I could give a whole talk about... They're so fascinating. And I met her because she actually knew... Her husband was friends with Daisuke so it was like one of these things where somebody hears about what's... And, "Hey, that's really interesting. Let's see if that would work." And then six months later, I'm speaking at their conference. But what happened was, is that we kind of paired up together to see if we could bring our commercial processes that we do normally with my day job, IoT engagements, we're gonna do an architectural design session, we're gonna get to know those processes. And then she gave us... We piloted with three grantees and started to try to figure out, we have different worlds, but we do the same things, it's just different words to describe them.   18:01 SM: And so we had a few epiphanies during this process, and so the thing is, is that she... Her group funds thousands of NGO companies and projects, scientists that range from urban sustainability, so like smart city type stuff, all the way to biodiversity, which is where we kinda focused, and so how do you scale? And so we've been working with her and her group on scaling up and digitally transforming this area through not only Azure IoT, but how does that work with the research part, there's a lot of machine learning, there's a lot of CAMS, so connecting that into something like Teams, so it's bigger than Azure IoT specifically, as all IoT solutions are, and so...   19:05 PB: Exactly.   19:06 SM: So that... Yeah, so that I got invited to speak about our work.   19:09 PB: Yeah it's interesting. Who do we have on recently... Oh, we were talking to Cory Clarke from RXR, and he was talking about the smart building solutions that they're rolling out for office space and office space post-COVID, and how do you use AI and sensors to detect occupancy and distance from each other and a lot of the core tech around using AI, vision and other things and processing that data, it's all very similar. The core tech is similar, but now we have all these other ways of applying it, whether it's in healthcare or bio-diversity or whatever. And so that's an exciting thing about Microsoft, is a lot of the platform tech that we're doing here gets used in all these different directions. And so you've found a particular slice where obviously there's a super high need and folks should look up and learn more about the poaching problems that are happening in the world, but it's pretty significant.   20:11 PB: And to take some of the tech that has been used for more of the, I don't know, traditional digital transformation that we talk about, but actually using that tech in a really smart way out in the field and the real world to help a problem. That must be pretty satisfying for you as a Microsoft employee. And I guess one of my questions is, that must take up a pretty good chunk of your time, as it should. And so you're doing that and you're also working at Microsoft. And so how do you end up balancing all these things? Is this a... Is that... Give us a little more insight. How do you do that? [laughter]   20:49 SM: Well, I have a very supportive wife who feeds me and makes sure that I eat and...   20:56 PB: Yeah.   20:58 SM: So good question. So when we started to scale, and I clearly... Daisuke and I cannot meet with every NGO to do an... Etcetera. So COVID, in the beginning of this, we did have a very big partnering model. And so we have all these great IoT partners, they've got platforms and just connect these projects to them like we would a startup, a retail startup or something. Unfortunately, the pandemic happened, and of course, as we know, it's all hands on deck to start landing our... Like you just mentioned, the return to work and employees safe. So Daisuke and I had another coffee talk, though virtual, and I said, "You know what? Why don't we use the company Hackathon and make an 80% solution for these folks?"   22:10 SM: That's an easier way. And so we actually got reached out to by a couple of colleagues, one of them was Pamela Cortez and Anders in my group. And they both said, "We'd love to join this because we know what you're doing and we need to figure out how to do the least amount of stuff to have a big impact. And to do that, we need to rely on existing enablement motions and partnerships within other groups. And if we could just build that, then we can roll that out, and off it goes just like anything else."   22:58 PB: Yeah. Well, Microsoft has a great partner network too. So that's the good thing, when we have developers, we have channel partners, we have solution providers, this huge force multiplying engine. It's one of the cool things also about Microsoft is just to get that great idea out there, partners picking it up and amplifying it and landing it locally. So it was good that you took advantage of it. I do wanna make sure people know the... So the aka.ms/project15, is that the go-to place to get the latest?   23:31 SM: That is the place. And then if it can... Down at the bottom there, we have a new link on that page that brings you to the open platform, if you wanna check that out.   23:41 PB: Wow, fantastic. So yeah, let me ask you too, another question. You mentioned COVID-19 and obviously we're all working through that in so many ways. And how has that affected some of your efforts around Project 15 in terms of... Has it been some acceleration in the adoption of technology? Has it slowed down some of these NGOs? Has it...   24:09 SM: This is a multi-faceted answer, so let me think about my words. Okay. So what happened, because now, in the past year, in my private time, and I'm just learning and meeting new people and learning about this space, 'cause I didn't know anything. So if you're somebody who's like me who always wanted to help but didn't think you could, so you just watched, that is not true. All of our skills are welcome and wanted, and a lot of these organizations are non-profits.   24:47 PB: Sure.   24:47 SM: And there's a lot of tech developer groups that you can code for good and get involved on the device level and the software side. So I just wanna put that out there. But what happened was, is that the places where these things are happening, you'll read news articles that poaching accelerated or the lack of tourism has caused some problems. So this space seems to be having the same problems that every other part of the world is having when it comes to learning to adapt to a pandemic world. We weren't exactly affected in terms of getting on the phone at 7 o'clock at night, Pacific Time, to meet with Sonam, who runs the Red Panda network, who's in Nepal, because we were always virtual. And actually, I would... The lack of social life [chuckle] being quarantined probably helped myself, and Daisuke, and Pamela, and Anders when we were cranking out the code and the plan for scale. And so the answer is no.   26:08 SM: One thing that's been... Is a little bit challenging is that I was used to meeting up with our partner architect friends, and we would draw on pieces of paper and we'd talk about smart factories, and then we'd talk about this. And so those kind of conversations got harder, but I did get involved with a Hackathon that came out of Hack-Star and where they were hacking on the OpenCollar project to build the smartest elephant. That's the goal, is to build the smartest elephant collar for Smart Parks. So I just wanted to mention that, is the partner ecosystem is out there, they're doing stuff in this area as well as all the areas. But so it didn't... I don't think it stopped. It's just, at least not...   27:03 PB: Yeah, changed it a little bit.   27:03 SM: For us sitting at the desk, yeah.   27:06 PB: Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. I've definitely missed some of the more serendipitous conversations I've had. Sometimes you... That's where you have the serendipitous meetings and conversations that connect things, and it's been a little more planful maybe in terms of conversations and time. But I know also that there's been a lot of tech acceleration by a lot of companies too, and the whole notion of remote and leveraging the cloud a lot more. So hopefully that does work in your favor. I was gonna mention the... We haven't talked about the tech behind Project 15 too much. You mentioned AI is obviously like big data sets. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention I think this sounds like a really exciting potential for 5G/LPWA tech in some form. I know that the... I don't think they've rolled out 5G yet in Nepal, but the idea of some sort of low frequency or low spectrum cellular connections that can blanket those areas is exciting. So that's a follow-on for me. I will actually take that as an action to circle back and see what we can do to help there.   28:20 SM: That's actually one of the... So when it comes to the spectrum of silicon to cloud, I fall squarely into process architecture and designing how you're gonna get this to there, and what are we gonna do and strategy on that. I also fall squarely on data because of my background. When it comes to connectivity, Pamela and Daisuke on the Project 15 meta team, they're really interested in that. But something I noticed is that my assumption that some place like the Himalayas wouldn't have any connectivity or something, that was just my own... I don't know if that's a pre-conception or just like a, "That's the woods and the mountains." However, when we looked into it, and we've been working with some groups in the Caribbean as well that go out into the ocean, it's all got coverage. It may be 2G. There's always a satellite, which then you're gonna bring in some edge, let's compute as much as possible over here at the camera or the gateway. But that was really surprising. So I'm really, I'm interested in... We'll loop back on your response because...   29:45 PB: Yeah, yeah. We'll have to loop back. There's some really interesting things happening, especially if you wanna have... You're designing for very low-bandwidth networks, like low-cost low-bandwidth networks. You actually need to do more processing on the edge, and then it's more of a metadata that's going to the cloud as opposed to the actual streams of video or camera images. So some really fascinating things going on there that I think would be really exciting, not only to land in low-bandwidth networks, but also that also enables some very low power endpoints. So imagine you wanna stick some sensors onto a tree out there somewhere, if you want it solar-powered, you need to keep that power profile really low. So projects like these, not only are they inherently just good, but they are also pushing the tech maybe more-so than the more business-oriented deployments that we have that maybe are a little "easier." These are hard deployments because of some of the different environmental factors. So it's always exciting to see the tech being pushed in that direction.   30:51 SM: I was gonna say, just to jump in. You actually raise... This is a really big deal. There's what we're doing with Project 15, but there's the bigger Microsoft sustainability mission. And so this year if you go out to the Microsoft sustainability web page, we just made a recent announcement about water. There was a really interesting announcement about the circular economy and waste. And so when you start to think about devices... So let's say you come from the more device side of the spectrum of our solutioning. I met a scientist who said something really that stuck with me. "We're trying to save the oceans from plastic using plastic." And so when you start to think about how we make devices. How do we make better batteries? How do we use solar? Like you said...   31:54 PB: Yeah, solar.   31:54 SM: That's when we just kind of was like... We also as a technical community should be thinking about that because it really wasn't purview a year ago. But oh, okay, that makes a lot of sense, I never really thought about that.   32:10 PB: Yeah. No. That's fascinating. I was gonna ask you about that before we... I don't know where we're at on time here, I have to check my clock. But I know we're not traveling any more, but I still stay in touch with BU through their various alumni programs and things. Do you stay in touch with any BU alums or any Boston related things these days? Or...   32:32 SM: Well, I do. I do.   32:33 PB: 'Cause we're pretty far from Boston. People don't know, we're actually in Redmond Washington. It's like the polar opposite of Boston.   32:40 SM: Three thousand miles away. I do, I have friends that I went there with, and I get the magazine. And I get...   32:49 PB: Oh yeah, the magazine.   32:50 SM: I was very proud of, what was it? One of the alums, she was in the Orange is the New Black and I was like, "Whoa, BU!" And of course on LinkedIn I see different things. Actually, speaking of COVID, I saw a really cool video that I thought was very edgy and he did a video about everybody wearing their masks and I was like, "Yes!" But yeah, no, I keep an eye on what's going on there.   33:24 PB: Good.   33:25 SM: So yeah.   33:27 PB: Yeah, no, it's fascinating to see all this stuff, how it's evolving and how we're all sort of connected, right? So now you and I are connected through Boston University, and we didn't even know that so that's fantastic.   33:36 SM: Who knew? T. Anthony's pizza.   33:36 PB: Who knew? T. Anthony's, yeah, I love that place, yeah. Although I don't eat cheese anymore but I still love pizza so... [chuckle] Cool. So any final thoughts Sarah? We... You kind of said that the URL people should go to. What's the call to action here? Where do you want people to go do now they've been sort of educated here?   34:00 SM: We love... When you think about it, if you go out and you get to the Project 15 open platform, for those of us who are very familiar, when you see the architecture you'll say, "Oh, this looks like everything else that is the components of an IoT solution." That is true. I've actually been using it with, met some startups and I said, "Well hey," doing my usual day job, which is, "How do I learn Azure IoT?" And, "Oh, go here, go here. Ask me questions if you have them." So people who are on the coding side of our world, feel free to bug bash that, and any feedback is absolutely welcome. It's really a passion project when you get down to it, which we hope is really useful, and if you do have people who are technical on the scientific side and it's interesting to them and we are building it through Pamela's work with community so that people will be able to get enabled on it. This speaks to the, "How do you do all of this?" Well, I have smart friends. And so yeah, so that really it's out there for you to use. Any feedback is welcome. And yeah, we hope it helps.   35:26 PB: Yeah, I encourage people to go to that website and learn more about it. And Sarah, I really appreciate the time today. I know you're really busy, so carving out a little time here, much appreciated. So hopefully we can actually meet each other in person at some point in the near future. So that'd be great.   35:47 SM: Soon. Soon.   35:48 PB: Soon.   35:48 SM: Wear your masks everybody.   35:51 PB: Exactly.   35:51 SM: Alright. Yeah, no, thank you so much. This has been fun.   35:53 PB: Sure. Okay, cool. Alright, thanks Sarah.   35:57 SM: Thank you.   35:57 PB: Bye bye.   36:00 SM: Bye.   36:00 PB: This is Pete Bernard. You've been listening to the IoT Unicorn Podcast, and thanks for joining us. Stay tuned for the next episode, and feel free to give us some feedback at TheIoTUnicorn@Microsoft.com. Thank you.   [music]