(Day 3) SDG Media Zone – 81st Session of the UN General Assembly

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the SDG Media Zone, and thank you for joining us this morning. I'm Kerry Bannigan, President of the Board of Public Foundation, and it is a pleasure to welcome you to Mobilizing Data, Technology, and Partnerships for Impact, hosted by the SDG Data Alliance. It is wonderful to see so many of our partners and friends from across the world and sectors gathered with us this morning. Where you are today is a special milestone for us in general as the SDG Media Zone. It's actually celebrating 10 years of impact and is also a very important portfolio and flagship initiative of the Public Foundation organized in partnership with the United Nations Department of Global Communications. It has become one of the signature convening platforms of the UN General Assembly, bringing conversations on sustainable development beyond policy and public discourse. Today, what you're going to see with the SDG Data Alliance is how this truly reflects public foundations belief that advancing sustainable development requires better access to data, stronger national data systems, and partnerships that make information more useful for decision making. We believe data is a human right and that better data leads to better outcomes for people and communities. Today, the SDG Data Alliance brings together governments, United Nations organizations, technology leaders, foundations, and the private sector, with a particular focus on the small island developing states and other developing nations. Data does not create impact on its own. It's what we choose to do with it and who we choose to work with, and that is what transforms information into progress. So now it is my pleasure to welcome our Executive Chairman of Public Foundation, Sergio Fernandez de Cordova, to deliver our opening remarks. Please join me and welcome Sergio. Thank you.

Thank you, Carrie. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, colleagues, and friends. Good morning. On behalf of Public Foundation, it is my pleasure to welcome you to the SDG Data Alliance Breakfast during the 81st session of the General Assembly. Our theme this morning is mobilizing data, technology, and partnerships for impact. This speaks directly to why we are here. We are living through an extraordinary period of technological advancement We have more data, more computing power, more earth observation capabilities, and more artificial intelligence than any point in human history. And yet, many of the countries that could benefit most from these capabilities still cannot fully access, integrate, govern, or operationalize them. This is a paradox. we need to solve. The challenge is not simply where the data exists. Much of it already does. The challenge is access, interoperability, governance, and sovereign capacity to turn data into decisions. Because data is no longer simply a development tool. Data is infrastructure. It informs how governments plan infrastructure, manage natural resources, protect ecosystems, prepare for natural hazards, attract investments, understand their economies, and make decisions about their future. This is particularly important for the SIDS, the Small Island Developing States. SIDS face a very structural constraint from geographic remoteness and limited institution capability and environmental and economic shocks. But they also possess extraordinary natural assets, ocean economies, strategic geography, and enormous development potential. The question is whether we can build the systems that allow countries to understand these assets, govern them, and translate them into long-term prosperity. This is why the SDG Data Alliance exists. What began in 2017 and was expanded into a global partnership in 2021 has evolved from capacity building initiative into something much larger. an architecture connecting global technology and data capabilities directly with national priorities. In 2023, together with the Alliance of Small Island States and the government of Antigua and Barbuda, we, the collective, began developing the SIDS Global Data Hub. Then at SIDS 4 in 2024, governments adopted Antigua and Barbuda agenda for SIDS, also known as the ABAS, establishing a clear mandate to strengthen data collection, analysis, accessibility, and the use of shared information across all of the SIDS. It is now our responsibility to move from mandate to implementation. Today, The CIDS Global Data Hub is being developed as a foundational component of the CIDS Center of Excellence in Antigua and Barbuda, connecting countries with geospatial intelligence, earth observation, technology expertise, training, and new sources of data. But the objective is not simply to provide governments with more tools. It is to strengthen national capacity and national ownership. while connecting global capabilities and the decision governments need to make every day, real time. And that brings us to why this room matters today. Many of the capabilities required to build these systems are represented here today. Governments bring the mandate and national priorities. The United Nations brings global coordination and institutional reach. Technology and data partners bring the capabilities. And capital brings the ability to scale. Our responsibility is to connect those pieces into infrastructure that governments can actually use. So this morning should not simply be a conversation about what is possible. It should be a conversation about what we could build together. Because ultimately, the measure of success is not how much data we generate. It is whether countries have the capacity to turn that data into better decisions, stronger institutions, and more resilient and prosperous futures. Thank you for being here, and thank you, everyone, for your partnership, because every single person here means something to that future. And we look forward to what we can advance together this morning. So as we are putting that principle into practice, this morning, I am pleased to welcome Francisco Virena de Cunha, the CEO of Geosat, as we formalize a new partnership with the SDG Data Alliance. Together, We will connect GeoSat's Earth observation capabilities with the CIDS global data hub, helping governments better understand their territories and natural assets, strengthening infrastructure planning, and turn satellite intelligence into practical decisions. This is exactly what we mean by moving from partnerships to implementation. and ensuring that these capabilities ultimately take root within the countries themselves. Francisco, please join me as we sign this partnership and begin the next chapter of working together.

So thank you very much, Sergio. Thank you very much, Greg, for making this happen. Just to tell you that we are extremely happy to become part of this network. I believe actually that we are probably the first or one of the first European entities to join the alliance. I hope this is the start of a new partnership as well, extending the alliance continent. A thing very important that I would like also to share with you is that this is important because we understand that getting data down to people is many times about partnering with the right organizations and the right people that can have common goals and can make things happen. Satellites, what they do is that they provide perspective. With satellites, we see the world all the world every day in the same way. So we do not see, many times we do not see policies, we don't see intentions, we see results. And by coming into the SDG Data Alliance, what we intend to do is also to share this information, to be able to become part of this network so that we are able to provide data directly to populations so that in the different regions of the world, in the seas and other developing nations, everyone is able to have this human right as Sergio was saying. In space, we know very well that if we want to go far, we need to go together, but if we want to move fast, we also need to move together because otherwise we'll be reinventing the wheel and we will be taking more time than we should to take all these new capabilities to the people. So once again, thank you public, thank you Greg, thank you Sergio, we're pleased for these discussions throughout the day.

And thank you, Francisco, and thank you to the entire GeoSat team. This partnership is exactly what today is about, as I mentioned earlier, bringing together the capabilities, the technology, and the commitment, very important, the commitment, no more talking, taking action that is needed to move from ambition to implementation. Thank you, everybody.

Thank you. Thank you, Sergio. Thank you, Kerry. Thank you, Francisco. Good morning, everyone. My name's Greg Scott. I'm the executive director of the SDG Data Alliance and Public Foundation. I'm really, really excited to see you with us today, to have you here, and to have, hopefully, what would be a really, really productive discussion. I'm going to spend a few minutes to set some more context on what Sergio has just spoken about this morning. I'm going to do that in two parts. I'm just going to give contextual overview of the work we're doing in the SIDS Global Data Hub. with a few slides and then I'm going to do something that probably hasn't been done in a media zone before. I'm going to go into the content live on the web for you to look at. So you get a bit of an idea of some of the architecture and structure that we're talking about. So let me start. And it really comes back to this this data and I want to just give a bit of context here around geospatial information. What is geospatial information? And really what it's about is location based data that tells us where we are in the world. You use it every single day. You use it on your phones, you use it in your navigation, you use it in a lot of your daily business. But it's also foundational data. It's things like buildings and infrastructure and settlements and coastlines and forests and rivers and lots of other more invisible data, population and demographics, sea surface temperature, sea floor temperature, climate data. This is all geospatial information because it's got a location to it. We know where we are in the world. And with a lot of that data or that information, we can model and analyze, integrate it through geographic information systems or GIS systems. And those technologies are now very, very advanced and have been used now for some 40 odd years. And what's really important about this, as Sergio said, particularly in our modern world today and in our developed world in particular, We have lots and lots and lots of data out there in the world. Our big challenge is we don't necessarily know where it is. We don't know how to integrate it. We don't necessarily know how to use it. We don't necessarily know the value of it. And we don't necessarily know how to use it to make decisions. And if we bring that down and say, if we're looking at small island developing states who are very, very tiny land masses, but massive ocean areas, that resolution of data or that understanding of data at very local levels is highly, highly critical. And that's part of the challenge we have. So if I use this as an example here, and it's a two-part slide here, there's lots of data out there. It's everywhere. The question is, what do we do with it and what does it mean? And so really the transition that we're talking about is going just from data to impact solutions decision-making. So being able to say, can I ask a question of data, can I get an answer? Is that answer reliable? Is it informative? Is it authoritative? And what's the means and the mechanisms that I do that? So it's very much this moving of bucket loads of stuff into answers and how we go about doing that. And this is really the journey we're on that we want to talk about a bit today. A little bit about the Data Alliance. and already Kerry has mentioned that, but you can sort of see there we have our purpose, which has already been mentioned, our vision and mission, but also our focus at the moment on, I guess, a few key things. Firstly, small island developing states, important, obviously. The implementation of the Antigua Barbuda Agenda for SIDS, the establishment of the SIDS Centre of Excellence, and then the development and deployment of the SIDS Global Data Hub. And what I'll focus on now is the SIDS Global Data Hub and the work that we've been doing in developing that architecture over the last year or so, working with countries and working with partners and working with the UN and other organizations within countries and regions. To the SIDS CoE, I'll just be really brief on this. It really has four key components to it. It is now established in Antigua, in St. John's. It is a physical presence with staff, and it has four key components. The data backbone of that is the Global Data Hub, but it also has an ITM, Innovation Technology Mechanism, an Island Investment Forum, and that Island Investment Forum was launched. in Malae in the Maldives just a few weeks ago, and a debt sustainability support service. Now all that information is on the SIDS COE website for more detail. But in essence, it's really about what does this mean for SIDS and why this sort of information matters. So just focusing on the global data hub, and I don't expect you to consume or absorb all of this. But this is really our foundational architecture to how we're developing this capability. So I think what's important, just look at the big bold text, sort of around the structure or the architecture of it. What we're doing in terms of integrating data, so moving from left to right, to the impact, as Sergio was mentioning, but using tools and capabilities, maps, apps, dashboards, stories, visualizations, capabilities that users and consumers can grab and use as reference point. And then, importantly, it's about implementation of both the ABAS and also the SDGs. So that's really our architectural structure that we're working to, particularly over the next few years. So what I'm going to do now, I'm going to go to a bit of a demonstration. And so I'm going to grab here my iPad and hopefully, oh, look at this, this is, thank you. And here we are, we're online. Okay, one caveat I want to say, you can go and look at this right now, but I just want to mention is that the web link at the moment is an interim one because we're vamping. We're doing another version of what is sids.sdg.org. So you'll see that website is slightly different, but it will go up live into the sids.sdg.org domain in the next week or so. Okay. So this is kind of the global data hub, and I won't spend a lot of time in there, but some of the things we're building into this now, apart from just maps and visualizations, some key indicators around statistical and other sorts of data and I'll dive into that in a little bit of a moment. But then what we also can do is go and explore data that's relevant to a country that we've pre-prepared. So I want you to think about the architecture here and the idea is that by the end of this year all All of those greyed out countries will be coloured. So the coloured countries are the ones that we've already developed virtual hubs for. And I'm going to show you some examples of that. So for the Pacific, for the AIS region, et cetera. If we go into some of these countries, so if I just go into St. Vincent and the Grenadines by way of example, what we do is we have a number of tabs along the top. It gives us an overview of the country, about the country. It's got some mapping data in there, but it also looks at things like, what are my national priorities and what are those priorities adhered to? Then we have what we term as map portfolios. This is where the real data is, stories, visualizations, and key statistics. So if I click on national priorities for St. Vincent and the Grenadines, it links to the formal actual documents And we group those priorities in nice, easy-to-read ways for the users to read. And then if we actually then go back out to the global hub, I know that my colleagues from Palau are here today, so I'm just going to click on Palau as an example. And you can see that the look and feel is exactly the same. So again, it has a consistent repeating pattern to the process. And I know I don't have a lot of time, so I'm now just going to finish off and go back and just focus a little bit on my colleagues from Tonga, who have been a great supporter in some of this process along the way, and just go into a little bit more. So again, the country of Tonga, This is an interactive map. You know, you can go into it and look at it in lots and lots of detail. This is all online. So it's just consuming publicly available data that's out there. We can look at the national priorities, what strategies they align to, what those priorities are, et cetera, et cetera. And then we can go in and start diving into the data itself with what we term as the MAP portfolios. And the way that we've brought the MAP portfolios together is nine thematic areas that align to the ABAS. So cities and communities, physical infrastructure, population and demographics, oceans, land management, et cetera. And as we go into each one of those, what we do is get a breakdown of not only some of the story and narrative around the importance of this population, the demographic data, and I'm hoping this is going to come up. Now we're getting into heavier data, so it's a bit slower in this instance here. And what we can do then, come on baby, come back. I'm going too fast for it. And then we can go in and start looking at some of the data in more detail. And so in this instance here, this is just a breakdown disaggregated data from the National Statistics Office around population. We can also look at gender breakdown by different ways as well, in this case by just using different population density metrics, et cetera, et cetera. So we can use all of those sorts of mechanisms if we wish. Now, what I'm noticing here on the iPad, which is why this is a bit slower, is that when we do go into some of these applications, like the map portfolios, it calls out another screen. And so that screen is overtaking my original one. So I won't get a lot of ability to go into too much detail. But you get the structure that we're talking about there. We also have a tab in there that can take us to different stories for each of those countries. So looking at, for example, mapping climate resilience in Tonga. And this is just a recent example where you can bring information and knowledge together on what's happening in small island developing states. Things around, for example, the volcanic eruption in 2022. But then you can also bring in other applications or dashboards or visualizations. And so this is an example of that, looking at that population data, but breaking it down into other areas such as education. And again, this is all live, shared, publicly available, and usable by all of us out there in the community. Another example is looking at, and this one's a bit heavier, is Tonga's Marine Atlas. So this is a live dashboard, and you can see data that's loading up as we go. And I'm hoping it's going to load up for me. No, it won't. doesn't look like it wants to. And if not, that's okay. I'll give it another couple of seconds and then I'll move on. Here we go. So this is the sort of data that we can use and consume. And as we build out this structure, what we're able to do is make this available for countries. I just want to finish off now with taking statistical data out of the National Statistics Office, because it's not all about geospatial data, but it's also understanding the state of our nation in terms of our social, economic, and our environmental, I guess, progress. And so here, straight from the statistical organisation, are some social statistics, some economic statistics, and environmental statistics. And the idea with the global hub is we'll build those out for all SIDs, we'll aggregate into the regions, and then aggregate for SIDs in total, so that we get an idea of what that means in terms of development and progress. And finally, as I finish, just want to mention that this is all embedded inside the SIDS Global Data Hub. But there's something else that's really important, is deploying this into the countries. So if I was to click on here, this is an example of the hub that would be delivered into Tonga itself, or to Fiji, or to Palau, or to Mauritius. And so we've set the architecture for each of the countries. And as you can see, it has the same look and feel, has the same kind of data, but it's all integrated, it's all interoperable, and it all works together. So with that, I'll stop and I'll conclude my presentation. We can go back to the slides. And that also finishes me for the moment. And what we're going to do now is move into our panel discussions. So what we're going to do is have three discussions that are going to explore more around our topic today, around our subject. It's going to be moderated by three of the team in Public Foundation. And as we set up the chairs, I'm going to first off invite up Ms. Ashaki Goodwin, our Director of Government Affairs and Public Foundation. and Ashaki is going to take over the reins and moderate our first panel session this morning. So thank you all.

Thank you, Greg. Good morning, all. Excellencies, colleagues, and distinguished guests, welcome. The Antigua and Barbuda Gender Facets outlines a bold vision for resilient prosperity. But our success hinges on a single foundation, data. Island developing states, vast ocean spaces, and geographic remoteness create unique data capacity vulnerabilities. And I know I'm speaking to the converted here. Today, as we have seen, we're exploring how the CIDS Global Data Hub can unlock the timely, geospatial, interoperable data needed to drive our blue economies, survive the climate crisis, and lead us towards resilient prosperity. To map out this digital future, we're joined by four of our distinguished leaders across our SID space. We have Her Excellency, Siboki Lavamu, Minister of Finance from the Kingdom of Tonga, if you can join us on the stage. We have His Excellency, Stephen Victor, Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Environment of Palau. His Excellency Kevin Hope, Ambassador for Finance, Climate and Investment, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. And His Excellency Dr. Tapingu Falifu, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Tuvalu to the United Nations. Now, as you can see, our time is short, so we're going to dive right into the discussions. And I'm going to start with the honorable minister from Tonga. The Kingdom of Tonga faces intense climate and multi-hazard vulnerabilities, alongside a very common institutional hurdle, Minister. Existing information is often fragmented and siloed across ministries and agencies, and cannot easily be accessed and shared. Minister, as a Pacific SIDS, Looking at your country's landscape, some of its unique climate-related vulnerabilities, what is the single biggest policy or legislative hurdle to breaking down these internal walls? And how can we incentivize government data sharing with modern tools and processes?

Thank you, Roshakie. Malolile, everyone. I bring warm greetings from the Kingdom of Tonga. This is my first time in my newly appointed role as Minister of Finance at the UNGA. So it is an honor to be here. But before being a politician, I've had 15 years in the civil service. So being here and sharing all these experiences on data for evidence policy decisions It's something I'm a strong advocate for in making sure that alignment with administration and the political level is interlinked. I'd like to also acknowledge support from Public Foundation and also the SDG Data Alliance and all the partners that are here together in this very important meeting. But before I respond to the question, Shakir, I'd also like to share that we're proud of being the initial cohort for 10 SIDS Global Data Hub pilot countries for 2026 has been a great opportunity for Tonga to share on its experiences in strengthening its national data systems, but also generating lessons learned from the Pacific region. I think it's an important challenge that you put forth there, Ashaki, and I think the response to that is Tonga has a data exchange policy framework. The issue is not implementing it. And I think there's a lot of our experiences in the Pacific, and I think probably other countries, we have a lot of policies, but there's a lack of implementation. And three things that I would like to point out on why this is the case for a small island developing country, and I'll give the demonstration of an example of the most recent climate disaster that happened in Tonga particularly the volcanic eruption that happened in 2022. There was a loss of life, there was a tsunami generated. It caused more than 30% of our GDP loss for the country. Three things that I'd like to put forth is, one, there's a lack of knowledge of who actually owns the data. In other words, data custodianship as a challenge. In the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcanic eruption, when making decisions, particularly from a minister of finance role, and how to have timely assistance after disaster hits, you actually have to know the different agencies in government that holds this data. And it's quite fragmented. The disaster management office would have data on the affected households. The Ministry of Health would have data on what are the health impacts after the disasters. Ministry of Infrastructure would have data on what kind of infrastructures was affected when the tsunami hit. And it's about identifying clearly under the policy and framework that we have, what are their responsibilities, what data do they collect. And since this is some practice where things are more reactive when we collect these datas and when we know who collects these data, rather than it's a daily practice for government to have this data anyways. It's basic information. The second issue is trying to ensure that there's a common standards that we adopt from these different agencies on the data. So one, for example, our disaster management office would have their interpretation of what a affected household is. That's different from what the statistics department would interpret as an affected household. And what the Ministry of Health would say is an affected household. And what finance would say is a beneficiary. So these are different terms that holds data behind them that actually have different meanings and different data. So if you don't have that common standard set out and agreeing that this is what you define as a beneficiary when a disaster hits. then having tailored policies and financial assistance to it becomes a problem and it becomes fragmented. The third issue is there's a difficulty in agencies to know that they don't have these data and they operate in silos. They have to have this understanding that it's a shared data across for the development of a country as a whole. And there's also a fear of it's my data, I collected it, I invested so much time in it. Why would I share it with the other party? They'll take credit for it. And all the decisions that we make. So with such a small country, 100,000 people, that's probably like 1% of New York's population alone. You think that it'll be really easy to get these things around. I tell you, it's a small country with big issues of trying to coordinate and hold things in line. And I think there's also a saying that I always like saying is, people like to say the word coordinate, but they don't like to be coordinated, you know, because of this fear of loss of power, because you might share the data and you might lose a bit of power. But it's actually collectively having this information. For a minister of finance, for example, I wouldn't be able to give financial assistance to know who the affected household is if I don't know all these data in place, and it helps me with fiscal planning and such. So I think, Shaki, just to wrap things up on that question is, is how do we facilitate all these different data and all the issues I've highlighted for effective policy decision is knowing that these link and knowing that these should coexist and everyone should know that ownership of their data actually links and contributes to a development outcome that we all want to achieve. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. You have identified a universal truth. Data locked in a silo is a missed opportunity for resilience. We now go to Minister Victor of Palau. Minister, Palau has been a global leader in marine conservation. But the Antigua and Barbuda agenda for CIDS highlights that critical environmental and climate data remains scarce to access. scarce and hard to access. Given the breadth and often scientific depth of these topics, there are often unnecessary and unknown data gaps. Your portfolio spans agriculture, fisheries, and the environment sectors, where having accurate and real-time data is absolutely necessary. When we talk about data gaps, Minister, what specific blind spots in your fisheries or your environmental monitoring keeps you up late at night? And how can a regional global ecosystem like the CIDS Global Data Hub help allow mobilized data and close those gaps?

Thank you, Madam Moderator, and good morning. to everyone and let me begin by thanking the public foundation and STG Data Hub, Data Alliance for bringing us together this morning and importantly for placing small and developing state at the center of this conversation. There are many things that keeps me at night and data is not one of them. I'm just kidding. For Palau, And I think for many small island developing states, we've been living in the front line of climate change, and now we're living the realities of climate change. We talk about it, but we don't really have that data set to have a good demonstration of how much it is really costing us yesterday, today, tomorrow and many years to come. So often when we're trying to access climate finance, those are the very questions that they're asking us. How is this going to impact how many people? But recognizing that many of our island communities, we're talking about populations of a little over 10,000. When we talk about the Pacific, a little over 10,000 to over 15 million for places like Papua New Guinea. So when we talk about return on investment, it almost seemed that building an infrastructure that will lift over 10,000 people out of vulnerabilities doesn't seem like an investable project. But it really is a culture and people worth losing simply because there's no financial return? I think that's a very hard question that we need to ask ourselves. Is it morally right for a culture, a people to disappear from the face of this planet for a threat that we contributed very little to? So I think this is really where data becomes important when we talk about return on investment. Data are, we need to see data as assets, national assets. We have a lot of research coming to Palau. So they understand many of what's happening within our marine resource. what we could potentially lose. But there's no real process to put that data into perspective. So this data hub is seen as something that will help us. We have colleagues from the Secretariat of Pacific Community in the room who are providing a lot of that support to countries, but they've had to serve 19 countries, so there's very limited capacity to provide this data at a resolution that really demonstrate the vulnerability. When we talk about fisheries, it is projected that each Palawan will potentially lose 29 kilogram of fish protein by 2030, yet we don't really know what we're losing within our reefs. Because it's a multi-species fishery. It cost millions to just assess our coastal fisheries. We don't have millions to assess our coastal fisheries. Yet it is something that we need to do. When we talk about our tuna fisheries, we have the regional data that informs the health of the stocks. They collect some information within our waters. But do we really use that data to then inform robust and more innovative policies? So to me, the blind spot is really how do we use data to inform policy? It's not necessarily that the data is not there, but how do you actually use the data to inform a more robust policy so that you're not driven to make decisions simply because it attracts global attention. And I use an example of our Palau National Marine Sanctuary. Back in 2015, Palau moved to close 80% of its exclusive economic zone from commercial fishing with a view that it will help improve the stocks of tuna. But the data doesn't really support that. The fisheries science doesn't really support that. But it is a global momentum to have this large MPA. And yes, we do need to have these large MPAs. But there is a real need to use data to inform what these large marine protected areas will achieve for people and nature, not simply achieve policies on paper. So to me, that is the biggest blind spot that I would that I actually lose sleep over, not lack of data, but really how do we ensure that the science that we say is really the science that you use to inform policy. We now live the reality of the climate science under attack. So that's another data that is very much something that we should be losing sleep over. Because if that science continue to be under attack, then how do we ensure that what we say is our vulnerabilities is actually supported by the science that we bring forward? So yes, I lose sleep over data, not simply for lack of it, but how we're using it. to inform a more robust policies. Thank you.

Minister, thank you so much. You have underscored that data isn't just an environmental asset. But it is an economic foundation. So thank you so much for bringing that to the fore and for bringing the example of Palau. I now go over to Ambassador Hope. And we now shift from the Pacific to the Caribbean. Ambassador, As an economist, you know that data is currency for climate finance. From a Caribbean perspective, how can bodies like the CIDS Center of Excellence and the Global Data Hub help Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to leverage geospatial data for a more interoperable global data ecosystem, de-risk sustainable infrastructure projects, reduce reactive disaster response and lean into proactive data-driven by macro fiscal resilience.

Thank you, Ashaki. And permit me to repeat a little bit of what Sivoki shared earlier, also being one of my colleague in a recent program. Congratulations on your ascension, Sivoki. Dr. Scott earlier shared with us that data in its raw sense, while it's currency, it's not usable. Whereas if we had utilized the data to actually inform decision making. So I believe the SIT Center of Excellence and also the Global Data Hub, utilizing geospatial data can enable us to connect local information into databases that would inform decisions that could help us to at least realize bankable projects reducing the risk in a number of small island states. And I'll give an example. In Saint Vincent and the Grenadines over the last five years we've suffered at least three major shocks. The pandemic 2020, 2021 we had the volcanic eruption of the last and in 2024 we equally had hurricane barrel at that time a category four hurricane on the fourth of July. data that was generated as a consequence in terms of the reconstruction and rebuilding from these from these natural hazards. In addition to the pandemic sits on someone desk. And is not actively utilized in terms of where we are now present in terms of building out our national development plan. So similar to Sivoki. Sometimes the issue not so much with respect to the technology. But the technology exists. Right. It's really and truly how do we move these data outside of the ministry departments and agencies with which they remain and actually make it available to the policymakers, to agencies like the Center of Excellence and Global Data Hub to really enable us to make actionable projects and decisions. So I'll give another example. So a lot of times we would usually rely upon just the satellite data that would have our islands in terms of looking at narrow land masses in an open ocean versus where we can take all of these different climate maps, the data are generated from these projects to overlay and actually be able to create, I mean, spatial clarity that would reduce policy uncertainty reduce our borrowing costs, and actually make our our infrastructure more attractive for investment. So our hope presently with our new government in office is really one where we intend to our parliament to prioritize the passage of different legislation that would enable the sharing of data with across ministries and departments. Equally to work on accelerating our single window. We do have a lot of data from our GIS system, our land registry and property. Which we can actually create a platform to actually start informing our national development planning process. Thank you.

Ambassador, thank you so much. And we all know that when we talk about shocks, we can't predict them. We can't speak to the frequency of them. We see in the case of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines as you rightfully mentioned, you had three shocks back-to-back. Um in a short space of time. And I think you framed it perfectly. Data as the structural foundation. Need to be absorbed when we talk about economic shocks. I now go to Ambassador Falifu as our final panelist. And Tuvalu is one of the smallest countries in the world, but it's actively shifting the global narrative for SIDS from a narrative of vulnerability toward aggressive, long-term, sustained investment and self-determination. Ambassador, from a Tuvaluan perspective, climate change is not an agenda item for you. It is an extensional daily reality where moving inland means stepping into the ocean on the other side. How do we design our partnerships with. institutions like the CIDS Center of Excellence and the Global Data Hub, so that data we collect is packaged and leveraged to mobilize private investment and international climate finance for the next generation of sustainable infrastructure and blue economy projects. Ambassador.

Thank you, Shekhar, Godwill. honorable ministers, our excellencies, distinguished guests. Uh let me also join our panelists here in thanking the public foundation and the STD data alliance for convening this side event. And thank you for the opportunity to participate. Uh the question that you have asked I suppose is one of the very important question for us who are gathered here on how we can best design the partnership from our national level with our regional and international partners in order to be able to pursue the various priorities that we have. We have listened to our honorable ministers sharing with us their practical experience in Tonga as well as in Palau. That clearly give us a perspective of how small island developing states live their lives with the information that they have. For Tuvalu, I would like to say a few points. I hope that can help us digest and look into how best we can design these partnerships between small island developing states and our partners who are here with us this morning. But I think the question that we have to ask first is, how can we convince our partners to be able to see what we see. Often the case that our developing partners look at small island developing state as countries trying to bring their needs. Others look at small island countries as vulnerable partners. But I guess there is a question that they often miss that small island developing states also have opportunities. A few examples that I can relate in the case of Tuvalu, especially on how data are so central to decision makers in making decisions. The COVID-19 pandemic, I was privileged to be the co-chair of the national task force together with the prime minister. In trying to make sure that how we address the pandemic is one that can save Tuvalu given the limited medical support that we have. But let me put in front upfront by saying that Tuvalu I guess is the only country as far as I recall, after the pandemic, that we have never had a casualty from the pandemic. And that is because of the way we try to address the issue. But one of the concerns or the challenges that we face was how-- what was about the information that we have. as alluded to by the Minister of Finance of Tonga, there's always this pool of authority over the information or data that departments have. And that's the issue that we had. In trying to look into the number of people we have in at the time, the only point of entry during the COVID, even a small country like that, we found it very hard. to understand the the the number of people that we have, where they live, even the household. So, these are the lack of these important datas provide a a major challenge to to leaders in trying to assess the situation and to make informed decision. And today we listen to the presentation that have been made about the importance of the seats, Center for Excellence and the SCD data hub, the global data hub in providing those very critical data for leaders to be able to make decisions. Tuvalu recently was able to have a lighter survey undertaken by the SPC, the Secretariat for the Pacific Community, which provide us with extraordinary information that we never expect. And those very information are the ones that we are now using in our advocacy of the real impacts, what the potential impacts that Tuvalu would face in the next 20, 30 years. Of course, we have received a lot of data and information from IPCC assessment reports and other reliable information. But the LiDAR survey report that was provided to Tuvalu gave us a clear perspective of the inundation that Tuvalu will have to face. and the various part of Funafuti. I'm so thankful and I want to acknowledge that I can see that there are some SPC staff here for the good work that they have extended to Tuvalu. I think only Tuvalu or one other Pacific Island country that have had the LiDAR survey prepared by the SPC. Now we can really see which part of the island will come underwater in the next 10, 20 years. So that very data now provide us with more informed decision making of where the adaptation should be addressed, where the coastal protection should start. But prior to that, we thought that to protect our coasts, we just have to build or reclaim land and elevate land to the coastal site where most of the people live or the main settlement, on the idea that this will

good for the people. But then after having the LIDAR test, we are now able to see which part of the island that we should provide that kind of coastal protection adaptation project. So coming back to how we design our partnership with our colleagues who are here, who can help us with the use of information, for Tuvalu, we have a very small what we call the statistic department. I think only about three of them. And that is the only department that we mostly use when we decide on major projects that we pursue. But now with the data of excellence and the global data hub. I am sure Tuvalu will be able to design a better way of making project or making decisions that are really or directly relevant to our context rather than just based on other information that we receive. So for today, I think the message that I want to leave with our colleagues who are here, especially our potential partners that are here, is that we would like you also to make use of this Center for Excellence to have a look at it and see the information that are relevant to us, small island countries, and we are part of those information that can be useful in your decision making to support small island states in their development aspiration. I think I will leave it there, moderator, but thank you so much.

Thank you, Ambassador. Today's discussion brings us to one point. Data is not an intellectual exercise, and I want you to join me in thanking our extraordinary panelists for their valuable insights from their unique experiences. Thank you all for joining us. I now hand over to my colleague, Greg Scott, who will lead the next panel on data technology and solutions delivering impact. Thank you so much.

Okay, we're rolling along. We've got a clock in front of us. I'm now going to moderate the second panel. And if I may, can I please call up our four panelists for this panel, please? And if you can sit under your names that are behind you as well. Dr. Alex Cantave from Kellogg Foundation, Kamal Turra from Esri, Manika Gupta from Privacy Evolved, and Francisco, again, up to the stage from Geosat. So welcome, welcome, team. This is a short, sharp panel session on data technology and solutions delivery and impact. Team, I know you're really, really good at what you do. We're now going to move you down to a 15-minute session instead of a 20-minute session. So we're going to hit this running. So I'm going to start really, really quickly with you, Alex, Alex Cantab from Kellogg Foundation, as we look at how we're designing this global data hub and the country hubs and and the work that we do, but also the work that you do that's, it's really about, about equity and children and health and prosperity, particularly for those that are disadvantaged. And you've got a lot of experience in how you bring the messaging and the data and the communication to the table. From your experience in this field, how can platforms like the Global Data Hub better frame data solutions to show a direct and measurable line to vulnerable populations, family economic security, and community resilience, particularly in island settings. And I know you have a lot of experience from Haiti and such a setting as well, but some of your experiences, how can we make this really tangible for countries? Thank you.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you again for inviting me. And thank you so much, Greg, for that. I remember when we started this partnership, I don't know how many years ago, particularly looking at the use of data in a place like Haiti before the growth of the Data Alliance to include the SEEDS and others. I would say that for us at the Kellogg Foundation, we believe deeply that data have to be made available to populations. So the question for us is, who has access to the data? Who's using the data and for what purpose? The work that we are doing with you, both in terms of the seeds, but also in terms of what's happening in Mexico, in places like Haiti, is the issue of the access. And for us at the Kellogg Foundation, that's the equity point. And I think One can summarize that, you know, three levels of access to the data. One is at the national level in a country, and that's the ministers, like the previous panel. Then you have institutions, then you have people who are mostly affected by that. And what we've seen is that communities rarely have access to the data. And that's where we come with the partnership with the Data Alliance, with Public Foundation, and saying, how do we make data available to communities for several reasons? One, so that they are informed, because they are the one most impacted by whether it's climate change, whether it's just policy, whether it's whatever the issues are, whether it's economic, social, political, they're the one most affected. And most of the time, communities are the one with the least access to the data. So the challenge is really, how do you make data accessible and usable at the community level? How do we then organize communities to be able to access the data? So the equity issue for us is really, how do we provide, build the capacity of local organizations to access, use, and advocate for better policy, better services for their communities. So for us, and that's where we see the biggest, the big gap. Communities just don't have the capacity, both in terms of infrastructure, as well as financing and skill. to be able to use data for their own benefit. And I think we have quite a ways to go. And I think the other thing I want to talk about, and I'm not going to say too much on it, is around the partnerships. The partnership has to be done not just at the governmental level, but it has to happen at the community levels as well. Because what we are seeing, and again, in places like Haiti, is that the data infrastructure, even though, as you were saying earlier, and as Sergio said, The data exists. It's not organized. It's not accessible. And I don't think we actually invest in making data available. We have countries that haven't have a census for over 20 years, right? Yes, the data that is being collected by institution like Geosad or Esri and others is available, but the social economic data It's also, there's a gap there. And of course we know in terms of partnerships, we're not financing the creation, stability, and longevity of data infrastructure, particularly in resource-limited countries and environment. So I think we have a ways to go to make data more equitable and to go back to the original point as data as a human right. So if it is a human right, then who's human enough to have access to that information?

Thank you. Thank you, Alex. Really good point. Data access is, you could say, is also data equity, but it's actually more than that. It's also socioeconomic equity as well. It means more for that access for these vulnerable communities. On that note, I'm going to move to you, Carmel. you know, Esri has also been a founding partner of the work on the SDG Data Alliance. For the policy makers in this room who operate under very tight resource constraints, as we've already heard, how does this concept about an open system federated infrastructure ensure that small island countries, developing countries, can maintain full ownership of its national data while still gaining access to these capabilities at a global level, these technologies, these systems, these services, these innovations. How do we bridge some of that understanding from your perspective?

Well, thank you very much, Greg, for the question. The SIDS Global Data Hub today as it stands is a tool for all the SIDS countries. It exists, we hope that as we change those gray icons into colorful ones. We'll be bringing more and more data online that is available today and organizing it and pulling it together for the other countries. So it is your tool. Please utilize it right from the get go. But it's our partnership that will also provide you access to the ArcGIS technology that was used to build the hub. And the CIDS Global Data Hub can actually have many nodes pulled together in a federated way so that each country can have access to the technology as well. Through the partnership, we will be providing that capability to all of the countries. So we would like to make sure that you are aware of that, working with the states in your region or in with, if you are from a member state, please reach out. We want to actively engage with you in that process. and make sure that you have your own country node established. And that can also be linked into then the global hub as a federated sort of system of systems. So I really want to echo what Dr. Khantav said about we need to get the data and the information and the applications and the content and all of that as close as possible to the problems that are trying to be solved. We know what the problems are perhaps at national and international levels, but having that information when a crisis happens or for planning socioeconomic opportunities for everyone, we need to have that data right down at the local level for local decision making as well. So please note that as part of the platform, you get a lot of content. There's a lot of satellite imagery. There's deep learning models. There's all kinds of data and information, a lot of socioeconomic data as well, that has been gathered up, organized, and is available. We have data available for scientists and developers to utilize, but we also have some very simple to use applications that are also geared towards the public to tell the story, to provide information, to let them ask questions of the data. And so I just wanted to point out that those dashboards and story maps and things like those applications are really geared towards the public, but there's also a lot of rich content for the developers and to develop an active data ecosystem within the countries as well. That also includes both geospatial AI tools to analyze that satellite imagery, as well as agentic tools to be able to help people better understand the data and analyze it. So please take ownership of the opportunity through this partnership to have access to that technology at no cost and be able to start building out your country nodes. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much, Carmel. Certainly what we're even learning every day too is that, gosh, it's so easy to say, we don't really always know what's out there in the web. And you know there's lots of good stuff, there's lots of not so good stuff. But when it comes to data and geospatial data, earth observations data, a lot of in situ kinds of information, you're just discovering so much every day. And it's really about, it's kind of like, you know, there's just a fire hose of content out there in the world. And what we're trying to do is just bring that down into what's relevant for developing countries and small island developing states. It's a big beast. But it's achievable with the technologies. And if we can get the human interoperability working as well, you know, it's going to be a lot, lot easier. Monica, coming from a boutique organization, Privacy Evolved, I was going to ask you a more general question around sort of privacy laws with data and sovereignty and these sorts of things. But as we spoke about before the start, I wanted to maybe get your insights, because you sort of deal with this every day, and looking at it through the lens of, for example, our ministers and ambassadors in the first panel, how do you explain to them all of these challenges or issues on what to do or not to do when we think about sovereignty of data around privacy, of sharing, of AI. Just a few minutes of what your experiences and views on some of this alike would be, I think, really valuable.

Thank you. Absolutely. Good morning, everybody. When I think about how complex the privacy landscape has gotten, and now with AI regulation being privacy regulation, I just think the retroactive fitting of data to compliance has to stop. There is a position where you can empower yourself with your data use by designing privacy and AI compliance into what you're doing. So when you have an ingestion point for your data, your human level data, do you have a format for your map of whose data it is, who's the data subject, what are the data elements, where are they located, Where are your third party recipients located? What was the purpose for your data collection? What is your permitted use for that data transfer? And with that map, you can very easily create machine readable code that will basically map this in an automated fashion. So at every point of your data collection, you already have a very good heat map of what is the data coming in, whose data it is, how can it be transferred, and what is the governance around that. And then, Greg, you mentioned localization, right? I think that is a massive piece of the puzzle around data sovereignty, but it is only one piece. That's your storage of your data. But for sovereignty of it, you have to regulate how this is actually transferred. So as soon as somebody has access to your data sets, you no longer have the ownership of that data. And when it comes to that third party recipient, Are they creating derivatives of your information? And do you have governance over who owns that derivative? If they are deploying AI that they may have even just licensed, not developed, how are you quantifying that data? Is that derivative? Is that tertiary data? And what are your controls over that? if you can create some governance rules around basically that initial heat map, the permutation matrix, and create a secondary permutation matrix around the transfer, you don't have to do this in a continuous basis. This can be a quarterly review, semi-annual sort of review, and you basically have an end-to-end data lineage of how your data can flow. I think with that, we all know that this AI race is here, it's not going anywhere, but if you are ahead of it from your design principle itself, you have a position of power where you don't have to slow down at a later point, like many countries that are trying to avoid this. It is a little bit of a slowdown in the beginning in order to be fast, I think, in longevity.

Okay. And just quickly, a yes or no with maybe an explanation. Does those sort of capabilities, methodologies, pro formas already exist to do that?

Yes, of course. This is just a little bit more of an automation from an Excel. This is not sophisticated technology.

Thank you, 'cause that's good for people to know too, 'cause sometimes we just don't know what we don't know. So thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Francisco, welcome to the team. Thank you. Geosat, yes, European, working and supporting with I'm going to say higher resolution imagery, island states have a real challenge with very, very small land masses and they need high resolution imagery as we know and we've spoken about many times. Global technology leaders are really trying to make this data much more affordable and accessible, particularly into governments. How do you see that working out and secondly, How do you also see this imagery that's now becoming more available to higher resolution, greater refresh rates, but going just from data or data products to kind of services and solutions as well so that it takes out what do I do with the raw data kind of question? Your thoughts would be really good. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Greg, very much. Once again, it's a real pleasure to be here, and I hope this is the start of a long road together. When we are talking about affordability and we hear that a lot, that VHR imagery, very high resolution is very expensive. So we like to turn the question around. So what is the price at which it is not expensive for you? So because when we talk about affordability, many times I think we are talking about perception of value because $5 might be expensive, it might be cheap depending on what are you buying with those $5. So what we understand is that we have here a cycle that we need to break. Images are not being acquired as frequently as they could because they are considered expensive. Value is not being perceived because images are not there and so users do not take the value. So this is a little bit like an egg and chicken problem that we need to tackle. And I think we have solution for that. On the other hand, what we also see is that there is a gap between the Earth observation industry because our market where we make money is not sustainability, as you can imagine. But we also understand that we have an asset that is a global asset, is an asset for mankind. This is not some for a specific company because we don't use the asset all the time. So we need to make sure that it is well used. for the entire world to benefit from that. But there is this gap. And we know that if I would send a satellite image to most of you, you would not be able to open it because it's not a picture. It's not something. And when you open it, you'll say it is really ugly. Because that's what I said when I saw my first satellite image, because it's not the standard photo from our mobile that we have. So it needs to be, it's understood by experts, but non-experts do not understand. So we need to bridge that gap. And that's why we understand that bridging the gap is the responsibility of the industry. And this connects to the second question that you posed, and I think Ambassador from Tonga also mentioned that we need to start seeing the world in the same way. So we'd see the world from above, but we need to engage local communities, meet global communities where they are, because we can provide very high resolution imagery and then it stays there in the computer, no one will use it. So we need to engage local users. We need to understand the problems from the community's point of view. because then we can say we have great platforms like Esri's, we have our imagery and we can say look maybe what we need here is this type of image. What we have established and I'm looking forward to start providing it through our participation in the alliance is the EO starter kit is one. Of course we can provide imagery but then training to people on the ground to use that image for what they need to use it. And then one-on-one support, because no one wants a fire and forget, okay, get the training and we never talk again. So that's what we are looking to do. We were missing a piece in our strategy, which was who are, which are the reliable organizations we can partner with to take this capability forward. So I think now we did it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. We're going to speed date into the next one now, next panel. We have five minutes left, but we're going to go out another 10 minutes. Thank you all for your great contributions. I know there's a lot more that we can talk about, but the great thing is our panelists are going to be here for the day, and please do speak with them if you need to. So thank you very much. Please join me. Thank you. And with that, I'm going to call President of Public Foundation, Steven Keppel, up to moderate our final panel session. Thank you. Thank you, team.

Thank you, Greg. I'll say, too, if some people are standing in the back, please come up. This is our last panel. If you want to take a seat, rest your legs. I know there's a lot of walking going on. But, yeah, let's get started here. I'll ask the panelists to come up. Can we And the -- this is the impact of partnerships panel, our last panel of the day. Can we -- yes, can we switch out the last panel, the impact of partnerships, so production team? Can we switch this final slide, please, so everybody knows where to sit? Great. Well.

That's my fault, sorry.

Oh, there we go. There we go, sorry. Okay. So please, it helps if you sit by your panel. Thank you so much. So yes, now we're gonna talk about the impact of partnerships here. Thank you to our amazing panelists. We are, as things often happen during UNGA, a little bit behind, so I'm gonna get right to it, and I'll None of this work is possible without partnerships. You just saw some from some of our corporate partners, but there's so much that happens regionally with the UN system that is extremely important. We want to talk about that here. Okay. I'm going to start with a question for Dr. Valerie Grant, who's a strategic advisor on geospatial matters for the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States. She's been a great partner to us and the Data Alliance over the years. I know you're pressed for time, Valerie, so we'll begin with you. In your role for the OECS, how do you see regional organizations partnering effectively, bridging the gap between national capacity constraints on the ground and this new global data architecture, particularly when we think about island states, right? Obviously, you focus on the Caribbean, but with SIDS, we need to connect across regions as well. So maybe talk a little bit about your work and how we can close some of those gaps.

Thanks, Stephen. So the OACS, the central issue is not simply how the member states connect to the global platform. It is how we ensure that we help shape it. That's always important to us. It is how we govern it and derive practical value from it. And we often say that the size of the country shouldn't determine whether our participation is really meaningful in this data economy. So our institutional works are really under constraint at the national level. And so small teams are responsible for things like sensors, for things like the spatial data infrastructure, household survey, you name it. if global platform engages each country only as a source of data, then we have not really created a partnership. That's how we feel about it. And so what we have created is another reporting obligation. And so that is something that we really try to avoid. So regional organizations like the OACS, we are that bridge because we provide four things. I think we provide scale. We also provide a trusted governance space and we provide interoperability and continuity. And we can develop these shared capabilities once for several of the different member states. And we bring things like the statistical offices together with the mapping, the national mapping agencies, the land surveys department, or planning and disaster and environmental and marine authorities. And so the OACS has practical assets on which we build, things like the regional data governance council through a data decision making project and the project lead, Sharma, is in the room today. And so they -- and things like our regional micro data catalog, GIS training, and the common work that we're doing to prepare for the 2020 -- 2030 round of census. And this really can provide institutional interface and regional mode for the SIDS Global Data Hub. We also recognize that the spatial data structure is at different levels of maturity across the region and so some countries are improving their established geoportals or their their data services others are still putting together governance and standards they're working on their unigif their their action plans and things like those and so the partnership must meet the member states where they're at and provide a pathway for common Regional standards rather than impose a single model and that is something that way, you know, working with Greg, we always discuss and figure out how can we do that. So co-authorship must be built around governance and the member states needs a seat at that design table, which is why we're happy to be part of this partnership. We have to remember that they are still the custodians of the data and so the tools First needs to be there for them to, uh, to serve as national decision making tools in things like disaster preparedness, climate, resilience, some of the things that we've heard about this morning. And so the test is really simple. Does the partnership reduce the reporting burden for these countries, de-regional capability, and allow for more data to serve the systems that are owned by these countries? And if yes, then we are co-owners. If not, then we're simply just consumers, and we don't want to be just consumers.

Thank you for that, Valerie. You mentioned two things that I think are extremely important, interoperability and continuity, as we build out this work, so thank you. Next, we're going to go to Mr. Daniel Cole. Yes, please. He's the Director of Development, Partnerships, and Program Delivery at the World Meteorological Organization. Daniel, thanks for joining us this morning. To get started, as we think about small island states and as they build out projects like the SIDS Global Data Hub, What concrete cooperation mechanisms can the WMO provide to ensure that macro global climate models and satellite intelligence can seamlessly, you know, integrate for the data that's needed, whether it's inter-island coastal management and sustainable infrastructure delivery.

Thank you very much also for having us here. I mean, I think the main response to that question is really the reason that WMO exists, and that is we facilitate and standardize and make sure there's interoperability across the global sphere of public weather services. So the 193 public weather services of the world share data in real time and do joint global forecasting for the benefit of all humanity. And of course, they take that and they benefit their own countries by then downscaling and nesting their own local forecasts in this global system. So our real reason for existence is to ensure exactly that, that all of this data that's out there, satellite data, ground observations, ship-based observations, aviation observations, weather balloons, weather radars, all that is made available globally for the global public good and that everyone has access to it to improve the forecasting and the longer-term climate projections in their countries. Where the struggle is, and this has come up a few times this morning, is this is a very good functioning system, but we need national capacity to pull that data and to turn it into local products. to help interpret it. We want to talk about not what the weather will be, but what the weather will do. Meaning, we can tell you what the pressure is going to be tomorrow. Who cares about barometric pressure? So what does that mean for me? Is the wind going to be strong enough to blow over a truck? Is there going to be flooding in this specific location? And I think that's where this kind of partnership is so critical, is to take advantage of this global interoperable system that has been going for decades and will continue to strengthen. and translate that into local products that the people who need to make decisions can understand. And without partnership, that's just not possible. And again, we're a bunch of meteorologists, climatologists, hydrologists. We might be socially inept at talking to normal people, so help us translate that information into usable information.

Thank you, Daniel. No, I thought that was very clear and feasible. I like that you said here, it's not what the weather will be, but what it will do. I think that's going to be even more important going into the future, but particularly for island nations. So thank you. Next, we'll go to Ms. Pamela Koch-Hamilton. She's the executive director of the ITC, who's been another big partner of this process around data across the UN system and with with the Data Alliance. Pamela, the ITC recently introduced the SIDS Trade Tracker to help small island states spot trends and build economic partnerships and build resilience against shocks. As the SIDS Global Data Hub is built out, how can partnerships ensure and, you know, projects like the SIDS Trade Tracker ensure that economic intelligence translates, first, that it gets to the islands that need it, and that it translates into real positive outcomes.

Thanks so much. I really appreciate being here. I think one of the key elements of any partnership is to ensure that all partners are working together towards the same objective. And I think the objective is, how do we create resilient economies, resilient countries, and the ability to maintain our livelihood. I'm from Jamaica. In a way that uses this data to be meaningful for countries. ITC has developed not just a SIDS trade tracker, but also are in the process of launching a SIDS export potential map. And those two together tell us where trade is, what is the trend for these countries, and the second, is what are the export potential possibilities? And one of the ideas that I really wanted to posit today is how do we bring all of our data together to make it functional for the countries? Because other than that, we're just collecting data, which is great for people who like to collect data. I mean, there are a lot of us, right? But the point is, It has to be usable. It has to make countries, it has to enable their transformation. So take, for example, our work in the sargassum value chain. One of the things that we'd like to do is how do we use geospatial data to identify where are those main sources of sargassum? How can it be utilized in a way that then takes our SIDS trade data and our SIDS export potential map and turn that into the kind of value chain that then enables countries to take advantage of what is a growing potential resource? So that is for me the key element. How do we bring all of this together as part of an SDG data hub process? Thanks.

Thank you for that. No, extremely important sentiment there, and I'll just repeat it. How do we bring all the data together for one, but to make it usable, right? We talked about interoperability, but also usability. You're right. There's tons of statistics and data that are out there. I think that's been a main message this morning. How do we now get it to those that need it and make it usable? So thank you for that. Next to Miss Lisa Kingsbury. She's the director of strategic communication for the Pacific Community SPC. Lisa. The Pacific community already operates a comprehensive Pacific data hub that's servicing its member territories. As we roll out the SIDS global data hub under the Abbas mandate, what type of partnership frameworks are needed to ensure that these two data systems, and I think in general, other data systems that have been created in the different regions of the Caribbean and also AIS, what is needed to make sure that they interoperate smoothly rather than creating duplicate reporting burdens? How do we make this easy and, again, usable for the countries?

Thank you. So SPC, for those of you that don't know who we are, we're an extension of government. It's very different to other regional organizations around the world that are regional. We, in the Pacific, some statistics offices could have three people working in them. And so recognizing that they need extra technical support, they created the organization that I'm privileged to work for. And so this is less of a separate organization and more of an extension of government. So the work that we do, we see ourselves as regional, we develop regional public goods. And so you heard earlier from Minister Victor and from the ambassador of Tuvalu, We don't just create the systems, we actually do the science and the data. But science sitting on a shelf that nobody understands or can't access to be able to use is a useless investment of resources. So we've been working very closely with countries to try and unlock access to information in ways that make sense. Most recently, a lot of the work that we're doing is helping understand sea level rise. Freely available information that is globally available is not as usable for the Pacific as it is for most other parts of the world. And I think this is an issue that most small island developing states face. We have geospatial data that suggests that places like Tuvalu have an elevation of 9.5 metres. their average elevation above sea level is 1.5 meters. And so if we're using freely available data without actually ground truthing this data with people that understand the region, are from the region, are actually working with and are an extension of government, it's not data that is worth the time because the decision making is flawed. And so when we've been doing large scale adaptation work, this type of high resolution data sets that are accessible are critical to making the decision between millions of dollars of investment or getting it wrong. And this is not something we have the time in the region to play with in terms of the threat of climate change and sea level rise. We've also developed global assets called Digital Earth Pacific, which is every single island in the Pacific now geospatially available to everyone in the region. But the partnerships, I think, for us, in terms of the value of this type of partnership, is to meaningfully work with organizations like SPC to actually be the conduit with and to countries because of the sustainability issues that we have across the region and the resourcing burden that this places on countries, where you might have three people doing the job of 25 in other places or 100 in other places. It's a burden that we're placing on countries. And so finding a way to create that barrier and making it accessible is critical. The final piece is that translation of information. And this is what I'm most passionate about, because without it, information cannot be used. And if it's only those from the sector that has been the person that can understand it, then we've failed at the very first step of what that data needs to be used for. And so really recognizing from the outset where that translation of information needs to sit and bringing people with the technical skills that understand communities, with the trust that exists in regional organizations like SPC is critical from the outset.

Yeah, thank you for that. And I like how you said that, you know, we need to use the structures that exist. And again, there are, I think, 39 SIDS countries and territories. It's going to be impossible to work individually. So that's definitely something that the Data Alliance is working to do, too, not to duplicate, but to leverage and strengthen the structures that exist. You also said something I had not heard before, but I really like. I'm going to use this. The importance of ground truthing the data. because we talk about data as exists, there's tons of data out there. How do we make sure it's the right data, but also how we make sure it's verified where we can, and then ultimately usable for decision making by governments. So I think we got a good display here in the impact of partnerships. Thank you for your partnership and being so sharp and concise on this panel today. I appreciate it and thank you very much. And I'm going to invite Dr. Greg Scott back up to give some closing remarks. So thank you, everyone.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you to our distinguished panelists. As you can see, we could have kept conversations going here for half the day without any problem whatsoever and then had a more interactive session, but time is against us. I was going to do a bit of a summary, but I'm not going to do that because of that fact. But I did just want to thank all of you for being here today. Thank you for your presence, for your support, for your contributions. To all of our speakers and panelists, I know it's a very, very busy week here during UNGA, for your commitment and taking time out to be with us, we really appreciate it. And just to finish off, as what has been said today, you know, the efforts here are about ensuring that states become engines of prosperity and economic development rather than vulnerability. And data is a key element underpinning all of that. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Have a great week. And we're always here to continue the conversations. So thank you all and thank you for your time.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening for those of you around the world watching us from the SDG Media Zone.

This report makes it clear that the 1.5 degrees Celsius target that all of us have agreed to, that we have established 11 years ago in Paris, we have committed ourselves to achieving that 1.5 degree goal, which is a goal that basically means that if we stay below 1.5 degree global warming, we are still in a relatively safe space. But now we know that we are going to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius. The consequence of that exceedance is that we are going to face extreme weather events, And here today we are talking about extreme heat. And you have cited one of these statistics that are very abstract, 500,000 deaths per year. That is the impact of global warming today. Now, we are not locked into a future. The future is not written yet. What we are highlighting in our analysis, in our reports, in our talks, is that we still have a good chance to limit global warming. We cannot prevent the 1.5. We will not stay below the 1.5. We will exceed, but we can go back. And it's a huge difference if we are living in a world of 1.4 degrees, 1.6, 1.8, or 2 degrees of global warming. So, in that sense, every fraction of a degree matters because the world will look very different depending on how long and how high we are exceeding the 1.5 degree target. So, our call to action from UNEP is we need to put more emphasis on mitigating greenhouse gases. That is the recipe that we have known for a long, long time, it's the only recipe that ultimately works. We have to mitigate and keep the emissions as low as possible so that we do not live in a future, in a world that is not manageable anymore.

And Vice Minister Maluf, Brazil has been at the forefront of this struggle. And Brazil has more cities engaged in the Beat the Heat initiative than any other country, 136 and counting. How does Brazil tackle this issue of extreme heat for cities? And how does this great national participation translate into real impact on the ground?

Thank you, Martina. Well, Brazil has been facing extreme heat for a long time. The north and the northeast of Brazil, they already facing consequences of heat for many, many years. And what we have seen is that different cities were trying to do different approaches. Some of them were doing protocols for health. or labor, some were thinking about, you know, public spaces, schools and hospitals. So seeing that the cities were trying to do things, but they didn't have too much of a guidance, they didn't have too much, they didn't have so many tools available for them to support. The federal government decided to create this inter-ministerial structure because not only in Brazil, but I guess all around the world, there is no heat minister. Nobody, you know, by themselves can solve the issue. So we brought all the ministers together, all the states, a lot of the cities. We created this kind of governance structure that from the local level to the regional governments and the federal, we would all propose the ideas together in how to implement this urban resiliency in order to deal with extreme heat, then supported by UNAP, we started to do a national plan, a national plan on cooling and heating and protocols and action plans to support cities to prepare themselves with temporary long term actions. You know what they're going to do in this next year. I don't know if you're all aware, but this year Unfortunately, we are going to leave the worst El Nino in the history. So not only we have three, four degrees higher on the temperature in some areas, which mean at the Amazon region, for example, cities will be isolated because the rivers will go down. And there's no way to get there. So for at least six months, we are preparing, we are sending fuel, we are sending food, you know, to stock in the cities because they will be isolated. So what we realize it is that even us doing national plans and programs and guides and supporting the cities how to do, they also lack tools to implement it. So we recently launched an app, which is also a web, platform that mayors, they get online by satellites and partnerships we've had on under Beat the Heat, bringing together all these institutions. The mayor can see clearly where the heat islands will be, what type of infrastructure are there, and a list of suggestions on what he can do on the short term, mid term, and long term. Of course, we want to do nature-based solution, urban trees, you know, there's a lot of actions, passive cooling, sustainable construction, there's a lot of actions that mayors need to do, all the governments, but they take long, but in the short term, there are also things we can do. with protocols, with temporary solutions. So that's where we are now with Beat the Heat, you know, supported by UNEP and all this range of stakeholders and partners that came on board for Beat the Heat. We've been able to support cities and we've seen the examples on how they're leveraging the action that they were doing at a faster speed because As we all know, heat is such a difficult challenge for mayors. Extreme heat and extreme weather events are more and more making it more difficult for them.

And Martin Krause, when cities get hotter, the immediate reflex is to plug in more air conditioning, which of course drives up energy demand, dumps waste heat right back into the streets. Are there other solutions, nature-based solutions that UNEP is working on with cities?

Yeah, Martina, you're right. So one thing is clear. We cannot air condition our way out of the climate crisis. Currently, cooling is responsible for 7% of all greenhouse gas emissions, 7%. With extreme heat, this will at least triple in the years to come. What that means the requirement on the national grids to feed air conditioning systems and other cooling equipment is huge and it's going to expand. So there is potentially a vicious cycle because in many countries, the electricity grid is dirty, is not clean, meaning we are using, we are burning fossil fuels to generate electricity. So if the demand for electricity because of extreme heat and because of the requirement for cooling is expanding, we are going to enter into a vicious cycle if we are going to just trying to air condition our way out of the climate crisis. Now, I have said this because I want to point to another solution, and that is what Adalberto has already mentioned, passive cooling in urban spaces such as Very simple solutions, planting trees, greenery, having parks around. These passive cooling measures can reduce temperatures between three, four, five degrees. So you lower the need for additional cooling if you first implement passive cooling measures. And there are many others in using specific building materials or greening the roofs of houses. And there's a long list of measures, passive cooling measures that can be deployed, that are being deployed as we speak, that can lower that need for additional cooling using air conditioners. Many people also, let's not forget, who live in urban areas do not even have the economic means of buying an air conditioner system. So ventilators, for example, is another way of bringing temperature down in enclosed spaces for three, four, five degrees. So that is another solution and they consume much, much less electricity than air conditioners.

Yes. And you alluded to it, the poorest neighborhoods are often the most affected by the heat. So in Brazil, how do you make sure that heat adaptation measures actually reach also the poorest informal settlements that are hit by the most brutal heat?

No, you're right, Martina. What we saw, at least in Brazil, and I guess most around the world, is that the most vulnerable communities in the peripheries of our big cities are the one most affected, not only by heat, by all the extreme weather events, floods or, you know, different actions that can happen. And in our program, what we decided to do is that most of the actions we do, we target these most vulnerable periphery area. So we did bids and the investments we have been doing on nature-based solutions and also the protocols supporting cities. They have a whole focus on the vulnerable communities. So basically, initially we took what are the groups of people that would be most exposed. So of course, children and elderly are the ones. Now we are mapping deaths in Brazil on an hourly base. So we know very clearly when temperature goes from 45 degrees Celsius to 47 to 49, we know exactly how many people will die extra because of this heat. So we are starting to map where these people live. so that when the temperature is going up, we can go there and bring these persons to some safer protected areas during those hours of the day, because unfortunately, if they stay at their house, there's a big probability that they won't survive. So it's more than a proactive approach now with the civil defense, Minister of Health, Minister of Environment, a group of ministerial approach trying to understand where the most vulnerable people are, what actions could we do in preparation so that they, you know, are ready when the extreme heat events are there. and trying to unify data in the systems. Because also in the case of Brazil, the Minister of Health has a known data. The Minister of Environment has other on air quality and heat. Civil defense has the alert systems for the population. So we hope to implement soon also in the partnership with UNEP, these alert systems. Out of a two kilometers from the cell phone stations, that it would give alerts to them. Look, the temperature is this. Please go to this place to protect yourself. So I think we have to change the way that historically we approach it. Governments need to be more proactively getting into the most vulnerable at the most vulnerable places so that we mitigate the impact of extreme heat.

Thank you. And we do have to wrap it up here, but this is definitely an issue that will continue to be too hot to ignore. And we will continue to watch what UNEP comes up with in terms of solutions and what leaders like you are implementing on the ground. And any final words from the two of you to wrap it up?

Yeah, Martina, just very briefly, I just want to point to the global cooling pledge. 76 countries have signed the Global Cooling Pledge, which is a commitment to address extreme heat, especially in urban cities, and to promote sustainable cooling solutions. We have also created a platform for companies, for manufacturers of cooling equipment, to use minimum energy performance standards for the cooling equipment to lower the consumption of electricity that comes along with plugging in a cooling equipment, so there are solutions that UNEP, with many, many other partners, is supporting, and I want to invite everybody to join us.

Thank you.

Yeah, well, I think for Brazil, like it took us a long time to integrate the climate change and the air quality agenda. And we saw the benefits of integrating both of them. There's new reports from UNAB showing, you know, $15 return for every dollar doing on that. But I think now our most urgent challenge is to integrate the cooling and the heating strategy. and how we are going to address both topics together because there is a demand, a growing demand for cooling in our cities. In the case of Brazil, six out of 10 schools are in hotspots of extreme heat. So we're going to have to do something there. But I think that the answer for us is how we're going to bring back nature to this debate. and use nature-based solution and cheaper, like passive cooling solutions to reduce the demand for air conditioners, but at the same time, created this environment that our schools, our hospitals, public spaces, and all the other different areas, they could deal and be more prepared to deal with extreme heat and get a little bit more prepared for the future.

Thank you very much. Thanks to both of you. Thank you for watching.

All right, welcome back SDG Media Zone. We're going to go from the solutions that were just presented on the urban resilience to extreme heat. Amazing conversation. I love when the speakers bring us with some solutions. We talked about the issues, but we really need to find those solutions. So that was great to have that to kick us off this morning on that incredibly important issue of extreme heat and working through that. We're going to continue on the climate theme next. I'm going to turn the floor over to Laura Geggel, the managing editor from Live Science to take us through this conversation, from evidence to action, making climate and biodiversity change visible. Laura, over to you.

Thank you. All right. Our climate is changing, and not everyone can agree on why this is happening. Although younger generations understand the urgency more than older generations, Research studies from Pew Research Center show that about 50% of Americans agree that humans are mostly the cause of climate change. But this statistic has stayed constant more or less since 2016, showing that Americans, we don't have a growing amount of people agreeing with the vast majority of scientists. Also, we're losing an alarming amount of our biodiversity, largely because of climate change, pollution, habitat loss and fragmentation. and over exploitation like overfishing. So it's not looking too good. But even though it's easy to feel overwhelmed and paralyzed with news of climate change and biodiversity loss in today's world, we do have people who are fighting back. We have scientists and filmmakers and activists who are helping people who are helping to galvanize the public. Today, we will talk about from evidence to action and how we can tackle these complicated issues. Today, we have Dr. Kenneth Lacovara on the far side here. Dr. Lacovara is a paleontologist and founding executive director of the Edelman Fossil Park and Museum in New Jersey. Dr. Lacovara brings the perspective of deep time with fossils and strata and past mass extinctions to reveal the to reveal the consequences of planetary change. Also with us today is Louis Cihojos, an Academy Award-winning filmmaker, who is also the executive director of the Oceanic Preservation Society. He was a National Geographic photographer for 18 years, and he's also the filmmaker behind The Cove and Erasing Extinction. And finally, we are very lucky to have Tanisha Ramadas, a Singaporean youth researcher and program coordinator for the Asian Women in Science Mentorship Program at ULRI. and former regional lead for SEA. She's also with the Girl Up Campaign of the United Nations Foundation. Thank you for joining us today. Let's start with a question for Dr. LaCovara. So you study mass extinctions that happened tens to hundreds of millions of years ago. When you're standing in front of a museum visitor, what's one thing you can say or show to them that will help them understand the urgency of mass extinction so that they take action today and not tomorrow?

Yeah, thank you, Laura. You know, the evidence is really in the past. It was Winston Churchill who said, "The further back you look, the further ahead you can see." And so I want to share with you today some deep time evidence of where we've been and how things have changed in the past. If we could get those slides up, that'd be great. There we go. So for the last 18 years, my crew and I have been excavating at the Edelman Fossil Park and Museum in Southern New Jersey. And we have excavated over 100,000 fossils representing over 100 species. And each of these individuals, like this crocodile here, are literal victims of the asteroid strike. This is a 66 million year old tibia from a crocodile that was actually caught up in that very event was found in the layer along with the fallout from the impact that happened about 1,500 miles away in Mexico. Material flew up into space, landed all over the world, including where this crocodile was living its best crocodile life and then got wiped out by an asteroid 66 million years ago. So this is what it looks like. It's preserved in what we call marl, which is a marine sediment. And this catastrophe affected life on land and in the ocean. There have been five mass extinctions since we've had complex life on Earth, the last one caused by an asteroid impact. But the previous four were all CO2 crises. And so we know that really, CO2 is everything. CO2 determines whether we're Mars or Venus. It determines whether the Earth a comfortable place to live or whether we have a snowball Earth, which has happened in the past. So right now, what are we doing? Well, we're using the atmosphere as a garbage can. And we are right now up to about 430 parts per million. And we haven't seen 430 parts per million in 16 million years. So we have now created an atmosphere for ourselves that no human or nothing much like a human has ever experienced. And, you know, it's not the ultimate value that matters. It was actually warmer in the time of the dinosaurs, but it's the rate of change. And ecosystems and organisms can only adapt so fast, and we're breaking the biological speed limit. Things cannot adapt to this rate of change. That, and along with habitat destruction and polluting the environment, is resulting in a crash in our wildlife. According to the World Wildlife Fund, for monitored species, we've lost 73% since 1970. To me, that's shocking. To me, I wonder why that's not on the front page of every newspaper every single day. In terms of biomass of mammals, like literally get the mammals, put them on a scale. Humans and our animals are now 96% of the biomass of mammals on Earth. All of the terrestrial animals, mammals are 2%. All the marine mammals are 2%. And the petroleum age, which we are suffering from, yes, we've benefited from it, but we're suffering from it as well. It's less than 200 years old. And when you think about that, I mean, there are trees right out this window near the UN. that are older than 200 years. So that's within the lifetime of a single organism. If you're an organism on Earth and the Earth gets hit by an asteroid in your lifetime, or if you're an oak tree and the world's climate changes catastrophically within your lifetime, it's the same, isn't it? It's instantaneous for life on Earth, for ecosystems on Earth. So we are now propagating the world's sixth mass extinction. In this scenario now, we're the asteroid. But we don't have to be. And I'd just like to leave you with this thought. If you were stranded on a little lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with four or five other people, how much are you going to think about that lifeboat? How often would you monitor it? How quick would you be to repair it? How much would you love that little lifeboat? That's exactly our situation. This is the famous Earthrise picture taken by astronaut Bill Andrews. the Apollo astronaut who first saw this view. And he said, we came all this way to explore the moon and we discovered the Earth because this is truly our situation. We live on this little, lonely, rocky lifeboat in space. I'm sorry, there's no planet B. This is all we're ever going to have, this Earth and each other. And it's time for us to be better ancestors.

Thank you, that would light the fire under any museum visitor. All right, to Mr. Saijo-Yos. The Cove and Racing Extinction, didn't it just inform people? It changed their behavior. So what's the actual mechanism in a film that flips someone from moved to motivated?

Yeah, well, we did a film called Racing Extinction, which is about the sixth mass extinction. I think that the change that we need, the evidence is there, you need to change people's hearts. You know, that's what we try to do is to take that information into action, you know, and you know, Hollywood filmmakers, it's about $10 and a box of popcorn, it's butts in seats. I think about the audience's minds in seats. How can you change a mind so when they come out of a film, they're behaving differently? You see that film, Racing Extinction, it helped create laws that prevented some of the most endangered species in the world from being trafficked. There was laws that were put in place because of the events that happened. We did projections of a dangerous species in the Empire State Building, we did it on the UN in 2014 for the General Assembly. And it created a groundswell. You know, movies, I think, are the most powerful weapon that we have in the world, powerful than Mr. Trump's bombs. It's called a weapon of mass construction. You drop a bomb, you create enemies. You make a film, you create allies. I mean, I was just going to say this, and he's not going to hear this anyway, but we have a leader in America that there's no evidence of him ever being in a national park. I mean, that to me is astounding. We need to get leaders that we care about that understand these issues, that are gonna vote for the future generations, not just with a pocketbook. This is a coin-operated government right now that we have in America. We need to change that by voting, get these bozos out two years from now. Let's, you know, there's... Keep the fires burning so that when these young generations are in power, there's something left. I run the Oceanic Preservation Society. Every one of those mass extinctions, we lost the oceans for about three to seven million years. What's going on right now in the oceans is unprecedented since the extinction 66 years ago, the KT extinction. We've we're losing coral. I think I don't know that the rates are happens so quickly like over 50% of the coral in the last 30 years and it's accelerating I Diving is the most beautiful thing I've ever done in the world. You put your head you're looking at the sky You put your head in the water. There's this other alien universe that's like Psychedelic Lee beautiful more amazing than anything you can imagine and we're losing that on our watch we You know, I make films. I think I try to inspire people to protect what we love. You know, so there is something left. There's, you know, we need to keep hope alive because it feels like it's dying and we need to do whatever we can. You know, everybody, every single, everybody always thinks, you know, let's wait for the UN, let's wait for the government leaders. But every single person in this room listening, the person next to you. What matters is the connection that you make with other people. Just, you know, keep that. You know, what's important, it's not money. We know that. It's the air that we breathe, it's the water, it's the environment, keeping the environment for future generations. That's what's important. The person next to you is the most important person in the world for you. So every relationship that you have, you can have a profound effect on everybody. I do it with films. So, and, but, but every, you sit on a subway, you can make a connection with somebody. You can start to talk with them. We're losing that because we're, we're stuck in this AI phone world. I'm gonna get off my soapbox for a minute, but thanks.

Yes. Hope and human connection. I feel like that's an overarching thing that we can all use more of. All right. So, Ms. Ramadas. We've watched how knowledge can lead to young people organizing together. Can you share a moment where a piece of scientific information converted someone into taking real sustained action instead of just posting about it?

Okay, so first thing is I think a very important distinction should be made when it comes to even posting about things, because I think that's where it starts. The first thing to the second one chooses to post about climate in particular, it is already them spreading information. And the thing is, there is so many information that you can share out there, but yet it's for some reason not reaching out to individuals. And those who are choosing to actively post, I think they're already taking the first step because clearly they are facing climate anxiety. And a lot of the times those who choose to post on social media, I think that is one way for them to sort of find a form of agency, sort of channel and start into, like get into their way of starting a form of activism. So there is that. But also at the same time, I think that it is so interesting to see how like climate has, I think, sorry, can you repeat the question again?

Oh yeah, just, can you recall a moment where a piece of scientific information really prompted someone to become active?

Oh yeah, okay, so yeah, so with posting that does that. And then beyond that, what it does is a second someone feels like, okay, there is a need to do something, it does prompt them because a lot of activists out there, what we do is that we share information. We are always trying to, we talk about statistics all the time. We're constantly organizing and yet people don't seem to hear us. And that is one of the biggest issues that we face, especially those who are not necessarily, who don't necessarily have access to spaces like this, for instance, even being in the UN. And a lot of the time, think when it comes to activism and working in the ground, a lot of those spaces are not offered to individuals who are actually there doing the work. So there is a sort of feeling of, oh, no one is hearing me and no one is really seeing me. And that essentially brings them towards this endless cycle of, okay, there is really not much that can be done. And also those who do face climate anxiety, feel like that's absolutely nothing they can do about it. And so they just sort of give up. And there's just no systems in place that allows one to truly want to do something as well. So there is a lack of hope, as had been mentioned by the previous speakers. There's just not much out there. And that's one thing that we need to do to cultivate that hope.

Yeah, well, actually, let's give our audience members something to have this hope and connection. So can you each give me one small concrete item that someone watching this can do the moment the panel is over, starting with you, Dr. LaCovara.

Yeah, well, you know, I think hope is a choice, and hope is a commitment, not a forecast, right? I don't know how this stuff is gonna turn out, but I get up every day choosing to be a hopeful person, And there are many things that an individual can do. The most important thing is to vote. But, you know, if you own a home, if you own a little piece of property, it's getting a little chilly in New York right now, leave the leaves in your yard this fall, right? That is the habitat that the caterpillars need, that fireflies need, that ladybugs need. We're having a terrible crash in bird populations right now because their food is going away, and their food going away because we're destroying habitat. We're treating this organic material like garbage. We're literally throwing it in landfills when it's really the habitat that we need to, you know, for the base of the food chain and to create, you know, healthy soils. for the environment. So be a little more gentle with your yard. Leave a little patch that you only mow maybe once a year. If we did that in the United States, we'd create 40 million acres, 20 million acres of habitat. That's like nine Yellowstone National Parks.

So do fewer chores. I'm on board. Dr. or Mr. is what? concrete action item would you like people to take?

Well, everything that you purchase has a consequence. So every product that you use, I just did a film called The Plastic Detox, it's on Netflix right now. Plastic is made of petroleum products and it gets absorbed by your body. There's three vectors that it gets, you ingest it, you inhale it, you absorb it. It's affecting your endocrine system, affecting fertility, obesity, ADHD, Alzheimer's. It's, you know, everything's being affected by it. So, reduce your plastic consumption. Every, you know, you can -- well, we have a site. It's kind of like -- if Jeff Bezos had a conscience, this is the site that I created. It's called the Unplastic Shop, and it's where you can go and you can buy a toothbrush without plastic. You can have a high-end one or, like, a bamboo one with soybean bristles that feel like plastic. go to that site, you know, there's there's 800 products that you can switch out from. Every time you, you know, whether you use our site or or anybody else's, every time you make one choice to bring something else into your home to make your own life better, by the way, it's also helping the environments but you could and then if you feel good about it, once you're you're making these choices that are for yourself and the environment.

Yes, I know I've been trying to deplastic my kitchen is.

I'll help you.

Thank you. What about you? What concrete item can people take?

I think one of the easiest things that I will tell my friends and like our generation is be very careful in choosing what you consume because overconsumption is truly a thing. And instead, perhaps look at like thrifting options or every single piece of clothing that you're owning, try to buy from sustainable shops and sustainable sources, try to consume more green. Yeah. And I would also say that it is so incredibly important to quite literally detox yourself. And there's always this need to want to constantly chase for the next trend. Perhaps there's really no need because who are we trying to impress? You know, sometimes it's good to just strip back and that way you're also in that sense, taking the right action to save the climate, even if it may seem so tiny, but this little help will do so much for one.

I am proud to say that my dress is thrifted. Thank you. Well, we have less than a minute left, but quickly, you guys are from different spheres, museums, media, and grassroots. Go back to Mr. Saijoh. How can you guys build trust across these different audiences that you guys each have separately?

Well, I always try to think about who I'm talking with, what their goals are. If I'm talking about climate to, let's say, somebody from the right, I might not talk about climate change. I might talk about CO2 in the oceans. It's like, try to find out something you all care about. When you talk about plastics, it's like, it affects everybody's fertility. It doesn't matter if you're a Republican or a Democrat or Ukrainian or what, it doesn't matter. It's affecting us. So try to figure out what those other person's needs are.

It looks like we're out of time. Thank you guys so much for joining this panel. I really appreciate it.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the SDG Media Zone. We're live from the UN headquarters in New York during the 81st UN General Assembly, and I'm pleased to pass it to our moderator, Elaine Reyes, to kick off our next.

Panel discussion. All right, thank you so much, Alexandra, and welcome to everyone here from wherever you're joining us, whether you're sitting with us here in windy New York or joining us online. This is Local Action Powering Global Impact, public-private partnerships to advance progress on SDG 7, affordable and clean energy for all. I'd like to introduce our panel, Kimberly Johnston, founder and CEO of NextGen Energy, and Mark Pacheco, former Massachusetts State Senator and CEO of the Transatlantic Climate Alliance. So, our conversation today will showcase how public-private partnerships supporting SDG 7 can turn local resilience into a replicable global answer, and one that is not only for more sustainable, but also for for more affordable and more secure energy. So Kimberly, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your organization.

Oh, wonderful. A pleasure to be here, all. And Kimberly Johnston, I'm the-- my background has been in energy for three decades, so oil and gas, natural gas to renewables. And it's all been based in Texas. And when I look at my career, I was a former EY Americas Power and Utility partner for six years. So really working across the US on these horrific climate devastations year after year. Prior to that, I was the vice president and corporate officer at CenterPoint Energy, one of the largest utilities in the US. And we serve over 3 million people in Houston and serving the coastal lines day after day after her in hurricanes. So it was a Texas freeze of 2021 where that freeze paralyzed the Texas economy. Four and a half people out of power for four days. It cost our economy two years of energy supply in four days, bankruptcies, people lost their lives. And that's when I decided to retire early and start next Gen. energy.

And Mark, you have a background previously in government, but tell us what you've been doing now.

Well, with my background at the local level and at the state level for 36 years at the state level, I worked a lot in the clean energy sector in sustainability to have policy that is part of state policy that we could work with local officials on, and I just retired in December of '24 from the Massachusetts legislature as the Dean of the Massachusetts Senate, because I wanted to actually look at making sure that we do everything we can at the local level to actually implement those policies. So we've created the Transatlantic Climate Alliance. And it actually got created because of a real life project that took place when we went to Europe. We met with European leaders. We looked at their policies. We looked at offshore wind. We brought back some of those policies to Massachusetts. And in working with our legal counsel and policy makers, we decided to work within Governor Baker and other local leaders in a bipartisan way to make sure that we could try it out. Let's see if we have any bids that come back. And here we are, just months after the Vineyard Wind 1 project was finally approved, powering 400,000 homes in the Northeast grid, all because we partnered together and learned from best practices that were taking place in the world, brought them back to Massachusetts, and implemented them. And we're powering affordable clean energy, 6.8 cents a kilowatt hour for offshore wind. And there's no comparison. that's what we need to do more of and that's why we created the transatlantic climate alliance anybody that wants to

Sign on and look at that organization. Please do and join us. Become a founding member of the Transatlantic Climate Alliance. It's all subnational climate action. So we're talking with mayors, with city councilors, with boards of selectmen, regional entities, and businesses. So we have a private-public partnership in making sure we do everything we can to embrace this climate action revolution.

Kimberly, I see you nodding your head there in agreement. What are some of the biggest challenges and misconceptions to getting where you are?

Absolutely. When I look about technology breakthroughs, and we've had so many technology breakthroughs in energy, when you think about the US, we were heavily dependent on coal. Well, we've reduced our carbon footprint by 4% GHG emissions reductions because we went from coal to natural gas. We found technology breakthroughs for this abundance natural gas that we have locally. And we became energy independent, which is a geopolitical historical threat. But now we have abundance of, Mark said, wind, solar. You can't get more infinite power from Mother Nature. Why are we not shifting to working more in harmony with Mother Nature? It's zero cost. After Storm Uri, I put on 40 panels. Solar panels, three power walls, we have two electric vehicles. I pay less than $4 a month in electricity. I've avoided 70 power outages, and I charge my cars for free. It's a net zero home, it costs nothing. It was an upfront investment, but the challenge is upfront investment. This is public infrastructure. Our aging infrastructure is here to provide an essential power. That is a given. And why it's rising to its 27 cents, Mark just said six cents for a wind, offshore wind project, but it's upfront capital. And that's what public and private partners have to come together. And that's what we're working at NextGen Energy, is really a local on the ground, educating, getting the communities to understand their options, and then getting the governments to give us some seed capital because We do need these towns don't have budgets, they can issue bonds, give a seed capital, and then we bring in the private investment to scale these projects. And what we're looking at is distributive energy, what we call hubs for energy resilient operations. So think of what I just described for my home. You have it on water treatment plants, you have it on hospitals, you have it on fire stations, you have it on when these disasters hit your town, you are protected. and your lights are kept on. So we've launched at Massachusetts the Keep Lights On initiative, and it's to roll out a network of hero hubs that are really providing unerruptable 24/7 clean power and protect those vulnerable communities that are hit hardest from these storms. But it boils down to technology breakthroughs, commercialization through smart policies, stable policies that remove market barriers and then and really get the empower those communities. And I know Mark has some thoughts here too on the challenges that we face in rolling this out.

Let me have you hold on for a second and bring in Dr. Wale Aboyeade, Vice President of Public Affairs and Government Relations at Sun King. I want to get your thoughts because you've also worked across government, development, finance, and now the private sector. So if we do want to accelerate SDG 7, what does an effective public-private partnership actually look like? What can governments and development partners do differently to help successful local models reach scale?

Thank you, Elaine. Yeah, that's a really good question and one that actually has a relatively clear answer now. That was launched a couple of years ago called Mission 300. Mission 300 is an initiative of the World Bank and African Development Bank to work with governments and the private sector to electrify 300 million out of the 600 odd million Africans that are not yet connected to electricity. And we are proud private sector partner to be under that program. And basically the way the program is shaped is that public finance made available by the World Bank and the African Development Bank are channeled through governments. And a large portion of them goes to off-grid technologies because there's the realization that you cannot connect those 600 million people, or in this particular case, 300, only by extending the grid. We've been trying that for decades, and it hasn't actually worked. But with off-grid solar, just as you mentioned, Kimberly, it is extremely quick to connect compared to how long it takes to extend the grid. And We have a model at Sun King that's called pay as you go, where owners of solar systems don't have to pay the total amount upfront. They only need to pay 10% upfront and pay the rest in installments, hence pay as you go. And so we had that model that was already successful outside of government. And so governments through Mission 300 has realized that this is a pathway to actually make it work. We will try and extend that pay as you go model. to reach communities who might not even be able to afford that initial upfront payment. And so they use public money to subsidize a little bit, sometimes usually around 10 or 20% of the cost of the solar systems to make it that much more affordable. And then we come in, we sell the systems at a much cheaper rate, but we only get paid once the systems perform, which is, you know, so it's called a results-based finance mechanism. And we think that that's a really beautiful And right now, through that system, I think close to 30 or 40 million people have been connected faster than has ever been before. We at Sun King alone over the last few years have already have almost 30 million customers using this particular method. So it's scalable, it works, and it's a great example of a public-private partnership.

And that's great to hear because as we all know, the demand for energy just continues to grow by the second. And, you know, you bring up an interesting and a very important point of access. And then we also have to talk about the infrastructure piece of all of that. Mark, what are your thoughts?

Well, we're looking at the big picture of what is happening out there, the policies that have been put in place by national governments, by regional entities, by state governments, but a lot of the action actually happens at the local level. And so that's why we've tried to focus on making sure that we look at and talk to decision makers in all communities and regions across the country, across the transatlantic world, because there are so many best practices that the doctor just referenced, that Kimalee is working on, that NextGen Energy is doing. And we can take these best practices and educate local decision makers in the public sector and the private sector so we can replicate those more quickly. The most frustrating thing about the climate crisis that we have right now is it's been over 20 years that we've been talking about solutions and we need to implement those solutions so much more quickly so we can save this planet and save the future for the children and grandchildren that are out there so that they have a great future. in this great country of ours, in this world of ours.

I'll go to all of you with this question, but Kimberly, I'll get you to answer first. I mean, can you share how your work addresses not just the climate question, as Mark just mentioned, but also makes a positive contribution to energy affordability and economic growth? I mean, there's that balance between development and being sustainable and smart and efficient at the same time.

Absolutely. And SDG 7 is all about affordable, clean energy. And And it's accessible when you're dealing with wind and solar natural resources that are infinite and you pair that with storage. Storage is a breakthrough technology and right now storage is about to four to eight hours of storage, but there is storage in play and we work closely with the US Department of Energy and then the 17 national labs and there is technology in the in the making that could store up to 100 hours. And and this is the breakthrough and same with advanced nuclear reactors. And that's using kind of laws of physics that really can contain those reactors from a safety, public safety perspective. And you have geothermal. So not only are we looking at affordable, accessible energy, and especially as Dr. said, when you're working with economies that are emerging and there's more than nearly 700 million people that have no power today globally. So this is a global answer, but not only are we working with seven SGD seven, but SGD eight is around economic growth. That's that's right. When we had the US law infrastructure law passed and that was about 1.7 trillion, we at our company immediately started advising US states on their climate action plans. How do they look at their state footprint, their carbon Where are those carbon emissions coming from and what is their pathways to 2050? And how can we deploy capital right now in the next 10 years to move that needle? And it was amazing how targeted you could be on the power sector and the industrial sector. And it's achievable. It's just the willing party. So we had about 3 billion of energy economic development projects going to get to those net zero targets. Well, we had a huge shift in the political environment that set us back, and that's a big headwind. But then not only do you deal with that SGD, but we also are working on the public-private partnership 17, because this is public serving assets. We're talking about the grid, and you need both governments and the private sector to come together.

So, Dr. Wally.

Yeah, sure. Again, I, I think this, nothing is more important really than public private partnerships on this topic, and, um, we really do appreciate the effort of partners like the UN, um, through the Sustainable Energy for All, and of course the DFIs and governments in the opening up. So actually having private sector play a really meaningful role. And that's, we have shown, again, through our scale, we now connect over 300,000 people to, you know, to solar every month. And just imagine the rates at that scale. And that's only possible, again, because of public-private partnership. And we are excited to see what the future holds for SDG 7 and for programs like Mission 300.

We're almost out of time, but just some final thoughts as we wrap up our session here on SDG 7 and what you'd like to leave our audience with. Mark, we'll start with you.

Well, I just want to continue with the cost. No matter what renewable energy technology you point to, solar, wind, geothermal, storage, it's all less expensive. It's more affordable for the future. And there's a cost that we very really very rarely talk about, and that's healthcare costs. In Massachusetts alone, we save $1.4 billion a year in healthcare costs because of asthma rates and cardiovascular and all of those other issues that pollution is impacting human health. So when we think about the affordability of the renewable energy future and the cost we save and the lives we save. Moving forward with what our colleagues on the panel here have talked about, that's what we need to embrace and we need to engage the political will at the local level to make sure these solutions actually get turned into action.

My closing thoughts, we are in the era of electrification. I mean, our grid in the U.S. has been in existence over 100 years. Well, we've been growing that power and meeting the demand at the rate of GDP growth, population growth. But by 2030, we will be 2.5x the amount of electricity consumption is what's needed in less than a decade. that the only way to get there is all energy, all power, and let's make it clean. Let's learn from the past and let's make it clean, resilient, and now's our moment. So power to the people, clean power to the people.

And I echo all of that. I will just say, look, we should always optimize for the fastest way to leave no one behind. There's 700 million people, 600 million in Africa. Affordability is a key issue. Speed is a key issue. And we should make sure that we make room through, again, effective public-private partnerships to be able to drive the systems and the models that have been shown to work to be able to meet that need. This is not a time to get into politics. is not a time to debate whether renewables are good or not. They are established to be connect. Again, we're connecting 300,000 people every month. This is the way. These are the kind of numbers you need to be able to get to where we're going. And enough of the politics. Let's get to it.

That's wonderful. Wally, Kimberly, Mark, thank you all for joining us. And if you're following our conversation, just use the hashtag #SDGLive and #GlobalGoals. Thank you all for joining us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Pleasure. All right. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the SCG Media Zone. We're live from the UN headquarters here in New York. I'm pleased to pass it to our moderator, Flora Pierre, from News Editor The 19th, to kick off our next panel discussion.

Hello and welcome to this UN SDG conversation on reimagining care, disability, family, and how we shift medical culture. More than 1 billion people live with disabilities. They are the world's largest minority, and yet their experiences and those of their families and caregivers are too often overlooked. The documentary Holding Moses follows ***** a Broadway performer and mother, as she navigates caring for her son Moses. Moses has a rare genetic mutation that shapes the way he experiences the world. The film has been screened not only in disability spaces, but also in medical schools. It offers future doctors a window into the lives of the patients and families that they will eventually care for. Today, we're going to use this film as a starting point for a larger conversation. How can medical culture better listen to and communicate with people with disabilities and their families? And what does it take to provide care with greater dignity, understanding, and compassion? I'm Flora Peer, an editor with the 19th News. Joining me are Rivkah Beth Meadow, co-executive director of Frankly Speaking Films and the director of Holding Moses. Dr. Jaya Isola, founder and executive director of Penn Medicine's Center for Health Equity Advancement. and Dr. Hannah Karkara-Anderson, an education scientist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Let's take a moment and watch a clip from the film.

A newborn should cry and start breathing calmly. Moses was laboring too hard. His belly was pumping to try to get air. And he could barely cry, and he couldn't move. And he couldn't open his eyes. And I would just watch him, and I would just wait for him to snap out of it. I was like, is this going to be the day you open your eyes? And he just lied there, and he was so still, and he was so beautiful. I had no idea what I was in for.

It's an incredibly powerful documentary, and I hope that you get the opportunity to watch it. Let's start with Rivkah, the director. We'd like to hear more from you. Your work explores how storytelling can change who we see and who we listen to. And how did you come to bring "Holding Moses" into the conversation about better care?

Thank you so much, Flora. So, with My company, Frankly Speaking Films, we tell stories that we think can engage people in conversations, and they usually have an art path and an impact path, and sometimes those intersect. We were really grateful that The New Yorker picked up this film so we could get to a much broader audience, and then we were Oscar shortlisted, which then made us have a much greater audience. That made it possible for us to do an impact campaign. We brought the film around to our partners. We showed it to groups of people with disabilities, rare disease communities, LGBTQ+ communities. While that was fantastic and validating for them, what they said back to us after like 30 screenings was, "Hey, would you please take this to the medical community "so that we can have better communication?" So my collaborator, Jen Rainin, who's my co-director on this film, we came back, we figured out how we could bring this film to medical schools, we got a grant from the National Institute on Healthcare Management, which enabled us to bring the film to 10 universities across the US. Those conversations with doctors-to-be, healthcare providers, pediatric neurologists, people who really think about communication, empathetic communication, how we can do better, how we can talk with people with disabilities and their caregivers more as partners, that's really, that film is doing that work and that has brought us here today.

That's fantastic, and I hope that it continues to spark more conversations in the medical community. Hannah, you've spent years advocating for disability inclusion through your work and also through your personal experience. Can you take us through what a medical appointment looks like from the patient side and kind of illustrate how that matters, disability inclusion.

Yeah, thank you. So, as you mentioned, I come at this issue from both kind of an insider and outsider perspective. As an insider, I'm a person who lives with multiple disabilities, and I access medical care at the institution that I work as a researcher. And so, I have this insight of living on both sides of the picture. As a patient, when I go to visit my medical providers and receive healthcare. The questions that are running through my mind are immense. Will I be able to get on the bus and go to my appointment? Will I be denied a taxi? When I get on the bus, will someone touch me and push me and move me without my consent because they wanna help me, well-intentioned help me? And the barriers to getting to my appointments, getting to them on time, they begin outside of the healthcare system, but they persist once I walk through the doors. Security screenings, finding my doctor's office in the labyrinth of a medical center, All of us have the experience of going to the doctor and having a million questions running through your mind and feeling anxious or nervous about the outcome of your medical appointment. All of us can empathize with that. But as a person with a disability, those questions are just exponentially increased and the types of barriers that are faced are also immense. So while I don't share the same diagnosis or disability as Moses in this film, I know that Moses and his family, when they go to health care appointments, face a lot of the same barriers. Lack of accessibility from the outset, doors that don't work, elevators that don't work, stairways and hallways and restrooms that aren't designed for people with disabilities, yet people with disabilities are the highest utilizers of health care systems.

And so many obstacles are built in. But what are some solutions that you've seen through your personal experience, but also through your research?

Yeah, so I think from the research side, it's really important to note that the patient experience depends heavily on the accessibility of healthcare facilities, the accessibility of healthcare providers. And when I speak about accessibility, I'm not just talking about access to healthcare. I'm talking about the actual physical facilities, the online facilities, the communication between providers. And some of the solutions, I think, that we can build better healthcare facilities, those solutions require, absolutely require the input and the leadership of disabled patients and their families in changing the way that we deliver healthcare. So, I think while there's no one-size-fits-all solution for all healthcare environments, the mandate exists to be accessible, and the pathway to get there, I think, is the authentic inclusion and leadership of disabled patients.

And that is a big piece of equity work, right? So, Jaya, can you tell us from the clinical side, what do you see as best practices for an appointment in terms of communications and access?

Thank you, Flora. It's great to be here. Best practice is actually continuing to evolve, and primarily because we're learning and growing in the field by including, finally, the perspectives of patients with disabilities and persons with disabilities, and also the family and caregivers of those patients with disabilities. And When we think about a foundational principle, even though we're evolving, foundational principle that should guide all of our care is the awareness that the inclusive communication that we have begins far earlier than when we eventually greet the, the doctor eventually greets a patient in the exam room or in the hospital. That inclusive communication has to begin far earlier in the journey from when the patient first calls to make the appointment And it includes how they get there and what happens in the waiting room. And then thereafter, what happens when they return home. And as we think about how to evolve and improve upon that, the onus is on us as healthcare professionals. If we are not patient-centered and thinking about how that journey is also part of the care we give, we run the risk of patients not getting the care that we seek to give them at the time where they need it most. And so one of the things that we have to do, as Hannah talked about, is really include the patient's perspective and folks with disabilities in the table as we redesign our care delivery models. One of the ways in which I've been fortunate enough to do that is by working with incredible researchers like Dr. Anderson and also Dr. Mahir Karkare, who's here in the audience with us. We had conducted a study that involved a go along with patients, established patients in our clinic, where we shadowed them to their journey to the doctor's office. And we talked to them before and after. And what we learned was so striking that it is incredibly difficult. It takes so much just to get to the doctor. And Unfortunately, the experiences that Hannah described are the norm, not the exception, from so many patients. If you think about it, just as Hannah alluded to, it is a stressful thing for any of us to seek medical care. It's not an easy thing to do. We're thinking about so many things. We're thinking about, gosh, do I have the questions I want to ask my provider on hand? Will I have time to ask my doctor that? Will I have time if I have time, will I remember to ask those questions? We're also thinking about, do I have to fast before I get my labs? Or bracing ourselves for lab results, like, what is this conversation going to mean for me or my family member? Now, add to that, how do I get there, as Hannah described, or what do I do? Will my wheelchair fit in the elevator? Or if it does fit in the elevator, does that elevator open on both sides, or do I have to stand the elevator until I figure out what side of the elevator the doors open and wait so there's enough room for me to turn my wheelchair around if I can't exit the first time in the way that I entered? Will my doctor actually look at me when they talk to me or will they look at the person that came with me? These are sort of the questions, the added questions that are being asked. And the way in which we combat that as healthcare providers is to really begin to elicit what patients need the moment they call to make an appointment. It's as simple as that, a foundational element. What can we do to make your life easier or your journey easier to get to us? And what kind of accommodations can we assist you with when you are there? That's the starting point, I think, of best practice. And To be honest, that kind of question is universal. Any of us could answer about a certain accommodation we need at that moment, whether we broke our leg in an accident or we're a pregnant mother and we have a lot going on and we will need more accommodations just getting to the office. So having that sort of universal question from the onset is a great way to start as a baseline practice.

Small step goes a long way and you know, this is right now, going forward, what would meaningful inclusion look like five years from now? You know, what do you envision as a wider, more accessible, welcoming medical space? Jaya, would you like to start?

Sure, and then I'll definitely turn it over to others. For me, five years from now, everyone, regardless of their background, their culture, their disability status, their language, religion will be able to access care with ease and feel like they belong when they access care, which is huge. How do we get there? We get there by including multicultural perspectives, the perspectives of everyone involved. Our healthcare systems by design have been designed historically by a single cultural perspective that really isolates so many of us. The only way we get to that future state is by including perspectives of individuals with disabilities at the seat at the table, having them represented in the boardrooms, in leadership spaces, so we can change the design of the way we deliver health care from inside out.

Yeah, thank you. When I think about five years from now, I want to be able to wake up and take accessible transportation to my health care appointments. I want to show up at a hospital that is built by and for disabled people, that when I enter the screening process, the doors, the hallways, elevators, everything is designed from the perspective of how can we accommodate and welcome diverse bodies and minds. It's easy for me to find my way around the hospital using signage, using electronic tools, assistive technology. When I check in at my doctor's office, I'm greeted with respect and I am given the independence and agency to make choices about my own health care. I work as a partner in a team with my health care providers, and they genuinely respect and solicit my opinions, my perspective, and make decisions with me, not for me. And I go home with instructions that I can read, that I can use, that are accessible for people with disabilities like me, that have options of the ways that I want to follow up with my care, and that follow-up process is also accessible and easy and designed with multiple different bodies and minds from the outset.

Thank you.

And so because I'm a filmmaker and a storyteller, I come at it from that perspective. I think the stories that we tell actually shape the world we see. And so these things are interrelated, right? Like the perspectives that we see when we see ***** and we hear her journey of ableism, really, throughout the film, we start to understand, oh, everyone's coming at this from a different place. In five years, the more we have these personal perspectives, people who are going through systems and letting us know what their experiences are through emotional, moving narratives, I think that that, you know, that helps us understand, right? When I hear Hannah talk about her experience and take us through a day, even, you know, walking here, it's... illuminating to see the different challenges that we navigate that Hannah navigates every day, right? Jaya talked about the go-alongs. You know, essentially, those experiences help inform the care and the design that's delivered in the medical spaces. And then as media makers, we are able to broadcast that to a much larger audience, right? So I'd like to see more films from first-person perspectives.

Yes, absolutely. I'd also like to ask one more question of Jaya in particular. You talked about the isolation of the medical experience. What are some ways we can open that up? Is it changing the space itself? Is it changing the conversation at the appointment making point? What are some ways that we can relieve the isolation for the patient?

Yes. Yeah, I think it begins with a simple question when they call to check in. Do you need any accommodations? How can we help you get to us? Thereafter, once they get there, there's some standards we can ask about not only how can you get to us, what do you need when you're in the waiting room, what may you need to bring with you, how can we go into what we may need in the exam room. assessing questions and there's standard questions by which to assess for accommodations that are being rolled out now and there's greater movement in this space to kind of open that up. Thereafter, I think so much of it comes down to the basics of cultural effective and cultural humble provider care where, you know, you're applying those basic people skills and we have to train providers, you know, just because someone doesn't speak English doesn't mean they are hard of hearing. Just because someone has a disability doesn't mean they lack the ability to comprehend and you can't speak to them directly, you have to speak to their caregiver. These are really basic things, but it's amazing how quickly healthcare professionals can regress and forget those basic elements of communication, the inclusive communication.

Thank you so much. That's all we have time for today, but as you can see, we can take Small steps can make a big difference, even right now, and I'm sure we'll be doing more going forward. So thank you, Rivka. Thank you, Dr. Isola. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. And thank you to the organizers of UNSDG.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back with us in the SDG Media Zone. I'm pleased to pass it to our moderator to kick off our next panel discussion.

Thank you. How's everyone doing today? Having a good climate week? All right, so in this session, we get the opportunity to dig into El Nino. As many of you already know, this is already showing up in our weather around the world, and it's only getting stronger. So we have an amazing panel with us to get into this subject. To start, we have the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization, Celeste Asolo, and she is the UN system's authoritative voice on weather, climate, and water. She's the first woman and South American to lead the organization, so huge kudos there. And as a meteorologist and an atmospheric scientist, she previously served as the director of Argentina's National Meteorological Service and first vice president of the WMO. After that, we have got Tim, well, excuse me, Terry Thompson first, and Terry is joining us from S&P Global, where he oversees science and the climate direction of the organization. And we also have Tim Carroll joining us from NVIDIA, where he's a technology and weather forecasting expert working at NVIDIA, where he focuses on the application of artificial intelligence and advanced computing for weather prediction. So we've got a great crew with us here today, and I'd like to start out with you. It's official, El Nino is underway. And can you help us understand from the WMO's perspective, how that's showing up how you're working with different national med services and how you're focusing your attention.

Okay, well, first of all, thank you very much for this opportunity. It's a pleasure to be here with you and sharing this panel with all of these colleagues. But let's start our story about El Nino. And El Nino starts to show up as a warming pool in the Pacific Ocean, near the equatorial zone of the Pacific Ocean. And we are monitoring that area thanks to the ocean observing system. And it has been becoming warming since, I would say, May. And now that warming is increasing and increasing. And it's not only about that warming area, but also near the coast of Peru. we can also see that the subsurface of the ocean is getting warmer. That means that there is a warm pool of ocean that brings a lot of energy to the atmosphere. And that energy drives atmospheric circulation. And as a result, we have patterns of enhanced precipitation or below normal precipitation spread all across the world. So that is a very global phenomenon that starts in the Pacific, but really drives the weather and the climate across the whole world.

And so sometimes people ask me questions, so I'm sure you get these too, of how does that mean it gets wetter somewhere, and how does that mean that gets drier somewhere?

So maybe helping people understand how it's shifting weather patterns and making them more intense.

Well, El Nino creates some preference for cyclones and anti-cyclones to happen in one parts of the world and in another parts of the world. According to that, we can experiment different kind of precipitation patterns. So it's difficult to understand how something happening in the Pacific will drive the weather, let's say, over India or Indonesia. So that is because there are teleconnections from the Pacific Ocean into the Indian Ocean. And so when these waves move across the atmosphere, we have more cyclones in some areas. Where you have more cyclones, you will have likely more precipitation. And where you have more anti-cyclones, you will have less precipitation. And that is how the atmosphere responds to this warming pool in the Pacific. Still, as you mentioned at the beginning, and I don't want to lose that idea, from a global signal like the one that is happening in the Pacific, we need to translate that into what happens at the continental scale and at the local and national scale. And that's where the national met services play a huge role here, because translating this understanding into what will happen to me over my head, it's something that is top of the met services. And that is what the WMO help met services and connects them all across the world to make sure that the global information translate into local information and, of course, local action.

And so one more for you here, too, because this gets into a really critical role that the WMO plays is we can forecast this risk months ahead of time. What makes that possible? And Help us understand how global observations are so critical in that forecast.

Well, that question is crucial because El Nino is one of the few phenomenas that we can anticipate so many months in advance. And the reason why we can anticipate it is because it's a start in the ocean. The ocean is a slow system, much more slow than the atmosphere. So as soon as we get the signal over the ocean, we know that the atmosphere will unfold in a certain way. And that comes months afterwards. And then, as you said, We need to have this ocean observing system active to make sure that we understand what is happening over the ocean. But then, of course, we need satellites to have a full coverage, and then we also need the land observing system because we need to monitor what is happening everywhere in the world. So the connection between all those observing systems is part of the responsibility of the WMO and part of the importance of the WMO. So I would say that it's a huge responsibility, but also in particular with El Nino, it's a huge opportunity to showcase that if we connect all the observing systems, we can have concrete answers to concrete problems that we will see that will unfold in the upcoming month or couple of months.

Absolutely. And so we're going to bring in the business side of this with Terry also. And so people are running businesses and making decisions around this. they're trying to think, what does that mean for me? How do I process this? How do I calculate this into my risk? So from your role, where you are, how are you helping businesses make decisions around this?

Where to start? Let me just echo and explain a bit more something that Celeste said, because I want the public to understand that Ocean observing systems are not simply satellites in the sky. There's an enormously important and complex and highly professional cadre of people who interpret that data. And it's not only the availability of the satellites, but it's the availability of the professionals who interpret that information and turn it into what someone in business can use. It's quite a long chain. And I think we should all value that chain immensely. Now, to come back to business sectors, most business sectors have interest in what El Nino will do to their business. It's rather apparent that, for instance, agriculture facing drought in one region or excessive rain in another region is going to have impact on productivity. We're going into what is called a super El Nino phase, one of the most severe ever seen. And some of the indicators indicate that it may be the most severe ever seen. And there's a correlation between, in particular, the super El Ninos, which is just a very high level of El Nino characteristics that we've seen over the past decades. There have been approximately 10 super El Ninos. And we, at my institution, have correlated the effects or the occurrence of the super El Ninos with impacts on agricultural production, for example. But I don't want to limit this to agriculture at all. Supply chains can be interrupted due to transportation difficulties. A super El Nino may have an effect on, let us say, river transport in Europe, the Danube or the the Rhine can end up being unable at certain times of the year to transport all sorts of goods, including those related to energy production, those related to food distribution, and so on and so forth. Other organizations certainly have an impact as well. You might well think of this as any organization that is impacted by weather. will be impacted by El Nino. It's a weather pattern of a particular characteristic of a particular strength and a celestial, uh, explained. It is different in different parts of the world.

And just to keep people up to date, I mean, this El Nino is already pushing records. Data came in this week, and there's different ways to calculate certain ocean observations, but we're pushing records on many different ways you calculate it. So Again, applying that to a business way, how do you put a dollar value on these forecasts?

Well, I think a simple example is to look at agricultural commodity prices in this correlation with past super El Ninos. Our agricultural team has actually done that, so you can see the relationship between super El Nino conditions and commodity prices of different types, excuse me, I'm speaking here of agricultural commodities. You can see a relationship, a rough relationship between the prices of those commodities during super El Nino events. So that's what we use to predict the financial impact, the monetary impact of the upcoming El Nino. It's not a perfect art, it's an approximation, but we do have some ways of quantifying that impact.

So now we're bringing you in also and Let's get into the forecasting aspect of this and how technology is advancing our ability to understand what's going on. So how are AI and new computing technologies changing that in weather and climate forecasting?

So as tempting as it is to dive right into the technology, I think it's important to take a step back for just a second. And when you ask, can we put a dollar value on this, think about GPS that everybody has on their phones here. Are we able to calculate how many lives have been saved because somebody had GPS on their phone and was able to get from point A to point B? Have we been able to calculate how much money was made because location services were embedded into an app? We really can't. And weather is so important to the 8.3 billion people on this planet. It's the one thing that affects every single person every single day. And so when we talk about the forecast and where the technology can really help the forecast, Yes, we can bring technology to bear to make that forecast a little bit more accurate, but what's more important when we talk about El Nino here, what people are really wondering is, how's El Nino going to affect me, where I am at this moment or in three days, and whether I'm here in New York or I'm a sustenance farmer in Central America. What we need to do with the technology is not just figure out better forecasts, but we need to use the technology to be able to get the forecasts Rather than a passive, hey, here's what the forecast is, come and get it. We need to be able to push that to the people who need it in the context that they need that information. If they are a farmer or an ambulance driver or somebody trying to get their kids to school. And to do that, we need to bridge the gap not only with technology, but with the local met services that the WMO represents. And so there's a great opportunity here to use the technology to do better for all 8.3 billion people on the planet. But in order to do it, we're going to need the people involved in that process and not just the technology. So sorry, I'm the tech guy, but that was a people answer.

Oh, I'm here for it. We can't cut people out of this whole chain that we're dealing with to keep them safe. So ultimately, when you're making these forecasts, And you're factoring in new technology. Since our climate is changing, how are we processing what's happened in the past from an AI perspective and incorporating that into future forecasts?

This is an area where AI is incredibly helpful because if you think about the amount of weather data that has been collected over the last 100 years. And even if it was somebody in a lighthouse writing down on a piece of paper what the conditions were that day, that's all incredibly valuable for, invaluable data for us to be able to ingest and to be able to process and then put it in context with other events that were occurring around it. So even though the climate is changing, All of this historical data, even though it was recorded in a time that the climate wasn't the same 50 years ago as it will be 50 years from now, it's still incredibly valuable to help us make better forecasts that we then are able to push to the individuals that are there. So it's the old, those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. If we don't learn from all of the hundreds or the 100 years of weather data that we've collected, it will be to our detriment.

And it really is important, again, to bring in the people piece on that also so that we can take this information and apply it. So I know we don't have forever. I could talk to all of you forever on this subject. I want to go down the line and ask each of you, with so many people following along here and all of us being affected by El Nino, if you have any advice for them on how to follow along what's happening, how to stay informed, and how to keep them safe and prepared as we move forward.

Okay, my first recommendation would be make sure that they connect with official channels of information because El Nino is being so public and then you know you don't need to be scared about it's information and when you have information you have tools to react in advance and on top of what has been mentioned before and I think the comments that we are sharing now it's important to be people-centered. So the real challenge we face is how to translate this information into information that people can really understand. So let's keep it official and let's not think that the will stay until February, but it's already here. So follow up. the official information and make sure that we are prepared and we follow the recommendations that are provided to us. Otherwise, we will be losing the opportunity on the richness of this information.

And national med services are a great way to do that too.

So of course that's the official source of information for weather and climate and water. But then it comes emergency manager. So it's about coordinating that response. And that is where the AI also brings a lot of value because it can connect met services with emergency response, with communication, with cell phones, and make sure that everyone is reached by an early warning system in the end.

Absolutely. Terry, any advice?

First, I'd just like to follow up to say that we're teamed with NVIDIA to also train AI models on climate model information. The climate model information augments the historical data and looks into the future. So we train NVIDIA based models that look into the future as well. This is a new technology, particularly this latter part that I'm talking about. So we're beginning to use it and it looks quite powerful, but it needs further work. Coming back to the main question, I would say there have been 10 or so super El Ninos in the past. So this is not a disaster. This is an oscillation of our climate or an oscillation of our weather that's occurred in the past. It may be somewhat more severe this year. Climate change effects are contributing, but just contributing to the situation. And the second takeaway is augmenting the idea of staying in touch with the official meteorological organizations, trust that information. Hundreds of trained meteorologists working on this data, and I think you can trust their projections and their interpretations very much. And again, this is not uniformly drier or wetter around the planet, it varies by region, so that's very important as well.

And it also, to help understand, it sets up a pattern. So if it's a wetter pattern, you still have to track the individual storms as they come along. And those are the moments with the early warnings to make sure that we're on top of those. So your words of advice.

This is, there's nothing that I can add to what's been already said other than people that are in meteorology and in the weather forecasting, it's not even an industry, it's a community. These are service-oriented people who are passionate. So when they send out a warning, it's because they want to save lives and property. You can trust it.

I can tell you as a meteorologist, this is very true. So thank you everybody for joining us today. Now we have El Nino. It is here. As you said, this is a way to be prepared, not necessarily scared. And the real goal is to keep people safe and prepared. And there's a lot of data and a lot of outlets on how to follow along and learn more to keep yourself safe and prepared. So thank you so much and hope you have a great week.

Hello, hello, everyone. Welcome to the SDG Media Zone. We are live from United Nations Headquarters. We have a very exciting hour of fashion in front of us. And to kick it off, I'm going to introduce the First Lady of Estonia, Siria Kares, to give some special remarks here from the podium. Please welcome.

Excellencies, distinguished guests, dear friends, all of you are anyway friends. Today, here in New York, at the heart of international diplomacy, we make space for a softer kind of diplomacy, shaped by culture, creativity, and human skills. Culture is not simply decoration around diplomacy. It helps countries understand and respect each other. Fashion is a part of this. Our clothes can hold memories and tell stories about who we are and where we come from. Even before We say a single world. Traditional diplomacy uses official statements and negotiations. Fashion speaks differently, and it can reach far beyond meeting rooms and connect with people everywhere. It reaches people who may never listen diplomatic speech. Fashion catches our attention and makes us curious. Who made this? Where does it come from? I have seen it myself. When I travel, I wear Estonian design and jewelry. And these are made by Estonian artists. People often ask about these pieces and what they mean. A dress, a brooch, or a pair of earrings can open a conversation about Estonia, our traditions, and our creative people. Estonia is small, but our culture travels far. This is soft power. Culture gives our country a presence in the world that is greater than its size on the map. One such story is already here, Mother Tree, by the renowned Estonian textile artist, Professor Emerita, and my dear friend, Anu Raud. was presented by Estonia to the United Nations in 1995. It includes hand woven skirts made by women from the small Estonian islands of Kihnu and Maanila. "All tapestries I make bear the scent or at least a tiny taste of Estonia." That is what good design can do. Handmade textiles and traditional patterns carry the skills, memories, and knowledge of the past generations. To keep these traditions alive, I share them with others. I welcome the Russian diplomacy initiative. It brings craftspeople designers, cultural institutions and diplomatic communities together. It can support education, exchanges and partnership. In this way, fashion can create jobs, strengthen communities and give young people new opportunities. Pages, textile, or a piece of jewelry may be inside a suitcase, but it can carry a story much larger than itself. As AI new technologies change how a fashion designed and shared, we must continue to value the human creativity, cultural knowledge, and traditions behind what we wear. I hope today's conversation brings these stories and the people behind them into focus. If we value living culture, support the people who carry it, and create opportunities to work together, we can bring our cultures closer and give these traditions a strong future. And perhaps in doing so, we can understand each other a little better. Thank you.

Thank you so much, First Lady. And to continue the conversation about cultural heritage, I now invite our panelists, Bella Webb from Vogue Business, who's going to moderate the session, and Jasmine Ahrens and Marilyn Tamzour, thank you so much.

Hello, everyone. I'm Bella Webb. I'm the sustainability editor at Vogue Business. And for the next 15 minutes or so, I'm going to be walking you through a conversation about the concept of fashion diplomacy. We're going to be talking about how personal stories of craft and heritage can be woven into a larger conversation using fashion as a force. for international collaboration. So I'm joined on stage here by the founder of the fashion diplomacy, Marilyn Tamser, and also Jasmine Ahrens, who is the founder of ready-to-wear and accessories brand, Voz, and philanthropic partnerships officer at the Amazon Rainforest Investor Coalition. So a really good foundation to talk about fashion diplomacy on stage here today. Marilyn, maybe you can kick us off. You used this phrase, fashion diplomacy, What exactly does that mean to you and why did you want to create a specific platform to fulfill the mission of fashion diplomacy?

Hi, everybody. First, let me just recognize all the people who arrived here through this bomb threat and driving, they're running 10 blocks. So really, thank you all for being here. It means a lot. And I remember all the faces, by the way.

Jasmine running heels. So extra applause. Exactly.

So maybe we should start defining or a bit defining what diplomacy means here, right? Diplomacy is about building relationships between countries in general. And what's happening here in the United Nations this week is also nothing else but building relationships between 193 countries, between the members of United Nations. So I claim that fashion offers a unique common language to build these relationships because I claim and I know actually, because everybody wears clothes, right? And there is not a single person who would like not like to talk about the clothes that he or she is wearing or the craft of his culture. Personal fashion is personal and also global at the same time. So it's an extremely unique industry in that sense. And so fashion is a language of soft power. And. To this day, it hasn't been recognized enough how important and powerful it is. And. why I created, why I put these two words together, let's say, is actually a bit of a personal story of mine. And if you don't mind, I'm going to share this. So I grew up with a grandmother who was knitting me sweaters and socks. And at school I studied handicraft. This compulsory in Estonian school, because in our culture it's very normal to do things with your own hands. Later in life, when I was a teenager, I would make clothes for myself. for myself, myself, because that was really the only option for me to get any new clothes, was to make them myself. And then I somehow kind of stuck with this topic. So later, I studied clothing production for my bachelor. and fashion marketing for my master and all my life I worked in fashion mostly on the retail side because this is the most social side of fashion and I'm a very social person so and then next to my career in fashion I had another professional life I would say that was my life in diplomacy because my husband is currently the ambassador of Estonia at the United Nations. And in the last 15 years, we have packed our bags more than a few times, right? It's definitely a very unique lifestyle that also really definitely taught me a lot about myself and about other cultures. So for the longest time, I kept these two lives of mine totally separate. And honestly, I Diplomacy sometimes was challenging for me because diplomacy to this day is quite rigid and quite old school. It has a lot of rules. So for me, it was hard to find this topic that I cared about, I cared to talk about and was still neutral enough for everybody to engage in, right? until one day I understood that this topic can be fashion because I said before, everybody wears clothes and this is what connects us, right? This is the decision every single person makes in the morning, right? We might all not drink coffee or even not maybe eat, right? But all of us wear something. So it's an extremely unique topic in terms of connecting people. And the moment I realized this, I saw that there was something bigger there have to put it to, you know, like a translate it to a framework or a program or something. And this is how the fashion diplomacy was born. So, yeah.

Amazing. And Jasmine, you have worked with indigenous craft based communities all around the world. And I wonder from your perspective, you know, fashion can be a very top down industry and sometimes the relationships at the foundation of it are not the most fair or equal. What does respectful collaboration actually look like on the ground? And how do we make sure that the economic value of craft exchange, heritage exchange, actually benefits everybody?

Thank you so much for that question. And thank you, Marilyn, and the First Lady, and Bella, and the UN for having us today. One thing that helped me is I didn't come from a traditional structured fashion background. I studied art and engineering, and I did my thesis work on studying ceremonial design and anthropology around the world. And I was obsessed with the question of how can we rehumanize our design? My peers at Stanford were inventing apps that were taking us away from one another physically, and I wanted to create the antidote And I thought I studied cultures that were using fashion and craft as a means of ceremonial connection, a means of. occasions that meant something of wrapping people together. And I, in that spirit, went as a, gosh, 21-year-old down to rural southern Chile and did a fellowship with the Mapuche people and learned from traditional weavers and knitters and silversmiths about their traditions. And they wove every single piece from their heart for the person who would wear it for special ceremonial occasions, birth, weddings, healing as well, healing blankets. And I didn't bring any conceptions about what we should be building. I just asked questions. I sat in circle with them. I ended up moving there and we built those together in a circle, six months of drinking mate and listening and deciding, listening to them, what fair trade meant to them, what would help them, what did they want, what were their dreams and imaginations, what did they want to create. And the way I got through to them before I learned great Spanish was through drawing, through showing them how their textiles could be on the cover. I took their textile designs and I Sharpied it on the front page of a Vogue magazine and I showed it to them and I said, look, look how your art can be recontextualized for the frame of the front cover of Vogue. We can do that together. And so for me, collaborative design is based in listening, learning, and co-developing not only what fashion should be structured at, what fair trade agreements should be, how they should be compensated and delivered, and really not imposing any preconceptions.

I think something that often gets lost in the conversation around fashion is how deeply personal and deeply local it is. And I think craft is a really beautiful vehicle to look at that pluralism through. Marilyn, I know one of your kind of goals with the fashion diplomacy is to connect the hyper local context specific to the big global picture. How do you plan to do that and why do you think craft is such a powerful way to connect different cultures in different places in different contexts?

Yeah, maybe I will once again started with a definition. I mean, what does connection mean, right? Why do certain people connect with each other? Why we are friends with one person for years, right? Or why we somehow are married with one person for 18 years, like myself, right? I think we don't consciously think about it, but it's mostly about the values, right? It's about these common values that we have with these people. And me, with my experience living between different cultures, I've learned that that's how you connect to the different cultures, right? You know, you, you find the common values and you talk about these common values. And I think craft and heritage both are super unique in the terms that they have many of these common values that all of the cultures carry or that the humanity carries, right? So for example, empathy, integrity, community, creativity, right? Um, but really I emphasize community, right? For me, because one of the main, task or goals of Asian diplomacy is to bring together a community or create a community. So I think recognizing these common values and talking about this, this is super important because I think especially today in the age of AI and, you know, algorithms, we need consciously the conscious talk to talk about these things, the connecting factors of humanity, right? What it means to be a human, right? What it means to be creative, right? And so I think we need to understand and remember where we are coming from in order to understand where we are going, right? And craft and heritage kind of translate the history of who we are as humanity and the values of us to the present moment and also to the future.

I've done a lot of coverage at Vogue Business of very specific craft heritages in different parts of the world. And something that I see as a bit of a red thread is that they're struggling to get young people into craft. They're struggling to preserve craft for the next generation. And I think a fundamental part of that is the struggle to make it economically viable. Jasmine, what solutions have you found to make the preservation of our craft heritage profitable?

Thank you for bringing this up as well. I think what I'm the most proud of is that the daughter of my co-founder, a Mapuche artisan master weaver, is now running our business, running our production and administrating. And I think that the most important thing is is that this not be theoretical, this not be thought leadership in a circle. And in order for that to be the case, it has to be compelling, gorgeous, flattering, soft, it can't itch, it has to be durable, it has to last for a lifetime, it has to be something passionate and gorgeous. It has to inspire you aesthetically. And in the world of do good, we are so dedicated to resolving problems and, you know, alleviating poverty and preserving culture. But that's not how we choose. That's not how we really choose what to put on in the morning. What we choose to buy and invest in is something that makes us joyful and beautiful and alive. And so as do gooders, how can we be more artistic, more artful and deliver on quality on time? I think we have to be competitive if we're really going to create a successful global movement that truly creates compensating jobs, not just for elders, but for young people. And then they can afford to learn the craft and practice it.

So Jasmine's given us a really beautiful success story from the business sector there. What would success look like for you with the fashion diplomacy?

Oh my God, I didn't prepare for this question. Well, I think For me, as I said already, it's a lot about creating a community, to bring together the like-minded people who care about the same topic, who instantly just get it. Jasmine literally is practicing it on a daily basis. I'm so lucky to have her also as a friend. And to kind of, uh, build this community and make it global and have these conversations that are global and impactful. Also, my goal is to, you know, take it to diplomacy really, right, because I think it needs the bigger stage. right? And it's really been like downplayed for now. Fashion has been considered like just decorative, but it's such an impactful, impactful industry personally and also globally. We all know that it impacts the prosperities of so many countries. It is also affects climate change, all of it. And if it's done well, though, it can make so many beautiful things happen, right?

Well. I think that is a beautiful note to end on. Thank you so much to everyone for joining us. I hope you've really kind of got the message that fashion can be an amazing platform for diplomacy, for cultural exchange, for heritage preservation. There is so much that this industry can offer. Thank you and enjoy the rest of your day.

Thank you.

Thank you so much to our panelists. Please stick around. We will soon have a fashion upcycling demo coming your way. So stick around for a few more minutes. Thank you.

All right, welcome back to the SDG Media Zone. Please quiet down, take your seats. We have a very exciting upcycling demo and we have Kate McGuire here, founder of Converted Closet. I'm going to hand it right over to you. Thank you.

Okay.

Well, I have been asked to come here to do an upcycling demo and obviously I couldn't be more excited. Partly because it is my personal mission to get as many people converting as humanly possible. I mean, so first of all, I don't really like the word upcycling. I'm going to be honest about it. I like the word converting and conversion. To me, upcycling intimates that something was once lower down and it's now what it is. Converting feels like it's just come in, it just changed. And I believe that if the fashion industry is going to take this category seriously, it has to sound more fashion. So I'm going with conversion. Are you OK with that? OK. Now, the crazy thing about this is that I was doing it for fun my whole life because it was fun, not because I realized it was sustainable. And obviously, once I realized that it was, I felt like I had a duty to share it with the world because I was doing it because I really like clothes. I really wanted things to be just the way I like them and really unique. And I was getting them. Then I find out that what I'm doing for fun, for like the best clothes, is what we should all be doing because extending the life cycle of a garment is the number one thing. It's the most impactful action we can all take to help the planet alleviate it from fashion. So we're going to start converting. So I have heard many people say, oh, I'm not a creative. Sorry, everybody has an inner designer within them alive and well. If you woke up this morning and you decided what you were going to wear, you liked and you didn't like, you have one. So I'm going to speak to your inner designer. Most of us have not been conditioned, right, to see the clothes within clothes. You look at something and you see it for what it is. You don't think, what could this be instead? We're not automatically doing that. Of course we're not, because the entire fashion industry depends upon us continuously consuming new things. How many collections a year? I think there's a brand I know that has 52 collections a year. There's always something we're being encouraged to buy. Why do we want new things? Because they make us feel amazing. Clothes are powerful. We can feel confident in them, we can feel interesting, we can feel attractive, and we can feel connected. So they are really powerful. And I'm just gonna quickly say that actually what you're really wanting when you're buying a piece of clothing is the feeling, right? You're looking for the feeling of excitement. You get the piece, and then you've got it, you want the next piece, right? And then the next piece, 'cause you're consuming the feeling. When you convert clothes, you are generating the feeling that you're looking for. You become part of the journey. You put yourself into it. When you invest your energy into something, you know it from any other thing you do. When you invest your energy in it, you end up loving it. If you love it, you value it more. If you value it more, you're going to wear it more. You're going to feel amazing in it. So that's my point made there. So the shift. that shift in mentality really, really matters, right? We know that being sustainable is the right thing we can do. And if we're doing it because we actually just get better fashion, like, what exactly is the downside? I'm just going to get us really excited about this. So I'm going to show a quick demonstration, obviously not sewing life, that would be interesting. I've chosen a denim jacket. Denim on denim today. Because it's classic, most people have got it, easy to find, and there's something really good about denim jacket that's going to be helpful in this. It's got clearly defined panels, right, on the back. So I'm going to show you how you can cover a panel. That sounds like, for me, I was like, "Ooh, this is a bit of a basic conversion." But then I started doing it and I was like, "Ooh, no, this is really fun, actually." So They can become a canvas. You can put practically anything on the back, except new fabric. Nobody here is going to put new fabric on the back of anything, okay? Commitment. We are going to use clothes already in existence, because guess what? They're shapes of fabric sewn in special ways together. You can unpick them. And you can get more design inspiration from a piece of clothing than you can from a piece of new fabric, and I'm going to show you what I mean by that. So the other reason to use new clothes is obviously because only 20% of what actually gets donated gets sold. That is really significant. A lot of people I know are just donating because they think it's the right thing. We've got to use those garments. So you can really have fun because you're going to find some really exciting things in thrift shops and I'm giving you full permission to cut everything up. So I did ask my followers, a few people here, to bring in a garment that they have that already exists where they like the fabric, but they're never going to wear it again. So raise your garments. Just have a look what they brought in quickly. Oh, I want to just come down and just-- they are-- oh, look. Oh, I've done that. Oh, I mean, look, is everyone here seeing inspired fabric? Because I certainly am. Thank you very-- oh. That's rather nice the way it is, actually. I love that. So I am now going to show you-- right, I've got some little models-- not little models, lovely models. And I'm going to show you the backs of some jackets, first of all, to give you inspiration. And I'm going to start with the splotch. I call it splotch velvet. It's actually-- made from the remnants of a dress that SJP wore in And Just Like That. Always save your remnants. And do I have a little model that I can just-- thank you very much. Can you just pop that over your shoulders? Thank you. Button's done up. This is a bit novel for the media zone, I think. OK, here we go. So we can do a spin. Thank you so much. So you can see on this one, I've used the whole frame. There are three panels underneath. There always are on denim jackets. But because this velvet is quite thick and it's got a big pattern, I've used it to cover the whole thing. Thank you. The next one is this one, which I think is pretty cool. Here we are. Thanks, Ayo. This is a skirt. A skirt sewn into the back of the denim. I actually removed the whole back panel and I did that for a reason. Because, I mean that's, I like it. I think it's pretty cute. And I'm gonna get out the little accessories in here I'm gonna come to in a sec. But if you look at the front, yeah. Can you see it's kind of, it's completely changed the shape of the denim, the jacket. So that's another one, skirts. You can do it with pleated skirts as well. Just start with the bottom of your skirt and then go up and see where you get to. Then you don't have to hem anything. This one I am so obsessed with. I personally love it. We've got, Kathleen's gonna put that on. So did everybody know, because it was relatively new to me, jumpers, sweaters are made in panels. So when they're actually on the production line, they just come out in panels with the seams finished at the edge so they don't fray. Well, if you excavate your seams, which I know you're all gonna do as soon as you go home, you're going to look for a piece of thread that is not the same as the yarn. It's gonna probably be a similar color, but it won't be, it'll be thinner, and pull it if you wanna take your sweater apart. When you pull it, you'll see that the seam gathers and you know you're onto something, keep going. you can snip it a little bit further down and then you will release a panel. You never have to worry about fraying. Pop it on the back. I'm going to show you how in a second in a video. Obviously with this one, I couldn't resist. It was the best. It had these amazing ruffles. Sorry, models. I'm just getting them to stand facing the back. This one's also got some upholstery trimming on it because I wanted a bit more of a shoulder. I don't like sloppy shoulder. So, that's that one. Right, now I'm going to show you a film. It is a very quick film and the mannequin, I'm just going to move her out of the way. It's how you do this condensed into three minutes. And I do have a longer version if anyone's interested. Right, let's move that off. Thank you, Daniel.

Here's what you'll need. Sewing machine and iron. Needles and thread. pins, scissors, a ruler, a pencil, pen, chalk or crayon, paper, cereal box card and double-sided fusible tape. You may also like interfacing for your fabric if it needs extra weight or is pale against the denim. If you're hand sewing I like embroidery thread for definition and maybe you need a thimble because denim can be tough. I thrifted this denim jacket and I'm using a plain men's shirt to cover the middle back panel so you can see exactly what I'm doing. The character is coming, I promise. Place your completely flat, making sure nothing is bunched underneath. To make a template, place parchment paper, or regular sheets of paper joined together, over the panel. Gently rub across the seam lines with a pencil, crayon, or chalk to transfer the shape and double check your measurements. Sharpen the lines up with a ruler and cut. Staple your paper template onto cereal box card. Cut it out and check it fits the panel on your jacket. This is the moment to make any adjustments and I recommend getting it perfect. My shirt has buttons down the front. I I'm using double-sided fusible tape to bond the two sides together, creating one stable piece of fabric. No sewing required! If it's difficult to see whether your pattern is straight on your fabric, and you don't have a guide like buttons, fold your template perfectly in half lengthways and draw a line down the fold. Align this with the vertical threads of the fabric. It will stop the panel twisting. Weight the template, then mark a half inch seam allowance around the edge. If you're a beginner, go for an inch. Wiggle room is always useful. using white fabric against dark denim so to make it less opaque and give it extra body I'm ironing on fusible woven interfacing. Cut around your outside line, place the fabric right side down with the card template on top, fold the seam allowances around the card and press in place. This is where the template really comes into its own, creating lovely sharp corners. Check the panel fits again. I like to super stabilize before I sew and adding fusible tape around the edge will secure your fabric directly onto the jacket. Massage the edges of the fabric, if you need to, into place. I use a pin to push and pull so it fits super snugly against the seams. Finally, pin it to the denim for security and top stitch as closely to the edge as you can. You might want to practice first. If you're sewing by hand, good for you, use backstitch. It gives a gorgeous intentional look. And think about using contrasting colour. The panel is finished. It's perfectly inset. It's slightly underwhelming, isn't it? Is that the collar winking at me?

Okay. So, okay, just very, very quickly, because I've got to wrap up, but this is, this is quite funny, because it's a total accident. I was like, oh, we'll just use a shirt, and then I was like, oh, we can't, and this is actually taken from a pair of shoes I bought secondhand for the crystals, took them off from another jacket, Always got to have pairs of bright colors on things so an outfit looks really-- if you didn't have this, it would look a bit weird. This makes all the difference. So I'm going to wrap up, but I just want to say one thing. You want to just quickly come up with these. If you can do the back of a panel, you can do all this, all this. You can do the armbands. You can do this practically. I've literally taken the waist off, taken the collar off. This is what happens when you take the waistband off any denim jacket or any collar, you get this. A dark band, like it's giving you the conversion. I take the collar off all my denim jackets. So I have just basically got one word for you. I could say more, but will you, will you please get converting? Promise? Okay, I'm gonna have to do it. Conversion.

All right, good afternoon again. We're back at the SDG Media Zone. And in true SDG Media Zone fashion, we have a real treat for you. As we've always talked about, we try not to make these just quick conversations and panels and discussions. We try and bring in things like the fashion, sustainable fashion that you just saw with an amazing demonstration. And right now, we're going to kick off the conversation on how to get people to care with something that's going to get all of you to care. Those of you in the room watching this in New York City at UNGA 81, And all of those of you around the world, good evening. Good afternoon. Good morning to all of you, wherever you are. You're all going to love this, I guarantee it. So with that, I will invite Rouge to take the stage.

One, two, three. Thank you so much. Hello, everybody. I need some energy, guys. It's been a tough day. Thank you. Thank you so much. My name is Ruj. I'm a part of Creative Development. We have taken a very long flight from South Africa to be here to spend some time with you guys. But with Creative Development, we do things very different, very, very different in terms of how we greet. I'm going to hand over very soon, but I need to do it in the way that I do. Is that okay? Can I greet you guys the way that we do? All right. So Welcome, everybody. Please feel free to make your notes. How to keep kicking my feet just so that I can stay afloat, but I'm good. Stubborn as ever, but relevant. Look, it ain't even my show, but summer, I'm the main event. What swag? I think I got something that you lack. Bring your bread and butter, 'cause I got this joint jam packed. Look, we rap to beats that you need to rock. So I think it's about that time that I show 'em what I got. No, look, we speak to things that you need to clock. I think it's about that time that we show 'em what we got. Go. We have a superpower. Like the heroes in the comic books, when we say we can change the world, it is not a metaphor. We don't need to wait for permission, just a conscious group decision. While you decide in your boardrooms with your suits and speeches, there was a player waiting on the bleachers. Culture. More than a word, more than a trend, it was there in the beginning and it will outlive us in the end. Creativity is the podium, from delegates to communities, telling Africa's stories like the sweetest lullaby. Creators now part of the conversation. They fight for Africa's plight side by side. No hogging of the light. Creative development shifting the narrative. A vision seen in 2020 before the policies culture moved first. Because it's a way of life.

How amazing would it be to help us see ourselves for who we are in all our magnificence, in all our beauty, through creativity. Maybe that can serve as a theory of change around social impact, of really getting people to understand, particularly Black people, to understand their magnificence.

Time to put your cape on.

Hi, everyone. Hi. My name is Dr. Okito Weri. I'm the founder and CEO of Creative Development. We are a Pan-African organization that connects the creative economy to the development sector through storytelling, through popular culture, through data, through advocacy. And we do this with the aim of making the future of work in Africa publicly legible, accessible, and tangible to mainstream audiences across the African continent and diaspora who would never be in a room like this. but who need to understand the issues that are going to impact their futures socially and economically. And since our inception in 2021, we've been grounded and led by a mission that really hasn't changed, to bring joy to the development space through culture. Why joy? Why culture? Because culture moves faster than policy. Right? And if we are going to see social change, it has to start with people who care and people who care collectively. And with that being said, I am so excited to be in conversation today with Akuna Cook, the founder and CEO of the Next Narrative Africa Fund. a multimedia production company building a robust ecosystem to support African and Black diasporic content creation to advance economic progress. Akuna, it is so wonderful to have you.

It's wonderful to be here with you, especially because you reached out to me via e-mail. and it went to my Gmail and where things get to get, seem to get lost. And randomly one day I was searching for something and then I just saw your e-mail and I was like, oh my God, I never responded to this. And so I said, okay, we have to get together. And so, you know, what city is it gonna be, where we're gonna find each other? And now here we are in New York. So I'm really excited to be here with you.

Now here we are, and under the theme of care, And how do we use popular culture to get everyday people, influential people, to care about some of the social economic issues facing our continent? I want to sort of ground the conversation around what matters to you. What do you care about? And so as someone who is building probably one of the most prominent content and media funds right now-- Yeah. What is the most important film you've watched or book you've read that has really shifted how you see the world and what you care about?

Yeah, so before I answer, I'll just give a bit of context that I come from the policy world. So I started my career as a career diplomat. I was a US diplomat for 10 years. Then I went to law school. I worked on law, politics, and then came back to policy as a presidential appointee in the Biden administration. And I give that context because one of the most influential pieces of content that I've ever seen is a show I watched called The West Wing. And there are so many people who, like me, went into public service because of Aaron Sorkin and the characters that he created who made public service seem exciting, but something noble, you know, that competent people who cared and wanted to make a difference could do. And so it really influenced me at a very formative time to pursue public service. And so I would point to that. But there are so many examples that I would point to, but that's the first one that comes to mind.

I love that we were all watching the West, even in South Africa. So right there you, the next narrative, next narrative Africa came out earlier this year with an incredible report, right? And there were tons of really important, rich insights around how we need to be thinking about infrastructure and investment on the continent as it relates to the creative economy, as it relates to film. One of the insights that you speak to, is around the global audience infrastructure that does exist, but the supply really hasn't caught up to the infrastructure. And I think from a development standpoint, at least within the development sector, we're dealing with an inverse problem where we are seeing more reports produced and more campaigns produced that's not really landing for many people, again, beyond a room like this. I'm so curious to get your perspective around what do you think the entertainment space understands about building audience, winning attention that the development sector and many people who work within it don't.

So you said earlier that culture moves faster than policy, and I actually tend to put it that culture eats strategy for breakfast. And I know that because as somebody who spent years and years in policy, you know, writing some really beautiful strategies and putting together these really great workshops and seeing that ultimately if we weren't also thinking about the way these issues and themes were portrayed in popular culture, we were behind the game. So When I decided to leave the world of policy and diplomacy to pursue media, it really was out of this desire to see Africa's story represented in popular culture in a way that really both helped us as Africans see ourselves differently, but also the world to see Africa differently. And so when we started the fund, we were always hit with questions from prospective investors wanting to understand, does African content really move? Is it, do people really watch it? And because we both have the desire to make sure that our content gets to audiences, but also that when audiences watch that content, it has an impact, we're very interested in understanding the data. Where, who watches this content? Where are they? What is the value? And so that was the reason we partnered with Analytics to put out from influence to investable. And so some of the key findings we found was the headline, African content, black global content is demanded at 28% global. So it's 28% of global demand, but only 14% of supply or 16% of supply. And on top of that, Africa only gets less than 2% of global film financing. And so that was a story about the immense opportunity in looking at film. But when we talk about what happens, why is this the place to invest time and energy as a policymaker and as a change maker? It is simply that if we have all of these beautiful plans and don't consider how they're portrayed in pop culture, we're losing. And whether that is the status of international cooperation, climate, health, gender, right? We all ask ourselves, why aren't there more women leaders? Have we asked ourselves whether or not there are depictions of women leaders in pop culture that would make people change their minds about the way that women lead? I think that all of that is critical. And when it comes to the way that Africa is portrayed, we already know that it's negative to a ratio of two to one. And we know that it costs Africa, uh, over $4.2 billion a year in a stereotype tax. And so we have to be intentional about countering that narrative and changing the narrative. And that's why we were so, um, intent on showing just how far African content reaches, just how impactful it can be, and why this is, uh, an important tactic for making social change.

I think that's a great segue, um, into the next question I have, really around, public perception around Africa versus the perception that we have for ourselves. So you've spoken a lot about the fact that creative industries, cultural industries, really shape both how the world sees Africa, but also how Africans see themselves. And so which of those is harder to move from your experience? And does the one depend on the other?

I actually, if I had to choose one, I think both are difficult, obviously, but I actually think it's harder to change the way that you see yourself, and therefore, the way that Africans see ourselves. Because so much of, there's so much work that has been done to convince Africans and convince the world that Africa is lacking. The entire narrative about Africa is dominated by, you know, the three Ds. It's death, disaster, despair. And sometimes, those of us who work in policy, we inadvertently default to those stories because we want the world to pay attention to some of the, some of Africa's challenges, and we inadvertently give the perception that the entire continent, as vast as it is, is full of challenges and problems, and we skip over all of the opportunities We don't focus on that. And the result of that is that, you know, Africans, like everybody else, we're consuming the same media. We're consuming the same ideas. And, you know, it really came home for me. We did a global search for projects, film and TV projects, a little over a year ago. We have 2,000 applications from 80 countries and we were looking through all of these, all of this content which, you know, some of the themes, all commercial, you know, heist films, you know, horror films, you know, they're all set on the continent. And we're going through them and we just sort of, I remember my daughter who was our intern at the time, she was like, How come there's just not any whimsy in these stories? How come everybody is hopeless and depressed? And I remember thinking, it's almost as if we've internalized this idea that if you're telling a story about Africa, it has to be somebody's struggle and hopelessness. And so I, you know, it really impressed upon me that that change needs to come. Of course we did. We found nine projects that are not about hopelessness at all. In fact, we have a really great climate oriented story that Trevor Noah's production company is doing, "Related to Climate," which is really exciting. But those kinds of stories are out there. And I think once we internalize that, yes, these stories exist, we can tell those stories that just humanize Africans and people of African descent. I think that first happens and then the world will follow.

I'm going to go a little bit off script.

Okay. Right.

Because we have some time. Unless someone will let me know.

We also, we should say, we did a pre-interview.

We did a pre-interview. So we had an hour of navigating the streets of New York City. So we've been chatting about so many, so many things. I want to pull some things in because I don't think people, one, know what it takes to do something like this, to do what you've done. And so, one, can you please talk to some of the projects that you're funding? And can you speak a little bit to what the journey has been? This probably should have been my first question. I'm really sorry about that. What is the dream?

I'll give the condensed version, which is, you know, when you tell your family that you're going to turn down a very high level presidential appointment to go and work in film. You're going to get a couple of strange stares from colleagues, family, anyone who listens to this who's trying to understand what is this all about. But it really has been a journey like any founder of ups and downs, trying to find the right team, trying to find the right supporters, fundraising, all of the challenges that a founder is going to have. But I have been really, really lucky that every time, you know, I was telling kids early, every time I've gone to bed thinking I was going to quit the next day, some angel would come and keep me going. And it really has been gratifying to see how far we've come in the four years that Next Narrative Africa has been around. Our slate, as I mentioned, out of the 2000 applications we got, we settled on nine. We're so excited about all of them. The one I was telling you, we have two in South Africa, one out of Trevor Novas production company, and it's a film about climate and a young woman who is trying to really save the world from a reality where we were running out of water. The other one is a heist film that is going to be written by Tuso Mbeto, who is in Children of Blood and Bone, she was in The Woman King. And that's another really great story. We have two in Nigeria, one by Chukwu and Ari Asiri, the filmmakers behind Clarissa, which is going to Cannes and TIFF. It's a whodunit set in Nigeria. We have another one that's an animated feature called Jala Wars. And so for all the Africans here who know the fierce battle about jollof rice. It's a, it's a, it's a really fun, fun project. But across all of our projects, we really try to look for filmmakers who had a point of view, whether they wanted to have commentary about class or governance or climate or gender, you know, really, or health, really look for the nugget in what they were trying to tell us while doing it in an entertaining way with characters we would want to cheer for or yell at the screen about or whatever it is. And so I'm really excited about the slate and all of the research that's gone into putting together the slate and putting together our strategy.

And so for the organizations and people in this room, actually, I'm going to change to a different question. 20 years from now, we're sitting here, hopefully, again.

Yeah.

How do you know this has worked? How do you know the bet that you've taken on the next narrative, on Next Narrative Africa, has worked and been worthwhile for you?

Well, the first thing is that we've managed to cut the stereotype tax. If we have managed to eliminate any you know, overages on what Africa is paying because of this negative perception, I'll think it's a win. I'll also think of it's a win if people automatically think about Africa in the conversation about where they should produce their projects. So that it's not just, you know, the US, you know, UK, but they're also thinking, oh, I'll also think about, you know, Senegal and Nigeria as places that I want to take my project. And lastly, I think if we are having conversations about Africa, and instead of immediately going to the problems and the challenges the continent has, but are instead starting to focus on all-- start off with all of the amazing opportunities and the entrepreneurs and innovation, then I know that it was well worth this journey.

Do you have a final call to action to the room?

Yeah, I mean, I know that we're here, it's, you know, UN General Assembly in New York. There's so many policymakers here from around the world. And I would just challenge us all to start asking ourselves when we're working on these policies and these strategies, what is the pop culture input? Where, how is pop culture impacting what we are trying to do and how can we be more intentional about shifting that?

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you all so much. This was fantastic. Let's go out there and get people to care about dishes on the continent. Have a wonderful day.

Oh no. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the SCG Media Zone. We're live from the UN headquarters in New York during the 81st UN General Assembly. And I'm pleased to pass it to Aisha Becker Burrows, co-founder and executive director at Feminist to start our next panel discussion.

Thank you. Hello, everybody. I know it's a busy week, so we're grateful that you are here. I'm Aisha Becker Burrows, as she said, co-founder and co-executive director of Feminist. And for those of you who may not know, Feminist is actually the largest social first platform really dedicated to amplifying the issues around women, girls, and gender-expansive people around the world. And so because of that, and as you can imagine, we might know a thing or two about the unique intersections of technology, gender-based violence, and information, right? And the attacks that we're seeing, or for what some folks might call technopatriarchy. And with the advent of AI and the emergence and continued use that we, the rapid use and development of AI, we know that women and girls are bound to really bear the brunt of its harms and its advances. We often hear AI discussed as a future risk, but for women and girls, many of those harms are already here. So today, we will really move beyond a more typical framing of whether AI is good or bad and move towards questions of who is it built for, who bears its risks, and what are some possibility frameworks since AI is already here. So I have the honor of being joined by Caliope Minguero, UN Women's Chief of Ending Violence Against Women and Girls, and Jayathma Wickremanyake, I knew I was going to mess that up, oh, sorry, UN Women's Senior Advisor for Digital Cooperation. So I want to start maybe by grounding us in the present reality, is that okay? Yeah, great. So, Calliope, I'm going to start with you. My first question is, what does AI-enabled violence against women and girls look like today, and how serious is the problem?

Thank you so much, Ayesha, and welcome to all of you here. We know how busy you are. And you know, the Security Council, maybe in half an hour, we're going to have a very special briefing about AI as a threat to humanity. And that's why I find our discussion just right here very important, because we cannot talk just about AI as a threat to humanity when we have so much violence against women and girls, and we're not talking about a new problem. Just to give you the results from a global study, that 85% of women in this global study have witnessed some form of online violence that either to them or to one of their friends, to colleagues, et cetera. So the issue is not new. What AI has enabled is to do this harm and this abuse using new tools and to have it with new speed, the anonymity and the fact to make it really intense, even more than before. And maybe I can give you a little bit some of the tools that they're very, very common that AI enabled the deep fakes, right? Sextortion, these are tools that AI enabled the harm to be even more intensified. And we know, for example, that 98% of deep fakes are sexualized images and *********** and 99% of of this content, they are targeting women. So you can imagine it's really, really a very big problem. And I would like to finish by saying that we see a particular risk and increased risk for a particular group of women, women who are in public life, women, human rights defenders, women who are entering the political life. And there what we see from a UN women supported by the European Union tipping point research that 70% of women human rights defenders, they have faced some form of digital violence. And it has a huge impact for the mental health, but also sometimes we really disassociate online violence from offline harm and violence. But in that research of Tipping Point, we found that 40% of these women

have experienced offline violence as well. And we can talk a little bit later about the other.

Yes, we definitely will get into it. And it makes me think about the technology, right? The technology itself and the systems themselves. And so, Jayathma, AI is being built on a world that is already unequal. We know that. How do we stop it from simply automating and amplifying the same gender biases that we have been seeing for decades and have been to dismantle.

No, thanks, Aisha. As Kaliopi mentioned, in half an hour, CEOs of the biggest tech companies or biggest AI companies in the world will be briefing the UN Security Council. So to have this conversation on the sidelines of that feels surreal, also maybe a little bit ironic, talking about a feminist approach to technology when the whole world is racing to see who wins this AI race, but nobody knows what the ultimate outcome is. So if we zoom out of that kind of doom and gloom narrative about AI and zoom into our day-to-day lives, AI, whether we like it or not, whether by choice or not, is a part of our lives. We use it in our work, in hospitals, in post offices, basically in everything we do, in the news that we consume, AI is integrated one way or the other. I think there is a narrative that AI companies has been really successful in promoting, which is that AI is a neutral tool, that it's here to help us achieve productivity, help us be better. It's this silver bullet that is going to help us solve all the problems that we couldn't solve before. But we fail to recognize is that AI is not magic, right? AI is built by people for people. So it has inherently, it has inherited all of the biases, all of the discriminations that already existed in our world. Generative AI particularly also depends on a massive amount of supply chain, a massive supply chain of human labor, of natural resources, and scraped data that is unattributed and often with used without consent. So On top of that existing bias, this is a tool, this is a technology that is being built on very exploitative and very extractive economic model. So put those two levels of biases together, I think it's very hard to see how this technology at face value can be neutral. recent study by Stanford actually examined 133 AI systems that are being used in our world across spectrums of different sectors and found 44% of them displayed gender biases. 25% of them displayed gender and racial biases. Just yesterday, John Hopkins released a research that looked at how large language models actually produce differentiated outputs for men and women at work. So at the office, you will be asking ChatGPT to draft an e-mail. If you are a woman, it will give you a different output. If you are a man, it will give you a different output. And even when corrected for biases, it still displays biases in its response, which shows how deeply these biases are entrenched in these data and AI systems. Safety and equality, therefore, cannot be an afterthought. It has to be baked into the life cycle of AI, from the development, deployment, procurement, to constant audits that will oversee the use of AI in its life cycle.

Thank you. Thank you for uplifting that research, too. It's really, really interesting. And it's making me think about the consequences, right? You started to talk about this a little bit as well. You know, they shape who is heard, who's believed, and who feels safe enough to speak, lead, and participate in public life. And so I want to ask you a little bit more about this, Kalliope. How is technology-facilitated violence against women contributing to the shrinking civic space, democratic backsliding, and wider threats to peace and public safety? And what does that mean for civic participation and democracy?

I will refer again to the same research that we conducted, the tipping point, because I started saying that 70% of women in public life, women human rights defenders, women journalists, they face some form of online violence. But what I would like to add there, it's more than 41% of them withdrew from public life and self-censor themselves just because of this violence, and also, We know that other women, seeing the extent of harm and violence happening against other women in public life, they also don't want to enter this space because it's very difficult. And this is not just harm for an individual woman. It goes, as you said, they said before, it goes beyond, it's shrinking the civic space, it's shrinking participation of women in political life, and it's shrinking the democratic space more broadly. And the research that increasingly shows as well is that online violence and enabled by AI, it's very much linked as well with extreme radicalization. They go hand in hand with homophobia, with racial discrimination. And we've seen incidents that they do threaten the very public safety insecurity of a country and also sometimes they are linked to mass shootings. And then we check the internet and there is some serious history there of online violence and harm against women.

Thank you. So if these technologies are influencing who can safely participate in public life, then also who has the power to design them and govern them ultimately? And so my question is for you, Jayathma, which is who gets to build AI matters, and who gets to govern it matters too. So where are women, particularly women from the global south and feminist movements, in AI decision making?

So I want to break this down to two. When we talk about the AI economy or the economy influenced by AI, there are two clear divisions. One is the seen labor, one is the unseen labor. In seen labor, women make up about 22% of all AI jobs. When you look at AI leadership, it's less than 14%. Women are less represented as leaders and engineers, more represented in the areas that could be easily replaced also by generative AI. So within the AI workforce, the formal AI workforce, AI companies, tech firms, there is a disproportionate lack of women building this technology. Now, the part of the unseen labor in AI is that, again, there's been a very good marketing campaign for us to understand these tools as free tools, right? ChatGPT is free. Gemini is free. But there is a group of people who bear the unseen labor behind these free tools. And those are the women in the global majority. Those are women in Kenya, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, working in exploitative conditions labeling data, filtering content that is graphic, violent, abusive. These are the women whose communities resources are being pulled into building infrastructure, building hardware, the critical minerals, natural resources, water being pulled out of indigenous communities, communities of women who are on the front lines of advocating against the abuse that they see, the environmental and human abuse they see through these technologies. So when we talk about AI and the workforce and women in this workforce, I think it's imperative that we talk about this unseen labor of women, particularly from the global majority that goes into building these systems. Now, beyond the AI economy, and I want to put the responsibility also not just on technology companies, because ultimately, member states, governments has the responsibility towards their citizens, right? So we look at how governments are trying to regulate AI, regulate these tech companies, we see only about 20% of all digital technology ICT ministers are women, only about 23% of ICT regulators are women. So there's also a blatant lack of women in the regulatory space of AI and digital technologies. And when you look at what then these unbalanced governments produce, out of 138 national AI strategies, only 24 even mention only 18 actually there's something meaningful about it. So it's very clear when you don't have women building the technology, when the labor practices around women's involvement in the economy is unfair, the technology, the product it develops, and the laws that govern it inherently becomes biased and it works against women, minorities, people of color, and people who are most often left behind. So I think when you ask what can be done, we definitely need to get more women into STEM, more women into tech, more women to AI and to leadership. We need more women to run for political office, become ministers of ICT, ministers of digital technologies, become regulators. We need to invest in creating these pathways for women, both in technology and public policy making, in order to make sure that the life cycle of AI, but also the ecosystem around it, does not get gender blind.

I'm going to ask a question for both of you, actually, with this in mind, which is, What would a genuinely survivor-centered approach to AI look like? One that puts the safety and rights of women and girls into the technology from the beginning, rather than responding once the harm is already done. And there's work that you mentioned as well about the feminist principles for AI being developed by the Gender and Digital Coalition. And so I'd love to hear about that as well.

So maybe I can start about the survivor-centered approach. I think it's very, very important to have in place, first of all, safety by design in the tech platforms and when they design all these tools and all these to have the adequate safeguards to make sure that they catch the harm before it even happens. So there are some tools and we have some good practices and it shouldn't be just content moderation, for example, it should be also some tools that they can really detect. some of the harm beforehand and having the right processes in place to do so. So to have that, it's very, very important to go as well hand in hand with some regulation, which is necessary, but being really responsible by really addressing the needs of survivors. So what the survivors need, it's not just the immediate removal of the content, of the abusive content, but that needs to be accompanied as well with some referrals to the police and justice sectors, We may have to consider compensation for all the harm they have experienced, and in order to be able to continue being free in online spaces. I think that would be very important.

Yeah, and I think, you know, AI can automate decisions, but it cannot automate equality, right? We have to make sure that there is a conscious effort to proactively make sure that these technologies work for everyone, not for a select few. So as you mentioned, UN Women had worked with the Gender in Digital Coalition, which is a large network of feminist civil society organizations who are trying to work in this space to make sure that technology works for all women and girls, developed seven principles. These are feminist principles for AI governance. please approach after the session, we'd be happy to share them with you. And if you're watching us online, maybe write an e-mail to techinnovation@unwomen.org. We are happy to share the feminist principles with you. These are seven principles. I'm not going to go into detail to all of them, but I want to mention two principles. The first one is on equality, which is making sure that when we think about AI governance, we do not only look at it in the sense of what technology exists today and how is it going to influence equality or is it biased, is it not, is it is it not? More about proactively looking at how can this tool be used proactively to bridge inequalities in the world today, right? Can this be a technology that brings more women into the workforce? Can this be a technology that helps us solve community issues that exist in rural communities? So we want to flip the script to say, this is a technology, now make it equal and use it to, no, can we actually build technology that is equal, that can be used with the right safeguards? The second is the power of participation. We need to make sure that these decisions about who gets to build technology, who gets to use it, who gets to govern it, is done in a democratic way. Right now, none of the discussions around development of AI, the data that is behind it, who is governing it, who is controlling is public. It is not transparent. And these are not how democratic, long-lasting, sustainable, just accountable systems are built. So we need to make sure that we create a seat at the table for feminist civil society organizations, women's rights organizations, young people, advocates, human rights organizations to come to the table, influence the agenda, not just be consulted, but really shape and set the agenda for these discussions going forward. Because ultimately, if we do not do that and if we move in the phase that we are moving now, what we will do is we will use a 21st century technology to automate the inequalities of the 20th century. And I'm pretty sure that's not what everyone around the world wants.

Can I add something? I think also would be important to add to all these elements, how important prevention is by changing the narrative. And UN Women has carried out the study with Equimundo, examining masculinities in six countries where we examined the pathways of perpetration of online violence. And then we hear narratives such as normalization of violence, violence that is considered online violence being funny or being normalized. And that's why it's so important, apart from having the safety by design and all the right tools in place to detect such harm and violence, also to work with technology platforms and to work with civil society organizations in order to change the narrative and to make sure that men's narratives around online violence can change as well and addressing the normalization of violence happening both in online and offline spaces.

Thank you. I could sit here for hours, honestly. I think it's really important work that you all are doing and it's really important that we, you know, when we have conversations about AI, we also really have conversations about gender and equity as well. And so just grateful to be on this stage with you all and to have this platform during UNGA to be able to really share in that, share in that conversation with you all. So thank you. Thank you for your time.

Thank you so much, Aisha. And thank you to our audience.

Hi, everyone. I'm Charlotte Scadden from UN Global Communications, and I'm Senior Advisor on Information Integrity. Welcome to this session in the SDG Media Zone. built this way, children, youth and information integrity. So we're going to get to our panel discussion in just a minute. First, I did want to just make sure everyone knows that some of the issues we're going to be addressing today are quite challenging. They can be quite distressing, but we think it's really important to have direct conversations about the safety of children and youth online and indeed in real life. But you will be hearing about real life examples, so I wanted to make sure everyone was aware. Before we move to our panel, we're going to start with a short video to set the scene. Okay, just while we get seated, I think that some of the sound was missing from that, but we'll make sure that the version with sound is available online for those watching. But I think you kind of got the general idea. So I'm really I'm really excited to have this panel today. It's a topic that we've been working on a lot at the UN, including in my team, the Information Integrity team, and with many partners around the world. And I think we have an excellent panel today to talk about not only the problem and the challenges we're facing, which are great, but some of the solutions, right, that we can all undertake. So just a quick intro, we have Ian Russell, who is chair of the Molly Rose Foundation and Molly's dad, Felipe Lopez, who is counselor at the Brazilian mission to the UN, and Natalie Shupe, who is industry and data lead at Safe Online. So welcome. Thanks so much for joining us. So Ian, why don't we start with you? And we saw a few images there in the video that tell a little bit of your story, but it would be great if you could maybe share your journey, how you came to be this position of one of the global voices on child online safety and how you see where we are now.