(Day 2) SDG Media Zone – 81st Session of the UN General Assembly

piece here and then maybe we'll have the budget for it next quarter. Like that's just not how you build sustained change or momentum as an organizer, as a policymaker, or as a storyteller. So thank you for your realism there.

The other thing I just want to add is that the slightly new flavor to this round is that it's also you know, seen as controversial to even talk about climate now all of a sudden.

And should we censor her?

Never mind like climate justice. Ooh, no. So there's a lot of cowardice, I would say, amongst media, like newsroom leaders, funders, you know, everyone, well, a lot of people like took the first opportunity to pack up their spines and go home. And that's not going to be useful to journalism in general. I don't care if it's, you know, climate or any other type. Our job is to speak truth to power, provide a service to the public. And we can't do that if we're led by a bunch of people who turn tail and hide every time it's a little bit hard. So stop doing that.

I agree. It's the hard moments where we need to tell these stories even more. And I hope some of these funders can grow spine. Up next, I'm really excited to hear from Alyssa Hardy from Teen Vogue. She has been a leader in the space for so long, and Teen Vogue itself has been in the headlines as well. And so I'm excited to hear what your group was discussing.

Hi. So I think one of the themes that came out of our group, it was two pinpoints of pain, or points of pain, sorry, is one is just the vastness of the issue and distilling that into storytelling and the growth of it, of course, without, and this is the other pain point, yucking people's yum. We have a couple of fashion people in our group. I'm I come from a fashion background. People want to talk about the fun side of fashion and kind of connecting those 2 stories is very difficult. Especially when we're talking about a waste crisis, we're talking about fast fashion like you mentioned. It's hard to say, hey, this is a really fun industry, but also it's a really painful industry that is contributing to climate change in major ways. And so for us, we were talking about, OK, what are the sort of ways that we can use social media, as you mentioned, to show that, yes, we can still be having fun with some of these industries that are so problematic, but then, of course, point to these large issues. I think at Teen Vogue, it's something that I am often thinking about because young people, they are in this cycle. They are buying fast fashion. They want to know what the latest trend is. And so for me, as digital director there, thinking about, OK, how are we telling these stories without taking away those things that make a young person just have fun and be young, while they still are obviously caring about climate? So even during Fashion Week, which was last week, I think it's so interesting that Climate Week follows Fashion Week this time of year because we see all of these trends coming down the runway. We're talking about, wow, look at, you know, everybody's wearing blue or whatever that is. Meanwhile, in the global south, we're gonna have hundreds of millions of pounds of blue garments, you know, in global communities that are a problem for them. So how do we tell those two stories at the same time? I think that is something that I think we're constantly talking about, but I think as we are all saying, climate reporting is lonely. Getting spaces like this where journalists are talking to each other about how do we tell those stories, what holes can I fill in, what are you talking about that maybe I can give you some information to add to your story, things like that. I think that that's where we, we had a big group too, so it was hard to get through more than one question.

No, but that's really helpful and insightful, so thank you for sharing that, Alyssa. And then to close our amazing breakout leaders, we have Peter Parkeham from the Associated Press, who, I mean, take the floor, you deserve a mic.

Thank you. Thank you for that. It's great to be here. My group really focused on freelance journalism and online content creators. We had a really robust discussion around that. One thing that came out of it that-- a positive, right? You don't always hear positives when you say, oh, a lot of people are freelancing or working online themselves. because there aren't jobs or they've been laid off, and we've seen that a lot. But one of the positives that came out was that people who are working as freelancers for climate journalism really care about climate, and they're passionate about it. And that goes a long way when it comes to telling a story, right? If you're passionate about something, that really helps. And so I thought that was an interesting thing to think about like that. One downside of that, beyond, you know, can you make enough money and survive and all of that, I mean, that's a big question, though I think some people are, you know, doing pretty well online themselves. But the need for institutional support really came through of basically, you know, editors who can help you shape your story or producers who can help edit something or that kind of thing. That really struck me. One thing that we've been doing at AP the last couple months is we've been experimenting with non-journalist climate creators, content creators. These are some of the best storytellers out there, and I'm really keen to learn from them and put them on our platform. One thing that's really struck me when I've talked to them is how much they want to know what I think. And I'm like, no, no, the way that you tell stories, this is why I reached out to you, because you're telling stories with Legos, or you're doing just different things. And they're like, no, but should I structure it this way? What that tells me, though, is that there is a hunger for that kind of institutional support, that kind of editing. And the kind of thing that I do and everybody on this stage does, and we don't always think about that as a real skill, and it is. That was interesting. And then the second thing I'll mention is one of our, one of the people in our group is a Pakistani journalist, and she has some really interesting observations about how, although Pakistan, of course, is hit very hard by climate change, it's not a topic of conversation, not just in campaigns, it's just not day in and day out. And, you know, we've done a lot of stories at AP and a lot of others have done stories asking the question why is climate not talked about a lot more in society when we're all suffering, you know, the impacts. But that's a good, you know, reminder that we've got to tell stories more and more powerfully and just really make it the center of the narrative. Because with Pakistan particularly, you know, I think a lot about disasters and a part of our climate, extreme weather coverage. And Pakistan to date has had one of the worst climate disasters in history, right? In 2022, a third of the country's underwater. And if you juxtapose that with the fact that according to this person on our panel, that it's not talked about, that's pretty striking. So we've got to do a better job.

Thank you to our incredible journalist leaders. You can exit the stage. It's been a really interesting series of discussions, and thank you, Peter, for bringing up Pakistan. My family is from Pakistan, and a third of the country was underwater, and I remember giving a keynote at the UN right after it happened and nearly breaking down just because of the emotional reality of what was happening to even my own family. And then today I was planning remarks. I was like, what's the climate disaster of today? Oh, Nepal, we're talking about Nepal today. Great, we've moved on. And there's this like weird reality that you get into thinking about what topic is the most topical when this is a sustained crisis that has been going on for decades and is continuing really getting worse. So how do we continue to draw people's attention? How can we share these stories in a way that connects across these different verticals, across these different media platforms, and how can we share resources? Well, today's event has been done in collaboration, of course, with our friends here at the SDG Media Zone, but also two entities I will tell you about. One is called a Justice Environment, which I'm the founder of. We work with different governments, businesses, nonprofits on climate change, sustainability, and the just transition. We do a lot of media work and a lot of storytelling work, designing and crafting campaigns that many of you have maybe even been a part of and not even realized. So that's our goal, is to get people to really take action on these larger structural issues and connect everyday people at the grassroots level all the way up to the biggest policy makers in the world and use that to shift the world towards a more just reality. Our other collaborators for today are from Covering Climate Now, the leading platform that has so many different entities all together sharing resources on how we cover climate change better. And so I'm going to give the floor to Kyle Pope, who will tell us a little bit about Covering Climate Now.

Thank you. I'll make this really, really quick. I just wanted to introduce Covering Climate Now to those of you who don't know us. We're a nonprofit collaboration of about 500 newsrooms all over the world. We do a ton of training. We do a ton of connecting people with experts. Speaking of loneliness, we do a lot of work to bring a community of climate people together who cover this beat. And also, I just want to-- this notion that like, There is a retreat in climate coverage from some big news organizations, but not from everywhere. And the important thing to keep in mind is that the audience is there. We have a project called the 89% Project, which is based on the fact that a majority of people in the world care about this issue and want to read more about it. So they're ahead of journalism. We've got to catch up. So anyway, please join us. Everything we do is free. coveringclimatenow.org. We'd love to hear from you. Thank you, thank you for the space. I have to give a shout out to Amy. It's publication day for Amy's book called Brought to You By. If you haven't, if you haven't read it, it's amazing. And also congrats to Rachel and a group of colleagues who did an amazing project this week on climate and housing. So thank you.

And with that, that is our program for today. Thank you all for taking the time to come and to join us. I want you all to chat with each other, exchange information, collaborate. Please reach out to us. We are eager to work with all of you. You are all such leaders and we're genuinely grateful for everything that you're doing this week. Good luck on your UNGA. I know Climate Week is a hustle and I'll see you on the trail. Thank you, everybody.

Test. Good morning, everyone. The next SDG Media Zone session is about to begin. If you could all take your seats, please. Thank you.

Yes.

Good morning, good morning. Welcome to the from nature credits to development outcomes, financing, resilient, prosperity, session. I will moderate this discussion and then we have with us the director general of the organization of Eastern Caribbean States. as well as the ambassador and special advisor to the prime minister for St. Vincent and the Grenadines. So by way of introduction, let me probably start with one simple position. The developing countries that we are looking to serve do not lack ambition. They do not have a paucity of natural assets or natural wealth. And neither do they lack investment opportunities. The problem is that capital does not flow in either the adequate quantum or the cost that would make those investment opportunities viable. And the reason for that, I think, is simply one of perceived risk that is not adequately taken into account. And that happens in one specific area, which is we do not take into account and do not value sufficiently assets that are nature assets. And equally, we make the risk of those investment opportunities needed to translate national priorities to outcomes, we make that risk hurdle a little too high. And so we believe that one way to do this is, A, we need to augment the resources that we have. and B, shift the risk mechanisms that we have. And one way of doing this, and one way of doing this, is by recognizing nature credits. as one element that can be an innovative aspect to actually channel credits and the financing for development priorities. So this is where the nature bank enters the discussion. We see nature as a productive infrastructure. We see resilience as an investment outcome. We see the unit of investment as a portfolio. And we see the purpose of finance as meaning generating productive capacity as well as well-being of citizenry. And so that is where we enter the discussion today. What does a nature credit look like? Effectively, it is a mechanism that establishes the quantum and potential value of the assets that we have. Then we translate that through relevant data measuring, data verification exercises, and an integrity of a finance market that will allow for instruments that will now permit these priorities to translate into outcomes. So that's the basic area that we are on and what we want to do is to get a country perspective as well as a regional perspective on how this can actually be made real. What are the gaps? What are the impediments? What do we need to do to make it happen? So I'll start with Ambassador Kevin here. From your perspective from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Uh why would some instrument or some financing mechanism of that nature be relevant to you?

Thank thank you Doctor Leon. I think from a country perspective, a nature credit mechanism cannot be seen as a standalone silver bullet. For us, we see it as an integrated mechanism within which we can look at different sources of finance to finance our development. At present, we are currently working on a long-term national development plan. So, the opportunity to look at how could we value our natural assets. Um, our marine ecosystem in the Grenadines, some of the best sailing waters in the Caribbean. We call it the Tobago Keys Marine Park. Our forests, our coral reefs. We don't see these as just passive scenery. but as a productive and protective infrastructure that can be valued. Of importance when our reef or mangrove mitigates storm surge. Right? And reduce the damages to our roads, our ports, and tourism facility. How could we truly value this and add this as part of that financing mechanism that could actually bring in non-debt creating flows. In a country that's highly indebted.

Thank you for this, and I think you've made a very important point here. This is not about nature for a label. This is about nature getting its rightful place in the value of wealth that can now be used to be able to deploy for meeting the outcomes of well-being of your citizens that we are generally talking about. So that's important. DG, let me get to you. In the, yeah, I think it's on. Yeah, in the regional space, clearly there is room for not only coordination, room for scaling and room for sharing. How do you see the concept of a nature credit market, as it were, developing from a regional perspective? And how do you see that as relevant for the development priorities, not only of a country, but the region?

Well, there are several reasons why our countries would want to do this together as a very ambitious integrated unit. The first reason is a shared problem. The problem is shared. Our member states face the same difficulties in different sizes. We have high exposure to climate shocks, very limited fiscal space, expensive borrowing, aid and concessional financing that is shrinking. In fact, in just a single week, USAID shut down on us, putting several projects in abeyance. So what we also share is natural wealth, as Jean referred to it. Our marine space is roughly 80 times our land area. It holds reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds that support tourism, fisheries, and coastal protection. And none of that is on the balance sheet. Countries are interested because this mechanism offers a way to finance protecting and using those assets without adding to sovereign debt. preparation phase that we are proposing asks for no sovereign borrowing and no guarantee. The second reason is that going it alone does not work. A single island that tries to build its own baseline monitoring, verification, legal frameworks, and buyer relationships faces transaction costs that can consume most of the value of the credits. The Commission sees a further problem every day. This field is already crowded with tremendous duplicated effort. And too many projects competing for funding and for visibility instead of working together. A lot of time is wasted. Of our staff in just navigating duplicating projects by different agencies. The third reason is scale. And that is why this proposal is not six pilots under one label. Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines can each keep their full authority over their marine space, their standards, their revenues. But what we share then is the preparation and financing architecture, common methods, shared monitoring and data systems, one coordination function, and a portfolio large enough to interest serious investors. So investors look for pipelines, not for one-off deals. We're not starting from zero, we already have several projects and conservation funds, the UBEC project, Caribbean Biodiversity Funds. new payment schemes, the OECS 30 by 30 financing roadmap. Finally, the OECS includes independent states, British overseas territories, and French territories that are outermost regions of the European Union, each with its own legal system. That architecture has to respect that and to leave room for others to join later on their own terms.

Thank you so much, DG. I think we have in a sense laid out the rationale for doing this. The question really is what is required to actually move this from concept to reality. And what I'd like us to use the remaining seven or so minutes we have is to explore what are the implementation gaps, what are the impediments, what do we need to do to actually move this to the next level. And I think for me, one key element holds across that space, and that's the simple word of trust. Trust is what is needed to build confidence. And we need three elements of trust. Trust from governments, trust from communities that will stand to benefit, and trust from investors, the community that will provide the financing. How do we bring those together through the mechanism of country ownership, having adequate data and governance arrangements, having the appropriate institutions and the credibility of markets to bring that trust relationship together. So that's what I'd like us to explore. I can start maybe with Kevin.

I think in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, it's also country ownership and governance. I find in our small island developing states, we get results when we take ownership or we co-create. Mhm. And actively participate in the process with which we are doing to date. Um we have a number of our countries, Saint Vincent included, as I said, we're doing our national development plan. We have a national adaptation plan 2025 to 2035. So, how do we ensure all of these plans are linked with taking into account you know, nature credit as a modality with which we could finance and deliver on some of these initiatives and outcome. Equally important for us is also institutional strengthening and all readiness. So how could we crowdsource a number of these different funding we may be getting from the Green Climate Fund and other entities that would enable us to at least be able to deploy different nature finance instruments. Well at the same time being able to do the necessary project preparation design. And really crowd in as I said both the human and financial resources to make things happen in our islands.

Yeah. Uh thank you for that. I I think that's a very important point. Um finance must not precede. Finance has to be determined by what it is meant to deliver for, and there that is, I think, the key point you make of bringing partners together, because partners need to enter at different risk points. they have different degrees of tolerance of risk and how you blend those together is I think the role that we are looking to play as a DBRP in developing that nature credit market. And that's one way of building, I think, that trust that we see, bringing the different elements together. DG, what's your perspective?

Yeah, well, there are two sides to this, bringing the countries together, but also importantly, not just bringing partners together, but bringing the countries together as an important cohesion. There are four requirements that we see. One is a limited preparation mandate that the participation countries agree to take part. Each names a national lead. A small coordination function is set up. So from the get-go, that coordination is established. And the commission then begins to play a role as a host of that function. So we would, first outputs would be a reconciled 10-year financing requirement, a minimum viable portfolio, an appraisal of hosting options, and a typology of the claims that the credits can support. Also monitoring and capacity plan. The second is the issue of continuity and convergence, because the biggest risk is not a shortage of ideas. What we need is sustained work with each participating state that is tied to measurable nature outcomes, and partners who now agree to work through one architecture instead of competing with parallel ones. Third is the question of market integrity. Buyers will only pay for credits that they trust. Again, the trust factor that you mentioned. This requires credible baselines, independent verification, and clear separation between biodiversity credits and carbon credits. each measured and claimed on its own because you sort of mix between our land-based capacity and our sea, our ocean space. It also requires honesty about demand. Depending on the ocean does not make it a tourism or cruise, does not make a tourism or cruise business a committed buyer. Revenue should come in stages, strengthen existing marine user fees first, then test voluntary contributions and pilot purchases. And lastly, the issue of sovereign control and community benefit, which could be in contradiction. Authority over marine space, credit issuance, and public revenue stays national. Fishers and local operators must see local benefit or the protections will not last. And underneath all four is a question of data. Monitoring and verification are the product. They should be built into the regional data architecture rather than onto a separate platform. And the people who run them should be trained in the region and stay in it.

Thank you for that overview. I think it is clear that we are all aligned on one objective. It is achieving resilient prosperity for all. And that is not for governments, it is not for communities, it is not for investors, but it is for all. And for all while we ensure the planet where we call home continues to survive in a way that is ecologically stable. And so it is bringing those together, I think, through what we would like to call a demonstrable pilot, showing the world that it can be done. and it will be done through one or more of our countries leading eventually to the region is I think the goal that we want to set ourselves. So with the remaining minute that we have, let's do a final round of 30 seconds. What would it take to deliver or what would be your starting point? Kevin.

Well, in Saint Vincent, we don't have the luxury of time. So it would be really how do we move from the conceptual framework to project pipelines. Mhm. Um we are doing our part in terms of actually working on crowd and in the support to do the institutional strengthening. And we are actively looking for partners as to how they could assist us in finance and the ambitious goals that we have to make Saint Vincent and the Grandians a resilient small island development state.

Thank you for that. DG.

Well I can simply say details towards Kevin said at the regional level, simply it involves one priority, adopting the preparation mandates and fund it as a single joint effort. Each country playing their part, acting with alacrity in order to get the whole thing financed.

So I think we can see this in closing very importantly. Objective, we need to be able to see how we generate productive capacity. as well as well-being of people outcomes. We need to be able to identify what are the priorities in terms of portfolios that can actually lead to those outcomes. Then we need to be able to say what are the financing amounts, costs that will actually deliver on that. with all of the supporting institutional infrastructure that you have spoken about, including governance, but very vitally maintaining country ownership. And so it is being able to deliver that to maintain the sovereign space, but yet get the benefit to people is where I think the symbiosis of investments, finance and outcomes come together. Thank you so very much for being with us this morning.

Hi, good morning, everybody. Welcome to day two of the SDG Media Zone here at the 81st UN General Assembly. Thanks for being here with us this morning. There are a few things going on here at the UN, so thanks for braving the security line and getting here. It's a pleasure to have you all, and whether you're here in person or watching on UN Web TV or other broadcasts, it's great to have you with us. We have an amazing program today on day two, and we're really pleased to start it off with a program that's very appropriate for the SDG Media Zone, "Delivering the Promise of the SDGs Together." Obviously, very critical, and we're very pleased to have Ines Pohl, the White House correspondent from Deutsche Welle, here with us to get the conversation going. Over to you.

Thank you so much, and good morning. There's a little bit of a competition going on. President Trump is speaking at the very moment as well, or just about to. The difference is that media is very welcome here. We don't exclude anybody. With that, thank you very much for being here. Thank you very much for joining us to do Delivering the Promise. I mean, I think there is no better headline really to do discuss these most urgent topics. I will save ourselves a little time and don't give you a big introduction of my esteemed panel here. Keep it brief so we have more time to discuss. Catherine Stash, I would like to start with you. In times when multilateralism, peace, human rights are really under pressure, Germany still fights for these values. Talk a little bit how and why.

Thank you very much. And it's true, Germany is a strong supporter of multilateralism, of peace, human rights, and gender equality. And this is particularly important these days. And what we really need is people who have the enthusiasm, the energy, but we also need the finance to advance the SDGs and the Agenda 2030 and beyond. And Germany provides both. And I'm a bit proud to say that this year, in 2026, we do have 10 billion just for the development finance. And This is not everything. We really work towards innovative finance. Together with Spain, Zambia and Mexico, we will host the only event on the Sevilla Compact here at the UNGA. And we need private means. We need domestic resource mobilization. And of course, we also need to talk about that. And what really gives me hope is that there are so many people who do believe in the SDGs. And I think the last months have shown this. And what also gives me hope that we are all working together to make the UN even stronger, because this is what we need. This is why the UN is there for to deliver for the people on the ground to peace, to human rights, to gender equality.

Katharina, you are working at Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, BMZ. I'm sure that our audience here is aware that we are facing some political challenges in Germany with the far right party, which is getting stronger not only in Germany, but all over Europe, in your countries as well. How do German people feel about the goals you have just been describing? Is there the support also like within the German people?

Definitely, because we are all, I mean, in the end, what matters are the people, and I think all people are longing for the same. They long for secure housing, they long for equality, they long for equal opportunities, they long for a just health system, they long for equality and justice. And these are exactly the topics which are important back home. These are the topics why our government is fighting for reforms and is actually producing reforms. And this is how we need to convince our people back home, but also everywhere in the world. And in a way, it's nice to see how we all share the same ambitions and opportunities.

Thank you. I'll leave it there for now. Maybe we can come back to our little statements. And I would like to go to you, Stefano Gatti. Italy, of course, is also a huge supporter of the SDG. goals. Food security is one important topic you're fighting for. Maybe you can talk a little bit about the situation you're facing in Italy and how you keep fighting, so to speak, to support the goals of the SDG.

Thank you very much. Let me say that the first thing I think we have to say is that we all know that while we approach 2030, we will arrive there and see that a number of SDGs will not have been met. We know that, the situation that we are facing together. On some, we will have made progress, others no. We know that one of the issues, I wouldn't say that it's a main issue, but it's one of the biggest one, is food security around the world. Millions of people are still suffered of hunger, and billions that are food insecure, that live in a situation which they don't know. if and how they will be fed. So on this Italy is, you know, obviously we have a priority. I think we have a responsibility. So I would like to attach what was said before, you know, our people and what do they feel and what do they think? I would say that in Italy, there's no sentiment on, you know, but why are we doing this? We should not be doing it. Surely a number of things in the last few years have changed. One is, you know, after the COVID pandemic, I think that everybody has understood that whatever happens, in another parts of the world, it takes a matter of days to arrive in your home. So the fact that you have to realize that, and for a country that is, you know, at the center of Mediterranean, where almost anything is happening this time, and facing, you know, a continent that Africa, that is a continent that has huge challenges, but also huge potentials that we want all together, also as European countries to not only face these challenges, but be ready also to together to grow together with a continent like Africa that is the youngest continent in the world. I think that in Italian public opinion there is a realization that we have to be there and we have a challenge in front. We do not have all the resources that Germany is having on the putting on development front, but I think I can say that we are the only G7 country that has not cut It's engagement and resources for development cooperation, and we continue to use the resources. I do not think it's only a question of money. I would like to thank also the UN SDG campaign, Marina, for the work that has been done. One thing that we know from all this experience when we will arrive at 2030 and discuss what is the situation, what we have to do, are two elements there. First, governments cannot solve the issues alone. So we are today at the United Nations, an organization that has been formed by government, is composed by government, but governments know that we cannot do it alone. There is no way, possibility, even if we have a lot of resources, even if we double the resources, we need partnership. We need all a number of other components, young people, need to be involved in what we have to do. We have to recognize them. They have the new ideas and we have to, you know, leverage.

That would be my question, Stefano. So how do you strengthen this cooperation between different parts of a society? You have, like the youth you were talking about, you have artists, you have civil societies. all different kinds of groups. Talk a little bit how we can kind of strengthen the cooperation between these different entities.

But, you know, the issue of partnership, we discuss it a lot and we need to solve it also in doing projects and doing initiatives. Partnership means so many things. First of all, speaking and working with the governments of the countries where you go and do things. And they have to realize that today you still speak of overseas development assistance. This is a technical word. When you go in these countries, the A, they don't like it. assistance, you know, why do you have to assist me? Do we want to do things together? Let's do two things together. But it's not about, you know, so this idea of of charity, you know, it seems nice. It's not nice and it's not what they needed. So the partnership with the countries and I'm working with them and doing things that are mutually advantageous is not a question of a transactional world. It's a question that when you go to speak with them, they say, I don't know. need help. I need to work with you. I need investment. I need private sector investment. Then you have the youth. That is very important because as I said, they have the new idea. So how do you leverage the new ideas from the younger generation? You have to put them in a position to do so, not block them and not allow them to do that. And finally, you have artists. I can't say like Italy, artists, a lot of things and very significant. And what can artists do? They put all these things together and they artistic capacity, they sort of present a target that everybody can join. It's a way of communicating. You do it in writing, with an installation, with a work of art. Everybody recognizes itself and unites. So art is unites. And we do a lot of things also with young artists from all different continents with the UN SDG campaign, and we do wonderful things. So we have to continue. And when we arrive in 2030, we will not have met the targets, but we will have surely learned that this kind of work together is what we have to continue to do.

Thank you very much. Marina Ponti, of course, is the global director. No need to introduce you here. Marina, from an SDG action campaign perspective, talk a little bit about the key elements we need to inspire really that action happens.

So thank you for the for this question. We believe very strongly that what you can see and imagine, you can achieve. So the role of art that was just mentioned gives us the visual, the visualization of a positive future. And when people are united, and you already mentioned, towards a positive goals and towards a positive vision, things can happen. And people and individual, but also decision maker, business leader, they don't only act based on fact. So we have a lot of data, but data alone, we believe, is not sufficient. People need to be touched in their emotions. And art, creativity, inspiration does that. Because people ultimately don't act and don't change the way they behave or the way they run their business or their country only based on fear, on fear or something catastrophic is going to happen. They change when they feel that their change can lead to a positive outcome. So our strategy is really to base, is based on hope, on inspiration. Of course, we recognize the challenges. We are not naive, but we see through the SDG Action Awards, through many initiative, that there is so much change happening and we need to recognize and celebrate, and that change can inspire other to do the same.

That's very interesting. You know, I'm covering news, I'm covering the White House, I'm covering the United States for Germany's international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, and You, of course, experience that there is this news avoidance. People are getting so tired of bad news, of all these major problems the world is facing. Talk a little bit about how you can kind of inspire hope and also how you might use social media more or how you use it already, because that seems to be such an important instrument, especially to reach the younger generation, but of course, more and more everyone.

So we want to show, first of all, we use art because sometimes words polarize and words when you explain things, you are taking a side. And unfortunately, it's very fragmented and politicized, even the SDGs themselves. Although we are talking about decent jobs, we are talking about education, we're talking about health, we should not be politicized. This is now politicized. But when you show images, When you show.

When you hear poetry that talks about the issue and the people, then it's no longer on which side you are. You really, you're talking about education, you're talking about gender equality, you're talking about showing stories of girls' empowerment, you're talking about the success of investing in skills or job creation or protecting the environment. And those positive images through art, but also through story. We believe very strongly in storytelling because we don't want to promote the issues or sentences. We just want the stories to show that a different world is possible. And actually many people are building it. And we just want more people that are joining this journey.

Do you want to add something, Katarina?

No, I really like what you said about emotions and also how to capture it by art. And what I thought is that what really matters is trust and maybe also restoring trust. And what I experienced throughout my professional life is that we need to really learn again to listen to each other, to really understand where the other comes from. And I think this is really the necessary condition for, yeah, to restore hope, but also to advance the energy to look into a better future. And So once you do that, when you sit down, I think something happens. And that's why I think we need more alliances, more partnerships, and really reaching out across regions, across countries, from the north, from the south, from the east, from the west. And then I think we can advance the SDGs, Agenda 2030 and beyond, but also the UN.

Stefano.

Oh, a lot of things there, but I, I will surely, uh, go back to the issue of, uh, young people and art. Uh, this is, once again, for an Italian, it's something very, uh, uh, and connected with the negativity. If you look at what young people do, you know, on social media, well... It's not catastrophic, it's not negative. So this kind of negativity comes from a lot of other things, obviously, and the fact that people in our world are constantly changing and you have no reference points, have fear. So fear in itself is not bad. It's something that exists. They are fear. The question is how do you answer to that fear? Do you answer to that fear doubling that fear and say, come with me because I-- or giving a positive message and bridging gaps, knowing who is doing what. I travel every year in 13 to 15 African countries. Africa is obviously a priority in our engagement. And you just come to know people, what they are thinking, these governments, these civil society, what do they need? And I agree with Katerina, you have to communicate, you have to meet, to discuss, and you have to give space to everybody. So you have to give space to the young people with the innovative idea, to the artists, and it goes back also to the fact that governments can help, but they do not have the solution.

I totally agree. Hope is such a strong power. And I think there are powers in the world who want to take hope away, right? Because hopeless people don't fight. But having that said, we are here, of course, in New York City and the United States of America. There is not only a tendency in this country. We see that all around the world, this America first, you know, this my country first. Maybe we make one brief round. How do you experience the changes in solidarity in these times of kind of a more inward looking, also political kind of movement in pretty much each country around the world? I will start with you, then we make a quick round and then I'll give you my last question.

Okay. I think there, again, there is a lot of noise about putting the nation first, but I don't believe that people, I really believe that people want to cooperate with each other. I think we've seen it with the pandemic, we've seen it with climate change. No country alone can address the challenges that we are facing. So we need to work together. We need to respect the diversity and many people realize that. So I believe that there's a lot of noise now, hopefully this will change. But people understand that they cannot, people on the front line of all these issues, climate change or desertification or, you know, weakening of health system or food system, they know they need all governments to work together. They need the private sector, their know-how, they need the energy, it was mentioned already, of young people. They need the wisdom of the older generation. They need free public media to be able to make decision based on fact. And they also need, you know, government to set the frame or the policy that are essential to steer and create the incentive towards, you know, good behavior and try to discourage negative behaviors.

I think it's completely legitimate to communicate his or her own interests, but at the same time, I experience a new sense of solidarity. And it's true, the big challenges of our time, we can only tackle together. And this is, I think many have realized now and is happening.

Stefano.

The question of, you know, my country first. There are so many reasons, obviously, in Italy, we tend not to do these kind of things because we have experience in hundreds of years, you know, situation in which we learned that this doesn't have a very good outcome, but let me also say that. there are reasons behind that, and the reason for people also to support these kind of things. Because the question starts from, but what is my place in all this? People ask, all this is what happens, my place, so am I forgotten? What do we do, what our tradition? So there's also a positive side, sometimes saying, one issue, an example is food sovereignty. Food sovereignty doesn't mean I do not want to food somebody else. for us in Italy is we have an incredible richness and tradition of food and some of those plants, seeds and you know, have been cancelled. They're not there anymore. We have to go and recuperate them. So it's, do I have a place? Do we have an identity? And we have a legacy, you know, of things in all our countries that we have to valorize. So even the country first can be positive or can be negative, depending how you use it.

I give you my last question, start with you. We meet here in one year again. What has to have changed to really deliver the promise of the SDGs together?

A sense of unity, unity which doesn't mean we all think the same, we all do the same thing, united in our diversity but towards a shared vision of a more sustainable, peaceful and equal world.

Thank you, Katarina.

In one year, we definitely have a new Secretary General, and I expect that she will also advance the SDGs and the Agenda 2030 and beyond.

Thank you very much. Do you also think we will have a she?

We will have, sorry.

Female.

I hope. I'm not deciding it, but I will be more than happy. As you see, I'm very happy between females as well.

He was complaining that he's the only-- Gender unbalanced balance.

So I have to file a complaint to-- But.

I told him we are used to that since hundreds of years, so sorry, sir. So what has to have changed in one year's time when we meet again?

I don't know if it will have changed. I'm sure that we will meet in one year time because UN, even if it is contested, is needed. So the question, let's imagine a reality in which it does not exist. Will it be better or will it be worse? Or be far worse? So we will still be here and meeting together and discussing together.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And I think we really are all in this together. It's you guys who do that professionally, but I think it's everyone who can play his or her fair share in trying to keep this planet alive and to make it more just. So thank you very much and see you next year. Thank you.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the SDG Media Zone. We're live from the UN headquarters in New York during the 81st UN General Assembly. I'm pleased to pass it to our moderator from Nation Media Group to kick off our next panel discussion.

Thank you very much, and thank you for joining us on this very chilly day. But it's fantastic. I am joined on my panel by four lovely people including the United Nations Under Secretary General and Special Advisor on Africa, Ahuna Eziakonwa. Did I get that right? Fantastic. We are also joined by Eugenia Boateng, Africa Youth Diaspora Hub. And we are joined by Diala Momouni, President, Pan-African Youth Union. Thank you very much for joining me. And It is a privilege to be seated here speaking about innovations and speaking about what young people are doing across the continent. And so just to set the stage from each of you, and I can start from my extreme left, what is happening now around water, around innovation, around the youth, and how are you connected to it?

Good morning, everyone. My name is Reanne Olivier. I am the co-founder and CEO of Africa Matters Initiative. And the work that we do fosters supporting young people to create the future they want for themselves, their communities, and the continent at large. And how we do that specifically in terms of the topic that we're discussing is through our strategic programs around social entrepreneurship and innovation and leadership. And one of the programs that we host is Her Environment, Her Future that really looks at the vulnerable ages of 16 to 29 women and girls who are very impacted by climate issues specifically faced in their on the continent and helping them build green uh preneurships uh opportunities Enterprises that can not just support themselves but also support those in their communities and so the work that they've been doing have been focused on how do I take this social ill and the social issue and develop a solution that can not just impact my community, but also my country and my continent at large. But how do I do that in a way that it's skills transferable, where we're allowing and creating green jobs, but also training other young people to be able to apply some of these skills and start creating things on their own as well?

Okay, let me just follow that up with you, Diala. When you look across the continent and she speaks about solutioning, what are the most practical things you're seeing? Can you give us some examples about innovations that young people are doing across the continent and how they are solutioning for the problems that the continent is experiencing?

Okay, thank you so much. You know, I want to apologize to everyone because I'm a French speaker and is an obligation for me to move to English. But the topic is very important because today across the continent, because of climate change, we are moving to see what solution is better. On that, we are inviting the technology to solve that problem because we need to adapt. our system to the climate change. If you take in term of the farm today, we have not to go, uh, to do what our father, do. Uh I mean 20, 30 year ago. Now we are moving as the young people to invitate technology. Uh in what we are doing to adapt this system to lack of raining.

And do you have an example of of one of those?

And we have we have a lot of example. Because today, if you take the young people across the continent, they are not waiting for the raining to do the farming. They have system of water, how to retain water and do the farming. This is good system because in Africa, you have like three months for raining. and many months without raining. And in the past, you have to wait for the raining before doing plantation. And now we are doing plantation in the full years because we adapt, we have the system to have water. And we have also the system which this plantation adapt to the climate changing. And today we think so this is the technology that African young people got to raise the issues of the climate change and to support the conditional and to invite their self in entrepreneurship.

Okay, that's fantastic. And I want to come to you because We're talking about solutions, what young people are doing, and you sit at a policy level, but also at a very global level where you see solutions from across the continent, not just from one place. And so what would it take, not just from a policy level, but from an institutional level, to ensure that those solutions are visible and available to many more people across the continent?

Thank you so much. And first of all, to congratulate you for speaking so well in English. Yes, correct. I think you really made yourself understood so very well. You know, the topic here is so timely, youth empowering Africa's climate future for many reasons. One is that next year, Africa will be hosting COP32 in Ethiopia. And one of the posture actually that this continent takes is that we are not going to be positioning as a victim of climate change, even though we emit the least and we have the most impact. But Africa is going to showcase that it has the solutions and it's already building those solutions for the continent and for the world. And what's powering that is innovations from young people. We've seen it when I was at UNDP, we initiated this Timbuktu initiative where we have young people experimenting, innovating, and a lot of it, I would say 50% of the solutions that we saw on the continent were around climate change issues, adaptation, bringing power to the last mile through mini grids. You see young people innovating around waste, for instance, you know, how to turn waste to wealth. in different parts of the continent, what gap we found is how you crowd in financing and institutional support, how you make the government see these young people, the innovation, the potential, the assets that they present, and therefore bring support to them. Dianna, is it Dianna? Dianna. Dianna spoke about technology. Technology costs money. But it's even more costly because you have to bring it in from somewhere else. And what we are thinking for Africa, given the role that technology plays in bringing these kinds of innovation that helps Africa adapt to the new realities, technology has to be produced locally. And we have demonstration that young Africans through universities, but even other tertiary institutions, are capable of innovating this technology. They are capable of building the technology, but they need the financial and institutional support. Regulations, for instance. You talked about policy. Policy is extremely important. because if you have regulations that stifle rather than stimulate that innovation, then we have a long way to go. So we're talking to governments to see, actually to see this potential and then to create the enabling environment, first of all, for youth to be able to create the technology on the ground. Because once you build it locally, it's cheaper, it's more accessible than if you had to import it. And secondly, to be able to turn it into entrepreneurship, so into jobs. So climate change for us, addressing climate change has to be linked to development and to jobs. And the entry point is youth.

You say something that I want to follow up with you, Rianne. It speaks to these technologies, there's the diaspora, these places, these things are happening. How do you see yourself contributing to that place of people learning so that people don't have to repeat the mistakes that have been made before? How do you contribute to that?

Thank you for that question. The work that we do speaks for itself. We really focus on upskilling and reskilling young people, but also empowering them to really believe in themselves and the work that they're doing. And one of the points that Nahuna had mentioned in terms of digital transformation that's happening on the continent, you see so many young people outside of university spaces really utilizing AI to be able to build some of the tools at which that Diallo was mentioning, right? we look at agriculture, when we look at other intersectional opportunities, some women, what they're doing is creating safe spaces through digital means for young women who are being displaced because of some climate issues within their countries. And so I think to answer your question in full, being able to skill young people, is a huge benefit for growth, and it creates a buffer to remove the negative impact that climate and environmental changes are affecting them with. So that is how I would say we would contribute, continue to train, continue to nurture the enterprises, the ideas, the innovations that they're doing, but also working alongside partners, right, who are in the government, who are, you know, in international corporations or what have you, to really help scale the work of the young people. And if we're able to train them, but then also create that bridge between the grassroots individuals and those who are at the up to create some meaningful impact, I think we're doing a great job.

Fantastic. Let me just, because you've spoken about capacity building, but Ahona also spoke about financing. And so I'll ask you, Diala, what are the greatest challenges that the youth that you work with every single day around climate change and what are the greatest challenges that they face? and what are some of the ways you're finding to solution them. But first, let's focus on the challenges.

Thank you so much. You know, the young people issues is very complex. It's very complex because first, they're looking the idea that we have on young people. And second is how we are trusting the project. You see, She is speaking what UNDP is doing is very wonderful, is very good. If you take a lot of government, they are not trusting first young people. And second, if you are not trusting young people, you cannot trust their project. And today, the financial situation will be complicated for them. because the project from young people, the innovation, the technology that we are talking about, you cannot have this system if we haven't a little bit the financial supporting. And today, financial supporting is main problem, many issues of young people across the continent. I took example, if you need today to do the farm, and you need good farm for all the full time. You have to do like what we call water well. Water well. You have to need improved side to adapt. If you need a do it, you create something, you need first to improve it. You see, for improving it, you need financial. need financial support. A second, to realize your project, you need financial support. Because of that, I want to appreciate what UNDP is doing and most partners. I think so the financial supporting is main, main, a big problem, big uses. The second issues is opportunities. How many young people across the continent can come in UN assembly, getting opportunity, talking with my mother, and hearing to another, taking a good contact, how many across the continent. Opportunity also is very good. If you take the country level, maybe the capital only is the continent, is the country. And the rest is in the village. And they have an internet. They have an opportunity for the, uh, technology training, uh, they have a good education, I mean, they have an opportunity to show, to, to, to show their project. I mean, it's very complicated. The opportunity also is the main issues that African people have, I think. So this is also the advocacy that I'm doing to my mother. Thank you so much.

Yeah, but just to follow up with something you said, Owona, when you made your introductory remarks, you said, we're not going to look at ourselves as victims. It would be nice to hear from you what you're seeing that allows you to say, you know what, there's challenges, we'll never have enough financing, there's a trust deficit between young people and their governments, but there's good things happening in the continent. What gives you that hope that we're not victims?

The confidence of these young people here, they have so much courage. I mean, if you think about the fact that so much is coming out of this continent from young people with little opportunity and minimal financing. Just imagine how unstoppable this population is when you then start to present the opportunities and to crowd in the financing, which will come. Because what's interesting, what we're seeing is that the innovators on the continent are not just innovating for African problems. They are actually starting to come up with solutions for global problems. And some of those global problems are not yet born. So I would say actually there's a lot of foresight. There's a lot of imagination because a lot of the young people innovating are innovating from their experience. These are experiences that they are seeing in their daily lives. You have an aunt who died while having a baby because there was no electricity in the clinic. they are motivated by real issues. And so they are solving for real issues. And when you do that with passion and personal aspiration, you get outcomes that are unbelievable. So I am so confident that Africa's posture to be a shaper of what happened next in this area and you will see a lot of that featured at COP 32. Okay. Is coming out of a real place. It's not fictitious. It's not theoretical. Uh it's because it's born out of real experiences and some of the some other parts of the world don't really have the level of content that the continent has and is generating. So, I I think it's it's an area of hope. Um and as long as we in place the instruments, the rails that these young people need to be able to run faster, you know, and that's our job at the institutional level to really make sure. in a position now where I I do mostly advocacy rather than programming and I think I hear you and we will continue to beat the drum loud on how young people need investment and they're not asking for Aid by the way they're not saying come give us money uh that is free they're saying they're asking for Equity you know, they're asking for trust, you know, and they're asking to take them seriously enough to do what? Scale.

Yes, correct. Now, unfortunately, we have to wrap it up, but I think that's a really good place to end it, that the continent is not asking to be assisted. It's saying We have solutions that you can also utilize. So let's work together for it. And the young people, the dividend that comes from them, then becomes what we shall use. So thank you very much. And I appreciate and thank you for your contribution.

Hello everyone, thank you for joining us again in the SDG Media Zone. We're live from the UN headquarters in New York and I'm pleased to pass it to our moderator, Simon Bishop, Chief Executive Officer of BBC Media Action to start our next panel discussion.

Thank you very much everybody. Yes, I'm Si Bishop, the proud CEO of BBC Media Action, the BBC's international nonprofit. we support about 600 media around the world working in the toughest context Afghanistan, Ukraine, Somalia, helping them get life-saving trustworthy information out to their audiences which amounts together to a quarter of a billion people. A lot of our work is about strengthening climate and weather information to allow people to prepare for and adapt to climate related disasters. And I'm delighted to say we're here today. And by the way, you can see, unfortunately, some of those, the impact of those disasters in the photos on the back here. I'm delighted to say we're here today to talk about the Early Warnings for All initiative. This was established in 2022 with the aim of ensuring every person on the planet is protected by multi-hazard early warning systems. we're going to look at the progress of early warnings for all the initiative, how it's going and what more we can do to ensure that by 2027 every person on the planet is protected with early warning systems. I'm delighted to say I'm joined here by Sujit Mohanty who is from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and by Khadija Khadija Mlaj, thank you very much, who is a colleague from BBC Media Action in our North Africa office. So a question for you both to start with, and we'll start with you, Sujeet, if you can answer this first. Early warning systems have advanced enormously, yet still whenever there is a disaster, we see people still caught in it. either not reached by early warning systems or they are reached but they don't react, they don't respond. So from where you sit, how are we doing on this? And particularly that last mile communications to reach those impacted people. Is it getting shorter that last mile or are we still struggling?

Thanks. Thank you, Syed, for that question. So when it comes to early warning and the last mile, What I would say in the last several years, we have seen a tremendous progress in how countries are adopting early warning systems. 136 countries reporting as of August 2026 that they have some sort of early warning system established in their country. However, having an early warning doesn't solve all the puzzle. When it comes to last mile, still the issue of coverage remains a challenge. 43% of the small island development states have still lacking early warning systems in place. Africa, in last several years from 2015 onwards, they have a major progress, but at the same time, they're still catching up. They're still behind. And this is where I think the gaps are visible. When it comes to last mile, unfortunately, there is no good news. is not becoming shorter. And what I would say is that it's not the lack of systems or early warning systems or ability of forecasting. Where it really becomes a bottleneck is in terms of having the trust of those early warning messages, having the human behavior towards acting on early warning messages. And this is where we see the biggest bottleneck in terms of one is, of course, the coverage of not, there are still communities which are not reachable. There's no connectivity to them. But at the same time, the human behavioral dimension is that when they receive an early warning message, they are either not understanding it or they're not able to act on it. So at the end, It's all about if community are not able to act on the early warning messages, we are somewhere failing in terms of the forecasting, in terms of having those systems. So this is the biggest gap and these are the challenges where it's preventing people from really saving their lives and acting on the early warning messages.

And would you agree, DJ?

I completely agree. So thank you so much as well for the question. And as we mentioned here, exactly like early more early warning systems can reach out to every one of us basically through SMS, through radio, through TV. But the question here is not about the technicality as much as have we understood it? Have we are we able to take actions upon it? Are we saving lives based on that early warning? And this is the question that really triggered us among like us here and the BBC Media Action we work across North Africa and the Middle East and many other countries across the globe is to help communities really understand the early warning in languages they understand. In communication channels that reaches to them. We cannot spread early warning using SMS. However, everyone is using TikTok, for instance, or using communication channels in another language. And this is exactly what is causing damages more than just the last milestone, whether it is with us or not.

Fantastic. Thank you. And Susie, where does the media fit into all of this? How can stronger collaboration between authorities and the media help.

See, media we see as media has a profound role in this, not only communicating the early warning messages, but really have profound role in before a disaster, during a disaster, and even after a disaster. Before a disaster, media really plays an important role in communicating what are the hazards and risk communities are living around, giving them, the notion of how to prepare, how do you really react to any early warning message you receive, how do you understand and interpret those messages. So this is a big role of media before disaster, it cannot be done during, because this has to be prepared well in advance. Media has to have well grounded connection with authorities in knowing when the messages are arriving, how community can be prepared. And during a disaster, of course, media has, again, a very big role in terms of really communicating what to do, how to take action. But in UNDRR, we also give a lot of importance of media engagement in the peace setting or before disaster and after disaster scenarios, where we see the role of really communicating the benefit of prevention, preparedness, and so on. So this is really a critical element that it cannot be dealt with at the time of a disaster. It has to be, you know, it has to be, community has to be prepared. They have to really invest in prevention. And this is where we want media to really take a key role in communicating the prevention. Prevention is sometime invisible. When a disaster is prevented, there is no story. However, That is, we have in UNDRR engaging with a number of media networks, national broadcasters, media organizations, providing them the means and engaging with journalists to say how to really create a story out of the prevention. How do you really communicate the benefits of prevention? And that has been our effort with the media network. And we see that profound role with media, which has been there.

Fantastic, thank you, Sujit. And turning to you, Khadija, so if warnings only work when people understand them and they're motivated to react, where does understanding actually begin? What does BBC Media Action do to ensure that they do understand and they do react?

So we try to make the people and the audience understand, of course, before the disaster happens. And this we try to understand the communication channels that the audience uses so that whenever we prepare the audience for a situation where disaster is happening, so that they are very well prepared for that. And for this, we operate and collaborate with local authorities, civil society organizations, civic protection, and scientists as well. So we bring them like in the same table as well so that they can together try these the scientific people bring the complex information and through the support of media professionals and content creators in some cases to amplify the voices to amplify use the jargon that everyone can understand also in a in a language that they understand and this we can also talk about the impact based forecasting so whenever we have like

Just beforehand, so we can try to collaborate with all the different stakeholders in a way that the situation happens. And this is exactly I found myself once in a situation in North Africa surrounded by wildfires myself. And then the only way that I can know is the smoke. So there was no official communication about that. And whenever we turn the TV, it's being told in a language that none of the colleagues is understanding. So this is the problem. The problem is to understand exactly what is around so that we are well prepared in a situation where we do that. And this is like a project we are having with the UK office in North Africa. and now in Jordan and the Middle East as well, so that we support and we do co-productions actually with journalists, with media professionals, but alongside with meteorological departments, so that the information goes directly in a trusted channels in a way that the people understand it, but also the language and the jargon can easily be something that they can act upon it. And as you mentioned here, so it's not that moment specifically where we need to where we prepare along the way so that whenever the situation or the disaster is there, we, the people and the audience are well prepared for that. So it's not just about co-productions, but also it's calculating the risks and donating that so that we are ready for any type of disasters. We try our best using all the tools and the media. Also with another projects that we are having, we have co-produced actually more than 1,500 across Kenya, Bangladesh and Nepal with the Norad colleagues there. A lot of content that through two years that helped the people get ready and prepare themselves for disasters and this is super helpful as well.

Fantastic. And what about you, Sujit, in terms of that in between disasters, what can we do more to help people be prepared?

So first of all, I think we should really understand that the issue of early warning is not an issue only of communication. It's an issue of, you know, as Khadija mentioned, language. There are many different aspects of communication, but it goes beyond communication. How do you really prepare communities so that they know how to act, when to act? Are there things already ready for them, for example, Do they have access to the shelters? Do they know where to go when a message is received? Do they know the gravity of the event which they are encountering and what to do after that? So these are some of these issues which really need to be tackled. This goes beyond communication. It really looks at issues of preparedness, issues of investing beforehand, investing in preventing hazards from becoming disasters. And I would say the role of media here in between a disaster is quite profound. They have to really, first of all, prepare themselves to really safeguard their own assets, their own setups with a business continuity plan so that they understand that when a disaster strike, they're able to operate. Similarly, they should also invest in communicating the preparedness aspects of an event. And I think there are a number of countries where we have seen drills are quite a part of their society. So are we really investing in those drills? And this is where I would like to really ask all our colleagues here from the media, from the civil society that can we institute, can we have drills When a message, early warning message is received, can we institutionalize the system of having drills and having this preparedness within our scope of work during peacetime when there is no disasters? Then only we will be able to really react to those messages and effectively, you know, save lives.

And we've seen the number and the scale of wildfires grow in recent years and very sadly we saw the disaster in Nepal three weeks ago where 1,400 people are now confirmed dead 6,000 people are still missing entire villages washed away that was caused by a glacier melting and a lump of it dropping off and creating this enormous wave are we going to have to evolve and change up early warning systems for new types of climate disaster in years ahead.

Absolutely. The risks are becoming cascading and systemic. So there are disasters which are resulting in other events, other disastrous events. So we have to evolve accordingly. What the trend we are saying that we are living in a such a interconnected society that if we do not take care of these cascading effects and having multiple layers of warning and preparedness and different levels, we would not be able to react or we will not be able to save lives. So I completely agree that we have to evolve as the hazards and the risks are evolving.

Same question for you.

I would probably take it from preparing really the ground, preparing the journalists, the civil society organizations, preparing all the different stakeholders when it comes to risk communication, when it comes to lifeline. And this is exactly what we saw. Like we have prepared the colleagues in Nepal, for instance, on lifeline programming. Whomever has the phone, whomever has the microphone, whomever is able to reach a thousand of followers can save lives during disasters, during emergencies. And this is something that we can find, we can find the ready so that we can act upon it whenever there is a situation that allows us. And I also think about investing more on the duration, as you said earlier, like before the disaster that happens. What we can learn from that specific moment, like the takeaways that happened, that we need to improve more here, there, we need to understand maybe the audience better than that. Probably what we are sharing with them is not accurate to the situation, so we can adapt. And later on, we can build on next steps, of course, together, all of us, we should unite our efforts as well. So I can't see when hands can clap, so we need all the different stakeholders, United Nations, civil society organizations, to put the efforts, not just funding, but direction, strategy towards one goal together. And this is how we can save lives, of course, through media, of course, but also this is the joint effort that we need to have on the ground.

Thank you very much, Khadija. We're coming to the end. One last question for you, Sujit. So the Early Warnings for All initiative, just as a reminder, founded in 2022 to ensure every person on the planet can be protected from disasters. You laid out the progress in your first answer today, but we're sitting here in 2026. There's only a year to go. Do you think we can reach that goal of early warning protection systems for every single person on the planet by 2027? What do we need to do to hit that target?

Thank you. In short, I would say we can reach the goal. As you said, we have to evolve and we have to really make this people-centered early warning a reality. People-centered early warning has been at the heart of the Early Warning for All initiative. This is where we really look at the last mile, which we talked about in the beginning. The more we invest in the last mile connectivity, last mile communication, last mile preparedness, I think this is where the Early Warning for All initiative will become really a reality. We have made tremendous progress on Early Warning for All initiative. It's an initiative with multitude of organizations coming together, really putting all their strengths together to address this big challenge. We have come a long way, and I think we are towards success. I would really emphasize that we have to invest more on the last mile. This is where the success lies.

Fantastic. Thank you very much. Thank you to Khadija Malej from BBC Media Action and Sujit Mohanty from United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. That's a hopeful message to end on that in a kind of crazy, complicated world where it's kind of hard to drive change, perhaps we can hit that target for 2027 of ensuring every single person on the planet is protected with early warning systems. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you, sir.

Why don't you sit here. All right, welcome back SDG Media Zone. For those of you here and for those of you around the world watching, we have a super interesting discussion in front of us now. I think to help us maybe answer a question we're all thinking about regularly these days, and that's securing reliable information in an AI-driven world. Let's all keep hoping we can find that reliable information. And we're going to talk about that right now. And so and to lead us to that conversation is Eseohe Ahabam and Yamasaki, who is the head of communications at Springer Nature. Eseohe, the floor is yours.

Good afternoon. Thanks so much for joining us today. We're going to be talking about securing reliable information in an AI driven world. And I have with me today Bernadette Meehan, the CEO of Wikimedia Foundation, and Melissa Fleming, the UN Undersecretary General for the Department of Global Communications. As generative AI reshapes how information is created, consumed, and trusted, the digital commons are facing growing challenges of sustainability and exploitation. In this conversation, we're going to be talking about the crisis of content reuse and what happens when AI systems and platforms extract value from open knowledge sources like Wikipedia, like the UN's vast sources of data and information, without reciprocal support. What does this mean for information, sustainability, and integrity worldwide? I'd like to first ask you both to introduce your work a bit for those who may not be familiar and help us understand how it is your work relates to the topic at hand today. Melissa, you first.

Thanks. Well, I think it relates a lot because the UN is the source of so much information about the state of our world. I mean, we have the statistics of human suffering. We have the data on climate change. We have records of how implementation of the SDGs are going. We have so much information on what is happening in the theaters of war. And this is information that actually my job at the Department of Global Communications is to make available to people because access to credible, reliable, factual, scientific information is a human right. But it's also my job. And I have to say, having led communications at the UN Secretariat for the last seven years, I have an amazing team working to push this information out into the digital ecosystem. But the forces are against us. It's becoming so much harder. And I'm looking forward to addressing that challenge in this panel today.

Thanks so much. Bernadette.

So I am the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit that operates and defends Wikipedia. one of the top 10 most visited websites in the world, and 11 other Wikimedia projects. We essentially underpin everything that you see on the internet. We turn 25 years old this year. We have 250,000 volunteer citizens around the world who dedicate their time to update and contribute to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. We have 67 million articles in more than 300 languages, and we receive 15 billion page views per month. We underpin in this new AI ecosystem a lot of the information that you're receiving in your LLMs and new emerging technologies. And I likewise look forward to talking about what that means for open source data in this day and age in this new emerging ecosystem.

Thanks so much, Bernadette. You're quite right. Open source data, open research, open scientific and research platforms are increasingly being discussed. Let's talk a little bit, Bernadette, about how it is that Wikipedia is being used today and the role that it plays in the open knowledge ecosystem, and perhaps what some benefits you see are where AI is concerned, as well as perhaps a core challenge.

Wow. So we underpin, as I said, the internet, and we have for 25 years. In a changing ecosystem, we are one of the largest and most trusted data sets for LLMs as they're training new models and as they roll out projects to give people answers through chatbots, through voice assistants, and other emerging technology. We find in this ecosystem, less people coming directly to the Wikipedia website to read long-form encyclopedic articles, so we are also out They are answering the question, not only how do we get people to come to Wikipedia, but what do we do to say, how do we bring Wikipedia to people? And that's through forms like short form video showing up in places like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, where we know younger generations are engaging and seeking out sources of knowledge. of the reasons we are so vital in this moment is because of the principles and the values that underpin Wikipedia. Things like transparency. You can see every single edit that is made. We have an average of 364 edits being made per minute. We are neutral. Every article has to adopt a neutral point of view. We seek to inform, but not to persuade. We don't monetize. We don't sell ads. We don't track your behavior. There's no algorithm. We are not trying to convince you of a particular point of view, and that makes us incredibly valuable in this moment. The last point I would say that makes us valuable, especially in this debate, is the fact that we have on every Wikipedia article a talk page where you can go and literally see the human hive brain at work. Every single edit that has ever been made, even to the most controversial of topics, you can see when it was made, why it was made, and who made it. And I think that gets lost a little bit in this AI ecosystem, which is a challenge. the opportunities are. Wikipedia's mission is to ensure that the sum of all human knowledge is accessible by every single human being on Earth. It is indeed a human right, we believe, to have access to information. And AI can be used to supercharge that mission. It's a channel to do so. But the challenges are, there's a lack of attribution. Oftentimes, we are being scraped, which has a toll on our infrastructure, both in terms of cost and personnel. Chatbots and LLMs and AI systems use our content, but they don't attribute it, which means we see declines in page views and readership, which means less people are editing Wikipedia, less people are donating to Wikipedia. So the challenge is, how do we keep open data and free knowledge, that ecosystem, healthy and generative, even as we are more vital than ever, but less visible than ever?

Wow, that's a great way of articulating not just the importance of Wikipedia to the knowledge ecosystem, but also some of the challenges that we're seeing now. Similarly, at Springer Nature, where we have thousands upon thousands of research papers and several thousand journals also, many of which are open access and thus free to the public, to researchers, to policymakers, and so on, we care very much about information sustainability and research integrity. And attribution is an important aspect of that. We actually recently ran a survey where we asked researchers, how do you feel about LLMs citing your work? And they were fine when there was attribution with it. So Melissa, let me put the same question to you around this crisis of content reuse, I suppose we could call it, that Bernadette just spoke to. How does the UN function as a source of open knowledge? And what happens when AI systems and platforms extract information and value from open knowledge sources like Wikipedia, the UN, Springer Nature, without the reciprocal support that's needed to sustain and maintain these platforms?

I think we're in a very similar situation. I mean, we actually want to be scraped. but we want the attribution as well. We want to be linked back to and we're seeing those links crashing. So we, yeah, we're not in the position to request any kind of compensation, But because we believe so much that we want UN information, and it's our goal to be as accessible as possible to as many people as possible in the languages that they speak and in the platforms where they get their information. And so we are grappling now with how we can leverage these large language models And we're, you know, we've been told just forget SEO, like Google search optimization, that role just doesn't exist anymore. You shouldn't even bother. You need to start thinking about different kinds of content, taking the same data, the same information and building attractive pieces of content to content. So the LLMs will come and search for it and scrape it. I'm like, oh my God, this sounds like a whole team is needed because, well, first of all, there's one simple thing you can do, but it's time consuming. Get rid of the PDFs, apparently, because LLMs don't scrape PDFs. Of course, un.org and all of its ecosystem is full of PDF with rich reports. So that's one thing. But also, as you said, we need to create content that is attractive blogs. But at the same time, it is quite frustrating that this has to become another profession. I just wanted to point out we're concerned, interestingly, Springer, Wikimedia, the UN are trying to attract LLMs. Others who actually rely on being compensated are shutting walls around themselves. Many media organizations are putting up barriers to LLMs. And so what could be happening is actually a weakening of that information environment. Google search and other summaries are now making it easy for us when we search and we no longer see this kind of menu of news and information that you can choose from. Instead, we have this convenient summary. But what we're often seeing, if you actually take the time to go to the link, that the source is not necessarily credible. And there have been studies that very often they're a Reddit post, an opinion of someone. So it is a massive challenge for those of us who really deeply care about our information ecosystem, deeply care about facts and science, because we need facts and we need trust in those facts to have a kind of shared reality and to have global cooperation to solve our world's problems.

Well, Melissa, that was, I think, a really great overview of what's changing about the, not just the knowledge ecosystem, but the way that we're able to access it. I love that you brought in, gosh, are we leaving SEO? Are we, we're all now building AI agents, I guess, right? And you've pointed out that there is, you know, while there is the opportunity, of course, for achieving more with less, there is this entirely new horizon for us to deal with. So I want to go further a bit into the challenge there that you raised. If open knowledge platforms and public information sources lose the funding or the support that helps keep them going, lose the contributors, when we talk about Wikipedia or Springer Nature, for example, what are the broader consequences you foresee? And I want to put that question to both of you, you touched on it a bit. Melissa. So perhaps, Bernadette, you let us let us know what you think we'll see coming down the pipeline.

Sure. So I think there are really existential questions at play here. One of them is access to information. if information increasingly becomes paywalled or barriers are put up, is the thesis then you have to have some degree of wealth to be able to access information? That's a really scary process and goes contrary to everything that Wikipedia believes, and I assume the UN as well, because we believe it is a fundamental human right that anyone can access and contribute to projects. So that's one, I think, really concerning area. The other is knowledge equity. And I think about knowledge equity in two different ways. One is, again, do you have to pay to access information? But The other is, if you have communities around the world that are not culturally dominant or not commercially attractive, does their knowledge not matter? Do their voices disappear? Do the voices of women go away? Do the voices of smaller communities in the global south no longer matter? And what happens to them if they aren't preserved in projects like Wikipedia or through the UN or other open data systems? Their voice just goes away from all of the context and the debate. And the other I think is, do we really wanna live in a world where a small concentrated number of governments and or entities determined what is relevant and what the perspective is that you are reading or researching or learning about? Do we wanna be in a world where DeepSeek tells you that Tiananmen Square Massacre is not a thing that took place? Because that's the future if we allow certain concentrated areas to determine what the information is that you have access to, and the only way really to prevent that from happening is ensuring that we are preserving this open knowledge commons and saying to these different entities, there is a space for all of us, but we have to have a mutually beneficial relationship in this ecosystem to prevent an over-concentration that ultimately could lead to results like cracks in democracy, cracks in access to information, degradation of human rights around the world. So I really do think it is an existential question. I think lots of available answers and solutions out there, but I think it will take real willpower by governments and by other actors throughout the ecosystem to commit to principles and values that keep it in a sort of balance that benefits all of humanity.

Wow, that's quite a vision for us to consider in thinking through what some of the ramifications could be if we don't see continued support. One of the things that we've done at Springer Nature is launch an early career researcher program where we train researchers on different subjects and mentor them around AI regulations. And our focus is trying to prepare the next generation for these coming changes so They can take advantage of the opportunities that that are available. I want to put this question to both of you as well. And starting with you, Melissa. We've been talking here about information sustainability, right? Ensuring that these. platforms can continue to exist and that those engaging with them can continue to benefit from them. And I think it hits at the heart of SDG 16, peace, justice and strong institutions and public access, open access to information is key to that. What can the UN, government, civil society, policymakers, scientists, researchers, everyday people, what can we do to ensure that reliable information doesn't become the privilege or purview of just a few, as you posited, Bernadette, but remains accessible to everyone. Melissa.

Yes. Well, we're in the SDG media zone. If there could be an 18th SDG, I would make it healthy information ecosystems, because it underpins every single one of the SDGs. Without a healthy information ecosystem, it's becoming increasingly difficult to make progress, including on peace. If you're living in a toxic information environment where people don't know what to trust or when they can't really access the information in the languages that they speak. I mean, Bernadette was speaking about that. I mean, the LLMs, I think it's like seven or eight languages that they're primarily working in, and there are 7,000 in the world. So the UN, first of all, is working on equalizing that kind of access. But also, we're putting tons of emphasis on information integrity. We launched a couple of years ago, the Secretary General here, UN Global Principles on Information Integrity, which is our blueprint for a healthy information ecosystem. And it looks not just at, you know, this perhaps what we always point to as the big problem, the social media platforms and now increasingly the LLMs. It looks at all the other elements, all the other actors and stakeholders in an information ecosystem that need to come together to make it strong. And so, You know, we're working through our offices around the world, through so many partners, many of them are here in this room, including the Wikimedia Foundation. And you represent journalism. Springer Nature as well. Springer Nature. You represent journalism and science and journalism. And this is, you know, having a free and independent media that is robust, well-financed, that works in the public interest is so critical to a healthy information environment. And so it is a great pleasure to be with both of you on this panel because you're doing so much to contribute to that.

Agreed, agreed. Thank you so much for those wise words. We've done similarly at Springer Nature in investing in research integrity, expanding our team that works on research integrity, and as I mentioned earlier, training for the community as well. and a debt a call to action please.

Sure so I will give you five or six meta calls to action and then a call to action for each and every individual in this room uh on a meta level I think it is things like how do we protect projects like wikimedia Wikipedia un projects um we understand as you said earlier that economic models enable some companies to survive, to put up paywalls, to sort of pull up the drawbridge, but we can't let that happen to the open ecosystem and the open knowledge ecosystem. So don't pull up the drawbridge, stay open and find ways to support that ecosystem. We can't overregulate. Regulations and legislation plays an important role in sort of ensuring that we have guardrails that keep all of this information safe, but it can't be done at the expense or leaving out organizations like Wikimedia Foundation or others because then what we find is we're lumped in with social media or with others. They don't think about the fact that some of this well-intentioned legislation means in some countries or in some cases, people are prevented from accessing encyclopedic content. So let's not sort of overthink without pulling in the relevant voices to ensure that we're keeping that balance. Another area is partnerships. One of the great partnerships Wikimedia Foundation has had with the UN is in certain countries around the world connecting local UN offices with Wikipedians to say, pull on this open data that the UN provides to continue to enhance the verifiability and the credibility of the articles that we have. So partnerships with like-minded organizations. We cannot be nostalgic. right? We all remember what life was like 25 years ago when phones weren't interrupting everything. We didn't have Blackberries and e-mail pinging all the time, a day before LLMs, but that's not the world that we live in, right? And if we allow ourselves to be run over without thinking proactively about how to shape this ecosystem, we will disappear, right? If we let others dominate that conversation. So we have to have a seat at the table, even if we're not the dominant players. And then the last two meta things I will say is we need to encourage governments and organizations who are in these powerful positions to adopt principles and values that encourage a sustainable, healthy, open ecosystem. We do not have the power and the influence to do that on our own, so we need people going to those in power to insist that this be part of this organizational symbiosis. last thing I will say on the meta level is we have to encourage these Frontier AI labs and other big tech to pay back into this ecosystem if you're going to scrape us as you said we want you to use our information but do it in a sustainable manager find grants to continue to attract editors to contribute to these projects scrape our sites in a responsible manner that there is a way for that to work but there has to be a will and for every individual in this room you all have something that you feel passionate about become a Wikipedia Wikipedia editor. Contribute to the source of all knowledge. You have a voice, you can use it. And if you have the means to do so, be a donor to these different types of projects to sustain us, to keep us independent, to ensure that we are not beholden to any sector, government, or corporate interest. So I think there are meta things that we can do, and there are individual things that each and every one of us in this room has the ability, the power, and the voice to do to contribute to the solution here.

Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope this was useful and the word I heard was open.

Thank you.

Welcome back to the SDG Media Zone. We're live from the UN headquarters in New York.

It's my pleasure to introduce this session and our wonderful moderator, Alice Ade.

Hi, everyone. What an honor to be here. We are here for this session to celebrate and spotlight visionary storytelling with real impact in what we know is such a pivotal moment for our planet. My name is Alice Aidi. As we heard, I'm a filmmaker, Nat Geo Explorer, and co-founder of Earthrise. Today, we have the great honor of being joined by Chief Zuma Shipaya. Her story, featured in Oscar shortlisted feature documentary, "Yanuni," was launched in an innovative campaign to producer Leo DiCaprio's YouTube channel two weeks ago. and it's already reached 3 million views. We'll be joined in conversation with director Richard Ladcany and executive producer Dax De Silva. Just before they join us, let's take a look at the trailer.

Indigenous people dying at alarming rates, victims of the onslaught of illegal mining.

It feels like a cliche almost, but honestly, the first time I saw this film, it left me utterly breathless. Please welcome Chief Juma Jipaya, Director Richard Ladcany, and Executive Producer Dax De Silva. Welcome. What was the message that you wanted to carry from the territory to the world? It's something that you've said that this is that message that you want to bring from home. What is that message?

Kamadu ti wai wai. It's a salutation of my people.

This is in my people's language. I salute you all.

There have been many, but to me the most important one, not only as a.

Chief, as a leader, but as a mother, as a human being, I think the main objective was understanding.

Yanuni, as a tool of fight, but especially as a megaphone, from.

The grounds of the Amazon to the world, and saying, And not talking only about the impacts, but especially saying that we need to exist and not only resist.

Eu quero viver como qualquer um de vocês.

Eu quero poder criar os meus filhos e ver eles crescerem. Continuar sonhando e construindo tantos outros futuros.

Não somente para os meus filhos ou para.

O meu território, mas.

Is essential, but this is essential for all of the peoples, and not only for a single or for a country or a territory, or a territory.

And also not only for us indigenous peoples. Everyone deserves to be respected and live.

As suas vidas de acordo com as.

Suas culturas, no seu território de origem. Então.

Essa foi a grande esperança.

Em trabalhar nesse projeto.

É isso. Existir.

It also means he exists.

Yeah, and that's the message, existing and not only resisting.

Thank you so much, Zuma. Richard, Zuma describes the megaphone. The film feels that way. It feels loud. It's a global story. And yet it is made with this breathtaking intimacy, actually. I'm curious how you came to meet Zuma. your approach in making this project and why you feel this kind of story can create the change that we know needs to happen.

Well, it all started with trying to find a really good approach to talk about the Amazon and to talk about what's happening there. And from my work, I understand that the only way to reach people's hearts and to make them like rise up and rethink what's happening in the world and actually do something about it is if they're truly touched. So I was looking for someone that can transport these problems, but also these emotions and the war of what's going on there in a very powerful way. So when I met Juma, I instantly knew that she has this power to reach people's hearts. And not only that, but she was also at a very critical time in her life where things were really happening. to her and her family. She just survived the sixth attempt on her life and she was in hiding. And I knew that if I would be allowed to spend time with her and follow her, that we would be able to tell a really incredible story. And I believe in storytelling. I think if you want to change something, you need to be able to tell people a good story, a story that has a middle, a beginning and an end. And her story doesn't really have an end because it's an ongoing fight. But I knew spending time with her, one, two, three years, in the end it turned out to be six years of production, we would be able to witness things that will truly respond with people. When they see that, it will be like a call to action. Oh my God, look at her risking her life every day together with her husband, Hugo Loss, to resist and to fight. And it inspires you to see people like that. And that's why when I met Juma, I wanted this to be a really big film, a big production, and I needed people also to see it, because with making such a film comes a huge responsibility. You know, they are putting their lives on the line to be in the film. You need to get it out there. So we decided to put it on the one platform that is seen everywhere in the world. Actually, I think the biggest platform right now for anyone, which is YouTube. Because YouTube doesn't have an entry barrier. Anyone can see it from anywhere. So it was very important for us that people in Brazil see it, people in the territories see it, the enemy sees it, people that are trying to kill them. And that's why we just did that two weeks ago. And we had an incredible success, incredible launch. And it was also done at a critical time, one month before the next elections in Brazil. So it was all very much timed. And we also put it on a channel that is widely, you know, noticed, which is our producer's, Leonardo DiCaprio's YouTube channel. And it became a big success.

Thank you, Richard. Dax, I know that you share Richard's passion for storytelling and you have for many years. This film would not have happened without you. Why, same to you, why this story? And why fund this kind of storytelling around conservation, around nature-based planet-focused stories.

Yeah, as a producer and an investor, I'm always looking for what are the best ways that we can tackle these large challenges that we have on our planet. And whether it's an Oscar shortlisted documentary like Yanuni or it's on the ground conservation, there's many approaches, but storytelling is such an important tool to to protect nature and to fight for indigenous rights, the protectors of these environmental services, these huge forests and these ecosystems we all rely upon on the planet. And this is such a special story. It's the rise of an indigenous icon, Juma Shipaya, from an activist to being a part of Brazil's newly created Ministry of Indigenous Peoples. And that's that political story. And it's also Hugo Loss' story, her husband, who is fighting for the Amazon in a very physical way with raids on illegal gold mines. And it's a love story, and it's real life. You know, it's on the front lines. And so as the audience, you are brought into that frontline fight. And it's a call to action for us to join that fight. They cannot risk their lives without our partnership, without our support. You know, and that's what the power of storytelling is, because if the people care, then the government has to respond. And that's that is the power that this the storytelling that that that we've brought to the the widest audience possible. It's important to have this be seen by as many people, not just in Brazil, but around the world, because this is our common planet, our common Amazon. So storytelling is is the support that the on the ground conservation needs from from the the zeitgeist, from the, from the mindset of everybody.

Dax describes, you know, this is the story from the front line, your front line. Um, and I'm curious if you could share what, what is the situation currently at home?

Thank you very much for this question.

Because many people who sometimes stop to listen to us, or those who watch the Yanuni film, believe.

That it's as if the story has ended, as if the struggle has ended.

They believe that it's as if the story has ended, that the fight has ended. Iannone is not a fiction. I didn't follow a script written by Richard or by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Richard witnessed. For over three years, with.

The lens of his cameras.

Not only my life, not only Hugo's life, not only the fight of indigenous peoples, but.

The fight of many people and many peoples.

Que estão todos os dias defendendo as florestas, que não é só a Amazônia, defendendo.

Os rios, os biomas, os animais. the sacred spiritual being. So there are many institutions such as IBAMA and people who are also at the government who fight and defend with their own lives as I do, as many other women and other peoples.

So Yanunni, the fight, this story, it doesn't end when the film ends.

On the ground of the territory, we continue resist, every single day, and not only resisting, but working alongside and with the forest, on the territory. from the ground of the territory, with the children, with the women, with the elders, with our sacred and ancestral knowledge, because it's from the ground of the territory, it's in the forest, in the rivers, that we can find the solution.

The solution?

The solution, the climate solution, a solution which is so much discussed in governments and countries.

But close your ears and your eyes, and.

They close their eyes and ears and sometimes, many times, they don't admit que a solução está na floresta em pé, está com os povos, está com os guardiões, os guardiões não somente da floresta, mas desses saberes vivos.

Knowledge and we believe.

And we respect precisely this and we work from the ground of the territory with the Juma Institute.

Thank you, Juma. And on that note of the Institute, this film, as you've both said, is of course credit to the power of storytelling, but it's also about real impact. And I know that tomorrow as a team, you will be launching the Yanuni Fund, which will be in support of the Instituto Juma. Dax, can you speak to the importance of that and how people can support?

Yeah, it starts with It starts with the storytelling, but it has to have an impact, a lasting impact. And so the impact campaign, which is what we're talking about, the Yanuni Fund, this will go on to support those projects, to partner and strengthen these projects in the territory, in Juma's home village of Karima, but serving the entire territory, supporting indigenous rights, women's leadership, the traditional medicine and all the traditions, upholding the traditions of the people and making sure that every generation that leaves the territory for education and comes and returns has that love of the traditions that will keep the nature and the forest for generations. Because if there isn't that traditional knowledge preserved and strengthened, it is a risk of disappearing. And that's the importance. We started this with Dr. Jane Goodall. We visited the late Dr. Jane Goodall, visited Juma's village with Richard in 2023 and began this project with the Institute of Juma. And now we're looking with the Anuini Fund to have five years of continuing strengthening of this foundation, this impact campaign, supported also by Earth Alliance and Rewild.

Incredible. And Richard, Zuma so powerfully said her message to the world, the megaphone, to exist, to resist. I wonder, having traveled around the world with this film, countless awards, every possible festival, Oscar shortlisted, now reaching millions on YouTube, what is your hope and message that you would like to bring as the director?

Thanks for that. Look, the hope is that we can reach people's hearts around the world and that they listen to indigenous leader Juma Shipaya about rethinking the way we consider the natural world, how we deal with it. Because, you know, it's there for us, it's there for our future, for our children, for the next generations. And I've not found anyone as strong and powerful as Juma to deliver that message. So if we have reached people's hearts with this film around the world, and if they start to think, okay, how can we kind of influence our decisions in the future? And very often those influences happen when you vote, you know, who will be our next leader? Then hopefully they will vote for someone who takes care of the natural world, who protects it, who wants to preserve it. And we all know that right now the decisions are always very black and white, and you know who you should vote for. So we think this film could be a tool. It could be used by NGOs, by others, by many, many people to show the world there is a way. The indigenous people have the solutions. They know how to protect the forest. But we need leadership that supports them, that protects them, that preserves the future.

Chief Shuma Shipaya, Richard Laikani, Daxa Silva, thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Hello, everyone. My name is David Pedroza. I work in climate communications here at the United Nations. And I would like to welcome everyone to two very special sessions here in our SDG media zone, exploring the intersection between climate and entertainment. We've been very lucky. We've been lucky enough to have collaborated with the Hollywood Climate Summit, one of the entertainment industry's most influential platforms for climate action and storytelling. Introducing the first panel are two forces of nature in climate advocacy, Hollywood Climate Summit co-founders Heather Phipps and Alison Begelman. Alison and Heather, thank you for the collaboration here today and for your amazing and tireless work. Thank you.

Hello.

Hello. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Heather Phipps. I am a co-founder and executive director of Hollywood Climate Summit. And our main organization is Context Collaborative. What we do is mobilize the media ecosystem to drive attention to climate and put it in context of culture and what has a lot of meaning in people's lives. Our philosophy is there are many people who are trying to drive attention to climate issues, to contextualize it, and lives. We start with the communicators and we believe in bringing them into the conversation at the beginning. We believe in their leadership. They are already engaging the public, have their attention for a number of hours a day, engaging them on everything from film, TV, video games, podcasts, YouTube, and we bring them to the table in spaces of leadership and we connect them with climate leaders to really strategize on the ways that we can engage the public together. Our biggest room that we create is the Hollywood Climate Summit, where we bring climate experts together with leaders of the entertainment industry across the sector. And we then, from that point of departure, engage in building bridges of collaboration between those spaces, which I think is what's really important and exciting. And we're excited to be here as an expression of that. It's been an honor collaborating with the United Nations to put this segment together. So thank you for that. And I'll pass it to Allison to introduce it.

Yes, thank you so much. Thank you, Andy and Alexandra and David and the whole team. So today we want obviously to hear from the creatives themselves to contextualize how they are integrating climate into their work, what works, what isn't working, strategies, et cetera. So here we're gonna have our first panel, which is comedies climate strategy. You're gonna have some incredible comedians, late night television writers, and hosted by a Shell Winkley, incredible meteorologist and creator. So I will passed off to Shel. Thank you guys so much.

Howdy, friends. How are we today? Good? A little louder. How are we today, everybody? Good. Alright, we're going to we're going to pep this room up here in just a bit. Um yeah, my name is Shel Winkley. I am with Climate Central. I'm a chief meteorologist. I'm an engagement specialist. I spent about 20 years being a broadcast meteorologist in the great state of Texas. The stars at night are where you say big and bright. Ready? Let's try that again. The stars at night are deep in the heart of Texas. All right. Yeah. So I spent about 20 years doing that. And now I work with anybody who really wants to talk about climate change, our trusted messengers who can really tell the stories. The way I put it is climate central, we're really good at the science and the data, but we're not good at the local stories. So we localize that and we help tell the stories about why climate change matters. And that is all you need to know about why they handed me a microphone. With me today, we've got Nicole Conlin and Stuart Goldsmith, instead of doing that really awkward thing where I read about their lives and then they have to sit here and listen to me read about their lives, I want them to tell you about their lives. So Nicole, can we start with you?

Yeah, I don't know how much detail you want me to go into, but I'm--.

Start, the day you were born, was it raining? Was it sunny?

It would have been late fall, so probably not. I'm a writer for The Daily Show. Previously, I was a writer for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. I'm a comedian. I have a podcast called The Climate Deniers Playbook, where we talk about climate myths and misinformation with my friend and fellow climate comedian, Ronny Williams. and I'm really excited to be here. Is that everything? Did I cover it all?

Favorite season?

Fall.

Fall, okay, yes, that's good. All right, Stuart.

Hey, thanks for having me. So my name's Stuart Goldsmith. I've come in from the UK. I've been a standup comedian in the UK for the last 20 years, and in the last four and a half years, I have started to focus entirely on standup comedy about the climate crisis. So I'm currently on tour with my second hour, it's called "Canary," and that's a show that is entirely about the climate and our reactions to it our hypocrisy and our guilt and how we grapple with things. So I'm also the host of the Comedians Comedian podcast, which has been going 14 years, which is the only not funny comedy podcast where I try and find out the kind of creative and resilient secrets of my fellow comics. And I've been using all of those skills in my own comedy practice and to talk about the climate.

And Stu, your favorite season, if you would.

Summer.

Summer.

Yeah. Even this summer? I'm basic. I like summer. It's nice.

Even this summer that the UK just had.

Yes. Well, I did spend the summer, so I was at London Climate Action Week. Sorry to bring that up, everyone here in New York, in the beginning of June, where we were being rocked by heat waves. And it was incredible seeing speaker after speaker open their keynotes effectively by going. It was really quite intense over time, yeah.

Very good, very good. All right, so let's start with a question for both of you. Comedy usually punches at what we would call a power or norm, right? So who's the usual target when you're doing climate comedy? Is it me, this optimistic guy who thinks we can talk our way out of this problem, who knows we can talk our way out of this problem? Is it the audience, the deniers, fossil fuel industry, or is there something else when you're landing these jokes?

I think one of the best pieces of writing advice I've ever gotten was when I was working at the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and I asked one of our executive producers, like, I want to write more about climate change. it feels overwhelming and sad and I don't know how to talk about it. And the piece of advice he gave me was, are you guys familiar with the Mr. Rogers story where he told kids to look for the helpers.

Yeah.

Yeah. After 9/11, kids were very sad about it. They were like, how can we keep going? He was like, look for the helpers, children. And when I'm doing climate comedy, what my executive producer told me is look for the non helpers. Look for the people who are making it worse. Look for the people who are distracting us, looking for the people who are doing stuff and so that might be in some cases you know a clear-eyed optimist who thinks that we don't have to do hard work to get there but more often than not it is figures in media it is politicians it is the fossil fuel companies it is you know the guy down the street who refuses to give up his big loud truck that kind of thing.

Being from Texas I know about.

Those your kind of guy yeah.

Let me ask you a real quick question on that is a lot a lot of, at least where I find my time trying to undo is a lot of the misinformation or maybe just even misdirected information, maybe even people who don't know what they're doing. But is there a way to do that, looking for someone who's not a helper? Is there a way through comedy to help to break apart that misinformation and actually get information through.

I think my experience with my podcast about climate misinformation has not necessarily been that like people are coming to comedy to really do a deep by deep, a deep step by step breakdown of each piece of climate science and climate myth. But I think what is helpful with climate comedy is it gives people an entry point and it it feels like so often when there is climate talk going on or they're making some kind of argument against change you're like I don't know that much about climate and I don't feel like I'm really qualified to have this conversation but anybody is qualified to be like Senator Imhoff brought a snowball to the floor of Congress. That's stupid. That's a stupid, dumb thing. And I think it allows people to start talking about it without feeling like they need a level of expertise that they don't have.

Like a little open the door.

Exactly.

Stu, what about you?

I have quite a different answer to that. Although I do make fun of those organizations and fossil fuel companies, I've got some material about how a fossil fuel company popularized the idea of the carbon footprint in order to turn the I. name them we know who they are.

It's BP we can say it.

They are a British Petroleum company if that helps but although I do go for those kind of people I don't spend too much time making fun of for example climate deniers because I think we know 86% of people worldwide want more action on climate my target really for my comedy a lot of the time is myself and it's my own hypocrisy I'm skewering the fact that I don't know how to respond that I swing between hope and despair I'm trying to be vulnerable and open up about the fact that I find it completely overwhelming sometimes or that I flew to the States to talk about the climate which is bad but it's better than flying across the Atlantic and not talking about the climate so I'm I'm trying to make fun of those and try and find in comedy we say the problems are the material and wow aren't there loads of problems in the climate catastrophe so I'm trying to examine those ambiguities the difficulties and the hypocrisies that we all exist as we exist under climate capitalism trying to break in those things ultimately try and give my audiences permission to feel joy, like permission to grapple with it, permission to go, wow, this is incredibly hard and it's not weird. You're not weird or broken if you yourself swing between hope and despair.

You know what I like to do on an airplane? Go on. I'd like to start conversations about climate change. Yeah. Because it is really hard when I'm sitting there, I can see them see me working. Sometimes I'm like, yeah, I work in climate change, which feels really weird being on an airplane. But it's interesting. I think you mentioned it about just people talking about disinformation. I think a lot of times people do get confused. And in my experience, at least, if they're asking a question, even if they're coming at it as like they don't maybe believe in climate change, if they're asking the question, they want to have a conversation. I think that's the power of what both of you have here. Stu, stay on you for a second. You've built an entire stand-up hours, not just bits, but hours based off of the climate crisis. So what did you learn about your audience's tolerance for the subject once you gave it a full hour, maybe, than just a couple of lines?

Well, I have to say, I think in the beginning, I was hopelessly naive because when I started to stand up about the climate, I honestly thought my audiences were going to go, finally, finally, someone's talking about this deep, scary, complex thing that's apparently a long way off and implicates us all deeply. That was not the reaction. So I had to work out how to get them to trust me. And then once they did trust me and I could push them into some darker or less comfortable places, I did start to find that there is really an appetite, there is really a tolerance for it. As well as doing public shows, I also do lots of work for sustainability departments of big organizations. And there what I try to do is help it feel a bit more visceral and real and meaningful and a bit more easy to engage with rather than as we've all seen if you talk about the climate people can treat it a bit like a health and safety briefing and they sort of nod and smile and blink and you can see it wash over their head so I think actually giving people as long as you have some kind of authentic connection to the real feelings and the vulnerabilities that people are really going through then I think you can you can actually depend on them for quite a lot they really will go with you on the subject.

Have you ever heard someone stumble into one of your shows not knowing what they're getting into and they're like and get up and walk out.

Yes, I have. I'm happy to have retained most of those people. I don't want to turn them away. I'm not out to, I don't want to reject anyone or kind of turn them away. Some there there's been a far fewer heckling than I anticipated. I have had one one lady in Cardiff in Wales heckled me on the basis that she thought that Extinction Rebellion, you know, kind of popular activist group. Uh she thought they were all paid employees of the deep state. So, that's but that's an there's there's very little comic mileage in that.

That's a long thing to heckle.

Yeah, yeah, it was.

Standing up at a show and heckling that takes some time.

She really believed in herself and I I didn't want to silence a mum but I think that engaging with that is one thing. You can get some laughs out of that. But the reality is that someone who has been misled and I don't know whether it's part of my manifesto to reach out and try and convert the relatively small number of of climate deniers. Only 10% really of people climate deniers. That number's inflated, ostensibly because of social media. And that number, of course, does go up to 40% in the US Senate.

All right, Nicole, so when you're looking at a headline or a news segment, you're finding that clip of somebody holding a snowball, right? What do you need to translate it into a format like The Daily Show? Like, what's the process for finding the fun in it when there's sometimes not a lot of fun in it, which we just talked about? Like, can you share an example? Like, how do you go about doing that?

I think there's a few different things that we think about. One thing that is tricky with late night comedy is that our audience is coming to see what the big news story of today is. And climate can be, I mean, it is rapidly speeding up, but it can be a very slow moving crisis. So there's not a lot of like front page New York Times news about a climate initiative or a climate crisis. And so we do have a responsibility to the audience who showed up to see, you know, whatever gasp the president made to talk about that. Where I think The Daily Show has an advantage over other late night shows is because we're a parody news show. In the second act, we can do a piece about climate change. So this week we just did a piece where our correspondent Michael Kosta went out and interviewed this guy who's trying to individually do solar geoengineering by releasing balloons into the atmosphere. So that was a great way to talk to this guy who Michael Kosta was very able to kind of needle and poke fun at and we can edit it in ways where he's like, I don't really know how chemistry works. And that's very funny. But in order to understand what he's doing, we have to explain to you, what is solar geoengineering? How does climate change work? Why would we be reflecting sunlight away from the earth? So we're able to kind of your vegetables in there that way. And then when we're trying to put climate stories in the headline, in the monologue, you know, we kind of discovered a while ago that like doing stories or doing jokes about like how many degrees Celsius the temperature is going to increase and how many, you know, how much sea level is going to rise is a little bit abstract for people to understand. So a lot of what we try to do is to connect it to things that are very tangible for people, which is sort of what you were talking about and what Heather said at the top. So people might not understand like the way the jet stream is changing, but they understand if their flight's going to have more turbulence. They understand if beer is going to get more expensive and maybe be shortages. So those are the kind of topics that we'll take on because it's just easier for the audience to understand.

I think someone asked me the other day, they said, why, what is your thing? Like, what is it about climate change that you want to solve because you love this thing? And I was like, beer, that's it. I can't have beer, like my beer doesn't taste as good.

I grew up in Colorado, I'm a huge ski bum. Like, it's okay to fight against climate change for selfish reasons. That's allowed.

Right, exactly.

And I love this, just to interject, I love the idea of sneaking your vegetables in. I do that as well. I think that's really important. Sometimes it can be very difficult to explain. There's a bit of material I'm always chasing around, trying to explain what 1.5 really means. Everyone in this marquee outside the UN knows what 1.5 means. They know what the significance of that is. But I don't if it's been well communicated. I think a lot of people think, oh, 20 degrees today, 21.5 tomorrow, fine. So you have to do a certain amount of explaining. You've got to go, there are some vegetables, and we need to understand that there are some vegetables. But now please enjoy this smorgasbord of other vegetables, other things like this. And you need to sneak them in, but it's really difficult sometimes. And that's part of the attraction, I think. That's part of the challenge, is how do you get people to understand solar geoengineering or whatever that whatever the subject is, how do you get them to-- I feel like I'm constantly learning. There's constant back and forth with an audience going, what do people actually know about this? And of course, the more I research it, and I'm sure you're the same, the more my feed, my various algorithms all become siloed. And I feel like, oh, everyone's talking about climate all the time. And I've got to just turn that all off and go and look out the window, go, no, no, a lot of people still aren't talking about this enough.

Yeah, there's a climate communicator and scientist named Catherine Hayhoe, who I think is wonderful, and she often says the most important thing you can do to fight climate change is talk about it all the time. And I think the most valuable thing about using comedy to talk about climate change is it just makes it accessible to people in a way that facts and numbers might not.

Yeah, I was at an event just yesterday afternoon that Catherine Hayhoe was putting on. She's great, she's awesome. So it's comedy for you with her, it was an analogy tied to music, you can play something solo, but better as a band you know so like there's these different analogies different ways to sneak that broccoli in every now and again all right so there's a lot of guilt you know a little background about me I like to say this side of me is is the Jewish half of me. My dad was Jewish. So my nana and my aunt, man, when I tell you that Jewish guilt is on me like nobody's business. This side of me, mama was Catholic. So that Catholic guilt is also on me, right? So I feel a lot of guilt in my life. So when it comes to guilt that people might have because of what they heard or because they're on an airplane or because they're just trying to live their life, how individual choices make it sometimes impossible for us to be perfect climate communicators or perfect stewards of this earth. So how can laughing at ourselves kind of help us with these new conversations that we can have to connect climate change to what we're doing today?

Yeah, I think guilt is really interesting because really the guilt doesn't belong to us. The guilt belongs to the fossil fuel companies, right? And it's so easy to get waylaid. Obviously, there are some contradictory things. I think that we should all change the way that we travel, but I still flew here and I'll fly back at the end of the week. So I'm aware of those contradictions and it's really easy to get caught up in But if we do that, it keeps us completely inert and that plays into the hands of the fossil fuel companies. So one of the things when I'm swinging towards the more hope end of the spectrum is just thinking, how dare I feel guilty when that guilt belongs to the fossil fuel companies? They've known for 70 years, they made hundreds of billions of dollars through doing something. I have a photocopy of a memo, an internal memo from a fossil fuel company that's like dated 1982 that proves they knew that burning their product would create global warming. That memo is no longer, that photocopy is no longer pinned to our fridge because marriage is based on compromise. But I see that stuff and I think, how can I possibly feel guilt about this? Because if I feel guilt, that plays into their hands. If I green hush myself, if I do a thing with audiences very often where I solicit people's climate confessions, because I think we have to undermine this notion of the purity test, that if you yourself don't lead a perfectly carbon-free, guilt-free life, then you don't deserve an opinion on the climate crisis. Some guy said he puts his pyjamas in the dryer before he goes to bed so they're all nice and snuggly and he secretly feels bad about it. That bad feeling isn't going to change the world, it's just going to shut him down and stop him talking about the climate, as Professor Hayhoe says we have to do. That was his confession. Mine was that I made fun of him at the time and then I went home and tried it and it's absolutely fantastic.

One, when you say that it only benefits the oil companies, that is absolutely 100% right. One thing that we talk about on my podcast a lot is there's like every few years a new commercial comes out that's like, oh, you hate oil? Well, what if everything that had oil in it disappeared? And it'll be like somebody driving to work and it'll be like their car disappears and then, oh no, their shoes disappear because there were plastics in that and then their glasses disappear and they can't see. So like, it's really your fault for going to work, wearing shoes, and improving your vision, like, like, when you are made to feel bad for your individual choices, it stops us for acting, it stops us from acting collectively in a way that will allow us to make different choices. I could go home and I could tell people on the mountain that I grew up on, you have to walk to work, and they'd be like, okay, it's 40 miles and that's just not a possibility. So we need to look for systemic change. And the only way to do that is by not blaming each other for individual actions and directing our energy at the people who made the world the way it is.

I was about to throw my glasses for the sake of the bit and then I realized that'd be a terrible idea.

But I think that's the same. We see climate activists all the time being interviewed by news anchors who are saying, well, how did you get here? What's your watch made of? What are your clothes made of? All of these kind of fossil fuel, plastic related things. And you just end up thinking, how naked do you want me to be before I'm entitled to an opinion? Yeah, you know, like fossil fuels, they got us this far and their time is over and we have to transition away from them as fast as we possibly can.

One thing that I will say is I think Gen. Z is getting much better than my generation was about being like, why is there oil in ******* everything? Sorry, it's the UN. I don't know if I'm allowed to swear in everything. Like now there are, you see on TikTok, Like Gen. Z people who are in the clothing resale market for example are starting to realize I'm trying to buy a sweater and they're all made of plastic and I don't want any of this and I think there is a growing awareness that we actually haven't been given a choice to be sustainable in many circumstances So I'm cautiously optimistic about Gen. Z and Gen. Alpha in that regard.

I do like a good cautious optimism and I think there's one piece that kind of pulling out of both of what you just said is thinking about it as the people we Are you a doctor? Are you a comedian? Are you a meteorologist? Are you a podiatrist? Whoever you might be, like using who you are for that. Okay, we are about to be out of time. Nicole, very quickly, where can we check out the Climate Deniers Playbook?

You can check out the Climate Deniers Playbook anywhere you get your podcasts. We're on Patreon, and you're actually coming in at the perfect time because we're dropping a new season next week where we're talking about stuff like AI is going to fix climate change. We're talking about stuff like why the Hyperloop failed. We're talking about, I thought sea levels were going to be rising by now, that kind of stuff. So please tune in. I'm really excited about this season.

And it's going to be funny, right?

Yes, absolutely.

Okay. And Stu, you've got some comedy that we can follow. You've got your upcoming show, Canary. Where can we find those?

For sure. I just want to shout out the Climate Deniers Playbook, genuinely excellent podcast, and also Climate Town. You work on that with me.

Yeah, I work on Climate Town with Raleigh.

Absolutely brilliant, funny, great climate information. My show is called Canary. It's on tour at the minute. You can find out all your details at stuartgoldsmith.com. You can follow me. If you're a public fan, you can follow me Stuart Goldsmith Comedy on Instagram, or to my chagrin, if you're a sustainability person, you can follow me on LinkedIn, but only if you're a decision maker, let's not waste each other's time, all right?

All right, we got Stuart Goldsmith, we got Nicole Carlin. I wanna say a very big thank you to the Hollywood Climate Summit for putting us up here on the stage, and thank you to you for being here today. Thank you. Thank you all.

Hi, everyone. I'm told we're live. So hello, I'm Allison back again for our second session of the Hollywood Climate Summit and UN SDG Media Zone programming. Today, you're going to hear from some incredible creators and authors and musicians to talk about how they're engaging their fan bases, which are super unique and diverse, and contextualizing climate for them. I won't waste any more time, we have the incredible Melissa Navia, actor, writer, producer, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds here to moderate the session. And so I will pass over to Melissa and bring up our incredible panel, one of whom is still en route, by the way, but making it through security. Thank you.

All right, come on down, guys. Hello. Hello everyone, thanks for joining us today. Today we are talking about climate action, storytelling, and fandoms, and how all three can come together to genuinely and positively impact our world in ways we never thought possible. I have four amazing creators with me today. One of them, just like the rest of us, is, or how we were, is currently stuck in security. So he will join us when he gets through security. So my name is Melissa Navia. I come from the world of Star Trek, from the Star Trek franchise, we are currently celebrating. Yeah, all the way. Trekkies in the house. Yes, we are currently celebrating our 60th year anniversary. And as an actor in the world of Star Trek, I know how powerful fandoms can be and how storytelling really can change lives. And one of our mottos in Star Trek is ad astra per aspera, which is to the stars through hardship. And if we're talking about climate action, climate storytelling, we know just how real those words can be. Now, this panel, like I said, brings together four creators who have built massive devoted audiences around cooking, fashion, music, and science. and who have found their way to climate storytelling through their passions. So I'm gonna ask you guys to introduce yourselves because you can do a much better job at it than I can. And Pedro will be joining us very soon. So let's start first by I'll ask you a question and then you guys can give me a wonderful answer and also tell us a little bit about what you do, who you are, even though I have a funny feeling anybody watching this right now knows. So your content and storytelling entertain while helping your audiences connect to the issues they're passionate about. How does the work that each of you do tie to what you love and value about our world, nature, and the importance of caring for it. Who wants to give it a go first?

I mean, Hila, you are the Earth. I feel like it's only proper that you--.

The Earth should begin.

-Should go first.

OK, yes, I am hosting everybody. Hello, everybody. My name is Hila, the Earth. I represent the Earth, and I'm an eco rapper, comedian, and content creator. love our beautiful planet so very much. And I didn't always. I grew up in New York City. I grew up in Soho, in lower Manhattan, where there wasn't a single city tree on my block growing up. And through time and just more exposure, camping trips, things like that, I actually got enamored and closer to the beautiful life that surrounds us. That's not just human life, which I love New York City for having so much diverse human life and learning about biodiversity really got me closer to what it means to be alive and what's actually important on Earth. And so I basically am just taking all of my gifts of comedy and music and making Earth more accessible and more fun and sexy. So that's really, that's my goal, yeah.

Hi, everybody. My name is Alexis Nicole Nelson, or @blackforager on social media. I help people learn about their surroundings, especially the plant biodiversity and fungi biodiversity around them through the lens of food. I have been a forager since before I can remember. My mom taught me to start foraging when I was around four or five years old. And now it's like the honor of my lifetime to get to share that love and that particular way to experience the spaces around us with my audience. I think we live in a society in which we're very removed mentally and physically from natural spaces. And I hope that my content reminds people that even in the concrete jungle, we are still existing in an ecosystem. Even when you think that there are no snacks hiding nearby, I literally had to be pulled away from some guascos as we were rushing to get through security. You can even forage on the UN campus.

Take that away with us. Remember, you can forage on the UN campus.

So, okay. Well, I don't say who told you to do it. I don't say who told you to do it. I'm, it is possible though?

I'm doing that. Right after. Right after. You gotta teach me how to forage properly.

Go on a foraging walk after this.

After this. Yeah, let's go.

Um I'm nowhere near as cool as these two but my name is Wisdom. Um I make a lot of content with clothes and fashion and I aim to typically other worlds, whether it's from movies, you know, cinema, TV, anime, things like this, science, and bridge them together with fashion and kind of find a common ground and explore different themes, topics and universes, and show how fashion kind of bring those things to life and tell different stories, in turn, also bringing together different communities that share a common interest or can discover their new interest in fashion as well.

Fantastic. I love all of it. And what it reminded me of too, when you were all speaking was about like conventions when fans come together, right? They come together because of, for example, a show or because of a creator. But when you see them all connect, they connect about things they didn't even realize that they were going to connect about. So we open up all these doors and that is one of the best things about storytelling, I find. Let me start off, Hilla, with you. Now, because you are the planet, I have to point out, the last time I did something with the Hollywood Climate Summit, we spoke on a panel about the overview effect. I'm sure you know what that is. So the overview effect, for anyone who doesn't, is what happens when astronauts, and right now we're also starting a lot of civilian astronauts are going into space, and when they look back and they see the Earth as as the planet that it is, right? Not a lot of us on this planet have gotten to see the planet from space. And when we see that, there's this kind of shift that happens because you see it and you're reminded that we are all one. Now, you would think that we should always just kind of intrinsically understand that, but it's a whole different thing when you're out in space, right? And I've gotten to speak with a number of astronauts and they say that it really is just transformative. So now we have the Earth here with us. So, Hilla, you perform as the planet itself. walk us through what that means, the music, the character, the comedy, and how the idea first came together. You spoke a little bit about how you love New York, which I love you. I'm right there, born and bred New Yorker. And so tell us a little bit more about what you do and how audiences connect with that and how they take that out into the world, into the world. You are the world. I'll just let you take it from there.

We are the world. We are the children. Well, Becoming the Earth was kind of by accident. I was performing with my bandmate, Nate, and we were making eco music about plastic, about bring your own cup, zero waste, composting poop, all sorts of things. And for a show that we had, we wanted to create an earth character, and we decided that I would be the right person for that. And when I took it out into the streets, I performed my song, "Dirty Talk," which is a sexy song about soil. And that video went very viral. And then I became the Earth. So that's pretty much how it happened. I was like, thwarted into this role. I never asked for this. The weight of the world is on my shoulders. But it's been an incredible experience. Exactly to your point about the overview and realizing how unifying it is to be the Earth, represent the Earth, to know that the Earth is where all the good and bad things happen, where all life exists. And I just-- it's evolving me. I feel very changed by this responsibility of representing our beautiful planet. And I think that something that really brought me closer is discovering and learning about indigenous history and wisdom and connection to land. I think that, you know, yeah, maybe astronauts needed to go out into space to realize that we're all a one living planet, but indigenous people have known this the entire time and have been telling us this through the stories that they have about the animals and the plants. And so learning about plants, and also through Alexis's work, which I love so much because of this, it's really gotten me closer to understanding that, yes, we're all connected. And life is really the driving force of protecting life, loving life, having a great time with life, making life, if you're into that, is part of what drives us all on Earth. Yeah, I mean, I feel like maybe that answered your question, but the response has been great. I mean, people get it. They see me as the Earth, and they love it or hate it, I guess. Some people call me flat, which I think is body shaming, but I have been going to the gym, so we're working on it.

So rude, churlish and insubordinate. Those are your children. They need to respect you.

Seriously, come on. I'm not flat, okay? I'm three-dimensional.

I hope that answered the question and I'm just in awe because I've never spoken to the earth. Do you know what I mean? I don't even know what I asked.

At my shows, I try to get people to talk dirty to me and tell me how they would hit on the earth. The responses are great, honestly. It's been wonderful to see how people would talk to the earth and what they would say to the earth. Sometimes it's very deep and emotional and very dirty.

And you're seeing something in a brand new way, right? I mean, I'll leave it at that. You're seeing something in a very brand new way. Now, my next question was actually for Pedro, but since Pedro is, again, going through security, so we know what that's like. Wisdom, may I give you the next question? And also, We'll say that for when Pedro comes. So you've talked about style as a form of self-expression and identity. How does that personal empowerment start to turn into something collective, as we've been talking about fandoms, and your audience, how do they use style to plug into personal or community advocacy?

Yeah, I mean, I think like fashion has been around for almost as long as we've been around, and different cultures and communities globally have their traditional garments and their traditional dress.

And a lot of, you know, if you look at the greater modern fashion industry is inspired by these different cultural moments, communities and movements. So to be honest, you know, when I try to create my content, I always try to refer back to that. For example, I recently did a World Cup series and I've done a few international things here and there where I quite literally am using these sort of like more modern clothing pieces, but either emulating or directly referencing certain garments from different communities worldwide. And the response is pretty amazing because people from those communities can see that and they like it or they feel inspired by it. But then also people who may not be exposed are also then learning something new because I try to also directly explain and indicate what's from where, how it's being used, the references, and so on and so forth. So I think it's an amazing tool to be able to really understand that everything we're wearing, A, has a history. and is inspired in somewhere, some form. Nothing is just here because that's what it is. There's always an evolution, there's always a story, there's an origin, there's always a group of people that is behind what we see and what we observe.

Beautiful. What fascinates me about fashion is when you learn about, just like you said, everything everything has been around, it's come around for a very specific reason about the area that you grow up in, around your culture, around your beliefs. And so getting to incorporate that into what we do today, it's not just kind of, you know, people think it's vanity, you know, it's much more than that.

Yeah, yeah, I think there's the opportunity for it to be vain, and I think, you know-- It's not a.

Bad thing, right? Like, that's also like to enjoy how you appear.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, we all have the privilege to be able to explore things in any which can. I think I try my best to, when the opportunity presents itself, go deeper and explore things and expose people to more than just the surface of like, oh, this is pretty and this is shiny. Which again, sometimes it is just pretty and shiny and I like it because it's pretty and shiny. But sometimes there is also a lot of heritage behind certain things, certain patterns, textures, fabrics, where the fabrics come from, where they're sourced. There's so many stories to tell and I think there is the opportunity to learn those stories through fashion.

Beautiful, love it.

I did not rehearse that.

Yeah, I was just gonna say something about also when you choose fashion that's different, right? A lot of people are afraid for it to look different. And I just thought about, for example, you deciding to dress as a planet. I was curious how you were gonna come today and I've never seen this outfit before. Because you usually look actually like the planet, round. Yeah, so.

They wouldn't let me, they said no costumes.

The UN was like, not today. Alexis, first of all, congratulations on your new cookbook. I want to hear a little bit about it, and we are excited to all read about it. And for those of us who are less familiar with food sovereignty and foraging in the UN as well, if you could share a bit about the book and what readers and chefs can expect, and also what inspired you to write it.

Absolutely. So Honestly, similarly to along the same vein as what Wisdom was saying about how all of these different fabrics and patterns all have so much identity and culture woven in, our food obviously is the exact same way. And if you go far back enough, none of our foods were domesticated. You know, it's been an honestly, in the grand scheme of things, very recent development that we as humans have decided we're only going to eat like 15 different things. And so I, my book is serving hopefully to remind people that not only are there so many more cultivated foods that we could be eating and experiencing and so many more flavors and textures than what is normally offered to us in grocery stores, but you can take that even a step further and expand your palate with some of these amazing forageable plants and fungi that are available, sometimes even in your own backyard. And I try not only to give people that knowledge, but to also give them some of the historical and cultural context surrounding all of those species. For some of these plants that are still around, they are quite literally only here because they were stewarded by the people indigenous to the places that they're from. And I feel like I would be doing those wild foods a disservice to not make sure that's part of the story that I'm conveying to everybody. But I've traveled and foraged in a lot of different places. And just like how astronauts will leave the planet and get this zoomed out view of how we're all one, when you travel to so many places and see that we as humans in completely separate continents will find a similar plant and then find a way to use it the same way. you know, acorns were being eaten here. They were being eaten in Western and Northern Europe. They were being eaten in Korea, in Japan, in China, and we didn't all have to be interconnected by like the internet or anything to come up with that. It is just in our nature to learn and grow and adapt to the places that we inhabit. And I think that's such a beautiful unifying aspect of the human race. And if I can remind people of those things, especially in this globalized world that we live in, where sometimes you're foraging a plant that isn't even from here, you know, and suddenly you're having that in common with someone an ocean away. We have so much more in common than we have differences. And foraging reminds me of that every single day.

I love that. And because we were talking about New York City, do you have any, if you were to give a tidbit of advice for New Yorkers who really do represent the entire world, right? I come from Queens and we have everybody and I love it. I love it so much. We have every language, we have every culture and it is just the best. So if you have advice for someone like me who lives in an apartment and lives in New York, what's your foraging advice to someone who's listening to you right now going, "Ugh, I could never do it."?

Well, for starters, for New Yorkers, have you seen the northwest corner of Central Park? Yes. There are a lot of really tasty things hiding in the rather foresty, slightly wilder top corner of the park. I'm not saying that I have snacked on something every season of the year there, but I've maybe snacked on something every season of the year there. The hackberries are in season right now, they're delicious, they taste like pumpkin pie. That's my direct, like, actionable item you can do after this.

Fantastic, we can all do it.

Exactly, and I promise you, the traffic will be less bad up there than it is here. But just for New Yorkers in general, or any city dweller, sometimes your whole perspective shifts on your neighborhood by noticing and identifying the plants that are growing out of the cracks in the sidewalk. We're coming out of the summer season. Everywhere in the northern hemisphere, a plant called purslane, or verdolagas for Spanish speakers, is hanging out in the sidewalk cracks because it actually loves the heat that radiates out of our sidewalks and out of the concrete jungle during the summertime. And it's an amazing, super nutritious, actually genuinely delicious vegetable that people are walking by literally every day. And even if you don't want to eat it, which I get it, dogs be peeing, people be stepping, just knowing that it's there makes your neighborhood feel more valuable, which then makes you feel better about it, makes you want to take better care of it. And the other people and your neighbors who aren't people, you want to take better care of them too. Absolutely.

You're also seeing something that you see every single day in a brand new way, which keeps you constantly thinking and evolving. I love that. I love that. Wisdom, this next one is for you. Let's talk about integrating sustainable fashion. So upcycled and vintage elements. How has integrating that into your pieces shifted your professional trajectory? And have you seen your followers embrace this as a result?

I mean, I would say that's responsible for the trajectory to begin with. I started out actually getting clothes from my mom's closet, maybe jewelry, because she wore a lot of blouses and I wasn't wearing blouses. I would go in her closet, see any cool things there. Then when I eventually went to college, I was around vintage stores for the first time by campus. I would go to vintage stores and buy used boots and jackets. That was really my first journey into the world of fashion was that way. It still continues till today, honestly. It's so funny because even to the earlier question, so many things that are made aren't in reference to something. And I do try to always tell people, if you find a cool pair of, let's say, boot cut jeans or flare jeans from this brand that cost this much, well, those have been around for a minute. You can always go get a vintage pair that probably has the same cut, the same fit, same fabrics, same materials, and everything. So for me, it's been a huge part of my career. It's a huge part of my messaging. It helps me create what I create. And I think people love knowing, oh, he looks like that, that's a little crazy. But I can also kind of look like that too, which is sometimes it might feel somewhat unbelievable.

I love that. I'm trying to think of times when I've done something like that. I learned so much in my fashion from two of my sisters who are here today. And I'm thinking about when the Rangers won the 1994 Stanley Cup. I was 10 years old, and my parents bought me a shirt. And I wore that shirt five years ago in Madison Square Garden. again so that's kind of right I used it again I kept it you know I.

Mean hey but ain't.

Broke you know exactly right um so little steps little steps wisdom you have inspired me I will I will go to a vintage store there we go I will try things I will not be scared go Rangers yes let's go Rangers um Pedro hello welcome we were just talking about how security has been absolutely crazy we are so sorry that they.

I'm definitely not used to this kind of traffic. We don't have those in Brazil. So, sorry.

Do not apologize at all. But may I ask you, I know you just got here. Can you tell us about yourself? Like I said, most of the people here probably know exactly who you are, but tell us and tell us a little bit about your storytelling intertwines with climate action.

So my name is Pedro. I'm from Brazil. I have a channel called Ciencia Todo Dia. It's Portuguese for science every day, maybe the closest translation. And I'm really passionate about transforming complex subjects and topics of science in a really easy to understand language so anyone can follow it. And I don't know, maybe someone who doesn't have a physics background can get to know more about black holes or wormholes or time travel and stuff like that. And what I really like to do with my job, and I use it to also talk about the climate change message, is that Generally, people come to science videos online because they want answers. They want to understand something. They want to, like, they want, like, a bready answer so they can digest and get to know that weird subject or something like that. But I don't like to provide answers. I like to provide more questions. And I figured out that when I teach people how to make great questions, they join this journey of knowledge and start to learn from themselves and they are able to grasp really complex subjects by themselves and they don't need me anymore. And that's like a really fun thing to do, but that's what I'm passionate about and that's how I use storytelling to get people to engage in climate change.

Fantastic. I love that. I was talking earlier about how I'm an actor in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Go and watch it. Our season four is currently airing. And because as a part of the world of Star Trek, we also get to communicate a lot with the space community. And so much of what they're trying to do is make things that a lot of people think should be so complex that us who are not astronauts, who are not rocket scientists, it's not for us. And that is quite the opposite. So I love what you're doing. I had a kind of a specific question for you, but you kind of answered it. And so let me ask you this, what concept would you love a person who tunes into your work to take away from it? Let's say they, you know, they're leaving it, what would you love them to, if they remembered one thing from the work you do?

The fact that we are not as separate from the rest of the world and the ecosystem as we usually like to think. Because we generally separate humans really well. Like we put ourselves in this sort of box or a whole new category that we are completely different from all other living or non-living beings or things and stuff in planet Earth. But that's not the case. We are part of everything and all scientific revolutions and all our journey of getting and pursuing new knowledge involves figuring out that we are a part of this and everything we do and everything we try to do has a price to the environment. And so it's always this delicate balance between figuring out how to progress, how to make our lives better and easier, but at the same time, how to make the impact of this as low as possible?

Yes, I love that. It's as if you heard all of our other panelists speaking, how we spoke about how we are all connected and through what each of you guys do, that is a common theme. And it seems like the most basic thing, right? But it feels like some people need to hear it again and again and again. So Hilla, the planet, we've left you for a while. Let me follow up a little bit. So how do you feel when your audience tunes into your music, for example, like you were talking about what was your dirt song?

Dirty talk.

Dirty talk. Love that. About the soil.

Yes.

Dirt talk. Dirty talk, right, about the soil. But what do you hear from fans? Like one of the things I love is when I have fans come up to me and they say, I want to become a pilot because of the character you play, or I am watching your show because my grandparents introduced me to it. So what are the fan interactions that have really made you be like, becoming the planet was the best choice I could have made.

Oh, wow. Well, I get a lot of beautiful messages from people, truly. I love when people tell me that they play my songs for their kids. recently a parent came up to me at a show and told me that their kid like plays mycelium which is my mushroom song every day in the car since the last time I performed at their event which was a year ago so I never really thought of myself as a musician that when I started I really went into this through comedy and I just music is so magical to me it's such a big part of my life I actually released last night my verse for Alexis's jewelweed song. So Alexis made a song about jewelweed and-.

And then you made it a million times better.

I just added a verse. I basically just made a hip hop verse for the exact information that she had in her original song. And she put it out in 2022 and I, you know, it took me four years to like finally get it together. But the messages that I received from people are so heartfelt, so important, they just, They tell me that I give them hope, that I'm so important to them in their lives, that they've learned so much from me, and that also they just see me as somebody who's authentically living her life in service of the earth, and that's very inspiring. And so that means a lot to me, and I strive to continue to to vibrate in this high earth frequency to remind myself about the solutions that we have ahead of us, how beautiful our world is, all the plants that I have to make songs about and learn about and forage and continue to be that voice of hope and knowledge and fun for my fans.

I love it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We only have a couple of minutes left. If I had to ask each of you to give me one thing that you want somebody who's watching this to take away from this? You know, because sometimes we see these things about climate action and we leave and we're just like, there's too many things to do and there's not just one thing that I can begin to do. So based on what each of you are so fantastic at, and may I say, like the most fashionable panel I have ever been a part of. So thank you guys. I'm honored, absolutely honored. So yeah, one thing that you would say somebody who's watching this, this is the thing that when this panel shuts off, you can go out into the world and do this. I know we're going to go forage in Central Park. Yeah, exactly. I can't give out one of them. But that works.

For everybody after this panel, I would encourage you to notice one new thing, new natural thing around you. It can be a bug you've never noticed before. It can be a new plant who you're like, oh, that flower is beautiful. Let me take a picture of it so I can go learn more about it. Taking a second to remind yourself that even despite the horror We are always surrounded by beautiful things. I very much am in the camp of climate hope. We can't always be in the camp of climate doomerism. It makes people feel helpless. So I just want to remind everyone what it is we're fighting for.

Love it. Climate hope. Climate hope. Wisdom.

I would say talk to the person next to you. Talk to a stranger. I think, you know, I think one commonality we all have is that we all agree that like we're all similar even if we live in different places and I think once you talk to somebody, you realize those commonalities and the more we are united in that way of of being more like, you know, united just in in conversing and being more open with each other as people, the more we'll want to come together and and genuinely want to solve our problems.

Love it. Pedro.

I think that it's easy to get sad or down with all negative news regarding climate or regarding our planet, but we as humans, we try to, I don't know, maybe sometimes we have a tendency to try to find a one major unique solution to all problems, but there's not one only way of talking and engaging about climate change. And I would say to look around and see all the initiatives of the brilliant people talking about them and doing stuff that matters. And for me personally, every time I get sad about the state of things, that fills me with hope and makes me like full of joy that there are amazing people worried and doing something and try to engage with these initiatives.

Love it. Open your eyes, look around. the planet, please send us out.

I want you to remember.

Pressure, no pressure.

No pressure. But I have, I have the perfect answer which is that you are the earth. Um, we're all reflections of each other and you are the whole planet. Every time you see the earth, you say, hey, that's me. And so you're the creator of your own reality. You have an incredible amount of power to transform and change your life in any direction that you want it to be. You can use the power of your thoughts, the power of your actions, And just always remember that you're hot, you're beautiful, and you're the earth.

Fantastic. Thank you guys so much for joining me today. Thank you guys for being here.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon SDG Media Zone. Tuesday afternoon, UNGA high-level week, the 81st, and I am really excited about this next conversation. We have Staffan DuJarric, who many of you know is the Secretary-General's spokesperson and has been the spokesperson for three Secretaries-General. So he's been doing his job for a long time. But today, we're not going to have him answering the questions. We're flipping the script, and he is going to ask the questions to two journalists from the UN Press Corps. And we're very pleased to have Gabriel Elizondo from Al Jazeera. an Edie letter, the legendary Edie letter from AP. So, Steph, now's your chance.

All right, thank you. I've been waiting for this for about 26 years. So, Edie, concern or deep concern, what's your favorite UN expression?

My favorite UN expression is we must, we We think we should maybe do something about X, Y, or Z. Excellent.

We like to use direct language. No, listen, thanks to both of you for joining us. This is my 26th General Assembly. Edie, I think you're 27th, 28th.

I started in September of 1998.

Okay, well, I will get you, but I want to start with the youngster on the stage. Gabriel, what was your first GA like? Like your first high level week when you were thrown in to the deep end of the pool, how did you survive?

Lots of espresso and more espresso and even more espresso. We made it through. You have to pace yourself, obviously. You have to pace yourself. And the first GA, you're like saying, oh, is that the president of that country? Oh, how cool. Let me get a photo. And then after a few of them, it's just sort of like, OK, we're here to do a job. And that's that. But yeah, that was the first.

But what's the biggest challenge for you in covering this crazy festival of diplomacy here.

When it comes to the General Assembly, UNGA, there's just so much information and you really have to prioritize what are you going to cover that day. You simply cannot cover it all. And we have a pretty big news organization here, pretty well represented at the UN, I mean Al Jazeera. But if you're one, two, three people, good luck. So it really forces you to prioritize and really determine what is the agenda that you want to set when you're covering it, because you simply can't get to everything.