Transcripts For CSPAN2 Discussion On Climate Change Maritime Security Part 2 20240713

Climate on oceans, Marine Biodiversity and human populations living in vulnerable areas. I appreciate it andthanks to our first panel. Ive enjoyed the conversation. I think were going to pick up on the end of that conversation around this idea of the Dynamic World and what that means now in the policy and security space so im excited to have an excellent panel to talk about that. Heatherconley , John Mimikakis was Vice President for oceans Environmental Defense fund, there was director of fisheries and amy lehr who is the director of the Human Rights Initiative so think the panel and im going to sit down and be quiet and handed over to my panel and we will start off. Thank you so much, good morning. I think the arctic is a tough place to talk about. The intersection of climate stress and security. And in many ways, the arctic is telling us, actually most polar regions are telling us they are under the most dramatic stress as the arctic certainly is warming 2 to 3 times faster than any place on the planet and in many ways we are now dealing with a very new ocean. In fact, our former coast guard commandant called the arctic americas fourth coast and i thought that was such a powerful way of thinking about it. In part because Many Americans do not know the United States is an arctic nation, to help bring it home because this is homeland security. We now have a new coast that requires our protection so that is what in many ways the nexus between the rapid diminishment of the arctic polar ice caps is now creating new borders, new coast to protect. Which is why we need enhanced coast guard presence, certainly through the enhanced icebreaker component , what we call a polar security cutter. But this also requires deepwater ports, greater maritime domain awareness because we are now seeing an increase in commercial and human activity in the arctic. It is also this new ocean and the opportunities that this new ocean provides is really requiring a much more rethought i would argue about sovereignty in the arctic and this is certainly therussian governments perspective. Because they are now, russia is now developing a very ambitious Economic Development plan for the Russian Arctic which not only includes the development of oil and Gas Resources in the Russian Arctic but also the creation of a major transit route, the northern sea route so what were seeing is less of needing to enhance the protection of the northern sea route, their reopening airfields, search and rescue Centers Across the northern sea route and they are also making important changes to the structure and how they regulate the northern sea routes and of course what underpins all of this, both the science andenvironmental change we are seeing in the arctic as well as the economics , its all underpinned by science. Science is power in the arctic. Using traditional knowledge of the indigenous communities is power and of course we are trying to understand the Science Behind the extraordinary changes we are seeing in the arctic so im going to touch on some of the key Security Issues and sort of the good the bad and ugly if you will and there are some very good things that are happening in the arctic to manage this nexus between climate stress and security. First and foremost i think at this point the arctic is well governed. The United Nations convention provides that maritime space with good Legal Framework territorial waters, Economic Zones as well as the high seat area over the north pole and one of the most important forms of monitoring and governing the arctic is through the Arctic Council, theintergovernmental forum that was covered in 1996. It was birthed from an arctic Environmental Strategy that brings the five coastal states together, russia, canada,norway, denmark , and of course the United States plus iceland, sweden and finland but whats so important about the Arctic Council that gets missed is at the center of the Arctic Council are the indigenous communities, thepermanent participants. Have a seat at the table because its their way of life that is so dramatically changing. But the Arctic Council has been groaning under the changesboth of the Climate Change and the new demands on it. Right now there are 20 observers to the Arctic Council and in 2013 china became a permanent observer to theArctic Council and i would argue that very much change the dynamic. Now the arctic is not just for regional countries, is now becoming a global issue because what happens in the arctic impacts the Global Environment and as chinas role became more and more apparent in the arctic and russia began to assert itself increasingly both militarily and economically in the arctic, now were at a point where we are doing the arctic through the lens of Great Power Competition and that was framed by secretary of state mike pompeo in finland in may of this year where he gave a real stem winder of the speech that surprised some of us where it came from describing this very start Great Power Competition in the arctic and so thats in some ways what were grappling with today. Chinas growing economic presence through infrastructure, through its participation in a variety of international organizations. And of course russias increased military presence. These are challenging how the us thinks about it i always want to end with good news because so often in our line of work were just talking about challenges. I want to say the arctic has also demonstrated great resilience and governance innovation. When we needed to to strengthen the maritime shipping code in the arctic, the International Maritime organization, created the whole polar code which strengthens demands and mandates that shifts must be hardened. Or traversing the arctic. This created an International Search and rescue agreement and oil spill and response agreement. We recently negotiated a preemptive fisheries agreement. There are no fish in essential arctic oceans but this agreement put a moratorium on that for 16 years until the science tells us that it could be okay if we need to do that. We have innovations like the Arctic Coast Guard Forum which helps do that certain search and rescue, but Oil Spill Response and something wet and i have been looking at, its getting to that high seas challenge to protect biodiversity beyond the national jurisdiction. Beyond the exclusive Economic Zones thats targeting those ics areas, fisheries, biodiversity, shipping. Its a little chaotic right now, i dont think we have it all exactly the right place and im very worried about the military dimension. Im worried about china infrastructure in the arctic but im very heartened when i see innovation, pragmatic governance thats helping to protect the arctic so i want to end on a high note but looking forward to your questions so were going to turn out from the arctic to asia and the specific and john. So asia is very much a crucible for Climate Change and security. If you think about it its got two thirds of the global population. Many of thoseare poor populations. They live coastal lee, primarily relying on seafood for nutrition. Theres already overexploitation of those fishing resources and that overexploitation is intensifying. The government typically has low capacity to deal with those issues and then these in Southeast Asia especially, these are the countries that are going to be the hardest by Climate Change where some of those impacts will be felt the greatest area to talk about this and put this in context i want touse indonesia as an example ill start with that and try to back up a little bit. Indonesia is the second largest fishing town in the world in terms of the amount of wild fish harvested. China is the first but the country that struggles with poverty hasabout a 10 percent poverty rate. Of its 270 million people, 10 percent lived below the poverty line which indonesia is about 76 cents a day. The fishing is often referred to as a last resort occupation when agriculture and other jobs dont work out, you can just go fishing and so many of these coastal communities depend on fish for nutrition and to climb out of poverty and if youre not certain how important fisheries are in indonesia, google minister susie fuji and im sure you will pull out a photograph of the fishing boats that have illegally traversed into indonesia fishing waters that shes blown up literally and has made her one of the most popular allocations in indonesia today. As an example, of the role that fisheries play, i can tell you a little bit about a blue swimming cracked fishery that edf worked in. Its the third most important export commodity economically. If you go to the chesapeake here and you order a crabcake sandwich , chances are the local supplies cant keep up with the man so chances are very good that you are eating a blue crab from indonesia. And perhaps one the job pussy. 80 percent of the product goes to the us. Theres about 300 people in that fishery in terms of fishermen and supply chain workers and it brings in the country about us 300 million 300,000 people, 300 million, you do the math. Keeps these people just above the poverty line but only hovering just above it so they remain very vulnerable. Climate change area impacts will be very serious for communities like these. Obviously sealevel rise, some of these communities are not just coastal, there is a fishing village thats we work with that is literally built on a sandbar about 10 kilometers from shore with sticks sort of put down in the sand and theres a platform and women and children mostly fishermen are there and they live their yearround so they can get further access to the fishery. Sealevel rise is going to be extremelychallenging. But the losses in productivity that you heard about in the first panel are what we heard globally, global fish production may decline by about four percent or so. But regionally, losses in the developing tropics and places likeindonesia could decline by as much as 50 percent. And thats both because of the loss in the mental productivity that the previous speaker has talked about and also because of fish migrating to cooler waters and polar northward and southward. So this is of course potentially catastrophic for these poor communities hovering on the poverty line. And this generation, this will create a potentially downward spiral so if theres a lot of cash, the logical response for most communities is to then harder. Then makes these fisheries even more vulnerable to Climate Change though theres an interesting link to as stan has talked about in the report overfished fisheries are more vulnerable to Climate Change and Climate Change of course will have a negative impact on fisheries so these communities experience drops in catches will then make their own resources more vulnerable by overfishing. The governments in many of these places havelittle capacity to control that. And so these communities have the potential to spiral downward. Another response to declining catches will be for fishermen to go further and further abroad. Many indonesian fishermen go right up to the border of australia and fish along the line because australias fisheries are fairly well managed and indonesian fishermen get the benefits over the border. Weve seen china do the same thing as their domestic fisheries have dropped, increased the power and number of distant water fleets and this of course creates huge challenges in asia where the ezs are packed in so tightly that it will create a lot of potential for growing among countries. So turning to solutions, what can we do about this . The Number One Solution is to mitigate minechange , to reduce Carbon Solution and Global Warming solution number one and ocean themes number two. I would say its to promote low carbon energy, wind energy, wave energy, perhaps thermal water energy as well. Solutions that promote blue carbon. The report talkswell , speaks well to the issue of mangroves, so marshes, but theres also the carbon found in increasing fish stock. Reviving those two historic levels. Theres a paper i saw recently by some economists estimate if you could replenish whale populations, whale populations alone to prefish levels thats two gigatons of carbon so thats a startling number. Another potential way to negate is to eat more fish, this may sound controversial, we can talk about it but beef is about 20 times more emissions per gram of protein and a lifecycle analysis and seafood. Okay. Butcritically as we heard in the last panel , we cannot just mitigate, we also need to adapt and manage and this is an urgent issue the cause of this link to fisheries abundance and resiliency. Its urgent that we put in place good Fisheries Management in these countries that lack. This is a Food Security issue so number one we need to build capacity in these countries that dont have the skills, finances or expertise to put in place management and number two, we need to strengthen International Agreements because as these fish migrates, the countries that host fish that are leaving at every intent to fish those population down before they get across the border and the countries that might receive a fish are not going to want that to happen there needs to be what we know again and again from observing fisheries around the world, when theres unmanaged competition it leads to a decline in the fish population so there needs to be a new effort to strengthen these agreements. There are many International Agreements on fisheries, almost none of them contain provisions and lastly, we need to develop solutions for some of these local communities like aquaculture , blue carbon and perhaps some Energy Solutions as well because there needs to be new Solutions Like that that can provide income nutrition for these communities. There is hope. There are good examples, with earlier mentioned usfisheries are one of the best managed in the world. Its one of the greatest conservation success that almost no ones heard of is the turnaround in us fisheries so management can lead to fisheries rebounding. Its not just the us of course, australia has done this, new zealand has done this, there are good examples around the world and solutions that can work to rebuild fish populations and again, this increases resiliency of the oceans to Climate Change. In asia there so again, japan last december post past its most significant reforms to a fishing loss since world war ii and even china has now beenimplementing pretty dramatic reforms to control overfishing and over explication of aquaculture in its domestic waters so theres a lot happening. If countries gather together, i think and promote a video countries to build capacity, and share their experiences, can share their expert, their Technical Expertise and most importantly share their Financial Resources theres hope to avoid the worst of Climate Change for these countries in Southeast Asia. Thank you. Maybe you can talk about the indo in info business and and maybe class im talking primarily about africa and the indian ocean and i think john provided an excellent segue into what is happening in countries around africa and the adaptive capacity that needs to be built out. I agree in countries that are facing the most extreme impacts from Global Warming and Climate Change, their physical consumption of resources is not the driving factor though theres a real mismatch to the drivers of change and those in the world will face the greatest impacts and the new special report makes that quite clear by showing that the greatest impacts are going to be in the tropical latitudes. Arctic as well but when were talking about the number of people live in given areas the topics are facing a disproportionate impact from Climate Change. Compared to other parts of the world and so its some of the midline to regions. I just wanted to give three examples of recent impacts of Climate Change that are happening in africa. The first was Tropical Cyclone oday, essentially the Hurricane Dorian of east africa. It happened in march 2019, over 1300 people were killed in mozambique and although mozambique was hit hardest. Currently the estimate 2 billion worth of damage. And those type of evidence are made worse as you know by Climate Change but they destroy the resilience of communities. We talked a lot about Ecological Resilience but Community Resilience is important and i think the good news is that something we have a much greater ability to impact and the second example is whats happening in lake chad in Central Africa between chad and nike nigeria. Lake has lost 90 percent of its water volume over the last 15 years, thats not solely due to Climate Change and warming area is also due to irrigation and other factors that illustrates the complexity of the problems were facing, the way we deal with land creates positive feedback that makes the impacts of climate warming even worse. And in the area of lake chad in particular the changes being seen in fishing communities and efferent agricultural communities rely on rain fed water and the links for irrigation have created such levels of poverty through insecurity and livelihood insecurity that these areas are now becoming a bit of a recruitment or breeding ground for violent extremism. Theres not one direct line between Climate Change and violent extremism or even between poverty and violent extremism, i wish it were that simple but these issues are innately connected and the third example ill mention the ongoing drought in the horn of africa which is a terrestrial impact but given the monsoon seasons, given the amount of ocean upwelling that happens around the horn of africa and somalia in particular, the drought that has been happening there for the past several years has resulted in the displacement of millions of people internally and has recently put millions of children at risk from drought impacts. It has made worse by climate warming so this is what africa and the indian ocean are facing right now is as a consequence of Carbon Emissions. So part b of the special report looks specifically at the predicted risks for people and ecosystems and one thing that is valuable that the report does is it puts levels of confidence around things and i wish those of us who look at the human impacts to be as confident in what we think the impacts will be as the people who study the physics and biology. Unfortunately is not a simple math equation and so theres a lot lower levels of competence around what we expect impacts to be on communities thats where the opportunity exists and that because we have the ability to impact through governance, group policy changes, the way that human beings through their own free will make changes in relationto their own behavior. I want to put opinion that and say it cannot be, it must be incumbent on those of us in developed countries who are creating the most amount of Carbon Emissions do not require or rely on developing countries to be the ones who fix our problems. We need to enable them and provide capacity and Technical Expertise it cannot be on developing countries in africa throughout the tropical indo specific to face the problems we created so i think there are three primary mechanisms that i see in africa and the indian ocean that are linking Climate Change to conflict and greater Security Issues in the maritime route. The first is direct competition finite and mobile resourcesand several thinkers have touched very nicely with good examples of the movement of fish, changes , there was a great question from the audience about easy boundaries, those boundaries will change slightly but with sealevel rise in africa alone there are 12 different maritime disputes over economic exclusive Economic Zone boundaries which extend from the shoreline out to 200 nautical miles and in Southeast Asia they overlap quite a lot and in africa theres a lot of overlap as well and a lot of contention that these easy boundaries are the definition of where governance over the Marine Resources for a given country belongs to the domain of that country. Country can choose to sell off access to oil exhalation, middle exploitation, and governments especially in africa a lot of revenue by selling some of those rights but those, the access to those resources is going to changeunder scenarios of climate warming. Colleagues and one of the future have done research on what causes conflict, often times violent conflict of fish and its direct access to the resource coupled with and made worse by declining fish populations and unclear maritime boundaries and not just maritime but also the boundaries thatexist in inland waters. So the second primary mechanism linking Climate Change conflict is changes in livelihoodsecurity and several other speakers have talked about that but i wanted it in on what we mean by Food Security in relation to Marine Resources. Food security is defined as a predictable and reliable access toaffordable and nutritional forms of food. So three keywords, predictable so that people can plan their lives and livelihoods. Affordable and nutritious and the food is some of the most nutritious food that we have had low in fat, high in omega3s and highend micronutrients that are important for Childhood Development and Brain Development so when youre talking about nutrition at a childs level, youre talking about setting the stage for generations of people to come and access to seafood and i would agree with john there are ways we can increase seafood consumption without destroying the ecosystems we have that have to do with choosing what types of fish we eat andreducing some of the global trade we have around. That level of Food Security is extremely important to over 2 billion people in this world. 1 billion people rely on seafood as their number one form of protein and most of those people live in on developing economies and rely on subsistence and smallscale fishing. One or two people out in a canoe collecting fish, not trawlers that have 40 to 50 people on board who can collect a lot of fish so the third and final mechanism connecting Climate Change to conflict is through the widening of socioeconomic ego ecology across the world, some people call this the northsouth gap, these are replicated at the local level in communities that rely on Marine Resources at the state and federallevel. When you have concentration of wealth in different communities often times away from coastal communities and at the global level in the relation of wealth in northern and developed countries so as Climate Change affects food and livelihood securities are going to see a widening gap and all of a sudden the governance and security implications for what were driven by resource questions do not become solutions that are resource based any longer. Its really a socialjustice issue i think. So i like what you said about the good, bad and ugly and i didnt want to end on a bad note so i do see some good things happening with maritime domain awareness and Maritime Governance and that is the recognition by the world really about the importance of regulating better distant Water Fishing nations and keeping track of things that are being done by largescale industrial fleets in the waters of countries that rely on fisheries for Food Security and smallscale subsistence consumption so for example the port state measures agreements which was led by the fao have now been ratified countries to be put in place and if you look african and Southeast Asian countries and those in south asia as well you have a very high rate of ratification by those countries that they know that having control over their ports and understanding the transparency behind asian , fisheries moving around the Global Economy is so important what theyre doing oh i would say the port state measures agreement right now needs more adopters to really have a global impact, but thats one thing i think we can have some focus about. The bad is the lack of data we have on smallscale fisheries around the world so earlier we sought fantastic data from the gulf of maine and we dont have those kind of data sets from most of the worlds fisheries. We dont know where the fish are, how big they are, how their reproducing and how much are being caught so in terms of Capacity Building, providing avenues and funding for Data Collection at a species level for fish is very important for developing countries. Just to be able to track whats happening because we dont know what we, we cant manage what we dont know. And the third thing ill say is ugly and that is the global subsidies for fisheries and fishery fuel and in fact a colleague of mine is speaking today or tomorrow at the wto trying to lobby or reduction in fuel subsidies for global fishing fleets. The reason most of us can afford to eat the food we find in seafood restaurants in the United States is because of government subsidizing the cost of catchingin the first place so that i think is something we absolutely need to address. And to end on a positive note what i see changing in africa and throughout the Pacific Ocean is the awareness of the youth on Climate Change and Climate Impacts. Its not just scandinavian youth, theyre doing a fantastic job but across africa, you see a large awareness of the problem by youth and a focus on local solutions that involve communities and indigenous knowledge which is something the report focused on. And also the empowerment of women and the inclusion of women in fisheries and maritime Security Issues as a means ofchanging conversation and some of the paradigms around economic exploitation. Thanks so much. Thats a great segue i think and thanks to amy who will talk about the adaptations and how that looks in developing states quite im to be here today, partly because i feel like historically, rather oddly the humanrights and environmental communities have operated somewhat separately even though we have a lot to offer to each other. And i guess im thinking about this in terms of i think the science provides the what, the human rights provides the how. Ill talk more about what i mean. First ill talk aboutbriefly what are the human rights impacts of Climate Change . A few people have covered it well without using the word human rights butwhat can human rights tell us about mitigation and adaptation . Just on the impacts of human rights, rights of food, right to livelihood, impacts on fisheries. Also arable land, these will be drivers of conflict, conflict breeds more human rights problems so all of this as i have to say grows from a human rights perspective. Relocation, migration, also enormous human rights concerns. This is intuitive. The rights of Indigenous People are also a concern because they will be some of the first impacted groups and they tend to be the most vulnerable because they have no political rapid representation in their own countries, there such a small image of the population but im not going to focus on the problems because we all know what they are basically. I want to talk about what humanrights might contribute to solutions and so ill pick up on some of what other people have said using different language. One piece is that if we want governments to feel urgent about addressing Climate Change, we really need to double down on democracy and rule of law, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly so populations and pressure thegovernments. So in a way to me doubling down on what the Us Government does a lot of, supporting other governments around the world. Thats pretty easy. Weknow how to do that even if its not perfect. I alsothink , i want to pick up on i think i heard in the last panel which is that sometimes communities themselves can address their own problems so if we respected the landrights , the Traditional Land rights of evil in the congo basin or in malaysia and indonesia or other areas, we be protecting peatlands, Indigenous Peoples and people with traditional livelihoods have lived in their environments without destroying them for a long time and they know how to do that. So its one of these areas where theres a real marriage between protecting important carbon sinks and protecting peoples rights. And what can we learn about adaptation . So my particular expertise within the nexus of business and human rights, we are learned a lot over the past few decades about what happens when you try to engineer National Projects from the top it doesnt go very well. Theres been a lot of time and energy spent on for example in the context of mining, how do you actually carry out a project like that withgenuine input from communities affected. And why would you want that to mark first i think heather alluded to this indirectly, groups like Indigenous Peoples will first of all understand the impacts better and they may have ideas on how to mitigate them but it wouldnt occur to us. And its not just for Indigenous People but communities around the world. The other reason is i think it will also experience and help community by ends so youre asking people to change how they make their living,change the way they a or otherwise earn their daily bread. Youve got to have them believe in what youre asking them to do and they have to be art of that solution or they wont do it and in the worstcase scenario they will lead to conflict. So we know how to do this. We have a lot of experience and i guess my call would be coming up with International Frameworks or national frameworks, making sure that approach is embedded. I see bits and pieces of that area some of the major adaptation funds at least have environmental and social policies, im not sure how well thats implemented, this is an easy stuff but we wont get where we need to be if we dont have community buyin and intelligence in our purchase in Climate Change so that the challenge. We have to think big, big problems need Big Solutions and we have to think locally and do both. You. So that was a really great i think translation of some of the impacts weve heard from the first panel into how it lookslike in the real world. And i want to take a minute to just think about this idea that we picked up in the first panel of aDynamic World and how we adapt to it. I think a little bit of sarah was talking about at the end, im going to throw out a quick general question to the panel and all of you can weigh in as you see fit but how are our multilateral institutions rattling with this challenge and are they up to the task but you can take it if you want regionally because there are countless examples. East africa, are they beginning to deal with this challenge . Are they ready for the challenge . What kinds of steps you need to take to improve on them and maybe a little of that was named right now but ill dive in class ill start to pull on the comments that the Arctic Council, my own view is theArctic Council is straining enormously. In many ways, the International Community is putting a lot of burden on a structure that wasnt designed to carry all that burden. The Arctic Council is again, its anintergovernmental forum deals on consensus. Produces some remarkable arctic Climate Impact assessments and maritime shipping assessments that are extraordinary. I dont think they get much play, but there an incredible value. The six working groups at work on a wide variety of issues, they do important work but its very isolated. Its not wellknown. But theres a lot of things now that are happening in the arctic that the council is designed to do and so again, whats happening is things are beingbuilt around the Arctic Council. So the innovations that i mentioned to you on search and rescue agreements, International Science agreements, uses the framework of the Arctic Council so the eight members but thenthe Arctic Council itself has nothing to do with the implementation of those agreements. The Arctic Council members can of course, they just failed to approve a declaration after the Arctic Council ministerial in may but all the members can say this is a great impact that im not going to do anything nationally to reduce the Climate Impacts so the russian governmentisnt reducing gas flaring in arctic. Its nice, its lovely but its not moving the needle and so what i see happening right now, particularly on the security part of the conversation, the Arctic Council is prohibited to deal with security we cant have that conversation there. Structures being graded, the arctic economic council, theyre all outside the Arctic Council so i see this duct tape apparatus that were trying to respond to the innovation which i think is fantastic and important and theyre moving for diplomacy at lightning speed to get some of these things negotiated but it doesnt have a home. It doesnt have an organizational framework and what concerns me is that it has all these little pieces and parts art managed within a framework and that allows countries either regionally or globally to perhaps manage all of that chaos for their own purposes and i think we have to be very cognizant of it. I think we need a lot of rethinking of the arctic governing structure, that there is no political will. Everyone is frightened to do any change and so i think were going to be stuck with an Arctic Council at going to be less and less efficacious if you will in what we needed to do in the future. John, esther was talking about her different modes of conflict and talk about competition for resources, Food Security and all these things really just sounded like a witches brew that describes south asia. And climate come together in that part of the world in a dire way. What do you think about the ability of existing International Institutions and agreements in that partof the world to grapple with this challenge . I think its important to look at all three levels. There needs to be that opportunity level that amy talked about that are super important where you need to have buyin. Youve got action at the national level, thats important and your question focused on the international. With regard to the International Fear in asia, i got two examples. I think its still evolving. Hopefully the conversation can give all quickly enough to deal withthe urgency of the issue. One example is in japan where as i mentioned earlier , japan took this dramatic step of undertaking the top to bottom reform. Thats how it manages its domestic fisheries. They did this even though they know and its part of the discussion that a Significant Impact on japanese fisheries is not domestic, its by foreign fleets from russia and china and others and but the officials basically said we have to do what we can do first and then we will hopefully have greater agency then or moral authority to come to the International Realm to try to argue that there needs to be regional agreements. Another example is we will see how that conversation goes area another example has been the western control Pacific Ocean so the International Institution there is the Central Pacific fisheries commission. And they are now in the process of grappling with different types of Climate Change where the specific island countries, some of which are in the world depend so heavily on those fishery resources to do one of the most valuable fisheries resources in the world. The center of gravity of those fisheries under Climate Change is forecast to shift largely away from those islands and outside of their eegs where they can control so they are grappling right nowwith the question of how do you allocate quota , how do you do it based on history , will the right to fish attach or remain with the countries that have the fisheries originally or will they migrate with the fish, migrate out to the open sea where other countries and half, can sort of harvest them more on their own . So thats the conversation happening within that fisheries commission. Its robust, we will see how it goes. What are your thoughts about africa, you mentioned opportunities for optimism. How do you see thatplaying out at a more regional scale . In multilateral institutions . Similar to what john said, the same kind of conversation is happening in the indian oceans about cash allocation of the most valuable tuna fisheries and in the indian ocean theres a very large presence of distant Water Fishingnations, china, taiwan , the eu fleet which is primarily france and spain in the indian ocean to be part of the regional Fisheries Management you do not have to be a country whose shoreline touch of the waters of that commission. You can simply have a presence as a fleet and voluntarily joined the organization and that gives you rights and responsibilities to the organization so the same conversation is happening right now. And theres sort of two competing proposals right now for how to allocate those valuable tuna fisheries one proposal being forwarded by what they call the coastal states and those are common to take in sourcing of some of the smaller countries in the tropical pacific, indian ocean and so i dont know what the state of those, that conversation is but its mirroring whats happening in Southeast Asia so i think its very interesting but these states are exerting a little bit more influence and Decisionmaking Authority over their own resources and not just simply telling them off to other countries who, and keep in mind the other countries coming in are very efficient and for the most part their fishing methods, theyre just targeting a few of these valuable commercial species that have global trade. Theyre not necessarily coming in very close to coastal waters and damaging coral reef habitats. Thats not what im talking about area and im talking about fleets that for the most part stay out in International Waters although not exclusively and there are two Regional Security agreements in africa, at least to what to that im more familiar with, what is the code of conduct which is related to north africa, east africa and the middle east and in west africa you have the code and both of these are Regional Security frameworks that deal with the maritime space and to my knowledge Climate Change is really only dealt with when it deals with blue economy issues but because these are security frameworks a deal with issues of in west africa and east africa piracy, human smuggling, arms smuggling, a lot of which takes place on fishing boats so i cant say how those frameworks are set to incorporate issues of Climate Change but certainly they probably should be, especially when it comes to the migration of resources. Were going to see amy before we turn to the audience. You talk about local solutions and that caught my ear when the lands special reporton the lands came out in august. It was a great panel, john locklin joined us for that and we had a director of the Global Environment facility and she spoke about just that and theidea that often times we talk about these global movements or other agreements. And we set these National Goals but those goals are often being implemented atthe regional, national scales. And really when you talk about Community Level actions, could you talk about the pathways for success in that kind of work . I think this isnt a problem that the new. So thats the good news is weve had challenges in implementing largescale projects at the national and local level for a long time so weve learned something. I think you can look at standard like the isc performance standards. Theyre not perfect but theyre pretty good. Implementing is a different question. To do that effectively is a challenge but it covers both having anenvironmental social Management System in the first place , its a requirement of entities but then also how specific chapters on land rights and resettlement and Indigenous People, legal rights and other aspects of Environmental Impact. And what ive seen so farand im sorry to add to that , i feel the governance around that, they have experts in health to help their clients do these things properly if they dont know how. Have agreements mechanism at independent and raises problems when these art, normal people can bring complaints when the standards are followed. And what im seeing in some of the adaptation funds is there picking up some of the comments a light touch so my question is there are other things that can be strengthened and if the government wants to access that funding and they have to start developingcapacities and we probably also need to be financially supporting capacity because it isnt easy. For a lot of countries that have topdown cultures a different way of doing things. So i think thats something that should be incorporated, particularly in adaptation across the board and again, theres stuff you can pick up off the shelves in terms of what the standards should be. I also want to talk about one other area, theres been progress on how they frameworks that probably needs more migration so people that are migrating because of either a sudden onset or slow onset Climate Change are considered refugees under International Law and so are migration frameworks are slowly evolving. Theres a Global Compact for orderly and regular migration that was marginalized in 2018. Does talk about Climate Change, not as much as it should. It doesnt solve the problem but there is talk in the area. And i think thats going to be a key issue to get our brains and political willpoweraround going forward. That will talk about commenting. Thank you very much. Audience, do you have a question . Do we have microphones . The first panel will take up to three at one time so we got one here, a second and one in the back there. Okay,lets go with those two. Thank you, michaels order. My questions are more for john and sarah and i really appreciate a discussion on the impacts at the Community Level in indonesia and asia broadly and in africa like chad, mozambique, somalia. Im interested to know what is being done at the Community Levels within the most affected communities to address and anticipate the impacts of climate driven risk and to mitigate the chances for drivers of conflict and im probably leading thisquestion for sarah because im a work aware of your work in somalia but at the Community Level where people could be drawn intocriminality , violence extremism and conflict, what can be done with those communities that are risk and at the frontlines . Lets go back and get a little bit. Im monica medina. I know a lot of you. My question is about technology and the use of electronic monitoring and electronic recording systems and youre seeing an uptick in that anywhere else. Can you hear me . The question is about electronic monitoring and electronic reporting as a way to better manage fisheries in the face of Climate Change, im wondering if youre seeing an uptick in that anywhere else. There are some efforts in the us but theyre sort of in fits and starts and i think this is the case globally as well but id be interested in knowing if any of you are aware of any places where its going well. One here in the middle. Thank you very much. Wonderful presentation. I was wondering if you could the role of the International Financial institutions, for example world bank or Asian Development banks where theres been Capacity Building in places such as africa or asia. So we got one on Community Level Risk Mitigation and maybe that ties into that funding work. And then we got another question on electronic monitoring and advanced approaches to fishery management as away of climate management. Who wants to dive in . Thank you for your question. I think the answer the question of whats happening at Community Level, i think that question is difficult to answer weekly have to do with what the impacts of the community are and the capacity and knowledge of the community and in the horn of africa the largest impacts of Climate Change are terrestrial agriculture impacts and routes and most of the Capacity Building in committee, i wouldnt even say theres community Risk Mitigation going on. Theres simply survival thats happening. Id say in the maritime realm though probably the greatest amount of Capacity Development is happening in Data Collection and very basic approaches, data core approaches to stock assessment happen through Regional Cooperation with some of these larger scale levels so i dont in a lot of communities that have already been impacted by Climate Change or that are regularly struggling with issues of food and Incoming Committee that may be completely decoupled from Climate Change, im not sure that wrist mitigation is something that even where we are right now. I think its more thinking about ways to improve Resource Management that incorporates Climate Change at some level, at some regional level. Its not a great answer to your question but to work at the Community Level i think you need to have support from the federal and state governments when relevant to enable communities to both bring problems to the federal and National Levels for solutions and so im seeing a lot of that sort of level of Community Education and Environmental Education around the impacts of Climate Change, plus mobile education as a result of awareness building thatshappening right now. But i did want to actually address your points about relations to violence extremism or recruitment into criminal activity and while that can happen and we do see some of those things happening i think the issue is so much more complex than just Climate Change causing food and livelihood insecurity causing recruitment into violent extremist groups. Its not that simple, is a more complex issue and in the area of horn of africa there have been a lot of linkages between the rights of piracy 15 years ago and changes in their Marine Fisheries but in a lot of times these things are not, the story told in the media is not nearly as simple as one that we would like and the downside is that simply holding some of these problems will not address the issues around violence extremism. Just a quick answer, to compliments. So i think there are three things that are happening. Theres a lot more to be done but one is more scientific information about whats happening in water, the healthiest communities understand how to deal with things. The second is planning for the future, what are these resources going tolook like and how can communities plan for that and finally , to amys point is governanceand self empowerment. So as an example some of the work that we did in the crack fishery , bringing the local governments had never really reached out to the stakeholders before in these communities and organize them we help them do that in one of the things they did with that was the government announced it was opening the home for the provincial government and they announced they were opening a mind in jakarta but the fisherman there said no, that mine is in the middle of our fishing ground and the government heard from these fishermen but they had never heard from before and so building governance like that is a critical way to give people not just buyin but a way to save their own futures. Click on the technology, obviously i think you mentioned in the ustheres a lot of emphasis on improving monitoring which isimportant not just for the science , to understand whats happening in the water. To be able to base management decisions on but also to improve accountability because every fisherman will tell you they dont want to catch the last fish but they cant sit around and let you catch the last fish so as a common issue theres a lot of important emphasis on knowing the community is abiding by the same rules so the us is testing a lot of those new technologies. Japan as part of its reform is pushing to modernize its data system as you go and look at the records from three years earlier of where the fish are and how much there is and you cant manage stocks that are shifting rapidly in this case. China has realized accountability and enforcement is a big weakness and its Management System and are taking steps to do that too and some of you have heard about the efforts of global fishing watch that uses satellite data to track fisheries around the world, indonesia signed up and there are other countries that have signed up to partner with this ngo is helping to make transparent everything on the water. Quickly on technology in the arctic is going to be transformative because you have vast systems with limited infrastructure helping to understand the Environmental Impact on the terrestrial environment and also to continue to monitor maritime. Also how we connect communities, the Arctic Council has beenworking for the last several years on enhancing Broadband Communications with the most indigenous communities. This is telemedicine, Online Education and this is awareness of bringing what their observations andhow helping us understand that and just on the tracking as well , even in the arctic thats why this mandatory code is so important because it now has to track, vessels have to have aif. Hopefully theres mechanisms we can understand because we are seeing early anecdotal instances of fishing stocks moving north for cooler waters as the water is warm. That the plankton changes and were going to see this in vessels increasingly in higher and higher latitudes, making sure we understand both the Fishing Vessels as well as the scientific vessels not always science and we have to understand who and what are operating in the arctic. Technology will have to be transformative to how we monitor the arctic in the future. Im afraid we have to stop there so we can get to our final conversation but i want to back the panel, its an excellent conversation and i appreciated. [applause]. [inaudible conversation] we were talking about how the high seas are lawless. And it shows up in the explication of fishing stocks. It shows up in transportation of illegal goods. It shows up in piracy. It shows up in the Logistics Movement of really bad people. And this is all part of this landscape. And so we wanted to do something that brought the Security Community came together with the Environmental Community to say we have a shared interest in solving this problem and im so grateful today that John Richardson has chosen to be with us as kind of a concluding keynote speaker. John is of course just to step down from having been the chief of naval operations. He worked in every bit of this, every part of his professional career and certainly the last four years when he was a cfo was focusing on this very question. And its a unique opportunity for us so would you with your warm paws welcome to the stage John Richardson, former chiefof naval operations. I appreciated. Great to be back here. I know youre familiarwith our humble abode. I think this is really a wonderful way to whats been a stimulating couple of panels. For me, what has been the takehome is this idea of a more competitive world. And a more Dynamic World. And one that needs to be more adaptive in lots of different ways. We talked about obviously the first panel some grim impacts from climate. We talked in the second panel about how these changes are going to translate in specific places around the globe to sustainability. Opening arctic through stress and tropics. Lots ofopportunities for challenge. We talk about how these translate into threats but thats of course going to take a lot of different forms area and it can be strategic so i guess i wanted to open my getting your thoughts on what kind of climate related threats most concern you, local or strategic . If you asked me today if the acute and if you ask me tomorrow if the strategic and i think that they have sometimes constructive ways of interfering with the planet and not so helpful where the acute can really occupy all of your time and resources, all your attention and sort of cause you to maybe neglect longerterm strategic things and i think that with respect to the ocean and Climate Change, its may be particularly vulnerable to that type of by dynamic because both acute challenges that are here and now in front of us that tend to meet our targets if you will are very busy and some of these other things, theyre just now becoming wellknown, well agreed upon the vast majority of people. The ocean is out of sight, out of mind and so even in here in the United States, other nations that we talk about have been maritime nations if you will since their birth, theres kind of this see blindness that arises we just dont realize maybe on a daytoday basis, and acute basis how much we depend on the seas and the oceans for our prosperity, livelihood, our security and on top of that, this Climate Change dynamic is becoming more visible as opposed, its not as visible as some of those things capturing the headlines every day we got almost discipline ourselves to spend the appropriate time and attention on this, particularly now i think because there is a growing sense of urgency and the fact that some of these dynamics that are happening, they may be irreversible if we dont act soon. Picking up on the idea of driving ourselves to action, looking back across the various Strategic Security documents over the last decade or so you can go back to 2010 and the general defense review, client took up a whole chapter within that review in 2014 , it was sprinkled throughout perhaps with the less dedicated focus and of course they absent for political reasons from the National Security strategy. But i guess my question to you is a little bit of with the view of driving us to action, how important from a security standpoint, from the mind of the pentagon are these documents in terms of driving action, in terms of allowing us Security Community to adapt better to threats that are going to be facing . Im a believer in the importance of strategy and kind of getting back to our first question , a wellcrafted strategy and a well communicated strategy allows us to make sure that while some part of the organization maybe activated by the hereand now , theres another part of the organization and after these longerterm things so it is important that our strategies , our strategic documents mention these challenges, maybe even breaths. Having said that i dont know that if you think about the elements of National Power , im not sure that the military dimension of National Power is the primary focal point to address the challenges of Climate Change. And certainly we will have an impact, and implicationfor the security environment. But if we look at this primarily through a military dimension lends, i think we could distort the solution and arrive at approaches that areselflimiting maybe. So when youre talking about just from the earlier panels, when youre talking about challenges that are more fundamental in Food Security, thats a much broader challenge than the military can solve area in this case really a whole National Approach is not an interNational Approach and the comments about our institutions to to a rise to this challenge i think our fundamental sets of questions and from a security standpoint, again i spend a lot of my time trying to highlight the importance of the oceans and also i know im preaching to theconverted year , that the oceans are under a lot of stress just separate from the Climate Change stress. The shipping of the oceanhas increased by 400 percent in the last 25 years which is an astounding increase. The seabed infrastructure whether were getting at Natural Resources or whether we are talking about intercontinental communications, 99 percent of the internet rides on those cables so the seabed is becoming almost a lane into itself. Megacities are moving. Theyre going in number and most of them are coming up on the shorelines so theres just a tremendous amount of stress already on our oceans and how you overlay that with this stress and the challenge of Climate Change, it really begs for a super approach that would incorporate certainly the military dimension of National Power but has to be much broader than that. Picking with the idea of institutions we talk about this way that our dynamic nature of the world is stressing what is a world thats built on static norms, static institutions. So were kind of creating that if you will, cracks in the established mode of governance in the world and a lot can happen in those tracks. It seems like this is the kind of dynamism in the world today that can provide extra opportunities for hybrid conflicts. The gray zone conflict. Other particular places in the world, regions that you worry about that stress . I think the earlier panel touched on some of the regional dynamics that are at play here and in each of those regions we do a lot of talk amongst chiefs of navy about this and chiefs of coast guard and it really just the earlier panel highlighted where you said is where you stand. And in the gulf of guinea, as somebody said, their focus on the survival. The basics of maritime awareness being able to somewhat govern that space in the slightest matter. In more developed countries of course theyve got pretty secure means of governing their territorial waters and even Economic Zones. Thats not the case everywhere. So these institutions havegot to, one side necessarily wont fit all. It does give rise to these themes and i think a lot of our institutions, particularly the ones i was wrestling within the navy, their highly structured. They are fundamentally built to handle linear problems, face zero, phase i, phase ii and i think they operate inside a regional boundaries, artificial regional boundaries and is Climate Change challenge is really going to impose a great stress on thoseinstitutions. Its highly nonlinear, having simultaneously and its truly global. We talked about the importance of the science, i think its also history what i think tell us weve got to approach this with a deep sense of humility in terms of how much we can understand and absorb and measure 1000 times before we get once on this thing because we can end updoing more harm than good if we dont do it right. When we launch this program in january, senator whitehouse was kind enough to join us for aconversation and he had remarks that i often return to around this idea of conflict , conflict and resentment and how we are running the risk right now of engendering a conflict of resentment around the world. Through lack of action on climate but that literally there are opportunities to do the confluence of resentment and there is an idea that American Leadership is as in most things indispensable in this area. Beyond just mitigation, were talking about adaptation and alliances and partnerships and i guess i would just ask you what you think about the opportunity for American Leadership and working with our partners to be more adaptive in the security space . I think its absolutely essential. If were going to have a seat at the table, if this future is going to come out the way that we would like it for the health and prosperity of our nation, for our future generations, and america is i would argue still optimally plays to lead. We do have a tremendous network of alliesand partners. Thats under stress as well but i think particularly in the maritime dimension, things tend to go pretty well. This is one area i think where the military dimension can play a stabilizing role and a little bit biased i think that because we share a lot of cultures and norms, just that Transcend National boundaries. And i would argue that first among equals art navy canadian types of things. We could go out into International Waters, we have to operate in meaningful ways, communicate and you have to put together plans and operate and be safe and be productive. And so you know, not to just take this analogy to the breaking point but maybe the navy, coast guard coast guard, maritime types of partnerships can either stabilizing heal as we move forward into the future for these ships estate that will allow some of the other wins diplomatic economic winds blow. You want to come out relatively close to ontrack when these wins of a. And keeping that alliance and Partnership Structure together i think is really perhaps one of the most critical roles the militaries can play to get us through. I think im happy to turn the audience now and take some questions. Lets go one, two and do we have a third mark fine. Im john wortham with gis software company. Im curious admiral, you are serving as cnl when both the paris climate accords were signed by president obama in 2016 and when President Trump went through the United States from that agreement. How did you and or general dunford view the role of military vested vice in terms of security parameters of either being in that document or removing us on that document . Go ahead. I can speak for myself and it went back to what i said at the last, sort of the end of wins question was i saw my role as primarily being to reach out in a maritime dimension of power, bringing those chiefs of navy together and saying these partnerships that we have to despite what may be happening and despite how you interpret that, lets make sure that we keep exercising together. We keepup with personal exchanges, keep inviting each other to other schools , all of those things that create sort of a deep and meaningful relationship that is founded on sort of the common principles that and Common Ground that our two nations can find. That was sort of the primary emphasis that i took anyway to make sure that we did as much good to keep the partnerships strong as possible. Hello admiral richardson. Stevenson foundation. Quick question, is there a way to introduce high iq fishing as a mission for the navy and have it actually included into the nda as Maritime Safety as theyre trying to do and can that then be used as a gateway to corporations with other navies . Is i you fishing topic comes up at a lot of these regional maritime conferences that i had the privilege of attending because as the earlier panel said, its so fundamentally important to the prosperity of so much of the world. And having said that, to your point, to my mind isabout authority. What are the span of authorities given to navies and thats why widely varying and in our station, Law Enforcement and also to fishery enforcement authorities primarily with the coast guard and so thats a separate service and we partner closely together particularly in information sharing andmaritime domain awareness. In other nations, those authorities are allunited in one maritime body. So again, where those i would go to the authority. Those nations or those institutions that have the proper authorities to do that type of reinforcements are the ones that should be doing. And that various from state to state. Where the navy can play a role is in sharing information somewhere out there on the high seas. The overhead types of capabilities. We dont have perfect granular awareness but we got pretty goodawareness and we can focus it where it needs to be. So i think that by taking a look at the Information Exchange agreements, we can do a lot of good to enable those institutions with the proper authorities to respond to potential violations. Somebody mentioned this is also a rich area for technology, the infusion of technology so someone mentioned ais. I know there are others. Okay, what are the rules and norms and heart how are they enforced in terms of what a particular ship is squawking on ais and how are we going to respond to that if we find that what theyre saying in their ais transmission is different than what we observe them to be doing or maybe they turn it off altogether. The good guys are pretty much complying but those of course are the folks that we are after. The other ones are harder to see. Maybe taking a little moreexquisite type of technology to detect and sharing that with the Law Enforcement authorities that can respond to it. This one here. Alexander with senator murkowskis office. Weve seen this year the navy has pushed back a little bit away from their climate research, climate studies. Recently the task force on Climate Change was shut down this year. My question is what isthe navy going to compensate for that loss, what our priorities youve seen that might be good for the next administration. And then also the same realm, what doyou think is the near future for the use of the navy in the arctic . I think you would find if you look at the data that the navies been more involved in the arctic in the last two, three, four years and we have been at the end of the cold war. Just some examples that i like throwing around, weve spent a strike group in the northern Arctic Circle in november 2018. And i mean, its tough operating out there as you all know. We had to kind of crack open some old books and we hadnt been up there since 1991 with that type ofthe force element. So what we found is that while much has changed in those 20 or so years, its still cold as hell up there and the seasons are very rough. We can kind of get rc legs back in terms of doing that. Bring baseball bats, that was one of the lessons because theres nothing like a louisville letter to smashthe ice off of your superstructure and radar and everything else. So some things remain fairly primitive. Weve done a number of exercises in the alaska, so this is one of our gems as a nation in the arctic region and in fact i think we concluded one of their that involved pretty sophisticated operations with the navy and marine corps. Despite the recent trends in headlines, the navy has steady investment in Ocean Science and in fact when i was chief of naval operations, just to reinvigorate what i saw as kind of a slipping Competitive Edge in Ocean Research, we set up Task Force Ocean which was an academic effort by, focused at those bright stars in the academy that are doing Ocean Research. Infusion of resources to make sure that we stay on the front end of this, not only for our own sake but where there really is a competitive dimension to understanding the ocean and Ocean Sciences that we stay competitive as well. More questions . One in the back there, monica. Ill ask again. I love the topic. Thanks for being here. Been good discussions. Sorry, ill get closer thanks so much admiral for being here, great discussion and thanks for letting me ask a second question. My question is you called Climate Change a challenge, repeatedly referred to itas a challenge but is it more than that . When you look at us military installations that have been severely impacted by it and when you think about it as not only a threat multiplier but the potential for its reach to our own communities andour shores , is calling it a challenge notenough . Is it more like any other threat that is x essential as often people refer to it . Has got a, you know, a deliberate approach towards, you know, harming you, right . One thing, it just didnt happen, right . Thats one of the scariest things about it. It has no, you know, aim. Its intellect. Its just the science is going to take over here, right . And this is a sense of urgency, you know . Some of these bigger forces in the scientific dynamic that really governs deep ocean currents and coastal regions. I dont mean by calling it a challenge to lessen the impact of that, you know . And particularly along our coasts and, you know, it wont surprise you that the navy is present mostly along our coasts. So its got a lot of impact on our bases, our infrastructure, all of those things. But, you know, its sort of its like in those really, the scariest horror movies are those things where this force is just moving without a conscience through and manifesting itself on the environment. This is Climate Change, you know . Its almost spookier than a threat that has a deliberate intellect. Its just happening to us, and and were going to have to just deal with it. We cant, we cant convince it not to threaten us, right . This is something that is a challenge that is super urgent, and thats how i see it anyway. So i took very much to heart your point about, you know, this is not necessarily a military threat. And inasmuch as its can i mean, that is sparking an acute military conflict in the way that we think of these things happening traditionally, its hard to say, navy, go deal with this challenge [laughter] go meet that hurricane. Yeah. But that doesnt mean that there isnt a lot of opportunity for the services no, thats right. To engage and to work. And i think i want to go back to that point that we talked about a little bit earlier about the idea, this opportunity for American Leadership. And your point about how navytonavy, maritimetomaritime conversations are sometimes the most fruitful and grounded and solid and honest conversations that we have with our international partners. So theres a report just out by the climate and security group, organization of retired security officials, and they call for the establishment of a National Security directive addressing climate response, and they go into some detail about what might look like, things of that nature. Typically calling out military Development Plans with our partners, and i wanted to pose that to you op on your thoughts, one, on how you might make Something Like that happen through the bureaucracy of the pentagon and go back to that point we know Strategic Planning and whatsful and maybe a little bit whats useful. And maybe a little bit to the lexicon issue. Again, were not looking necessarily to deal with a particular issue, but allow ourselves to be more adaptive in the security environment and using that adaptability is something we can use to strengthen our alliances. No, i think youre right. First, just in terms of what does this mean for the military, you know, we ignore this at our own peril. Just as so many other people talked about in the other panels, where there are security challenges, security threats, those are real threats, tensions. Its now you know, again, i dont mean to be too cute, but you turn the temperature up on that, you know, and Climate Change just makes out all harder, more pressure, for more stress, you know . So when youre talking about defending and governing International Boundaries even at sea, the fact that, you know, your food source is migrating outside of your international boundary, you know, that in and of itself raises a security challenge of the most fundamental nature to a nation. And so i think that this idea of a National Security directive and if you look at the people that put that report together, very broad, very wish distinguished, these are very thought theful people. And, you know, from a wide variety of National Security, right . Not just military, but so many other places. So i think that, you know, this type of an approach is really valuable. And that it would be not so much the department of defense, i would suggest, would play a supporting role. But this must occur kind of at the National Security Council Level to sort of unite all the elements of the government and unite all the elements of National Power to get after this. There are some aspects of this that are going to be highly regional, and so these regional aspects of the directive, i think, are very useful. And then perhaps the most challenging would be what are those truly global, you know, dimensions, sort of transpacific types of things that need to be addressed. And when you think about, you know, the time frames to bring these sorts of structures together, right, it took about, i think, a decade to get unclustered. We talk about some of the agreements in the arctic, again, about a decade to get these things brought together if agreed e to and signed. I dont know that we have a decade really of time left before some of these things become, you know, really the momentum builds to the point that its going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to turn them back. And so theres a sense of urgency that its going to have to come to this international dimension, that its going to be unprecedented in a way to get these agreements together in a time thats relevant. [inaudible] thank you very much. Im john white, the head of the consortium for leadership. So roughly 15 years ago today another retired cno, admiral watkins, was testifying before congress. And he stated that Ocean Science, Ocean Research in this nation is, its spread across a confusing number of agencies at the federal, state and local levels, and the public is crying out for data and information in a way that can help them make meaningful decisions. My question as you look at your great experience of looking at this federal structure of Ocean Science and research with Task Force Ocean as you did, how far have we come in that 15 years and, i guess, how far do we have to go especially when you add in the importance of Climate Change and, in fact, the clock is running out here . I know you mentioned in some of these areas. Thats the question. I think we could always do better, john, you know, in terms of sharing data. I mean, you wont be surprised even just inside the navy some of our labs and efforts inside of the navy, you know, the collaboration there, were always striving to improve that the, right . So that we can really move forward in a meaningful way, eliminate duplication and all those sorts of things. And its not any better, you know, as you expand that aperture to include other agencies. You know, Task Force Ocean was an idea to try and reunify that, give it a focus so that it was a gathering point for all those different efforts particularly as it related to Ocean Science. The technology has really changed in the last 15 years, so i think that right now we can do, you know, some tremendously meaningful Ocean Science work in terms of really getting after this and understanding it. If you think about our understanding of the ocean in the last 15 years, its really kind of remarkable what thats done. You know, one of the things im going to do in the near future is im going out to scripps, and im going to speak at this event that is honoring the legacy of walter monk who is just one of these, you know, epic oceanographers. And, you know, walter monks impact and we are taking you live here on cspan2 to the Johns Hopkins school of advanced inter, National Studies in washington, d. C interNational Studies for remarks by the irish ambassador to the u. S. And others discussing brexit and the u. K. s future relations with the u. S. Foreign policy institute fellow. E