INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND WORLD BANK GROUP

2018 ANNUAL MEETINGS

CIVIL SOCIETY POLICY FORUM

ARE WE BUILDING BACK BETTER? LESSONS FROM DISASTER REPORT (2016)

Surabaya, Bali, Indonesia

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

3:30 p.m.

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

MIHIR R. BHATT Director All Disaster Mitigation Institute & Chairperson, Duryog Nivaran

SUNITA KAYASTHA Emergency Specialist, UNICEF –

DENIS NKALA Regional Coordinator – Asia Pacific United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation)

* * * * *

Are We Building Back Better? Lessons from South Asia Disaster Report (2016)

(3:30 a.m.)

MR. BHATT: This particular panel has been especially put together to look at this whole idea of build back better and, you know, who does it, how it is done, who matters, why it is far more important now than it has been before, so on and so forth. And keeping that in mind, we have drawn from a very important report that came out last year, which was called Build Back Better, and it reviewed what has happened in South Asia in the last 10 years and all the disasters that took place that attracted international financing or international relief. And from that study which was done by various countries in South Asia and the report itself was done by Duryog Nivaran, which is alternative network of individuals and institutions which look at disasters differently and exactly the point being that when there is talk about disasters and finance, there are World Bank President and Indonesia Finance Minister and two other ministers actually gather up and when there is talk about build back better in terms of people, not money, and there is very little interest and that's what Duryog Nivaran has been actually saying that what really matters is, you know, who builds it, how the extra money reaches the poor, what is the accountability, what happens to women especially with all that finance; does it actually reach them, women, children, so and so forth; and also what is the role of actually countries learning from each other, that is India from , Bangladesh from Nepal, Nepal sort of south-south if you will. So that is the focus of Duryog Nivaran, and therefore we requested for a panel in the World Bank annual meeting, and they quickly granted us the panel and here we are.

So I'm going to draw from this particular report that we have. I have a copy of that if people want to -- anybody wants to see that subsequently and I can also e- mail that if you would leave your name and address with me. The report is done every two years, and 2016 the report was, as I said, on build back better, lessons from South Asia and 2018 a report is coming out, which will be

'19, which will be about South Asia disaster report on transboundary early warning system, so that the focus is. And Nepal and India and India and Bangladesh, of course Bhutan included. There's a lot of transboundary early warning system for floods, but also for other disasters as well. So that's what it's going to focus on.

As you can see -- so let me start and as you know, South Asia is highly prone to disasters and we have learned to build resilience in South Asia, especially last 10 years, 2008 to '17, eight and a half to nine years, we looked at and so 426 events were reported and based on that the studies were made in respective countries to see that what is the nature of build back better that is taking place. And two or three things came out very clearly. One was that the build back better was build back better to the original position which meant that inequality of people's role in building back better, that is men and women, for example, not focused on child protection for example which meant that you went back to the jobs that you have lost, but not finding a job which will be even more useful in the coming years so on and so forth. So that was the background from which this particular report was put together. Build back better is a critical part of disaster recovery that has to -- there is the structural improvement, how the society is actually constructed as well as the underlying drivers of causes that lead to the risk at the onset itself.

So Duryog Nivaran builds that we shouldn't be building up the society of the past, but also – but actually building society of the future retaining the good parts of the past society, but also claiming to the new areas which are fast emerging so that the people who are poor, people who are vulnerable actually benefit from that. To give you a concrete example only from today, there was a lot of discussions on social protection for example and build back better includes that we should not only rebuild the existing social protection measures for children, women, workers, but also build back better the social protection measures that we will need in the future especially.

The build back better is very well defining

Sendai framework, those who are aware, which was in Japan and it's called Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, SFDRR, shortly called Sendai, which has four action areas and seven guiding principles. So this report particularly addresses that. The aim of the SADR, South Asia Disaster Report, 2016 was that how the build back better recommendation of Sendai framework hold up against actual institutional resource capacity in the country in context of South Asia. So a lot of global work happens and which is important. But that's never enough to actually see what's happening on the ground, I mean, how things actually perform on the ground and that is what the South Asia Disaster Report has done. The capacity, intent and interest of the existing mechanisms and systems of recovery and reconstruction to deliver on build back better principles is also addressed in the report. And the role of capital, development agents and other interest groups in operationalizing build back better.

Capital is very clear as we have seen in the recent past, what is not clear is the role of the labor or the workers in the build back better and especially if you see the build back better efforts, large number of casual labor unorganized sector, labor, many of them, 80 percent, 70 percent, 90 percent of them are women who are actually building back better, but it's always assumed that build back better is so to speak of the existing structure. And we also look at the ecology or the role of, for example, water harvesting, tree plantation for example, plantation of forestry et cetera which are not seen as infrastructure. When we talk about infrastructure, it is always seen as large bridges, roads, ports. Of course they are important, but that's not the only infrastructure we need for a good life, for a good economy. What we need is economy and ecology as well so that both work in harmony to reduce the vulnerability and that is something missing. So these are the aims of the – the approach was to draw from country experience. So we wanted to not look at the macro data because most reports on disasters look at the macro data. So we thought we would look at the micro data, what happens actually on the ground and then build it up and the reason being that there is macro data anyway available, what is not available is what actually happens on the ground because it is disaggregated and

because it is all scattered, it's never put together and added.

To give you an example, what happens on the ground, as far as Kerala floods are concerned, recent floods in Kerala, in India. The large number of people, large number of people actually managed their camps on the road, but the only reports that we hear about is outside agencies, government and non-government agencies helping them setup camps and actually manage it, which is less than 3 to 4 percent of the outside agency job, but because it is not reported, we believe that large number of agencies from outside helped the local people manage their camps and set up. This was an excellent example that people themselves managed their own camps with their resources, their skills and mostly local procurement of rice and other food items together.

So main examples are the earthquake in Nepal in 2015, which was also very recent. Also looking at the landslide in of 2014, Meeriyabedda, then Uttarakhand floods, Cyclone Phailin and Cyclone Hudhud in India, three cyclones and one flood; Cyclone Sidr and Aila in Bangladesh, and monsoon floods in . So these were the highlights, which were included in the last 10 years trend as well.

The lessons for planning and community participation is one of the things, which came out very clearly that though in 10 years several disasters has actually taken place, there was hardly any learning either from one community to another or from community to the local officials or national officials or from one community in one country where the cyclone took place to one community in another country where the same or similar cyclone took place. So that kind of lateral learning as well as vertical learning as far as disaster response, recovery and rehabilitation is concerned is very weak across South Asia, and which is where academies such as South-South Academy could be very useful for us and about which there will be more that Denis bhai will be talking about later. I'll introduce both the subject and the presenter.

There was also integrated planning and action, and there I would like to highlight two things which came out very clearly in South Asia. One was the integration of disaster risk reduction and climate change, and it assumed that the risks are two different risks. While if you are poor father on the ground, it doesn't matter if the flood was because of the disaster or flood was because of the change in climate. So that kind of a separate approach actually divides the resources, money which comes down, but also efforts, institutional efforts, intents, programming et cetera. And that is something that was very clear.

Third was community involvement and there we would like to highlight that everybody, now almost everybody agrees to community involvement. What is not understood is that the community itself has changed so much in last 10 years, access to social media for example, the way people's livelihoods are concerned, the role of youth for example. So the nature of community has become far more dynamic than it has been in the past 10 years and that is something is not understood neither in development field, which we will not talk about, but in the disaster field as well. So any community based disaster risk management project is assumed to be very good because it is community based, it's true because it's local, but the community itself has seen so much and therefore the programming has to change and that's something not quite picked up.

After that was important about the communication channel, which I just talked about. And two aspect of leadership, one was the leadership of the community, but especially leadership of women was very, very weak even in South Asia where women play far more active role both as young girls, as married women, as workers, as old women as well and still that part is not recognized in disaster, either relief and response or in the long-term recovery aspect. And though the Sendai framework quite rightly has underlined with the leadership of Japanese government that all disaster risk reduction should be responding to the -- should be guided by women's leadership, that is actually not happening. So that is what the report found out. There were also some other highlights which came out, was

the not looking at the everyday disasters. So it was assumed that unless large number of people are killed, it's a disaster, but if people are not killed, its only loss of livelihood, it's not a major disaster. Let me give you an example. Last year we had floods in India and two-third of the country was under at least two weeks of flood or sometimes three months of floods. So it's a really large number of people were affected throughout the country. But it was not a national disaster because it was widespread, slowly unfolding, not simultaneously happening and loss of lives were very less. So unless there's a large number of people who are dead, it is not considered to be a major disaster, which comes out across the South Asia also.

Prioritizing schools and safety, that was something which came out again from the report very clearly both for young children's and for others and about which later on we have very good presentation here. And other was the integrating disaster risk with climate change adaptation, and that is something extremely weak and as a result the risk factor faced by local communities, especially local poor households is increasing. So when there is a talk about the government financing, public financing, financing which is bilateral such as from Japanese government to government of India or government of Nepal, such as money coming from World Bank, IMF, ADB to the national governments in South Asia. The integration of disaster risk and climate risk is almost invariably missing. And that's something doesn't really help build back better. So we build back black or brown economy and not build back green or blue economy, which is what we would like to actually do, which is a better use of resources.

Here there are four or five aspects which came out very clearly on the risk governance part. One we would like very much to highlight is the missing voices. So because of participation, because of community centered risk reduction, far large number of people are able to actually contribute to an extent the decisions related to disasters are concerned. But when you look at the people who are left out and that becomes very shocking that there are missing voices, which repeatedly do not come in the

decision making process. One of that is in spite of the fact that India has, in South Asia, but South Asia also is a large number of youth, the focus on role of the youths, adolescents is very less as far as disaster risk reduction is concerned and engaging them into not only recovery and rehabilitation process, but actually helping them to take leadership for building a sustainable risk reduced, so that are the aspects which is not coming out.

So in South Asia building back better and, yes, countries are moving in the right direction, but more progress is needed and the issue can be categorized into six components. And here are the six key components; government, economy, ecology, human settlement related, safety nets and essential services and vulnerable groups. I will like to highlight the last two especially.

In the safety nets what is happening that anyway there is no social protection which is available during a development period or a non-disaster period. The social net that is there in terms of food, water, any of the basic lifelines get destroyed during a disaster. And during the recovery, instead of starting rebuilding from the lifelines which are lost, social protection, the rebuilding focuses on large capital investment on infrastructure that also physical infrastructure, which should be exactly the opposite that first you start with the lifelines; that is water and food and health and education, access to finance and banks so on and so forth, and that doesn't happen, but it happens the other way around. And that's something I'd like to highlight as a finding from this report.

And second is vulnerable group. And of course we are aware of groups such as, not groups, major portion of– half the portion of our population, women and children in large numbers, disabled down very much in the agenda of disaster, but some other communities are not there in the groups which includes, for example, the migrant community and they don't have enough presentation -- enough representation such as in Kerala floods recently, almost 98,000 families from the deltas of Sundarbans came and were working in Kerala all the way South India and they quickly rushed back during the floods. Now what happened

to that 98,000 families, what was the loss and damage and that is something displacement is not adequately looked at. Other vulnerable group is which is just now recognized in India by the Supreme Court, is people who have either alternative personal sexual life or do not want to fall into any one category such as male or female. And that was because not recognized by the Supreme Court, it was also not there in the disasters. Only now that is being recognized, and if you choose to be on this category or that category, you can still own a house, you can receive relief, you can receive rehabilitation so on and so forth.

So now deepening and moving beyond build back better and these are the areas which came out from the report. One was, as I said clearly, women's leadership part. Second one was about food, security and disaster risk reduction. And this is very sad for South Asia because what is happening is that in South Asia, the farmers who grow their food, those who grow for example wheat, they don't eat their own wheat. They grow their vegetables, but they don't eat their own vegetables. What is happening is that the agriculture is becoming hugely commercialize, merchandise. As a result during disaster field also there is no local food to procure, there's no local milk to procure, local vegetables to procure. So what happens is the people get even more delayed or even more costly imports from other district, other state, other countries the food then come. So that is something which is very alarming. Then there is an overlap between recovery in the conflict area. So there's a natural disaster, when there is some sort of a conflict either with the citizens and tribal's, either with the ethnic groups, minorities, workers and industries, a large part of that is going on in South Asia right now and that overlap is not addressed. So if you're doing relief for floods, you assume it's for flood, but not realizing that is in the conflict area, which may be -- so that's a very important aspect.

There was also the cultural part which is always assumed to be somewhat esoteric, somewhat not very central to recovery, we can afford to let some of our cultural heritage be erased so to speak. But large amount of

culture, both living culture and also physical culture in terms of, you know, architecture and artisans and artifacts are being lost in the last 10 years and that came back again and again and again. So our own history and culture is being washed away because of various disaster risks and there are no measures to bring it back. Something very alarming, which has taken place, you may be aware in Brazil where the national museum of Brazil got totally burnt, an entire heritage of the national museum is lost and we are not quite sure, we did not cover that in this particular report, but may God forbid, if there is a fire in any of the national museums in South Asian countries, how much, I mean, how well prepared they are. So that is something which -- and that is a national museum which is actually preserved, what is in the communities is even large amount of cultural heritage which is being lost, and it's not cultural heritage we sort of see in the books or on films. It is something which is a living heritage and those are also coping mechanisms for people to live that kind of cultural aspect.

So that's the report that was done and based on that this particular panel is pulled together. What we – the report as I said was done by Duryog Nivaran and experts in institutions which had got together. What was actually -- so now we have two panel members and two areas as I said which were very important to look at. So which is children, but not only seeing children as children, but looking at that as one of the most important vulnerable groups, also looking at them as the leaders and in risk reduction made with disaster risk, climate risk and also how the educational system can perhaps bring about change as far as we are looking at disaster risk reduction and climate change risk in South Asia.

So with these words we have from Nepal, the UNICEF -- excuse me sir, will you change to her? Good. So will you please make your presentation? Before you do that, is there any burning question from the report that I presented? Otherwise we'll just move on to the next presentation. Thank you.

MS. KAYASTHA: Thank you, Mihir. I am Sunita,

working with UNICEF as an emergency specialist. Today but I'm going to present on, you know, how really children can take a role or participate too in the context of build back better and the learning from Nepal. So that is a topic for me. Basically before going -- moving to the main context also because as you know how Nepal is a diverse country and also we have more than 126 caste and ethnic group and more than 123 language in the country. Why I'm putting this slide is how diverse we are, what are the issues related with the, you know, context of the development as well as the emergency situation.

Now if we see the Nepal as a disaster context based on the facts and figures in the country, so we are ranked as the 32nd country in the world by seeing the disaster context and disaster crisis and as per the INFORM Global Risk Index also. So globally Nepal also rank as the 30th country, according to landslide and flood, we are one of the most vulnerable in terms of earthquake as well as the climate change. This is a kind of scenario in the country.

So as you must have heard about the 2015 Nepal earthquake, around 9,000 people were killed and also if you see the like to 2.8 million people were affected, among them are 1.1 million are children. So when we talk about the disaster, when we see the most of the vulnerable population, we think about the other people. But in the country of Nepal because 41 percent are children in the country, so when disaster occur also most of the time most population affected by any kind of disaster, either small scale or a mega disaster, the children are the one of the most vulnerable people in the country. I just want to highlight.

After the earthquake also in Nepal we have – still we are feeling aftershocks, a few weeks ago also we have aftershocks going on. So we don't know what will be the situation. Based on the different report and after the earthquake, Durham University did a study, a research in the country and they already anticipated there might be more than 8.4 Richter anytime in the country. So we are in alarming situation at this point of time. We don't know where we'll go, where we move, but we need to be

better prepared to how we move forward to build back better in our own country. By saying that, so when earthquake happened there was almost 7.06 billion dollar, that was the kind of total financial damage and losses in the country. So rather than going into detail, I'll come to the -- because I just want to show, so not only the human capital loss, it is also economic loss in the country as well. There's a huge damage in the country.

Now there are different responses have been done and still recovery, especially currently reconstruction work is going on in the country in different sector. But now if we move to the children main agenda, so if you see like why we need to invest more on the children. So when we talk about, like as I mentioned before, 41 percent are children, but in terms of any kind of disaster, not only in Nepal, in globally also, if disaster occur always if we think why we need to pay attention on children as a preparedness, as you know better to be prepared to deal with any kind of emergency situation because if you see the vulnerability point of view, children are among the most vulnerable in both regular development work as well as the emergency situation. We can't distinguish between development and emergency situation. And also another factor is we also need to ensure the participation of children and adolescent in any kind of, you know, situation, especially building resilience and adaptive capacity largely depend on the nature of underlying system and the context of the country. So when we do, what do you call, initiate the approach for a child centered approach in the country, that really helps to promote systematic approach to reduce risk as well as sustain the community resilience. I'll come back later also.

When we talk about the ensure participation, children can be as a change agent, you know. If they learn something new at this point of time as a small child, how they can contribute to better build the system in the country, that is really, really important. That's what we say like children as a change, actor of change. So when we have – when we can see the children can understand the importance of any risk factor associated with their lives from very beginning, from early childhood development till being adult, so that is really important

also. So when we give that kind of environment also that really help them to, you know, equip with the knowledge and skill so that they can better prepare for any kind of situation in the normal situation or in the emergency situation. And they will also grow into better informed adults. So we talk about when most of the time as UNICEF, not as a individual when we visit many place, when we talk about the children, oh UNICEF is there, now they will talk about the children. But how we can see, perceive children as a change agent. When they learn something new for their own life in their community, how they can make a change in their whole system of the country as well as the government system as well as the overall development also, that is really, really important.

And also in addition to that also we need to see how we can see children as a sector point of view. When we see about education, health, water supply, whatever we talk about or social prediction, we talk a lot about this, so all the matter also when we see the children as a core or an integral part of that development also, that really bring the, you know, development work in the country.

So actually I really want to highlight one aspect here, is regarding when earthquake happened in Nepal also. actually Child's Right Organization we have a consortium, UNICEF, plan, old vision and save the children. We have a consortium globally and most of the country, you do have a consortium at the national level also. What we did as a practice is, there was a response going on and there was a discussion on recovery, there is a donor conference meeting held in the Nepal. But most affected population, 41 percent are children, but they were not consulted, what are their need, what they're looking forward. So four agencies came forward, had a dialogue with the government, Nepal government, to understand to get a better view and better point of view from the children with -- through the children consultation. So then we conducted the children consultation in 14 districts where the earthquake have impacted a lot and I actually aim for that consultation to hear from that, what are the challenges faced by children, what are the recommendation they are looking forward to build back better for their own like lives, their

community, their family also. So most of the concern raised by the children at that time is there is a very inaccurate and the insecurity of shelter, impact of school, how they impact their learning and also one of the most important factor what we have learned in Nepal is psychosocial support, how the children have been impacted through that process, not only children impacted, even their family and the community also.

So this kind of finding has been discussed with different sector. When you talk about the sector point of view, what are the issue related with health, what are the issues related with education, that has been shared and discussed with subtle intervention. So these are the issues raised by children that need to be considered while they're doing the recovery or reconstruction work. And some of the example I really want to highlight is, there was a great demand how they can because they are really afraid to go back to school now, even now, because most of their school, permanent and semi-permanent school, are weakly reconstructed. There's a issue of how children can go back to school, that's still a concern. So they really look forward for the transition learning center or some kind of, you know, what they can feel safe, at least being in the school they feel safe also. So that has been considered and the provision of transition learning center and keeping consideration of the resistant building as how to build back better. And also children have given, if there is a rainy season what would be the extra parameter need to take into consideration into education sector, that has been spelled out by the children themselves and that has been considered in the recovery and the reconstruction phase and still ongoing.

And another is health facilities. Now in Nepal we are building as earthquake resistant preferred building. We are not very sure how much Richter it will be, you know, taken forward, but it's more than eight Richter can be, you know, resistant. So that kind of thing and that is more concern and the build back better perspective also. And there is also another for anti- trafficking aspect also.

Now especially when we talk about the build back

better perspective, we always need to consider children need to be seen as -- we should not see children as a passive recipient, more an active citizen. We can also contribute, we can also facilitate, we can also support the country for a better improvement, better development. So especially what we're advocating and we are also practicing in Nepal as, you know, Mihir mentioned about the micro level, not at the macro what is happening in the big report, you know. So that sometime there is very kind of abstract, it's very difficult to understand by the local people and the community. So basically then it is better at the South Asia we are trying our best how we can make sure children also participate, children and adolescent participate for identification of risks associated with their own community. And also, they also need to participate for analyzing those risks and also how they can communicate risks with their colleagues, their sibling, their families and their community and the decision-maker also. That is also equally important.

So based on the analysis also how these kind of mobilizing the different kind of action resources and also some of the innovative social networking even with youth group or other media also and also based on that kind of analysis, small scale mitigation action need to be taken into consideration. So I mean that what are the issues related with the children, when they identified those risks, that need to be taken into consideration by adult. So when we do the risk assessment, it's not only with the children. The issue raised by the children is also tallied with the risks identified by the adults, so we overlay those risks. What are the risks associated with children and the adult and we try to analyze and prioritize to take action against this. Those kinds of actions really bring those kind of synergy in the community to build back better. So that is really, really important at this point of time and we have some of the learning from Nepal also.

So for example, I just want – it's not only involving and participating children for the decision making through the risk identification, for the mitigation action, but we have some learning from Nepal also. We have, you know, we have a Child Centered DRR Program

supported by UNICEF, not only UNICEF, we have a country based disaster risk reduction platform laid by Minister of Local Development and General Administration, it is a ministry, there is a platform where all humanitarian actors work together to rollout this kind of initiative in the country. So basically when there was a flood and land slide in 2017, particular where there is area working on community based program involving children, we found there was zero casualty. There was economic loss, but there was no human loss at all. So some of the learning, I'm just sharing. And also some of the mitigation and prevention really, really pays back.

So especially a fortified embankment did work to protect community from the flood and minimize those kind of impact. It is in India and other countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka also, and also cycle (phonetic) of really especial in Nepal we have a children network. Around 48,000 children network in the country supported by many agency led by government and the other international organization also. And also there is a raised hand pump and toilet and also some of the other initiative has been taken into consideration in the country.

So as a wrap up of my, you know, the brief presentation, some of the key learning is we know children led risk analysis is always the foundation for the risk informed planning. So when I talk about the risk informed planning, it's not only related to the disaster or some of the -- like onset emergency. This is more related with the development. When we join different platform here in IMF session also, because how to bring development and the humanitarian together, that is a great challenge for us. So when we have that kind of context to bring that element together, it really help us to, you know, have a risk informed programming, we support for the regular development as well as the emergency setting as well. And also building resilience for children entails working at different level. When we talk about children participation and their perspective, we're talking about the individual family, community, and the larger network and the overall country as well. That's one.

And the multi-hazard risk mapping is really,

really important and also for identification, analyzing as I mentioned before. And the small scale risk mitigation also paid back, that are learning going on. So that's a small investment targeting to the most vulnerable area. Targeting most vulnerable population is the key factor for a risk informed kind of development which really sustain the development work, that is really, really important. And the mainstreaming DRR and climate change into local government planning process is critical for sustainability of sector development.

What we are trying to do in the context of Nepal, just to wrap up at this point of time, is because we have gone to the new federal structure. We have a new act, we have a new constitution. So everything is new. And recently we have a New Children Act two weeks before which has been, you know, endorsement by the cabinet. So it's the new change context of the country, what we're trying to do is now we have local government, we have given more authority. Whatever risks analysis and the understanding from the children prospective, that should be inbuilt with the government local planning process, not by the project, either supported by UNICEF or INGO, it will be there for a time being, once we move, everything will collapse. So how to bring that element into government planning cycle, what we all humanitarian agency in Nepal working together with government to build the capacity, to build the system so that government can own or government can facilitate the process to build back better in the country in coming days.

So this is how we are working in the country at this point of time. So this is all about Nepal and this is Mount Everest, if you happen to visit, just to wrap up my presentation. Thank you.

MR. BHATT: Thank you so much.

(Applause)

MR. BHATT: So is there a specific question burning before we move to Denis? Good. So we'll move to Denis. He's the Asia Pacific head for UN South-South Cooperation, and a lot of sort of what came out from the

report originally and also in this presentation, as you may have seen, is that we just seem not to learn from each other, we wait for somebody else tells us what the lessons are. And South-South Cooperation in our eyes is exactly how we can directly learn from each other, may it be community or may it be districts, states or even countries for that matter.

And Denis bhai has worked a lot on disaster risk reduction including his team most recently at the Asian Ministerial Conference they had presentation for the Asian regional plan, which is there for disaster risk reduction and how that can work faster and better if the countries work jointly laterally. So Denis bhai, over to you.

MR. NKALA: Thank you very much, Mihir. We have worked together for some time now, since about 2008. And I'm grateful that you have invited us. I think this is one of only a fewer panels where the subject of South- South Cooperation is going to be addressed by design, not by default. I attended a few panels yesterday and today, and the subject of South-South Cooperation came up. But it was mostly at the macro level. And when the UN office for South-South Cooperation would like to see South-South Cooperation not only they looked at those micro levels, but also permeating to the levels where we are actually dealing with people and this is the reason why we have a very close relationship with AIDMI and other institutions, that's how we can get at the local level.

So now I'm going to start my presentation and where I come from, in Africa they say before you travel with somebody you have to know who they are because that will tell you what direction they may be taking you to. And so I'm going to introduce the UN office for South- South Cooperation, I'm sure that a lot of you may not have heard about us at all. The UN office for South-South Cooperation, for some you may have known about it as the special unit for technical cooperation among developing countries. It was the outcome of the Bandung process going into Buenos Aires in 1978, that's when the unit was created to try to help member states to work together, knowledge sharing, technology sharing and so on.

And so our mandate is really to work with United Nations agencies with the member states, intergovernmental organizations and more recently we've been emphasizing a lot on working with multi-stakeholders in development including non-state actors and NGOs. And as I said, since 2008 we've been working with Mihir and his group.

Now in terms of our work, specifically I mentioned that we are trust with overseeing the implementation of three landmark decisions on South-South Cooperation; the Buenos Aires plan of action of 1978, and the new direction strategies where we started to think about bringing in multi-stakeholders, before it was all government, South-South Cooperation was only governments. And then the Nairobi document of 2009 is really what cemented this work with NGOs with the private sector and other partners.

Our main work is within the United Nation system and I'm very happy that I've got a colleague from UNICEF. So we're not the coordinator as such, but we try to liaise with the member states in trying to put together the norms for how South-South Cooperation can work and how it can benefit the member states and that is transmitted to our sister agencies in the UN system. Each one of them has their approach to South-South Cooperation.

And lastly, what we do is in big meetings like this one, we also try to have our voice in to remind people that there is the aspect of South-South Cooperation which can be approach to be in terms of helping countries, particularly those countries that do not have the ability to compete with the larger states, the more developed states. So we try to advocate for a voice for the most vulnerable people, states and communities.

Now as a last point in terms of introducing the UN office for South-South Cooperation, our headquarters is in New York. We have offices in Addis Ababa of Africa, Bangkok for Asia Pacific, that's the office that I lead, and we have another office for East Europe and Arab states, which is in Istanbul. As some of you may well know, next year we're going to have the second conference on South-South Cooperation after Nairobi and that too

again take place in Buenos Aires, it's called BAPA+40, Buenos Aires Plan of Action Plus 40. And it is envisaged that after that second conference, we're going to have a fourth office somewhere in Latin America.

Now so much for introducing the UN office for South-South Cooperation. So even if you remember only one thing about us, that's sufficient for me.

Now let's go to the issue of discussion. And what I wanted to start by underlining is that we are not experts in any area. We don't have the magic mandate like other UN agencies, not like my colleague who focuses on children. But our role is simply to ensure that we advocate for South-South Cooperation and that we facilitate processes whereby South-South Cooperation can help countries and partners. Disaster risk reduction is also a crosscutting theme as has been said. And for that reason member states have found it necessary for us to participate in this area. A number of times our directors have tried to defer to other agencies in the UN system who have more capacity to deal with South-South Cooperation.

However, member states have said, we want the UN office for South-South Cooperation to work in this area. The first time that this became very strongly was after the Tsunami in around 2005. And I remember we had what we call a high level committee review meeting in New York. And the Asian countries got together, brought in the leadership of the UN office for South-South Cooperation and said we want you to work in this area. In addition to that a number of countries including even some of the smallest countries that contributed some resources for the UN office for South-South Cooperation to help all the countries that had been affected by the Tsunami. That was the starting point because after that as we worked in the region, we came across a number of players in the field including Mihir. And when we started working together, we had this concept of bringing South-South Cooperation to the community level. How can we do that because their big meetings like this and the people that are really affected are not participants. And so our thinking was that we have to bring them to the tempo so that they can share these experiences and that gave birth to an idea of what

we call the South-South Development Academy. And the South-South Development Academy was our thinking that would bring all the local players in terms of disaster, recovery in particular.

So you'll be looking at the communities themselves, you look at the local government, there may be the private sector that is working there, there may be NGOs that are working there. So what was done with the nine academies that we have had, we have always tried to bring people with experience from the communities with these other players in the community and to share the lessons learnt in terms of recovery. And we have had quite a number of meetings relating to children. Disaster reduction relating to children, but also we've been thinking about this aspect of recovery and building better, which is why my subject, the subject of my presentation is about children and building better.

As I said, we're not experts, but we rely on those who are experts to deliver the programs, to put together the coalitions of people to address the programs on the grant. As you see us here, this could be one of the academies with UN agency UNICEF with AIDMI from India and the UN office for South-South Cooperation simply facilitating that process. And if I continue now to some of the things that we look at is the UN office for South- South Cooperation and in this aspect, it's not very different from what we would look at in any other area of development. We believe that without building the capacities of the people in any subject, you are unlikely to be successful in what you're doing. So this is again why we work with the NGO's that have the capacity to work with people and help them to build resiliency in their communities and to know what to do.

To give you an example outside of the collaboration with AIDMI, we also had a project funded by Japan between the Caribbean small island developing states and the Pacific small island developing states. And the idea was for them to share their experiences in terms of how they mitigate against disasters, how they come together in terms of recovering from the disasters. And this project was recognized by even the secretary general

of the UN is very important in that it started with the people themselves, this is the capacity that the people had and we're building up on that. We also know that you have to build the appropriate technology and in these days where everything is driven by data, it's certainly important that when we are considering the capacity building and working with the communities that we should have the appropriate data to help them make the decisions.

I just mentioned the traditional knowledge from the Caribbean and the Pacific. I think that is extremely important because some of the mistakes that had been made in terms of building better is introducing what people think is modern. But the local people sometimes know better what works. So I think we have to build on that and not come up with something that is new and completely novel. So, for example, if you go to where I come from, Africa, and you introduced some technologies or know how from some other places, it might not work because there will be some things that as an outsider you will not know. But we have to learn from each other from a South-South perspective and build from the knowledge and use the local knowledge to make things better.

The last two points, I have also said that in any approach that we have to development, we believe that we have to look at the local resources and the skills available at the community level. This is very important and it's a methodology that has been developed by one of our sister agencies, UNITAR, they call it the City Share methodology. When they go to help, the first thing they do is a mapping exercise with the community to see what resources they are. We're talking about different financial resources, but most importantly people as resources. And based on that then they recommend the way forward and work with the community in implementing it. So I think this applies in this situation as well.

And lastly, but not least, we have to commit financial resources which is why we also work with the UN agencies, we work with any other partners to avail resources to those who are implementing like AIDMI, and thus one of the partnerships that we have to try to get resources so that we can work together. And I guess with

regards to my final point, which is that we facilitate partnerships. So if you're interested in the South-South approach and you want to work with us or any of the UN agencies, we're very happy to be your partner.

The last slide is just the commercial. This is the UN office for South-South Cooperation in Asia Pacific. If you want to follow what we are doing, you can visit our website, but you can also visit us physically, we're at the UNESCAP premises in Bangkok. Thank you very much.

(Applause)

MR. BHATT: Thank you. So we have limited time and there are two other panelists who have not joined in, they've sent their message, they couldn't join for various practical reasons. And one of them is with Practical Action in Nepal, Achyut Luitel. And two major points that he wanted to share as far as build back better is concerned both within his country, but also in South Asia, and one of them was with the shelter recovery is very often in build back better seen as a process which is of construction and bricks and mortars and land and that it is. But it's not seen as a process of people rebuilding their lives, especially their work and social life. And that's something he thought was particularly missing and he wanted to bring it up here as he couldn't join.

And second issue was early warning. And in recovery one doesn't think of early warning very often. But when he reviewed the various recovery projects, what he found was two things missing; that there's hardly any early warning part added into recovery process and that's something not suitable, you have to start as recovery takes place and not to wait till the recovery process is finished. And second, especially the transboundary early warning, in a sense that across the districts there maybe rivers, across the states there maybe rivers and there maybe earthquake which affects two different states, especially across the countries as well in South Asia, that's very important. And so those two points that Achyut made from Nepal, Practical Action, wanted to highlight.

Ram Kishan who is with the Christian Aid and he wanted to again highlight two points, not being able to join here us in physical, in person. And one was the last mile and the last citizen. And mostly what happens in long-term recovery depending upon what particular social structure it is, but all the way up to 12, 13 percent to 3 to 4 percent definitely gets left out in terms of getting the benefits of the financial support, shelter support, all the other recovery inputs that go on. And though it seems like a small number 3 percent or 12 percent, but when you add up, it's a fairly substantial number, especially they are the worst affected and longest suffering. So that's something that he wanted to particularly highlight. And second one was about the missing voices, which I also mentioned, that we still don't have a mechanism where people who can speak up and should be speaking up are not necessarily given a chance to do that.

Third person, which is Margaret Arnold (phonetic) and she is with the bank and long-term involvement in various recoveries for almost two decades now. And she, as we plan to put together small notes from this particular group to the rest of the -- to the World Bank, had mentioned two points. One was that in recovery, social protection is not looked at as much as it should be, it's seen more as a development agenda and that should be brought into the disaster and climate risk agenda as well. And second, in terms of investment, that recovery related investments are seen also as our reports said, sort of still so from brown or black agenda or gray at least as far as industrial development and industry recovery is concerned. It's not seen as a green agenda, which includes the rebuilding of ecosystem, but also much, much, much larger aspect of that.

So those were the six points from three of the individuals who really wanted to contribute to this. I'd like to stop here and ask for your questions. I haven't introduced one of the founders of Duryog Nivaran who's here and which is Priyanthi Fernando, and we are very glad to do have her join us. So thank you very much and welcome to joining us. Thank you.

Any questions or any support? We have five to seven minutes. And if you would kindly introduce yourself and ask the question? Thank you.

VISHWADEEP: It's nice cozy group. So I thought we can make use of the time. I am Vishwadeep, I work with a foundation in India focused on water with both lot of civil society organizations as well as the government. I'm guilty of working in my silo, so this entire thing was pretty new in terms of the language. So it took me a while to figure out building back better what it means, but thanks to all three of you, I mean, I learned a lot.

As I was listening to you talking about disaster recovery, certain thoughts because we work on water, I want to bring in a slightly different perspective that is tantamount to disaster, but I'm not sure whether we call it that. Like Mihir, you would know 250,000 farmer suicides primarily because scarcity, I mean, bore well going dry, taking more loans, not able to repay. Over a 10 year period that is roughly 2,50,000 a year, right, so 65 million people who are affected by fluorosis, that is again because of plunging water levels and that's an entire childhood gone, wages lost, social cost and high economic cost. Arsenic is 600 million that are vulnerable. And our studies with partners are showing that there's a high correlation with cancer deaths in arsenic affected areas.

In mountain areas, they're doing some work on springs because for drinking water that's the only source. So what happens when a spring grows dry, I mean, and many of the springs are vulnerable and we are doing lot of work with the government on spring rejuvenation. And that's around 40 million if you add just the mountainous states. So the question that was again and again coming to my mind is, I mean, so what is the critical mass of human suffering that we need to attain before we can call it macro critical? I mean, and these are only learning in the last three days that unless things are macro critical, it's not enough, worthy enough for the bank or the fund to look at it, it's not scale, it's not.

So these are slightly upstream problems of

before the disaster strikes. I mean, there's a little bit of disaster happening every day if you can call it that. I don't know towards what end or why we would want to classify it under DRR, but to me the numbers are sufficiently large to even if it's to shine the light on the issue and possibly prevent a future disaster if not anything else because it's disaster risk reduction and after all, so if we can -- it's a veritable disaster, I mean, waiting to happen in some sense.

And to Denis' point on South-South Cooperation, I mean, that's also very striking and you are very right that even in our subcontinent or country as because India we are seeing that in the same district if two agencies are working, we don't really know, the government doesn't know what the CSO's are doing, between CSOs there is very little coordination. So there's lot of duplication, there is lot of resource that can be saved. And right now we are focusing on seeing how we can find ways of enabling this cooperation's to happen and possibly using a digital platform. Because one thing that we have learned is without partnerships and cooperation nothing really works or nothing really sustains. So how do you enable that to happen at scale for people to learn from each other? Basically reduce the friction for knowledge and also data to travel, basically we are just about trying to develop a digital infrastructure to see if - and if it can work for India, I'm sure it can work across the region.

That's on the focus of what we are trying to do and to Denis' point, I mean, we've kind of reached a saturation point of working in a project mode, although they are good, but they don't really scale. So we work through networks and programs. So on each of these issues, on ground water, on springs, on water quality, and they are large networks, very amorphous, there's no -- not necessarily funding, there's government, there is civil society. And if there is any way that can be useful to become part of your network, at least making them accessible to your needs, that's something we would be happy to do. I don't know beyond that.

MR. BHATT: Thank you very much, and both very important questions. We should quickly address. Any

other question or comment you have? Yes, sir. And Priyanthi, after you.

MR. LEVA: Thank you.

MR. BHATT: If you'd introduce yourself.

MR. LEVA: Thank you, thank you, for the panel. My name is Charles Di Leva, I'm with the World Bank, and I had hoped to be here earlier. I just wanted to say that we have introduced new environmental and social standards as of October 1st, and a number of the issues that you've pointed out are now addressed in investment project finance. So under this new standard we have on community health and safety, it specifically says that we have to address resilience in new building so that communities are taking into account the changes in weather and disasters and the specific reference. I think the point you're making about children and women being part of the consultation process is now understood as essential.

So the new standards also have a new standard on stakeholder engagement, which spells out that when you design projects, you have to have this breadth of knowledge and I think you've made some other really excellent points as did the commentator before about, there's so many issues to take into account including being sure that the building is appropriate to that particular instance instead of just grabbing general industry or general standards. So I hope that what you're pointing out, maybe there's ways to enhance that knowledge as far as these new standards are concerned and I'd just like to thank you for the excellent work that you're doing.

MS. FERNANDO: Okay. I just want to endorse this fact because I think right at the beginning, Mihir, you started by saying this is about disasters and not really actually about development. But I think those two things cannot be separated and I think Sunita's presentation and what Vishwadeep said were all related to the fact and I think to focus on disasters as a big event is I think a mistake particularly in the world as it is now with all these little -- what seems to be little

disasters or not so publicized, not such big events where it is I think really important.

So I think that's well taken and I think we should try to emphasize that because it's how you do development is what actually results in disasters and I think we can't really actually forget that. So in that sense I kind of like to welcome maybe different kind of conditions from or safeguards from the World Bank and not the development agencies, but I think it's also about how our governments do development, right. And the kind of priorities that they do, for example, I mean, I understand that in Nepal they're now building a big new airport. I was there at the time when we were trying to fight the dam development in Nepal and tried, but some of those dams went ahead anyway because governments kind of funded them even if the World Bank stepped back.

So I think it's just both the development agencies and our governments really need to recognize that how they -- and I think that's what the Sendai framework also says that the more we do, the way we do development is what is the result of disasters. I'm very happy that we had a conversation about children here, but just want to ask Denis whether there is more work done on women's involvement in disasters, what do you do about it?

MR. BHATT: Just one more question and then we'll --

MS. DESAI: Hello, I am Megha Desai from Self Employed Women's Association, SEWA, in India. I'm happy to hear about what you say what has been done for women in South-South Cooperation, as well as I'm happy to hear about child statement that there are new, there's a breather for women to take charge for development.

I would like to share here the work that SEWA has been doing with the disaster affected women in India as well as SAARC countries, seven SAARC countries. We basically work with women who are affected by natural disaster or manmade disasters like war. We're working with war affected women in Afghanistan since 2008 and there basically -- they are in, you all know that in these

disaster affected areas women are affected, not only they have lost the lives of their family members, livelihoods, but they're also affected psychologically. So it requires the holistic approach where we have worked with the women, develop the leadership, developed the vocational skills and starting from that we developed the community learning cum business resource centers in the countries which is affected by these disasters, in all SAARC countries actually.

And during the course of the process we involved right from the planning process, we involved the local women and local communities and local government and we have seen that at the end of around four to five years women could form their own economic organization kind of a social enterprise. And that are the core of sustainability of these developments. So this I wanted to share about the women's leadership in disaster affected area.

MR. BHATT: Thank you for sharing that. and so maybe we'll -- I wonder if you have, yeah. I mean if we have the bank we might as well have you, so. And then we'll -- just each of us will respond, maybe first you and then you.

MR. SWARD: Right. My name is Jon Sward, I'm with the Bretton Woods Project in the U.K. I just wanted to pick up on something you alluded to before you began your talk, which was a presentation on disaster risk finance earlier today and we've seen a big move towards this including the promotion of a lot of climate insurance scheme. So I'd be interested in hearing from the panelists their view around whether there's a tension between this sort of your work in very much these ground up approaches to disaster risk reduction and the direction of travel of disaster risk finance and whether there is particular financial instruments that might be beneficial to your work outside climate insurance? Thank you.

MR. BHATT: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Climate related risks and disasters are on an increase and the onset maybe slow, but

the impact is quite deep. So will you be also in the academy as Denis was referring to or in the work that you all have been doing, I've also been looking at, you know, recovery related to these kind of climate shocks and effects of that?

MR. BHATT: Thank you. I was just going to request to say your name and (inaudible). Yeah, your name and your organization, just so that we know all of us, I think it's a small group as Vishwadeep pointed out.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Everyone can hear me?

MR. BHATT: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yeah, so, yeah, my name is Amir (inaudible), I'm from Indonesia. I'm working for disaster map foundations that collect and analyze and visualize social media reports about floods and other disasters in Indonesia. Thank you.

MR. BHATT: Thank you. And this lady behind from Indonesia or maybe not Indonesia.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Hi, everyone, my name is (inaudible). I'm from Indonesia as well. I work in humanitarian for Indonesia, an interbreed of faith based NGOs working in humanitarian affairs.

MR. BHATT: Thank you. And this young lady last there?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Good evening, all of you. I am (inaudible) from Sri Lanka, Eastern Province, Batticaloa District. I am with affected women's, women headed family members and war affected widows. We are with since last eight years our -- in Sri Lanka after war and tsunami time our women are facing more financial and more problems. So now we will some development our sister with the SEWA project, we give support with us. Also government of Sri Lanka, Government of India also support with us. That's all.

MR. BHATT: Thank you. So at least we know each

of us and that's Dr. (inaudible), right? Thank you. We have five minutes as organizers are pointing out, so.

MR. NKALA: Okay. Thank you very much. I think most of what was said were really comments that we have to look at and discuss among ourselves. I want to address myself to two issues. One was the issue of gender particularly women with South-South cooperation. And I want to take this at two levels. At the macro level we recently put together what we call the South-South Cooperation framework for the next four years. And one of the main issues was that we should look at the issue of gender in South-South Cooperation, which means that the member states thought that we are not doing enough in terms of gender in South-South Cooperation. So it's something that we're going to be really scaling up. Having said that, to be able to be successful, we of course have to work with our sister agency, which is UN Women, and this relates to another question, which was asked whether we could have an academy for women and disaster, we have tried a few times with Mihir to approach various units of UN Women to have these academies, and I'm sure that this is going to be successful. And on the last note, the academies that we have had particularly on disaster recovery have predominantly had women as participants because we are the people that are really poor, that were mostly affected. And so in terms of the growth that we had to discuss these issues, most of them were women.

And then as a point that was mentioned about the proliferation of the institutions that maybe working together and how we can really scale this up, what we try to do is to have networks. For example, we don't have much time, I'll tell you that for public service innovation, we recently came up with a network which is led by one country that has experience in trying to develop their systems. And I can tell you that country is Bangladesh. So they are partner in terms of putting together this network, which has been endorsed by the United Nations. Thank you very much.

MR. BHATT: Thank you.

MS. KAYASTHA: Yeah, maybe I'll take a few questions regarding water supply also. The same situation as you mentioned in India also because drying the water source in the country because of the drought that's also one and another is because of after the earthquake also all the water sources drying in the hilly areas.

So actually government is taking leadership how to like they're promoting water receptive plan as a strategy also how to bring that element together to have a source protection to have a water system in the country. That's one going on. And regarding – I really like to thank the colleague from World Bank like great understanding of the participation of women, children and affected population for the program design, that is where we call about the accountability towards affected population. Not only the affected population, in a normal situation as well, that one.

So another is as you mentioned, DRR finance on climate insurance, Nepal, we have like a Ministry of Environment, they're looking into it and also not only for the financing, even we're looking forward for the insurance, you know, so how to take it forward as we're not at the stage compared to other countries. So we're struggling how to take it forward, looking forward on that.

And the last note because as we always mentioned, as you rightly pointed out, we always promote DRR is not a humanitarian work. Actually when we always say DRR is not the new thing, but doing thing differently so as a development work. So how we are promoting as all humanitarian agency in the country, we're promoting and supporting government to have one voice, how to mainstream disaster reduction and climate change adaptation into the local planning of the government itself, not for us, how to make their system inbuilt so that it will be sustained for a longer period of time. That's why we are working with the local government and we are promoting, like UNICEF, we have too many partners in different sector, was health and nutrition everywhere. But how we are promoting this kind of DRR into development is a key agenda for us working together with the government.

MR. BHATT: Thank you. Okay. I think it starts from the back and first on the insurance question that we had, both looking at disaster risk insurance as well as climate risk. And two quick points. One, there's a wide number of local initiatives taken across the South Asia that one is aware of. And that hasn't been consolidated and therefore put into national planning process or the -- in the case of international financial institutions, their ongoing projects. That process has just started as we saw this afternoon at 11:30 with Dr. Kim and Ms. Indravati (phonetic) starting the risk finance initiative for Indonesia.

So something similar to be done at both project level as well as at a country level is in there. Having said that, there are two major issues with the insurance coverage where it is provided. One is the insurance coverage has no meaning unless there is mitigation measures, and there is no investment in mitigation measures because if everybody claimed insurance, then obviously there's no point. If nobody claims the insurance, then actually then all that money of the premium goes to the insurer, and we obviously have -- the idea is not to make the insurance company rich to do that. I mean, now that we to -- want them to drive them. So that's on the insurance part.

On the part of slow disasters that you were asking and fluorosis or arsenic, which is what actually Duryog Nivaran quite a few years ago had looked at in Bangladesh and India on both sides. The most latest one that we've just started touching at regional level, but in India we've worked a bit more on the quality of air. And what is happening is, for example, I come from the city of Ahmedabad and last one year, that is from April 2017 to March 2018, there was not a single day as per the government data where the quality of air was not in the danger mark, so not a single day throughout the year, this is the government data. And not only it was above 50, which was 70, 78, which was the lowest, but on some weeks for two to three weeks together it was 300. So it should be 50 PPM, it was -- so that is the kind of development that we are going to -- now, is that a disaster? No, it's

quality of air, it's environmental aspect.

On the other hand, the way we are developing is becoming so dangerous that we won't need natural disaster anymore, we ourselves will be causing so many disasters that we will actually reduce the number of natural disasters that is to take place and the idea of the network approach from project, that's again very important and that's something that is, we are also saying that we on international financial institutions such as banks, but also donors, governments, they need to think more about network approach of financing than only having one way of financing and there isn't enough, I mean, there can be many more ways of financing and let's start exploring piloting and also seeing what the governments are.

I'd like to end with Charles, your comment on the Bank's new guidelines. And on one hand we find extremely useful various initiatives that the Bank has taken especially in South Asia, may it be the coastal project in India if you look at carefully or may it be the new work that is coming up in urban areas that the Bank is working on, school safety project that is designed -- is being designed across South Asia and what we would like to do is from this particular discussion come back to view that is the Bank with suggestions on how those things could be done differently as rightly put by Sunita so that we don't have to wait till things that are missed out or out of place actually become visible and then we can correct. So that's the purpose of this particular panel here. And it maybe four or five things, it maybe six or seven, but that's something we would like to put to the Bank and we hope as always you'll receive them and give it due consideration.

With these words I'd like to really thank the panel members, Denis for making time all the way across the globe to rush here, and Sunita-ji to you.

MR. NKALA: I just came from Bangkok.

MR. BHATT: And for you to come all the way from Nepal, but also to bring in the local reality of the children in Nepal and the group here, all the

participants, I really thank you very much. Should you have any interest, there's Duryog Nivaran website, you could look up and send questions there or you could just leave your name and address with us and we'll be in touch.

If not before, definitely next annual meeting we will see you again if you participate. Thank you very much.

(Applause)

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