Saline Futures Conference 2019 - Plenary sessions 2
CC Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivatives 3.0 Germany:
You are free to use, copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in unchanged form for any legal and non-commercial purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
Rahman, Atiq
Negacz, Katarzyna
- Climate change induced salinization as a growing global challenge: Atiq Rahman, Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies - Global opportunities and constraints: Katarzyna Negacz, Waddenacademie
 Welcome back everyone. I hope you had fruitful discussions during the parallel sessions. And behind me you see a website where you can go to vote for your, to vote for the posters. So if you haven't done so already, you can go there and use the code and later on in the break you can still vote. But you can also do it now if you want. So now it's time to look into a bit more of a global perspective on salinization and climate change. And we're going to do that with a man who has done a lot of work on this. And he told me that there's one requirement you need to do all this work. And I quote, you have to be a pathological optimist for this. But he has, he is the lead author and convening lead author at IPCC. He was awarded champion of the earth by the UN in 2008 for his contributions to the protection and sustainable management of our natural resources. He is also the director of the Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies, which is a leading think tank on environmental resource management and sustainable development issues. And he's going to talk a little bit about climate change induced salinization, about specifics about Bangladesh, and some of the funding possibilities there are. So let's welcome Professor Attik Rahman. APPLAUSE Ah, well, he's on his way. There is a bit of a, you know, sometimes wires get in the way. But I think we're ready. Almost, OK. OK, so let's do this again. Attik Rahman. APPLAUSE Hello, you can hear me now better. Yeah, and I can hear myself now better. All right, climate change induced salinization as a growing global challenge is part of the title. And like most good papers, I will be talking a bit about it and lots of other things. So we are trying to address the issue and some of the, I was requested to cover some of the issues of financing in the global world on and the potential that exists now. So in today's highlight, I'll talk a bit about climate change implication and challenges, possibilities for funding. I'll do that at the end. Emergence of the green climate fund, future potential of saline agriculture. In general, you heard a lot about Bangladesh, socio-economic impacts on the population itself. So what has happened as or is about to happen is that on the 29th of this month, a new IPCC report, intergovernmental climate change report on oceans and earth frozen zones, which is called the cryosphere. The reason cryosphere is relevant to what we are talking about is the earth frozen zone becomes water and becomes available to the sea and the sea level rises. If the sea level rises, the salinity includes into areas which wasn't already saline. So the sea level rise will affect major coastal areas, ecosystem food production by the OSHA, and economic activity the whole lot. So the truth of the matter is up to three years ago, we didn't know about some very few Antarctic scientists knew that Antarctic was melting faster than Arctic. Bits of it. There is part of Antarctic that is still growing with ice, but huge amount, you know, a semi-mountain like parts of Netherlands, goes out, melts and we have a bump in the sea level rise. So that creates one of the problem. And by 2050, the human displacement is going to be a major issue, extreme sea level rise in many areas and mega cities, which are now knocked around. You heard about Miami being affected, Amsterdam, you know, most of the other cities, New York, United, Tokyo, all of them would be greatly affected. Some will be lost in the process. You know that Jakarta is sinking and the capital is already being decided to be shifted. So displaced more than a quarter billion people, 250 million people will be displaced and that's a world that we don't want to imagine. And in the flood damages, annual flood damages are expected to increase by order of two orders of magnitude, 100 times more than what we have now. These numbers are astounding, but that's what the IPC says. Heat waves recent impacts of heat in Europe. Last year, 200 additional people died in Quebec in Canada for heat stress. So ocean oxygen shortage, 2% decrease in oxygen and the frequency intensity of marine heat waves will increase. On the ocean water mark will rise for centuries and in the end of the 22nd century, the sea will rise. One of the realities is that what we talk of angel scenario, all human beings become angels and stop breathing. Somehow manages to survive in a hypothetical world. The emission will come down. The temperature will come down, but sea level rise will not stop. It will keep on going for hundreds of years. That is a reality that we have to learn to live with. Food shortage supplied from shallow tropical waters to decline and particularly here we are talking about the coastal area acidification increase of salinity adaptation. Rising sea will force coastal regions to adapt even more and up to three years ago I used to talk about that poor countries will be most affected. Now we know in the last hurricane in the systems in coastal US, we know that is no more, thus the poor countries is poor country, rich country, every country will be affected. Those have the potential. The poorer people will struggle with the impacts and to retreat to high grounds as climate refugees or somewhere else. These are already started inside Bangladesh. I will show you how displacement is taking place and in the wetland globally much of the coastal wetland will be lost by 21, not everything quite a bit. Arts to ice sheets are melting rapidly becoming the main driver of sea level rise in the immediate future. The glaciers average runoff from glaciers is most mountains. We did a major study now on Himalayan and Hindu Kush and the glaciers are melting. Coming down by 2050 there won't be too much water left for South Asia. So remember South Asia holds more than 2 billion people. In the Parmafrost the world's top layer of Parmafrost to a depth of about 3 meters could melt by 2100. That means sea level rise even further. About 20% of the Arctic land Parmafrost is vulnerable and Abra Parmafrost is thought if ground subsidence will cause other problems. So just on the question of heavy metals and other toxic mercury and others will increase and mountains are expected to lose a lot of snow cover and far reaching impacts on agriculture, energy supply, tourism. Now people's perception of sea level rise 76% of Californian, let's take one US chart. 76% of Californians believe that the global warming will cause sea level rise. Now this is counter to what the White House thinks. 79% of Californians believe that the sea level rise will cause serious problems for the US. And those who know about the strategic decisions there was a special paper by CIA. What is the greatest threat to US strategic future? It wasn't terrorism, it wasn't trade war, it was climate change. And that was the report was hidden for about 3 years. Now it's coming out and that's the situation. Now in Bangladesh if you look at salinity during the last 20 years of the study, the perception is that respondents perception says that salinity during the last 20 years of the study what is happening. In the early days they thought not much, gradually increased and at present high level people saying that it is going to happen and happening and salinity. And no salinity used to be in 1992, it has changed dramatically and the percentage of respondents causes of reduction of rice production. They attribute to salinity intuition as the main reason there are other reasons of course lack of rainfall etc. So lack of rainfall is also connected to climate change. Some sea level rise natural systems effects across the world, you know most of these issues of freshwater resource agriculture feature is the health recreation by diversity settlement all will be affected by inundation flow. All of the wetland loss will take place accepting now all those and most of the cases in salt water intrusion, mass recreation and tourism everything else will be affected and similarly in the drainage systems. And we have seen that we know that IPCC says that globally sea level change has been taking place and these are recent publications of sea level rise and 1.1 meter, 1.2 meter is very much the order in the ocean in the tropical sub tropical areas and it could go up to as much as 1 meter in the IPCC assessment, fifth assessment that's how it has been reported. Long term sea level rise and IPCC assessment also shows that this is be happening and in the regional one this is the India Bangladesh areas where in the sea the temperature that will happen is the sea level rise and the large cities of London. So many of these cities will start being affected and in terms of total number of impacted people by salarization in Africa 123 million, Asia about 200 million, Europe 6 7 million, Middle East 91 92 million, Central America, North America 6 7. So you see that Europe, North America is not going to be that severely affected as others and that is one of the realities that we have learned to live with. Somehow the climate forces don't seem to like the poor that much. The case study of Bangladesh shows that when the coastal areas will be affected and much of these elevation from point 1 to 2 meter, you know areas which will be affected over several parts of the country and areas that gets affected in the regional sphere. And the salinity map of Bangladesh in 2016 we did some modeling ourselves and projected modeling shows that soil salinity, there are three types of salinity that's going to be affected. The soil salinity, the water salinity and the groundwater salinity. All of them interact with each other. Groundwater impacts soil salinity and as the overall salinity increases groundwater comes up and affects life. So those are issues that we have to understand. These are some of the other measurements that we have done over various types of spring and winter and there are separations because this oscillation takes place depending on ganges, how much water from the ganges come down through Farakha, Bharaj and all that. So we have done other modeling which shows that salinity impacts on agriculture is going to be impacted and the response is highest during this dry period when salinity comes up furthest. So because the flow of water from the ganges water system decreases. Quality of groundwater in coastal area has been done. The pH, electrical conductivity, total solids, the electrical parameter or partner of pH has been measured and we did a modeling, this has been modeling, done. I will not go into detail on that one. Similarly groundwater quality of salinity, again total solid and salinity temperature has been correlated. Climate change induced sea level rise in salinity and biodiversity and Sundabans. You know the Sundabans was the largest mangrove forest. The main tree called Sundari is dying, what is called top dying, it starts dying from the top. Many other systems start dying from the root. So people are at giving to high temperature and high salinity for that purpose. But there are doubts and debates on why this happens. So salinity impact on fish biodiversity of fisheries we did a study quite rigorous, literature shows that some of the fish diversity would be reduced and the great Royal Bangalore Tiger is also partly under threat because the increase of salinity affects some of the plants shading under which the tigers take their shelter. So those plants will disappear and tigers habitat will be certain. So the causal link with the diagram on the Sundaban we have done some analysis which shows that salinity will be affected by climate change, sea level rise, loss of agriculture there and then the whole cycle of decrease of fisheries, livelihood of people, shrimp farming, fauna, floral and other diversity all affect what I have said earlier gets into this schematic. Oops sorry I have done it wrong. No I am doing it wrong. So one of the reasons system that will take place is human displacement because of that. That is the state of present displacement that Dhaka city those are the coastal areas population and this is Barisal and Kulna and from the south is mostly going to Dhaka city and some from the north are also coming to Dhaka city. One third Dhaka city is a population of approximately 20 million out of which the slum dwellers are one third like 6 million. Out of one third of that like 2 million are people who have been displaced either from the south coastal or from displacement of you know floating islands or sorry not floating tiny islands, unstable islands in the river called Chots and they get affected and they get displaced and this 2 million in Dhaka itself are displaced population and there are similar displacement stories across the country. We have done some analysis and modeling which shows that right now this is the type of density from where people are coming, where people are going to where they will be going and again Dhaka city and all that will be under lot of stress and Dhaka is one of the world's most populous and densely populated city. Now what are people doing about it? People are trying to do wonderful things but that wonderful may not be enough to survive. They are raising their plinth of soil by a little higher so that when the rainwater comes the saltwater is washed out, goes out, they get a moderate crop and you have seen lot of the cropping that happens in various degrees of salt contamination. What we have been doing for the communities, they have taken too much of saltwater and in one village one of my PhD students at Imperial College found that one area had population whose blood pressure was higher than the rest of the country. And so consequently there is higher amount of sodium in their body. That was the conclusion, people are drinking too much salt. So fresh water, rainwater is being harvested, collected, kept into this and this then gets filtered and there is a whole system of filtering that we have set. People are trying to protect in the coastal area, their animals, in their house they are sharing with animals and sometimes who gets the preference, it means one of the challenges in their life we should get to the bedroom, the animal or themselves. The storage of safe drinking water is another area in which this, he puts on what is called the sari when this becomes very very old you do eight fold of sari and put it on top of the water and water purgulates even most of the germs are eliminated. So this is a filtration process that people use and of course they have to use some chemicals and they store their food and drinking water in the same way. Now this is a floating garden. I don't know whether you know the technology. What a higher sense is a floating weed with buoyancy. You press them with bamboos on both sides, they become a buoyant floating system and you put a spread some soil and you get this rice crop ready, vegetable crops come up and as the flood comes the whole thing floats up, the system moves and as the flood goes away the system goes down and collapses and creates fertilization by rotting for the fish and fish back to the system. So these are systems quite well known. When there are floods, people raise their water supply so it doesn't get contaminated and there are ways of technologies around it. When there are no other ways of producing shrimp or others, crab has been found to be one of the more productive system and now in the last 10 years crab is being exported to Japan, California and other places where people have adjusted to that. And salt tolerant variety of rice has been developed by the agriculture of scientists now being used. So technologies, people are trying to do that technology with limited knowledge, limited resources. We as scientists are backing those up. Now to do all that and improve and fight according to Paris Convention or agreement, there is a commitment from all the rich countries that $100 billion will be made available from 2020. Actually it was supposed to be made available in 2012. By postponing eight years the value of that money has come down significantly. Nonetheless, these are dodging and I'm not allowed to say in a conference but cheating ways of Western systems to undermine the values of what they transfer. Nonetheless, what we have is the possibility of funding emergence of a green climate fund has been created. It is supposed to have from 2020 which is next year $120 billion per year. If you next year you want to have $100 billion, how much should we have this year? They'll say around $50 billion at least. What we have is $14 billion and that's not good now but there are projects going around, metallurgies and development. We are helping them and this is about mostly money is going to mitigation. We have fought and won one battle. That green climate fund will have what is called equity and justice. So 50% for adaptation, 50% for mitigation. So that has enhanced the potential for adaptation which most developed countries as well as mitigation. So only for 100 projects have already been initiated, several funding mechanisms are being considered. The World Bank is trying to recreate, those who remember Kyoto Protocol had a market of carbon. And carbon market, the value of carbon was about $30 per ton at Kyoto Protocol of functioning. Now it's become $0.35 because when the system collapses that's what happens. And now World Bank is trying to recreate, we are trying to help that process help a new market. Sadly, to do a market you need two sides of exchange. Now that principle of common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities that we are feeling myself when we fought for the convention, we really fought hard and got that. That has been thrown out of the window replaced by what is called Intended Contribution for National Development and that is how they want to do it. Now there is no exchange happening, the debate is continuing and the whole discussion on finance is stuck. So we have a little problem there but it will come out of this. However what we do, $100 billion a year is inadequate. We need far more than that. And the government has a very interesting story saying governments have no money, go to the private sector. And when you go to the private sector they have very interesting story saying show us that we are sure to get 18% profit. Then we will start talking to you. No profit, no talk. That's private sector, perfectly legitimate. So we are in this situation and new funding. So new funding is coming, there are various initiatives. We as small group, we are bringing our communities across the world to create funds for the communities and the special systems. There are people who are trying to create funds for larger systems using the private sector to private sector making bankable, fundable projects. So those are things that are going to happen in the future. Overall climate change is here and now. The biggest, most fundamental issue in climate change is climate justice. There is now what is called that it is a climate apartheid world. And we knew about apartheid in South Africa. It didn't work very well for some. So we want to get out of it. And that justice has to be established in a number of ways from impact to adaptation, mitigation and allocation of resources. So those remains fundamental problem. At the same time, by 2050, 2100, about 200 million people will be moving across the world. I'm sorry to give the bad news that when that happens, the states will lose their significance in a serious way. The state border will not mean anything. And we do not want to imagine that world because we don't know how to handle that. Nobody has written a theory on this. It's a very bad situation to imagine. And let's not hope for that world and we have to act immediately. And my conclusion, I was given a lecture to the students where I said, we as a generation have done reasonably well in analyzing the problem, showing the science and identifying some issues. We have not been that good in giving solutions to the problems. It is the next generation who has to come up and give the solution. We are throwing the ball in their court, but that's not good enough. We have to do better than that in today, tomorrow and the next days and weeks and months and years to come. Climate change is going to come to you for decades and centuries. Thank you. APPLAUSE Do we have time for any questions? Thank you so much. I think we have time for a few questions. Good. Maybe one, two, let's see. It doesn't matter. So are there any questions? There are two ways. We can take question and answer or we can collect the number of questions in one go. It saves time that way. We could do maybe two at a time? Two, three at a time. First question. I'm going to throw you the microphone. You speak into the black bit. I had a question about the $100 billion. Is that only for Bangladesh or for all the countries? That's for the world. That's the planet as a whole. Well, one of the good news for those who are giving, if Bangladesh was given $100 billion this year, we won't be able to spend it. So we'll be able to spend about $10 billion. That's what we calculate. We need about 10. And if we get 10, 90 is left for the rest of the world, there's going to be a fight. So, all right. Thank you. There's another question there. Can you pass on the microphone to the back over there? Throw. Yeah, you can throw it. It's soft. So, how good you are in basketball. Good. Great. Thank you, Dr. Latik. Very interesting talk. The message about climate change has been there for decades now. I remember watching a movie in California 10 years ago about climate change. Maximum four decades. Yeah. When Pierre and I started this thing. Climate change immigration has been there in Hollywood for more than 10 years now. And we are reading books about climate change funding corruption. My question is from your knowledge and when we talk about these amounts of funds, billions of dollars. There is a lot of talk about corruption in handling these funding opportunities to the third world countries. Yeah. Can you tell us why? Yeah, I mean corruption is a red herring in this case. There has been corruption in computer development. There's been corruption in software market. There has been corruption in guns. True. Nobody tries to stop those things because of corruption. True. You see, the whole arms, you know, exploration of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, there's huge corruption. But nobody does. Corruption is something that we should get rid of at all levels by all countries. And those are basic principle in sustainable development goal that good governance under sustainable development 15, good governments, governance procedure will have to be established with accountability across the world. In USA, in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, you know, what bribing is called corruption. In USA, that's called lobbying. True. Okay. So it's the name that matters. You know, somebody calls it love, somebody calls it, you know, not so good thing. You see. So it depends. Yeah. How do you, how do you want to play it? Thank you. Another question in the back there. Let's see if we can get the microphone over, over there. Oh, that's a bad one. This way you get a bit of exercise too, you know. Yeah. You have to do through. Pass it on. Oh, oh. Not that adventure. Come on. All right. I will help you. Okay. Thank you very much. I have a couple of course many questions, but it's a 10 million a billion per year or per old total, total. 100 billion. Yeah. I mean for Bangladesh. No, for the whole cut world. But it's 10 per year. 100 billion. It's 10 per year for Bangladesh or not. No, Bangladesh has shown that we have a spent from our own resources, 7 billion per year. Bangladesh is one of the most advanced countries in climate financing where Bangladesh government brings out a separate budget on climate, which what is each ministry has spent on climate change that is accumulated and reported to the parliament. And that gives us a figure of $7 billion. We are demanding $10 billion. If they give you me 5, 7. But once again, is it per year? It's per year. Okay. From 2020 every year to continue. Yeah, it's still half of the profit shell has. So I think it's way not too much. But that was not my question. Exactly. The question is you showed me the IPCC values of one meter sea level rise at the end of this century. Well, you know with us that the Konto and Polar for instance, they had an estimation in nature. It could go up to much more than one meter per year. It could go up to one and a half, three meters in the end. Why don't you bring it into IPCC? They have done it. They have done it. Why don't you show here? Because it's much more than you showed. Yeah, it is. Well, the variability is wide. But you know, the science says this is the amount using the equation they have. But the probability because IPCC has not taken into account the melting of the Antarctic. It is the Antarctic which is changing the equation altogether. Because chunks of Antarctic is coming out and melting while other parts of Antarctic is still growing. So there are dynamics that's happening in there. As to the money part, hundred billion dollars would be a good start to manage, learn how to spend it in the best possible way. And that is not yet there. That's the whole point. No, I cannot. Okay. My only thing I want to say is that if you communicate as IPCC more than this specific one meter per the end of the century, then you put more pressure on the whole system. And if you say it can go up to three, then you really put more sense of urgency over there. That's my point. I don't know whether I call him a gentleman. There's a gentleman in a little house called White House in Washington. I'm not telling you. It's already many years already. So you know, whatever number you give, till you attach money to it, he won't move. So either he or his daughter should get money. Then it moves. It's a different world. Okay. Well, thank you for your questions and comments. I think this is all we have time for right now. So I want to thank you very much for your presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much. So we're going to stick a little bit with a global perspective because we have one last speech ahead of us. And this is by someone who is one of the, I could say, main organizers of this conference. She's done a tremendous amount of work for it. And she is a researcher at the Institute of Environment Studies at the Department of Environmental Policy Analysis at the Free University of Amsterdam. She has an amazing multidisciplinary background in environmental and resource management, international economics and law. And she's going to talk to us about global constraints and opportunities. So let's welcome Kater Zinan Vigas. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for a wonderful introduction. Yes. My name is Kater Cater Zinan Vigas. And today I would like to talk about global opportunities and constraints. As Magó said, I'm a social scientist, so I apply a little bit different perspective than most of you. But a year ago, together with Pierre Felija and Arine Vos, we embarked on a journey to explore the economic potential of saline degraded lands for the food production. We wanted to look at the global picture in order to estimate the total value that these lands can generate for the policymaking and also for the business investors to encourage them to further explore these lands. So as you all probably have realized, this issue is gaining more and more attention in media. Even today, there was a newspaper published about our conference also highlighting the issue of saline degraded lands and their potential for the future. This topic is appearing not only here in Europe, for example in France or in the Netherlands, but also in Bangladesh, as we just have heard, and also in the US and California. There are a few topics which are very much connected with the potential of salt degraded lands. First of all, it's food security. So whether we have enough food to feed the global population, not only today, but actually in 80 years. More and more ecosystems are degraded because of changing land use, converting lands for agricultural production. Yesterday, Wilhelm Fövenda mentioned that some very pristine nations' ecosystems were turned into farms, into fields, because people were looking for new lands for the crop production. Therefore, we can look at this saline degraded lands as a potential to use for this new agricultural terrains. Second issue is actually food sustainability. Janice also yesterday mentioned that we need to look further into human diet. What do we eat? Maybe switching a little bit from the meat consumption to the more plant-based diet. Another topic are the causes of salinization. So, whether these are natural or human-induced processes, how much climate change will further bring salinization into the new terrains? We had just heard excellent presentation on how this is going to further evolve and what threats we may encounter. At the same time, we're all here together because we know that there is a solution to this problem. We can use this lands for more agricultural production. Some of the experiments, those conducted on pessell and presented by Arian, also which were further taken in Bangladesh, and also other which you are conducting in your respective countries show that we can take certain plant species and we can, with the proper management, introduce them in other countries as new potential for the food production. Therefore, with our project, we took up the question, what is the economic potential of saline degraded lands? Going into account both the growing knowledge on salt-tolerant crops and also increasing climate change, we decided to follow three steps. So, first, look into the available total area of saline soils. Second, try to estimate the economic value of those. And third, validated with the case studies. Today, I would like to talk only about the global perspective as we are here all together and together we can also make a little bit better estimation. So, at the very beginning, we asked ourselves the question, which areas are currently considered degraded or less productive because of the salinization? As a result, we produced a soil salinity map. I hope that you can recognize some of your countries here. I'm pretty sure looking at the titles of different sessions and different presentations that they are quite present in this conference room at the moment. Of course, these are just examples because if we zoom out, we don't see all the countries in details, but we can see that there are some lands which are more saline, some that are actually not that much saline. Of course, also depends on how you cut the cake. You can see that here, we have only three levels of salinity marked. So, this may actually influence what we see quite a lot. Therefore, we decided to take a little bit of a closer look and see how it will look like if we apply different criteria. So, we started with dividing our global surface into three categories. Those which have low salinity, those which have moderate salinity, and those which have relatively high salinity. We've decided to divide it into this way because thanks to that we can also choose which crops would be possible to plan there. And also, we decided to do it because of the data available. As for us estimating it for the whole world, it turned out to be quite difficult task. Then, we looked into water availability because for the agricultural production, as it was many times mentioned on this conference, is one of the key elements. Further, we looked into soil fertility because we can have water available, but then we also need the specific type of soils. Finally, we discovered that if we put all this criteria together, of course, the total amount of available saline lands is falling down. But, at the same time, the economic potential of this lands is taking the reverted U-shape. This is because the moderate lands are actually the most promising for the saline agriculture, since still we can plan there quite a few different species, but at the same time, they're usually not optimally used or abandoned by the conventional agriculture. Further, we decided to have a look how our results look when we compare them with other research done in this area, and especially mapping. As you see, there are very different results. Then we looked into why we can have such a different estimations. First, of course, we have very different measurement methods. Then, as we know, salinity is increasing in time, so the further we go, the largest should be the area that is mapped. Then, in the end, people took very different assumptions as it comes to what is saline, not saline, and which lands can be treated as potentially good for the agriculture. As you can see on the other side, we have also two maps when we decided to put on the map the focus countries for salinity, but also two conditions, so the water and fertility, and then those who are only moderately in a highly saline, and also meet the other conditions. As you can see, the number is going down quite dramatically, but at the same time, on the global scale, we need to take into account that there are very different conditions, and that also once we zoom out, the picture looks a bit different. I hope you can check now whether your country is there, and whether this highly economically valuable lands are located there. The second step of our analysis was the economic values of the saline-degraded lands. After the real challenge appeared, it turned out that after scanning more than 100 articles which took into account different economic values of saline-degraded lands, people do not often mention or pay attention on how much we can actually earn by using those lands. Therefore, we decided to apply a few different methods to see what actually we can get out of those lands. First, we looked at the meta-analysis, so we looked at all these articles that we had, and it turned out that as much as 47 billion US dollars of added value can be generated from this total surface. This sounds quite a lot. If we want to imagine this number, it would be GDP of Tanzania or Baralos. In the end, we can gain quite a lot. On the other hand, we can also save some costs. We also looked at how much costs are actually involved when the saline grounds appear in the publications. When we use these numbers, it turned out that 62 billion US dollars can be actually saved if we take right preventive measures. Then we can compare it to GDP of Luxembourg. This is actually getting bigger and bigger. When we estimated the value based on our mapping exercise, it turned out that there can be quite significant revenue generated by this land. However, here comes a little trick, because we could check only the revenue, but at the same time, of course, there are some costs involved. To fully finish this exercise, we need to compare two sides and basically conduct cost-benefit analysis. At this point of time, what was visible was doing it for our case studies. However, we really hope to take it to the next step and further develop it to the number for the whole world. Further, we conduct some interviews with experts from different countries. Quite a few of them are present here today in the audience. We ask them, when can we actually introduce saline agriculture? What are different conditions that we need for that? Can we easily scale up? Because quite often these are small experiments at the test sites, but putting it into big farming or in a big area, it's a totally different question. Then we also ask, what will be the impact of climate change? Will it be positive, negative, or maybe it actually doesn't matter, because salinity is caused by something totally else? Finally, we also ask, do you see any negative sides of saline farming? And quite a few of them mentioned that it may actually be a threat to the local ecosystems. So then we need to take into account different economic, social, ecological, and cultural conditions when we want to apply this kind of business. Finally, we looked into different methods that people use to estimate the total value of saline degraded lands. We especially paid attention to three different methods which we also involved in our study. So first, into mapping. And of course, it's a great tool that allows us to see what's the total surface, but it has also some drawbacks. For example, it's quite hard to capture salinality there, or if we only know what's the possibility of this land for being saline, it's actually also not really good for the further exercise to map the total area of saline degraded lands. Later, we also looked into economic valuation. And of course, this one is heavily depending on data. So we need more and more precise data and cost-benefit analysis to further estimate whether this is a good business model for the farmers to develop in all different countries. And finally, interviews with experts were also very insightful because they gave us a lot of hidden insights into opportunities and constraints, but at the same time, the sample of interviewed experts should be way larger in order to better understand what is really happening in all different countries and globally. Yes, okay. So in the end, there are three main conclusions of our study, which I would like to highlight. First, we should pay better attention to the global mapping of saline degraded lands because thanks to that, we will be able also to estimate the total economic potential of these areas. Second, we should pay better attention to moderately and highly saline soils because they cannot be used by the conventional agriculture. Therefore, this is where additional profit and income can come from. Third, this is the priority to look at the potential economic benefit that can come from that and that can help to address the sustainable development goals, which are also linked to this. First, not only the no hunger goal, but also sustainability of the ecosystems and sustainable production and consumption. So now, we would like to take the study to the next step and ask all of you to help us with that, to better map and better estimate the global economic potential of saline degraded lands for the food production. Thank you very much, and I'm looking forward to the questions. Thank you so much, Kate. So yeah, we have time for a few questions. I don't know where the microphone is at right now, but who has a question? Nobody? I assume so. Yes, over here. So we need to have it a bit slower. Can you get it? Or is it? Yes. Yeah, you can just put it back in, I think. Yes. Perfect. Working. Okay. Congratulations for your research. I think it's really interesting and important if we want to increase this saline farming, you know, all over the world. And also very interesting the maps with the two factors. I think it's also very interesting because we always see the global maps about salinity, but when you talk about water availability, do you take into account the water quality or the water source? Okay. So thank you very much for this question. It's actually a very interesting one. When we decided to include the water factor, we took into account the rainfall and irrigation. And of course, you can further apply more criteria here, and that would be even better. But unfortunately on a large scale, we had availability of these two factors to include. So this is water rainfall, basically, and also irrigation. All right. Any more questions? No one? Okay. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you very much. All right. So we're going to have another break soon, but I have a few announcements to make. First of all, like I said, you can still vote on the posters. There's also the link over there at the poster area and the code with which you can vote. So please do so. You can vote until the end of the break, which is until 3.30. And after that, we have a few more parallel sessions that start at, they start at 3.30, obviously, at the end of the break. But I have to say that session 8 and 12 are merged, and they will take place in here. So 8 and 12 have been merged together. So if you were planning to go there, you will come back here for the session. And otherwise, you will go to room F112. And then there's another thing I have to mention, because we want a group picture of all of you. So I think maybe, Kate, would you explain us exactly how we're going to do that? Yes, so at 3 o'clock, so within the next three minutes, let's say, photographer will join us to take the picture of all of you joining the conference. And we would like to ask you to maybe go just outside of this, of this, of this, of this auditory, and then we will take a picture there, unless it's not raining. If it's raining, then we go outside. But for now, let's all... No, the contrary. If it's not raining, yes. But for now, we all meet outside of this room at 3 o'clock. Okay, thank you. Oh, there's a question. Yes. Okay, so if you are presenting here at the parallel sessions, you need to get your presentations on this... Yes. Okay. Yes, sure. So I'll take this digital...
 Welcome back everyone. I hope you had fruitful discussions during the parallel sessions.  And behind me you see a website where you can go to vote for your, to vote for the posters.  So if you haven't done so already, you can go there and use the code and later on in the break you can still vote.  But you can also do it now if you want.  So now it's time to look into a bit more of a global perspective on salinization and climate change.  And we're going to do that with a man who has done a lot of work on this.  And he told me that there's one requirement you need to do all this work.  And I quote, you have to be a pathological optimist for this.  But he has, he is the lead author and convening lead author at IPCC.  He was awarded champion of the earth by the UN in 2008 for his contributions to the protection and sustainable management of our natural resources.  He is also the director of the Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies,  which is a leading think tank on environmental resource management and sustainable development issues.  And he's going to talk a little bit about climate change induced salinization, about specifics about Bangladesh,  and some of the funding possibilities there are.  So let's welcome Professor Attik Rahman.  APPLAUSE  Ah, well, he's on his way.  There is a bit of a, you know, sometimes wires get in the way.  But I think we're ready.  Almost, OK.  OK, so let's do this again.  Attik Rahman.  APPLAUSE  Hello, you can hear me now better.  Yeah, and I can hear myself now better.  All right, climate change induced salinization as a growing global challenge is part of the title.  And like most good papers, I will be talking a bit about it and lots of other things.  So we are trying to address the issue and some of the, I was requested to cover some of the issues of financing in the  global world on and the potential that exists now.  So in today's highlight, I'll talk a bit about climate change implication and challenges,  possibilities for funding.  I'll do that at the end.  Emergence of the green climate fund, future potential of saline agriculture.  In general, you heard a lot about Bangladesh, socio-economic impacts on the population itself.  So what has happened as or is about to happen is that on the 29th of this month,  a new IPCC report, intergovernmental climate change report on oceans and earth frozen zones,  which is called the cryosphere.  The reason cryosphere is relevant to what we are talking about is the earth frozen zone becomes water and becomes available to the sea and the sea level rises.  If the sea level rises, the salinity includes into areas which wasn't already saline.  So the sea level rise will affect major coastal areas, ecosystem food production by the OSHA,  and economic activity the whole lot.  So the truth of the matter is up to three years ago, we didn't know about some very few Antarctic scientists knew that Antarctic was melting faster than Arctic.  Bits of it.  There is part of Antarctic that is still growing with ice, but huge amount, you know, a semi-mountain like parts of Netherlands,  goes out, melts and we have a bump in the sea level rise.  So that creates one of the problem.  And by 2050, the human displacement is going to be a major issue, extreme sea level rise in many areas and mega cities, which are now knocked around.  You heard about Miami being affected, Amsterdam, you know, most of the other cities, New York, United, Tokyo, all of them would be greatly affected.  Some will be lost in the process.  You know that Jakarta is sinking and the capital is already being decided to be shifted.  So displaced more than a quarter billion people, 250 million people will be displaced and that's a world that we don't want to imagine.  And in the flood damages, annual flood damages are expected to increase by order of two orders of magnitude, 100 times more than what we have now.  These numbers are astounding, but that's what the IPC says.  Heat waves recent impacts of heat in Europe.  Last year, 200 additional people died in Quebec in Canada for heat stress.  So ocean oxygen shortage, 2% decrease in oxygen and the frequency intensity of marine heat waves will increase.  On the ocean water mark will rise for centuries and in the end of the 22nd century, the sea will rise.  One of the realities is that what we talk of angel scenario, all human beings become angels and stop breathing.  Somehow manages to survive in a hypothetical world.  The emission will come down.  The temperature will come down, but sea level rise will not stop.  It will keep on going for hundreds of years.  That is a reality that we have to learn to live with.  Food shortage supplied from shallow tropical waters to decline and particularly here we are talking about the coastal area acidification increase of salinity adaptation.  Rising sea will force coastal regions to adapt even more and up to three years ago I used to talk about that poor countries will be most affected.  Now we know in the last hurricane in the systems in coastal US, we know that is no more, thus the poor countries is poor country, rich country, every country will be affected.  Those have the potential.  The poorer people will struggle with the impacts and to retreat to high grounds as climate refugees or somewhere else.  These are already started inside Bangladesh.  I will show you how displacement is taking place and in the wetland globally much of the coastal wetland will be lost by 21, not everything quite a bit.  Arts to ice sheets are melting rapidly becoming the main driver of sea level rise in the immediate future.  The glaciers average runoff from glaciers is most mountains.  We did a major study now on Himalayan and Hindu Kush and the glaciers are melting.  Coming down by 2050 there won't be too much water left for South Asia.  So remember South Asia holds more than 2 billion people.  In the Parmafrost the world's top layer of Parmafrost to a depth of about 3 meters could melt by 2100.  That means sea level rise even further.  About 20% of the Arctic land Parmafrost is vulnerable and Abra Parmafrost is thought if ground subsidence will cause other problems.  So just on the question of heavy metals and other toxic mercury and others will increase and mountains are expected to lose a lot of snow cover and far reaching impacts on agriculture, energy supply, tourism.  Now people's perception of sea level rise 76% of Californian, let's take one US chart.  76% of Californians believe that the global warming will cause sea level rise.  Now this is counter to what the White House thinks.  79% of Californians believe that the sea level rise will cause serious problems for the US.  And those who know about the strategic decisions there was a special paper by CIA.  What is the greatest threat to US strategic future?  It wasn't terrorism, it wasn't trade war, it was climate change.  And that was the report was hidden for about 3 years. Now it's coming out and that's the situation.  Now in Bangladesh if you look at salinity during the last 20 years of the study, the perception is that  respondents perception says that salinity during the last 20 years of the study what is happening.  In the early days they thought not much, gradually increased and at present high level people saying that it is going to happen and happening and salinity.  And no salinity used to be in 1992, it has changed dramatically and the percentage of respondents causes of reduction of rice production.  They attribute to salinity intuition as the main reason there are other reasons of course lack of rainfall etc.  So lack of rainfall is also connected to climate change.  Some sea level rise natural systems effects across the world, you know most of these issues of freshwater resource agriculture  feature is the health recreation by diversity settlement all will be affected by inundation flow.  All of the wetland loss will take place accepting now all those and most of the cases in salt water intrusion,  mass recreation and tourism everything else will be affected and similarly in the drainage systems.  And we have seen that we know that IPCC says that globally sea level change has been taking place and these are recent publications of sea level rise  and 1.1 meter, 1.2 meter is very much the order in the ocean in the tropical sub tropical areas and it could go up to as much as 1 meter in the IPCC assessment,  fifth assessment that's how it has been reported.  Long term sea level rise and IPCC assessment also shows that this is be happening and in the regional one  this is the India Bangladesh areas where in the sea the temperature that will happen is the sea level rise and the large cities of London.  So many of these cities will start being affected and in terms of total number of impacted people by salarization  in Africa 123 million, Asia about 200 million, Europe 6 7 million, Middle East 91 92 million, Central America, North America 6 7.  So you see that Europe, North America is not going to be that severely affected as others and that is one of the realities that we have learned to live with.  Somehow the climate forces don't seem to like the poor that much.  The case study of Bangladesh shows that when the coastal areas will be affected and much of these elevation from point 1 to 2 meter,  you know areas which will be affected over several parts of the country and areas that gets affected in the regional sphere.  And the salinity map of Bangladesh in 2016 we did some modeling ourselves and projected modeling shows that soil salinity,  there are three types of salinity that's going to be affected.  The soil salinity, the water salinity and the groundwater salinity. All of them interact with each other.  Groundwater impacts soil salinity and as the overall salinity increases groundwater comes up and affects life.  So those are issues that we have to understand.  These are some of the other measurements that we have done over various types of spring and winter  and there are separations because this oscillation takes place depending on ganges,  how much water from the ganges come down through Farakha, Bharaj and all that.  So we have done other modeling which shows that salinity impacts on agriculture is going to be impacted  and the response is highest during this dry period when salinity comes up furthest.  So because the flow of water from the ganges water system decreases.  Quality of groundwater in coastal area has been done.  The pH, electrical conductivity, total solids, the electrical parameter or partner of pH has been measured  and we did a modeling, this has been modeling, done.  I will not go into detail on that one.  Similarly groundwater quality of salinity, again total solid and salinity temperature has been correlated.  Climate change induced sea level rise in salinity and biodiversity and Sundabans.  You know the Sundabans was the largest mangrove forest.  The main tree called Sundari is dying, what is called top dying, it starts dying from the top.  Many other systems start dying from the root.  So people are at giving to high temperature and high salinity for that purpose.  But there are doubts and debates on why this happens.  So salinity impact on fish biodiversity of fisheries we did a study quite rigorous,  literature shows that some of the fish diversity would be reduced  and the great Royal Bangalore Tiger is also partly under threat because the increase of salinity  affects some of the plants shading under which the tigers take their shelter.  So those plants will disappear and tigers habitat will be certain.  So the causal link with the diagram on the Sundaban we have done some analysis  which shows that salinity will be affected by climate change, sea level rise,  loss of agriculture there and then the whole cycle of decrease of fisheries, livelihood of people,  shrimp farming, fauna, floral and other diversity all affect what I have said earlier gets into this schematic.  Oops sorry I have done it wrong.  No I am doing it wrong.  So one of the reasons system that will take place is human displacement because of that.  That is the state of present displacement that Dhaka city those are the coastal areas population  and this is Barisal and Kulna and from the south is mostly going to Dhaka city  and some from the north are also coming to Dhaka city.  One third Dhaka city is a population of approximately 20 million out of which the slum dwellers are one third like 6 million.  Out of one third of that like 2 million are people who have been displaced either from the south coastal  or from displacement of you know floating islands or sorry not floating tiny islands,  unstable islands in the river called Chots and they get affected and they get displaced  and this 2 million in Dhaka itself are displaced population and there are similar displacement stories  across the country.  We have done some analysis and modeling which shows that right now this is the type of density  from where people are coming, where people are going to where they will be going and again  Dhaka city and all that will be under lot of stress and Dhaka is one of the world's most populous  and densely populated city.  Now what are people doing about it?  People are trying to do wonderful things but that wonderful may not be enough to survive.  They are raising their plinth of soil by a little higher so that when the rainwater comes  the saltwater is washed out, goes out, they get a moderate crop and you have seen lot of the cropping  that happens in various degrees of salt contamination.  What we have been doing for the communities, they have taken too much of saltwater  and in one village one of my PhD students at Imperial College found that one area had population  whose blood pressure was higher than the rest of the country.  And so consequently there is higher amount of sodium in their body.  That was the conclusion, people are drinking too much salt.  So fresh water, rainwater is being harvested, collected, kept into this and this then gets filtered  and there is a whole system of filtering that we have set.  People are trying to protect in the coastal area, their animals, in their house they are sharing with animals  and sometimes who gets the preference, it means one of the challenges in their life  we should get to the bedroom, the animal or themselves.  The storage of safe drinking water is another area in which this, he puts on what is called the sari  when this becomes very very old you do eight fold of sari and put it on top of the water  and water purgulates even most of the germs are eliminated.  So this is a filtration process that people use and of course they have to use some chemicals  and they store their food and drinking water in the same way.  Now this is a floating garden. I don't know whether you know the technology.  What a higher sense is a floating weed with buoyancy.  You press them with bamboos on both sides, they become a buoyant floating system  and you put a spread some soil and you get this rice crop ready, vegetable crops come up  and as the flood comes the whole thing floats up, the system moves and as the flood goes away  the system goes down and collapses and creates fertilization by rotting for the fish and fish back to the system.  So these are systems quite well known.  When there are floods, people raise their water supply so it doesn't get contaminated  and there are ways of technologies around it.  When there are no other ways of producing shrimp or others, crab has been found to be one of the more productive system  and now in the last 10 years crab is being exported to Japan, California and other places where people have adjusted to that.  And salt tolerant variety of rice has been developed by the agriculture of scientists now being used.  So technologies, people are trying to do that technology with limited knowledge, limited resources.  We as scientists are backing those up.  Now to do all that and improve and fight according to Paris Convention or agreement,  there is a commitment from all the rich countries that $100 billion will be made available from 2020.  Actually it was supposed to be made available in 2012.  By postponing eight years the value of that money has come down significantly.  Nonetheless, these are dodging and I'm not allowed to say in a conference but cheating ways of Western systems to undermine the values of what they transfer.  Nonetheless, what we have is the possibility of funding emergence of a green climate fund has been created.  It is supposed to have from 2020 which is next year $120 billion per year.  If you next year you want to have $100 billion, how much should we have this year?  They'll say around $50 billion at least.  What we have is $14 billion and that's not good now but there are projects going around,  metallurgies and development.  We are helping them and this is about mostly money is going to mitigation.  We have fought and won one battle.  That green climate fund will have what is called equity and justice.  So 50% for adaptation, 50% for mitigation.  So that has enhanced the potential for adaptation which most developed countries as well as mitigation.  So only for 100 projects have already been initiated, several funding mechanisms are being considered.  The World Bank is trying to recreate, those who remember Kyoto Protocol had a market of carbon.  And carbon market, the value of carbon was about $30 per ton at Kyoto Protocol of functioning.  Now it's become $0.35 because when the system collapses that's what happens.  And now World Bank is trying to recreate, we are trying to help that process help a new market.  Sadly, to do a market you need two sides of exchange.  Now that principle of common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities that we are feeling myself when we fought for the convention,  we really fought hard and got that.  That has been thrown out of the window replaced by what is called Intended Contribution for National Development and that is how they want to do it.  Now there is no exchange happening, the debate is continuing and the whole discussion on finance is stuck.  So we have a little problem there but it will come out of this.  However what we do, $100 billion a year is inadequate.  We need far more than that.  And the government has a very interesting story saying governments have no money, go to the private sector.  And when you go to the private sector they have very interesting story saying show us that we are sure to get 18% profit.  Then we will start talking to you.  No profit, no talk.  That's private sector, perfectly legitimate.  So we are in this situation and new funding.  So new funding is coming, there are various initiatives.  We as small group, we are bringing our communities across the world to create funds for the communities and the special systems.  There are people who are trying to create funds for larger systems using the private sector to private sector making bankable, fundable projects.  So those are things that are going to happen in the future.  Overall climate change is here and now.  The biggest, most fundamental issue in climate change is climate justice.  There is now what is called that it is a climate apartheid world.  And we knew about apartheid in South Africa.  It didn't work very well for some.  So we want to get out of it.  And that justice has to be established in a number of ways from impact to adaptation, mitigation and allocation of resources.  So those remains fundamental problem.  At the same time, by 2050, 2100, about 200 million people will be moving across the world.  I'm sorry to give the bad news that when that happens, the states will lose their significance in a serious way.  The state border will not mean anything.  And we do not want to imagine that world because we don't know how to handle that.  Nobody has written a theory on this.  It's a very bad situation to imagine.  And let's not hope for that world and we have to act immediately.  And my conclusion, I was given a lecture to the students where I said,  we as a generation have done reasonably well in analyzing the problem, showing the science and identifying some issues.  We have not been that good in giving solutions to the problems.  It is the next generation who has to come up and give the solution.  We are throwing the ball in their court, but that's not good enough.  We have to do better than that in today, tomorrow and the next days and weeks and months and years to come.  Climate change is going to come to you for decades and centuries.  Thank you.  APPLAUSE  Do we have time for any questions?  Thank you so much.  I think we have time for a few questions.  Good.  Maybe one, two, let's see.  It doesn't matter.  So are there any questions?  There are two ways.  We can take question and answer or we can collect the number of questions in one go.  It saves time that way.  We could do maybe two at a time?  Two, three at a time.  First question.  I'm going to throw you the microphone.  You speak into the black bit.  I had a question about the $100 billion.  Is that only for Bangladesh or for all the countries?  That's for the world.  That's the planet as a whole.  Well, one of the good news for those who are giving, if Bangladesh was given $100 billion  this year, we won't be able to spend it.  So we'll be able to spend about $10 billion.  That's what we calculate.  We need about 10.  And if we get 10, 90 is left for the rest of the world, there's going to be a fight.  So, all right.  Thank you.  There's another question there.  Can you pass on the microphone to the back over there?  Throw.  Yeah, you can throw it.  It's soft.  So, how good you are in basketball.  Good.  Great.  Thank you, Dr. Latik.  Very interesting talk.  The message about climate change has been there for decades now.  I remember watching a movie in California 10 years ago about climate change.  Maximum four decades.  Yeah.  When Pierre and I started this thing.  Climate change immigration has been there in Hollywood for more than 10 years now.  And we are reading books about climate change funding corruption.  My question is from your knowledge and when we talk about these amounts of funds, billions  of dollars.  There is a lot of talk about corruption in handling these funding opportunities to the  third world countries.  Yeah.  Can you tell us why?  Yeah, I mean corruption is a red herring in this case.  There has been corruption in computer development.  There's been corruption in software market.  There has been corruption in guns.  True.  Nobody tries to stop those things because of corruption.  True.  You see, the whole arms, you know, exploration of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, there's  huge corruption.  But nobody does.  Corruption is something that we should get rid of at all levels by all countries.  And those are basic principle in sustainable development goal that good governance under  sustainable development 15, good governments, governance procedure will have to be established  with accountability across the world.  In USA, in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, you know, what bribing is called corruption.  In USA, that's called lobbying.  True.  Okay.  So it's the name that matters.  You know, somebody calls it love, somebody calls it, you know, not so good thing.  You see.  So it depends.  Yeah.  How do you, how do you want to play it?  Thank you.  Another question in the back there.  Let's see if we can get the microphone over, over there.  Oh, that's a bad one.  This way you get a bit of exercise too, you know.  Yeah.  You have to do through.  Pass it on.  Oh, oh.  Not that adventure.  Come on.  All right.  I will help you.  Okay.  Thank you very much.  I have a couple of course many questions, but it's a 10 million a billion per year or  per old total, total.  100 billion.  Yeah.  I mean for Bangladesh.  No, for the whole cut world.  But it's 10 per year.  100 billion.  It's 10 per year for Bangladesh or not.  No, Bangladesh has shown that we have a spent from our own resources, 7 billion per year.  Bangladesh is one of the most advanced countries in climate financing where Bangladesh government  brings out a separate budget on climate, which what is each ministry has spent on climate  change that is accumulated and reported to the parliament.  And that gives us a figure of $7 billion.  We are demanding $10 billion.  If they give you me 5, 7.  But once again, is it per year?  It's per year.  Okay.  From 2020 every year to continue.  Yeah, it's still half of the profit shell has.  So I think it's way not too much.  But that was not my question.  Exactly.  The question is you showed me the IPCC values of one meter sea level rise at the end of this  century.  Well, you know with us that the Konto and Polar for instance, they had an estimation in nature.  It could go up to much more than one meter per year.  It could go up to one and a half, three meters in the end.  Why don't you bring it into IPCC?  They have done it.  They have done it.  Why don't you show here?  Because it's much more than you showed.  Yeah, it is.  Well, the variability is wide.  But you know, the science says this is the amount using the equation they have.  But the probability because IPCC has not taken into account the melting of the Antarctic.  It is the Antarctic which is changing the equation altogether.  Because chunks of Antarctic is coming out and melting while other parts of Antarctic is still growing.  So there are dynamics that's happening in there.  As to the money part, hundred billion dollars would be a good start to manage, learn how to spend it in the best possible way.  And that is not yet there.  That's the whole point.  No, I cannot.  Okay.  My only thing I want to say is that if you communicate as IPCC more than this specific one meter per the end of the century,  then you put more pressure on the whole system.  And if you say it can go up to three, then you really put more sense of urgency over there.  That's my point.  I don't know whether I call him a gentleman.  There's a gentleman in a little house called White House in Washington.  I'm not telling you.  It's already many years already.  So you know, whatever number you give, till you attach money to it, he won't move.  So either he or his daughter should get money.  Then it moves.  It's a different world.  Okay.  Well, thank you for your questions and comments.  I think this is all we have time for right now.  So I want to thank you very much for your presentation.  Thank you.  Thank you very much.  So we're going to stick a little bit with a global perspective because we have one last speech ahead of us.  And this is by someone who is one of the, I could say, main organizers of this conference.  She's done a tremendous amount of work for it.  And she is a researcher at the Institute of Environment Studies at the Department of Environmental Policy Analysis at the Free University of Amsterdam.  She has an amazing multidisciplinary background in environmental and resource management, international economics and law.  And she's going to talk to us about global constraints and opportunities.  So let's welcome Kater Zinan Vigas.  Thank you very much.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Yeah.  Okay.  Good afternoon.  Thank you very much for a wonderful introduction.  Yes.  My name is Kater Cater Zinan Vigas.  And today I would like to talk about global opportunities and constraints.  As Magó said, I'm a social scientist, so I apply a little bit different perspective  than most of you.  But a year ago, together with Pierre Felija and Arine Vos, we embarked on a journey to  explore the economic potential of saline degraded lands for the food production.  We wanted to look at the global picture in order to estimate the total value that these  lands can generate for the policymaking and also for the business investors to encourage  them to further explore these lands.  So as you all probably have realized, this issue is gaining more and more attention in  media.  Even today, there was a newspaper published about our conference also highlighting the  issue of saline degraded lands and their potential for the future.  This topic is appearing not only here in Europe, for example in France or in the Netherlands,  but also in Bangladesh, as we just have heard, and also in the US and California.  There are a few topics which are very much connected with the potential of salt degraded  lands.  First of all, it's food security.  So whether we have enough food to feed the global population, not only today, but actually  in 80 years.  More and more ecosystems are degraded because of changing land use, converting lands for  agricultural production.  Yesterday, Wilhelm Fövenda mentioned that some very pristine nations' ecosystems were  turned into farms, into fields, because people were looking for new lands for the crop production.  Therefore, we can look at this saline degraded lands as a potential to use for this new agricultural  terrains.  Second issue is actually food sustainability.  Janice also yesterday mentioned that we need to look further into human diet.  What do we eat?  Maybe switching a little bit from the meat consumption to the more plant-based diet.  Another topic are the causes of salinization.  So, whether these are natural or human-induced processes, how much climate change will further  bring salinization into the new terrains?  We had just heard excellent presentation on how this is going to further evolve and what  threats we may encounter.  At the same time, we're all here together because we know that there is a solution to  this problem.  We can use this lands for more agricultural production.  Some of the experiments, those conducted on pessell and presented by Arian, also which  were further taken in Bangladesh, and also other which you are conducting in your respective  countries show that we can take certain plant species and we can, with the proper management,  introduce them in other countries as new potential for the food production.  Therefore, with our project, we took up the question, what is the economic potential of  saline degraded lands?  Going into account both the growing knowledge on salt-tolerant crops and also increasing  climate change, we decided to follow three steps.  So, first, look into the available total area of saline soils.  Second, try to estimate the economic value of those.  And third, validated with the case studies.  Today, I would like to talk only about the global perspective as we are here all together  and together we can also make a little bit better estimation.  So, at the very beginning, we asked ourselves the question, which areas are currently considered  degraded or less productive because of the salinization?  As a result, we produced a soil salinity map.  I hope that you can recognize some of your countries here.  I'm pretty sure looking at the titles of different sessions and different presentations  that they are quite present in this conference room at the moment.  Of course, these are just examples because if we zoom out, we don't see all the countries  in details, but we can see that there are some lands which are more saline, some that  are actually not that much saline.  Of course, also depends on how you cut the cake.  You can see that here, we have only three levels of salinity marked.  So, this may actually influence what we see quite a lot.  Therefore, we decided to take a little bit of a closer look and see how it will look  like if we apply different criteria.  So, we started with dividing our global surface into three categories.  Those which have low salinity, those which have moderate salinity, and those which have  relatively high salinity.  We've decided to divide it into this way because thanks to that we can also choose which crops  would be possible to plan there.  And also, we decided to do it because of the data available.  As for us estimating it for the whole world, it turned out to be quite difficult task.  Then, we looked into water availability because for the agricultural production, as it was  many times mentioned on this conference, is one of the key elements.  Further, we looked into soil fertility because we can have water available, but then we also  need the specific type of soils.  Finally, we discovered that if we put all this criteria together, of course, the total  amount of available saline lands is falling down.  But, at the same time, the economic potential of this lands is taking the reverted U-shape.  This is because the moderate lands are actually the most promising for the saline agriculture,  since still we can plan there quite a few different species, but at the same time, they're  usually not optimally used or abandoned by the conventional agriculture.  Further, we decided to have a look how our results look when we compare them with other  research done in this area, and especially mapping.  As you see, there are very different results.  Then we looked into why we can have such a different estimations.  First, of course, we have very different measurement methods.  Then, as we know, salinity is increasing in time, so the further we go, the largest should  be the area that is mapped.  Then, in the end, people took very different assumptions as it comes to what is saline,  not saline, and which lands can be treated as potentially good for the agriculture.  As you can see on the other side, we have also two maps when we decided to put on the  map the focus countries for salinity, but also two conditions, so the water and fertility,  and then those who are only moderately in a highly saline, and also meet the other conditions.  As you can see, the number is going down quite dramatically, but at the same time, on the  global scale, we need to take into account that there are very different conditions,  and that also once we zoom out, the picture looks a bit different.  I hope you can check now whether your country is there, and whether this highly economically  valuable lands are located there.  The second step of our analysis was the economic values of the saline-degraded lands.  After the real challenge appeared, it turned out that after scanning more than 100 articles  which took into account different economic values of saline-degraded lands, people do  not often mention or pay attention on how much we can actually earn by using those lands.  Therefore, we decided to apply a few different methods to see what actually we can get out  of those lands.  First, we looked at the meta-analysis, so we looked at all these articles that we had,  and it turned out that as much as 47 billion US dollars of added value can be generated  from this total surface.  This sounds quite a lot.  If we want to imagine this number, it would be GDP of Tanzania or Baralos.  In the end, we can gain quite a lot.  On the other hand, we can also save some costs.  We also looked at how much costs are actually involved when the saline grounds appear in  the publications.  When we use these numbers, it turned out that 62 billion US dollars can be actually saved  if we take right preventive measures.  Then we can compare it to GDP of Luxembourg.  This is actually getting bigger and bigger.  When we estimated the value based on our mapping exercise, it turned out that there can be  quite significant revenue generated by this land.  However, here comes a little trick, because we could check only the revenue, but at the  same time, of course, there are some costs involved.  To fully finish this exercise, we need to compare two sides and basically conduct cost-benefit  analysis.  At this point of time, what was visible was doing it for our case studies.  However, we really hope to take it to the next step and further develop it to the number  for the whole world.  Further, we conduct some interviews with experts from different countries.  Quite a few of them are present here today in the audience.  We ask them, when can we actually introduce saline agriculture?  What are different conditions that we need for that?  Can we easily scale up?  Because quite often these are small experiments at the test sites, but putting it into big  farming or in a big area, it's a totally different question.  Then we also ask, what will be the impact of climate change?  Will it be positive, negative, or maybe it actually doesn't matter, because salinity  is caused by something totally else?  Finally, we also ask, do you see any negative sides of saline farming?  And quite a few of them mentioned that it may actually be a threat to the local ecosystems.  So then we need to take into account different economic, social, ecological, and cultural  conditions when we want to apply this kind of business.  Finally, we looked into different methods that people use to estimate the total value  of saline degraded lands.  We especially paid attention to three different methods which we also involved in our study.  So first, into mapping.  And of course, it's a great tool that allows us to see what's the total surface, but it  has also some drawbacks.  For example, it's quite hard to capture salinality there, or if we only know what's the possibility  of this land for being saline, it's actually also not really good for the further exercise  to map the total area of saline degraded lands.  Later, we also looked into economic valuation.  And of course, this one is heavily depending on data.  So we need more and more precise data and cost-benefit analysis to further estimate  whether this is a good business model for the farmers to develop in all different countries.  And finally, interviews with experts were also very insightful because they gave us  a lot of hidden insights into opportunities and constraints, but at the same time, the  sample of interviewed experts should be way larger in order to better understand what  is really happening in all different countries and globally.  Yes, okay.  So in the end, there are three main conclusions of our study, which I would like to highlight.  First, we should pay better attention to the global mapping of saline degraded lands because  thanks to that, we will be able also to estimate the total economic potential of these areas.  Second, we should pay better attention to moderately and highly saline soils because  they cannot be used by the conventional agriculture.  Therefore, this is where additional profit and income can come from.  Third, this is the priority to look at the potential economic benefit that can come from  that and that can help to address the sustainable development goals, which are also linked to  this.  First, not only the no hunger goal, but also sustainability of the ecosystems and sustainable  production and consumption.  So now, we would like to take the study to the next step and ask all of you to help us  with that, to better map and better estimate the global economic potential of saline degraded  lands for the food production.  Thank you very much, and I'm looking forward to the questions.  Thank you so much, Kate.  So yeah, we have time for a few questions.  I don't know where the microphone is at right now, but who has a question?  Nobody?  I assume so.  Yes, over here.  So we need to have it a bit slower.  Can you get it?  Or is it?  Yes.  Yeah, you can just put it back in, I think.  Yes.  Perfect.  Working.  Okay.  Congratulations for your research.  I think it's really interesting and important if we want to increase this saline farming,  you know, all over the world.  And also very interesting the maps with the two factors.  I think it's also very interesting because we always see the global maps about salinity,  but when you talk about water availability, do you take into account the water quality  or the water source?  Okay.  So thank you very much for this question.  It's actually a very interesting one.  When we decided to include the water factor, we took into account the rainfall and irrigation.  And of course, you can further apply more criteria here, and that would be even better.  But unfortunately on a large scale, we had availability of these two factors to include.  So this is water rainfall, basically, and also irrigation.  All right.  Any more questions?  No one?  Okay.  Thank you very much.  Great.  Thank you very much.  All right.  So we're going to have another break soon, but I have a few announcements to make.  First of all, like I said, you can still vote on the posters.  There's also the link over there at the poster area and the code with which you can vote.  So please do so.  You can vote until the end of the break, which is until 3.30.  And after that, we have a few more parallel sessions that start at, they start at 3.30,  obviously, at the end of the break.  But I have to say that session 8 and 12 are merged, and they will take place in here.  So 8 and 12 have been merged together.  So if you were planning to go there, you will come back here for the session.  And otherwise, you will go to room F112.  And then there's another thing I have to mention, because we want a group picture of all of  you.  So I think maybe, Kate, would you explain us exactly how we're going to do that?  Yes, so at 3 o'clock, so within the next three minutes, let's say, photographer will join  us to take the picture of all of you joining the conference.  And we would like to ask you to maybe go just outside of this, of this, of this, of this  auditory, and then we will take a picture there, unless it's not raining.  If it's raining, then we go outside.  But for now, let's all...  No, the contrary.  If it's not raining, yes.  But for now, we all meet outside of this room at 3 o'clock.  Okay, thank you.  Oh, there's a question.  Yes.  Okay, so if you are presenting here at the parallel sessions, you need to get your presentations  on this...  Yes.  Okay.  Yes, sure.  So I'll take this digital...
Plenary_sessions_2_0_2411.png Plenary_sessions_2_2412_4163.png Plenary_sessions_2_4164_4415.png Plenary_sessions_2_4416_4751.png Plenary_sessions_2_4752_5747.png Plenary_sessions_2_5748_5795.png Plenary_sessions_2_5796_5855.png Plenary_sessions_2_5856_8051.png Plenary_sessions_2_8052_9623.png Plenary_sessions_2_9624_9671.png Plenary_sessions_2_9672_10031.png Plenary_sessions_2_10032_11615.png Plenary_sessions_2_11616_12839.png Plenary_sessions_2_12840_13247.png Plenary_sessions_2_13248_15851.png Plenary_sessions_2_15852_15983.png Plenary_sessions_2_15984_16655.png Plenary_sessions_2_16656_17447.png Plenary_sessions_2_17448_17663.png Plenary_sessions_2_17664_19079.png Plenary_sessions_2_19080_19763.png Plenary_sessions_2_19764_20591.png Plenary_sessions_2_20592_21059.png Plenary_sessions_2_21060_21623.png Plenary_sessions_2_21624_22127.png Plenary_sessions_2_22128_22343.png Plenary_sessions_2_22344_23027.png Plenary_sessions_2_23028_23387.png Plenary_sessions_2_23388_23819.png Plenary_sessions_2_23820_24575.png Plenary_sessions_2_24576_24659.png Plenary_sessions_2_24660_24707.png Plenary_sessions_2_24708_24767.png Plenary_sessions_2_24768_26243.png Plenary_sessions_2_26244_26735.png Plenary_sessions_2_26736_27527.png Plenary_sessions_2_27528_28391.png Plenary_sessions_2_28392_28787.png Plenary_sessions_2_28788_28871.png Plenary_sessions_2_28872_29483.png Plenary_sessions_2_29484_30491.png Plenary_sessions_2_30492_30707.png Plenary_sessions_2_30708_30863.png Plenary_sessions_2_30864_31367.png Plenary_sessions_2_31368_32663.png Plenary_sessions_2_32664_35915.png Plenary_sessions_2_35916_37247.png Plenary_sessions_2_37248_51071.png Plenary_sessions_2_51072_51119.png Plenary_sessions_2_51120_51167.png Plenary_sessions_2_51168_51299.png Plenary_sessions_2_51300_51527.png Plenary_sessions_2_51528_51623.png Plenary_sessions_2_51624_51671.png Plenary_sessions_2_51672_51731.png Plenary_sessions_2_51732_51815.png Plenary_sessions_2_51816_52055.png Plenary_sessions_2_52056_52103.png Plenary_sessions_2_52104_52247.png Plenary_sessions_2_52248_52451.png Plenary_sessions_2_52452_53771.png Plenary_sessions_2_53772_54431.png Plenary_sessions_2_54432_57479.png Plenary_sessions_2_57480_58463.png Plenary_sessions_2_58464_58751.png Plenary_sessions_2_58752_59879.png Plenary_sessions_2_59880_60011.png Plenary_sessions_2_60012_62315.png Plenary_sessions_2_62316_64475.png Plenary_sessions_2_64476_64667.png Plenary_sessions_2_64668_67799.png Plenary_sessions_2_67800_69347.png Plenary_sessions_2_69348_69623.png Plenary_sessions_2_69624_71447.png Plenary_sessions_2_71448_76355.png Plenary_sessions_2_76356_76895.png Plenary_sessions_2_76896_80000.png