with climate, horrible conflict we are seeing in places like the middle east, ukraine, just reinforces the importance of ally ship and strong relationships with partners on the ground. the u.s. government is really striving to be a partner of choice, when it comes to these countries, low and middle income countries, to provide the kind of intellectual partnership, the funding and the long-term thinking that we need, to ensure that stability and growth of the economy. we are also doing work that sets the stage for u.s. private sector growth and development. when it comes to supporting

countries transitioning to renewable energy, one of our signature interventions is shaping free, fair and transparent options for energy, that u.s. energy developers can bid on, to ensure these governments are getting a fair and predictable price over time, to build up that renewable energy infrastructure, and u.s. businesses are able to compete fairly in the context of those options. that is one of many examples where u.s. businesses, u.s. employees and the u.s. economy benefits from the partnerships we are talking about. >> thank you. >> just to complement what killian noted -- what gillian noted, we are economically a very interdependent world. i don't think everyone realizes that we haul -- but we all experienced during the covid pandemic what happens when supply chains break down,

whether you are talking about global food production, manufacturing, transport, shipping of goods, when infrastructure breaks down in one other part of the world, it has a knock on effect in other parts of the world. prices go up, availability goes down. there is a value in the u.s. investing in the things we are talking about, in terms of resilient infrastructure. when a system goes down, people overseas don't have access to basic services like education and power. perhaps sometimes it is considered abstract but it can get very real very fast. >> interdependence goes both ways. i was just reading yesterday about how last week's storm and this week's storm, hitting the southeast of the u.s. have affected 85% of domestic supply of iv fluids.

just by chance of where those industries and factories sit in the u.s. and we are having to look externally at attentional sources, to help people dealing with illness. >> i think the u.s. is one of the leading sources of humanitarian aid and as we see more and more extreme weather events, growing in frequency and intensity, the price tag for that kind of aid continues to go up. another partner in the prepare call to action said that for every one dollar, prepping one dollar, and that preparedness in that resilience, you save $13. six dollars in damage and cleanup and seven dollars in knock on economic benefits. it is not only being smarter about how you invest those public dollars. >> do you have something to add?

>> i think my answer to this question would be briefer. mongolians have a saying that a gift is a true gift when both the receiving and giving parties are happy. i think a systemic approach, basically u.s. taxpayer funds are spent on meaningful projects that truly make a difference in parts of the country and the people in that country. at the same time, these infrastructure projects, these investments are able to withstand challenges. four challenges presented by climate change, and also at the same time, they achieve foreign policy objectives for priorities both countries have. >> anything to add? >> i will put on my private sector hat and say that it supports businesses and local

businesses to be able to export services. but also allows and fosters the exchange that we can have around technical capacity and economics . it is a win win. >> let me turn to the audience, someone will come around with a mic. please raise your hand to indicate you have a question. we will also take this gentleman on the others of the room. always good to get exercise as you are running mics around the room. >> good morning everyone and thank you to the panelists. just one quick question that i have, i am curious to learn how your organizations are thinking about innovation and algae and what is that role when it comes to climate resilience infrastructure. >> thank you for the question. this gentleman on the others of

the room had a question and we will take those questions together. >> hello. i wanted to harken back to -- that was the core door analogy and i'm thinking of when you walk in, there were something at the forefront of building out this approach and what is it and i haven't heard much about -- being at the forefront and i wanted to hear more about it from each organization. thank you so much. >> two great questions, covering different topics on innovation and technology, also equity and justice. we don't have to go on any particular order, but if someone has a thought on either of those questions, please jump in. who wants to go first?

>> i am happy to start. maybe just a couple of thoughts and i appreciate the question of innovation and technology. this is something that we are also increasingly thinking a lot about and how we can do a better job of bringing that into our program, how you leverage and bring in that expertise in the private sector and we also talk about the private sector being a source of money, but it is not just money, it is expertise. certainly we talk about technology, we have a growing push on digital and digital technologies, but also across the board whether we are looking at agriculture or looking at more advanced irrigation technologies, working in the power sector, and technologies for managing and ensuring the power, we are trying to be deliberate in terms of how we build that into our programs and provide opportunities, often

through finance tools like matching grants or ways to bring the private sector into the market that they might not otherwise go into. we have also been working closely with the small business administration, trying to develop with them, to tap into areas technologies that are incubated by the u.s. government. very cutting edge ways, trying to formally bring those into our programs as well. i will be honest, it is not always an easy thing to do, given our timelines but definitely something it is top of mind. >> let me just speak to equity because that is such a core value for you and absolutely central to our climate strategies and one of the core underlying principles. concretely, it means we have committed to investing in indigenous people in local

communities and especially when you think about the climate crisis, it is so fundamental to recognize that indigenous communities steward a majority of the carbon landscape. study after study demonstrates they do so better than others even in the context of management. these are communities that are not just not too often neglected or overwritten in the context of development projects, but in many cases, actively persecuted, many indigenous leaders are assassinated for their efforts to protect their lands and way of life. indigenous people and local communities are fundamental. women and other disadvantaged groups are complete fundamental. if you want to be sustainable in your development solutions, you must ensure that women are at the table in terms of shaping. that is what ensures the stick to it if this -- stick to

it-iveness. the usa is under a broader banner of localization, a commitment to quadruple our investments in locally based organizations and to ensure that at least half of our investments by 2025 are shaped and led by those local organizations and it is not a secret that an organization like usa and a lot of the bilateral agencies, the investments tend to go to larger multinational organizations. that makes sense because of course we are thinking about stewarding vass sums of money. project design requirements, but at the same time, what can we do to streamline some of the approaches while ensuring the responsible at the to steward those public resources carefully, because smart

strategic sustainable development requires the inclusion of local partners. >> just briefly, i would be remiss if i didn't put in a plug for mcc's recently released gender and social inclusion policy. i talk about things that are fundamental to mcc and we look at equity and social inclusion, this is something we've hit on since the beginning and continue to grow and deepen. it is critical to make sure that when we are investing that -- in the types of programs we are investing in, at the end of the day it is about people and we are talking about ensuring that women benefit, the disadvantaged groups, that is the way we are approaching it and it is central to what we do. >> a couple points, the first one on rnd, very interested in

making our work more efficient. facilitating the services that provide. we are partnering with other organizations. we use a lot of the satellite imagery to allow us to report. it is very difficult to get in because it is life-threatening at that point, so we use these live imagery to get a better sense of what the movements are happening in a structure space, so that is one, partnering with other organizations that already have technology we can use to help. the other one is of course, trying to -- especially looking at these multiple dynamics, multiple scale, looking at technology to help us quantify a lot of what we are doing, quantifying benefits but also the interests of the partner organization.

being able to layer these different layers around trying to prioritize where in a city, we have to put more emphasis, it's put in that population density, let's put in the different hazards map, where is the critical infrastructure, and let's have all of these together and using technology allows us to quantify that very clearly, where we can automatically start seeing the prioritization of different areas and allows us to prioritize actions. always actively seeking new partnerships and new types of technology that can make our work more efficient. in terms of equity, that is such a great question. ultimately a lot of the work we do is informal settlements. areas that are more badly hit, by climate change and other disasters, so the work we do is

on the co-creation side. in part because it allows us to bring all of these different voices that need to be there, so that we can have the inclusivity , more accessibility in the discussion, but also for the local governance aspect. these are areas where the government isn't necessarily present, where they won't necessarily be able to come in and maintain infrastructure, and there is a very -- in being able to cook create with the community to empower the community and create local strategies or enhance local governance strategies so that maintenance and operations can happen in the long run. ultimately what we don't want to happen is support and intervention that collapses because it is not appropriated and not necessarily being able to be maintained, so i think being able to have those

discussions, the platform to be able to co-create when possible. >> thank you for that question, both of those questions because i think either one could have a whole session to dig into them. when i think about rnd for example, i think about different types of research and development on construction, new challenges, but i also think about observing, remote-sensing data and the ability of ai to enhance analysis, to provide better climate information services that local businesses around the world really need and farmers need, to be more resilient. there is a lot that is happening in this space. let's turn to one last question and then we will wrap up. i saw this hand go up first. we will take you, and i apologize to those others but this'll be the last question. we do have a reception afterwards, so you will have time to chat more about this. please are member to introduce

yourself. -- please remember to introduce yourself. >> thank you to the panelists. my name is rachel law, i am incoming as a fellow at usaid. my question is, a lot of these larger infrastructure projects can be quite contentious, especially internationally and in communities that have been continuously hurt by the exacerbation of climate impacts. my question is, what kind of social engineering work is being done to support the infrastructure design being done , the necessary support that needs to come from communities

and the engineering and design work being done? >> thank you for the question and welcome to your first day. this is a great question for us to sort of wrap into, as well as we go across our panel. i think i will add to it, that we've talked about the system's more holistic approach that requires a whole level change in terms of collaboration, which to your point can something -- sometimes slow things down but also makes it better over the long term. i think the question also connects to that in terms of focusing on the social support needed to ensure sustainability and success of climate resilient infrastructure. how do we get there, and we have the tools that we need? we need to invest differently to do this better, to do what our

questioner is asking? limit go down the line, and we will wrap -- let me go down the line, and we will wrap up that way. >> -- so that your investments are really meeting the needs of communities. going back to the bridge i started with the floodplain surrounding it, is there a bicycle lane necessary to reduce vehicular traffic and emissions? what about roadside stands for shopkeepers who are actually trying to sell their goods along the road? how are we going to address air pollution, and the sustainability of that infrastructure? for the people in the floodplain, how do we think about their -- that they depend on to survive, as well as their ability to farm and fish in the

area? looking at all of the assets and physical assets, as a system that is deeply interrelated, and that connects to people in nature and needs to be informed by people in their perspective as well as nature and its needs. >> i think that speaks to the entered interdisciplinary approach, which gets to the social side of these heart infrastructure projects. >> maybe a few thoughts, thinking about where to go from here and how to make this work and maybe first is to touch directly at the question. i feel like i have said a number of times that something that is fundamental to mcc is what we call country ownership. that is something that is essential in everything we do. we do it in partnership with our partner countries.

that starts at the very beginning when we talk about what are the needs. highly engaged at every level of national government, we start shaping what the actual investment is. our programs, they are developed by our industry partners, and they are the ones that implement them and do them. i think that helps ensure that the stuff we support is owned and supported. going back to your bigger question, we touched on coordination. i think you'll even see in the commitments we've made about sharing information and new data and tools, i think that is all relevant here, and i spoke a lot about the working group and the government coordination, but it's got to be broader than that. it is bringing in the private sector, bringing in ngo's, insurance industries on the

front lines of climate change. they've got the map, the statistics. we are working with noa with some of the best climate data. developing data, sharing data, looking at different tools and approaches. i have no doubt we will continue to grapple with that, but we also want to learn from others and then maybe just a final point, we've also touched on this, but financing. i think it is very clear, we have tried to make the case that an investment upfront in resilient infrastructure pays dividends in the lifecycle. generally speaking, it costs more on the front end and how do you mobilize those funds? it'll be a combination of private sector and government donors, etc. >> i just want to echo jonathan's statement here in terms of country ownership and enrollment by the partner country.

we started on compact development. what projects to implement, at all levels by the government and not only the government, the private sector, the experts, the practitioners, this kind of extensive dialogue to ensure that the country actually owns the project and stays responsible through them mentation. coordination and collaboration, i could not agree more. most of the countries, if not all that partner with donors are developing countries. it is common for these countries to lack necessary expertise and resources to effectively execute these projects and ensure their long-term sustainability. i think these are the types of

collaborations and coordinations between stakeholders although they may have different agendas or priorities, but they will coordinate effectively toward the same goal and it can make a mile of difference. >> i will just compliment by saying there are variant -- there is various frameworks and it is not necessarily about rehab -- reinventing the wheel. a lot of the multilateral's has a wonderful resource. where we see the challenge is from that discourse and the conceptualization to the actual implementation on the ground and many times, this also happens because of existing funding issues, where funding is still very much coming in silos. also in terms of the actual

implementation, where we see the silo approach or a different type of institutional framework that doesn't necessarily allow this interdisciplinary approach for the coordination. one of the emphasis we need to place from a policy perspective is how to start bridging some of these gaps. one other point i wanted to make on r&d, we are going back to understanding and leveraging and supporting much more on the -- side, expanding construction, sustainable materials and technologies that for so long got ignored because -- again, echoes back to equity and community. i just wanted to stress that

point and i will finalize by saying that the need is so great. obviously financing is a critical component of it, but this is a compounding challenge, it is a humanitarian crisis, and globally speaking and what we see is that it does demand a new approach to how we are developing infrastructure, how we are thinking about infrastructure, but also on the private sector side, we need more purpose driven private sector engagement, so it is not just on the financing but leveraging what you can do and how we can work together on this. >> well thank you. this has been a tremendous discussion, and it is built upon tremendous work, including the report by various agencies of the u.s. government led by mcc. i want to thank our expert panelists, and i want to make sure i also think madeline

mclean from my team who is in the room, and our conferencing and audio and visual support teams for putting this together and they also want to thank some colleagues from the u.s. government side as well. this wouldn't have happened without tremendous cooperation. [applause] thank you for your continued leadership on the set of issues and climate resigned infrastructure issues. we hope to have many of you join us here again, two weeks from today. we are going to host a senior climate advisor to president biden, as well as the brazil secretary and ambassador and a fellow lineup of double leaders on the margins of the bank imf meetings and cup 29 and upcoming

g20 meetings. i want to close this out and invite all of you here in the room, close out our live stream and then invite you here in the room to join us for a reception just outside this room, but i also want to make sure to invite some others from the u.s. government. there are a whole host of leaders across the u.s. government on the president's emergency plan for adaptation and resilience and i would like to welcome you up on stage for a group photo and then we will join everyone for the reception. thank you. [applause]

talk a little bit -- i want to play a little bit of it and then get your response. [video] >> good morning. welcome everyone. we'll go ahead and get started here. my name is tony mills, i am the senior fellow here at the american enterprise institute and director of our center for technology, science and energy. thank you for joining us in person and those of you joining us online for supporting this timely conversation about federal research and