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The
convention on biological diversity:
unique international agreement that promotes nature and human well-being
| Biodiversity
is much more than the large spectacular mammals of the savannah
or a myriad of insect species in a remote rainforest tree. Biodiversity
provides goods and services that are crucial for human development
in both rich and poor countries. And there is a convention signed
by the majority of the world's governments to protect it, use
it sustainably and share its benefits in an equitable way.
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Madagascar
houses an enormous diversity, including Lemurs. Photography
by Thomas Elmquist.
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The
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was adopted at the 1992
United Nations' Conference on Environment and Development ("Earth
Summit") in Rio de Janeiro. It is unique as it explicitly states
that biodiversity conservation is a common concern of humankind
and an integral part of sustainable development. The majority of
the world's governments have signed the Convention that sets out
commitments for the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable
use of its components, and the fair and equitable sharing of the
benefits from the use of genetic resources.
Unlike already existing treaties, the CBD
was the first global agreement to cover genetic resources, species
and ecosystems. Another main objective of the CBD is to provide
a common framework for both poor and rich countries. There is also
a mechanism to provide funds to developing countries to assist them
in implementing the Convention. The CBD has put over US$600 million
directly into biodiversity projects in developing countries through
the Global Environment
Facility.
Biodiversity works for the rich and the poor
Biodiversity
includes not only the richness of species and their genetic make-up.
It also includes the processes and functions of which the species
are a part of, such as photosynthesis, generation of fertile soils,
cleansing of air and water, and pollination of food crops. Thus,
conserving biodiversity is definitely about human self-interest,
especially to the poor.
Poor people often turn to gathering a wide
range of species from the wild in times of crisis. In some parts
of India, for example, wild products provide 42-57% of the income
of the rural poor in times of drought compared to 14-23% during
normal conditions.
In addition, it has been estimated by WHO
that almost 80% of all health care in developing countries relies
on a diversity of plants and animals from natural ecosystems. A
diversity of wild and domesticated species can also provide risk-spreading
and more secure food production than just a few staples, as they
are more vulnerable to disease, pests, climate changes or market
collapse. This is a more viable option for those that cannot afford
pesticides and artificial fertilisers, which monocultures often
need to cope with disease, pests and soil problems. Also, agriculture
in rich countries depends on continuing revitalisation from wild
genetic stocks.
However, biodiversity is not only important for humans to allow
risk spreading. It is also nature's own way of hedging its bets.
That is, it is important for ecosystems' resilience,
their capacity to cope with disturbances (like storms, fire and
pollutants) and environmental change. Most ecologists agree that
depleting biodiversity will affect nature's resilience and, therefore,
change its capacity to provide us with goods and services in the
long run.
The CBD was adopted ten years ago. Since then research on ecosystem
responses to changes in biodiversity has focused more on groups
of species that perform similar roles in an ecosystem, called "functional
groups". What is clear from these studies is that many rare and
minor species that might seem unimportant today can take over important
functions and compensate when others are lost.
Benefit sharing
Most
of the world's biodiversity is found in developing countries. Agricultural
research and trade in genetic resources, however, occurs mostly
in developed countries and more and more often in private companies.
In this respect the issue of access and benefit sharing of genetic
resources is also related to human rights and poverty alleviation.
The CBD recognises the dependence of many poor indigenous and local
communities on biodiversity - and that these communities must share
the benefits arising from the use of their biological resources,
traditional knowledge and practices.
Nonetheless, a few months ago twelve of
the world's most biodiversity-rich nations signed an agreement stating
that the CBD is insufficient to prevent 'biopiracy' - when foreign
companies patent animal or plant products without offering benefits
to local people. More recently, at the sixth meeting of the Conference
of the Parties to the CBD (COP 6), representatives of 166 countries
agreed to the first detailed global guidelines on access to genetic
resources and benefit sharing. Whether these new guidelines are
sufficient to meet the criticism remains to be seen. Further, the
COP6-meeting agreed elements for an action plan for capacity building
and a paper on the role of intellectual property rights.
The Malawi principles
At
its second meeting, in 1995, the Conference of the Parties of the
CBD adopted the ecosystem approach to biodiversity management. At
a workshop organised in Malawi in 1998 this approach was further
discussed and twelve principles were identified. The Malawi
principles seek to find the appropriate balance between conservation
and use of biodiversity and to understand the ecosystems also in
an economic context. They suggest that management should be decentralised
to the lowest appropriate level and should consider the effects
on adjacent and other ecosystems. Another key feature includes long-term
conservation of ecosystem structure and functioning. Management
must also recognise that change is inevitable and should consider
scientific, indigenous and local knowledge.
Criticism and hope
The CBD has been criticised for not achieving its overall goal,
as we have not seen any improvement in the state of the world's
biological diversity since 1992. Others criticise the CBD for not
succeeding in the goal of full participation of women in policy-making
and implementation. Women play a vital role in the conservation
and sustainable use of biological diversity. Especially in poor
parts of the world women are often the primary users of biological
resources as they are responsible for the propagation of seeds,
tending fields, and the gathering of fuel, fodder and fruits from
the wild. Yet, women are often still excluded from entitlement to
property and land.
Yet, it would be unfair to say that the
CBD has accomplished nothing. It is unique as it takes a holistic
rather than a sectoral approach to conservation and sustainable
use of biodiversity. Further, it has framed overall objectives and
policies that create a mandate for important work to be done. Moreover,
it has been reasonably successful in requiring countries to form
national biodiversity strategies.
BOX:
Sida's strategy for work in the field of biodiversity
The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency
(Sida) gives overall priority to the fair and equitable
sharing of the benefits and knowledge of biological diversity.
In particular, priority is given to:
- Work
to respect, maintain and develop knowledge on the conservation
and sustainable use of biodiversity in local and indigenous
communities. This includes support for strengthened local
control, by both women and men.
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Conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity
in agriculture, forestry and fisheries at higher levels
of production.
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Policy research and policy development related to access
to and the fair and equitable sharing of genetic resources.
Support should also be given for capacity building in the
fields of biosafety and biotechnology.
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More
at:
Full
details on the Convention can be found on the CBD
web-site.
Urban Ecology: towards sustainable urbanisation
Half the world's population already lives in cities and the pace
of urbanisation continues to accelerate. Most of the world's mega-cities
with over 8 million inhabitants are in the developing world. How
do we make urbanisation more sustainable? Can we avoid problems
such as air and water pollution, loss of farmland, and isolation
from nature? These challenges are central to the new research field
of urban ecology.
Cities
are not isolated islands. They are part of and depend on on the
goods and services provided by ecosystems. Seattle, USA.
Soon, more people will live in cities than in rural areas. The global
urban population has grown from under 1 billion in the 1950s to
over 3 billion in the year 2000. During this period the number of
cities with more than 1 million inhabitants has increased from 80
to over 3000. Many developing countries illustrate this trend dramatically.
In China, more than two-thirds of the population still live in rural
areas, but the urban population has more than doubled between 1975
and 1995.
Soon, more people will live
in cities than in rural areas. The global urban population has grown
from under 1 billion in the 1950s to over 3 billion in the year
2000. During this period the number of cities with more than 1 million
inhabitants has increased from 80 to over 3000. Many developing
countries illustrate this trend dramatically. In China, more than
two-thirds of the population still live in rural areas, but the
urban population has more than doubled between 1975 and 1995.
The research field of urban
ecology springs from the need to take a more holistic approach to
understand the human-dominated ecosystems of urban areas. Urban
ecology views cities as part of living ecosystems, which provide
valuable resources and services that promote wealth, health and
quality of life. The goal is to integrate the social and ecological
sciences for a better understanding of human actions and their impacts
on life-supporting ecosystems in and outside the city boundaries.
Urban poverty
The poor in cities often live in unplanned regions with scarce and
polluted water, poor sanitation, and that are subject to landslides,
flooding and other hazards. Recently, many organisations and activists
have started to identify urban poverty as a bigger challenge for
sustainable development than rural poverty. For example, several
United Nations' agencies and the World Bank have started programs
to improve conditions in poor communities: investment in housing,
sanitation, and transportation; support for local small businesses;
and investments in economic growth. Many of these efforts have been
criticised as too limited or even counterproductive. Notwithstanding,
this demonstrates that urban poverty and its relationship with sustainable
development is definitely on the agenda.
The Swedish International
Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) is involved in many projects
dealing with poverty alleviation in urban regions. Sida, together
with UN-Habitat, UNEP, SEI and many others, also supported "the
Stockholm Partnerships for Sustainable Cities" that was arranged
by The City of Stockholm, June 4-7. It included a conference, an
exhibition and the award of prizes. Three Sida-financed programmes
were among the winners. In connection with the conference Sida also
organised a seminar on Swedish international support to urban development
and sustainable cities.
Cities need nature
Urban areas only account for 2% of the Earth's land surface. However,
city life causes regional and global ecosystem change. For example,
cities produce 78% of the greenhouse gases in the world. Also, estimates
show that a city may need ecosystems (ecological
footprint) of up to 1000 times the city area, both as resource
input and for assimilating waste products.
Hence, ecosystems
both inside and outside city boundaries are critical to the health,
economy and quality of life of people who live in cities. Ecosystem
services needed include uptake of carbon dioxide, mitigation
of local pollution and noise, shade, relaxation, privacy, social
meeting places, recreational and outdoors activities, maintenance
and creation of biological networks, and feeding and reproducing
areas for many animal communities.
It is not only
adjacent forests, agriculture, and nature reserves that provide
such ecosystem services. Also parks, cemeteries, golf courses and
other urban green spaces often play an important role. For example,
these green areas may provide important dispersal corridors for
mobile species and constitute a linkage between the inner flora
and fauna with the life-supporting surrounding ecosystems outside
the cities.
Moreover,
it is estimated that about 15-20 per cent of total global food production
is produced in towns. Such urban farming continues to grow in many
developing countries even though many regard cattle and crop cultivation
in towns as marginal activities that constitute a health risk and
a source of pollution.
Urban driving forces
Urban ecologists are not only interested in ecology. They also seek
to understand the social and economic drivers behind urbanisation
and the impacts it generates on the natural environment. Further,
city life tends to transform social networks and value systems both
inside and outside cities. As people move to cities, they tend to
abandon or lose habits, perceptions and knowledge that were coupled
to their rural lifestyle. This often results in a mental separation
from nature and consequent lack of responsibility for environmental
change. Therefore, urban ecologists point to a need for strengthening
the perception of humans and nature as interdependent and interacting.
Cecilia Holmlund and Fredrik Moberg
More at:
James P. Collings and others. 2000. A new urban ecology. American
Scientist, Vol. 88, pages: 416-425.
Bolund, P. and Hunhammar, S. 1999. Ecosystem services in urban areas.
Ecological Economics, Vol 29, pages 293-301.
UNEP
site on Urbansiation.
UN-Habitat
is the lead UN agency for human settlements with the aims to reduce
poverty and promote sustainable development in a rapidly urbanising
world.
The first ever World
Urban Forum, Nairobi, 3 May 2002. A think tank, and advisory
body of the UN.
This year's UN
World Habitat Day, 7 October, focusing on the need to improve
urban environments through more cooperation between cities.
About the Sida-supported
Stockholm Partnerships for Sustainable Cities.
Adaptive
management: Learning by doing is the essence of adaptive
management of the natural environment and its resources. Adaptive
management views policies as hypotheses and management actions as
experiments. It acknowledges that policy must satisfy social objectives,
but also must be continually modified and flexible for adaptation
to surprises. For surprises will always arise when dealing with
complex and variable ecosystems that we will never have complete
knowledge of. There is often great uncertainty regarding future
conditions of the ecosystems, the relationships among the different
components in the systems, the management objectives, and how abundant
the resources really are. Adaptive management is aided by researchers
as well as local users, takes onboard new information regarding
natural systems and adapts to new situations and disturbances. According
to a growing number of ecologists such flexible management that
is open to learning stimulates a sustainable development by enhancing
resilience (see sustainability
school of the previous issue) in coupled human and natural systems.
More
at:
Adaptive
management - accept disturbance! www.albaeco.com
Conservation
Ecology Vol 3 Iss 1
Preserving
nature can be good business
People
who protect natural assets can reap huge profits. A recent conference
presented an exciting collection of ideas on how to do business
with the environment. But, the possible risks involved in letting
profits guide the process were not really discussed.
The conference "Capturing the Value of Ecosystem Services: Developing
Markets for Environmental Assets" took place in March this year
in London. The participants included people from the financial and
investment sectors, large insurance companies, private foundations,
forestry product firms, research institutions, and NGO's. Such a
mix created a good setting for interesting discussions. It was concluded
that there are potentially huge business deals and opportunities
associated with the sustainable use of natural resources in general,
and of forests in particular.
One could almost think that the natural
environment was finally safe, thanks to sound business, but in general
the conference failed to provide a more realistic picture of the
difficulties involved. For example, a large part of the discussions
was centered on the potential that carbon sequestration certificates
have in increasing the profits from sustainable forest management.
Still, very few mentioned the fact that without the Kyoto Protocol,
there is no compulsory mechanism for reducing carbon emissions,
and there is no certainty that existing forest cover will be considered
eligible as carbon offsets.
It was concluded that sustainable forest
management of original forest cover can only become profitable if
other ecosystem services provided are accounted for. Carbon storage
was by far regarded as the most relevant ecosystem service, in particular
for foresters. It was argued that the use of forest as carbon storage
and the sale of carbon offsets held the key to the preservation
of the remaining forests and even the reversal of existing deforestation
rates.
Several successful examples were also presented
where owning and protecting watersheds, both for energy production
and for the provision of clean drinking water, have generated profits.
Nature based tourism was described as a well established, fast growing
and profitable industry where the risks are low. Biodiversity was
identified as important for the pharmaceutical industry, as storage
of crop seeds, and as a source of botanical medicines, natural products
and food. Despite the multiplicity of uses, most participants seemed
fairly hesitant about the business potential of conserving biodiversity.
One aspect that was not explicitly put forward in this context is
the need of biodiversity for ecosystems' resilience, their capacity
to cope with disturbance. This insurance value of biodiversity is
seldom acknowledged in economic valuations or the potential profits
in protecting biodiversity. Nonetheless, resilience is the basis
for continued provision of all the other goods and services in face
of environmental change and disturbances.
Francisco Alpizar R. and Fredrik Moberg
More
at:
The webpages of the two organisations that sponsored the conference:
Forest Trends
and The Katoomba
Group.
A new book The New Economy of Nature: The Quest to Make Conservation
Profitable by Gretchen C. Daily and Katherine Ellison (Island
Press, 2002) is a good source if you want to know more about
the economic value of natural systems and the potential profits
in protecting them.
Kofi
Annan's five key-actions for Sustainable Development
On
May 14th, United Nations' Secretary-General Kofi Annan made his
first major policy address on his expectations for this year's World
Summit on Sustainable Development. He criticised the current model
of development "that has brought us so much," but "also exacted
a heavy toll on the planet and its resources". On the contrary,
he said, we must find practical ways for humanity to better the
lives of all human beings, while protecting the environment. In
this process it can no longer be the environment versus development,
or ecology versus the economy. "Contrary to popular belief," he
said, "we can integrate the two." He proposed the following five
key actions (that can be remembered by the acronym WEHAB) for sustainable
development that are "possible with the resources and technologies
at our disposal":
1) Water: Provide access to at least one billion people who lack
clean drinking water and two billion people who lack proper sanitation.
2) Energy: Provide access to more than two billion people who
lack modern energy services; promote renewable energy; reduce
over-consumption; and ratify the Kyoto Protocol to address climate
change.
3) Health: Address the effects of toxic and hazardous materials;
reduce air pollution, which kills three million people each year;
and lower the incidence of malaria and African guinea worm, which
are linked to polluted water and poor sanitation.
4) Agriculture: Work to reverse land degradation, which affects
about two-thirds of the world's agricultural lands.
5) Biodiversity and ecosystem management: Reverse the processes
that have destroyed about half of the world's tropical rainforest
and mangrove forests, and are threatening 70% of the world's coral
reefs and decimating the world's fisheries.
Annan
also concluded that research and development are still neglecting
the problems of the poor. Moreover, developed countries "have not
gone far enough" to fulfil the promises they made ten years ago
in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro - to protect their
own environments and to help the developing world defeat poverty.
Yet, he ended on a positive note, stating that we have a chance
to catch up in Johannesburg and write a new and hopeful chapter
in natural and human history.
More
at:
Download
the speech.
Resilience
can become a key concept at the World Summit
To sustain development in a changing
world, policy must enhance resilience in social-ecological systems
and strengthen the perception of humanity and nature as interdependent
and interacting. This is stated in a new report for The World Summit
on Sustainable Development (WSSD).
A report entitled "Resilience and Sustainable Development: Building
Adaptive Capacity in a World of Transformation" has been prepared
on behalf of The Environmental Advisory Council to the Swedish Government
for The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in August
this year. The report, which is published by The International Council
for Scientific Union, aims to bring to light a growing body of research
demonstrating the strong connection between resilience (see
SDU 2, 2002), diversity, and sustainability of social-ecological
systems.
The WSSD process offers a rich opportunity
to improve our management of social-ecological systems and thus
people's livelihoods, which depend on healthy, functioning ecosystems.
In this regard, what may be needed most is a shift in how people
view the relationship between environmental issues, economic growth,
and the health and well-being of human populations. Resilience theory
provides just that, a fresh perspective on managing social-ecological
systems through building resilience and adaptive capacity within
the system, rather than attempting to control for stable optimal
production and short-term economic gain.
The report describes why a worldview that
considers nature and humanity as one system allows us to better
appreciate the linkages between ecosystem goods and services that
support human development and how human actions affect the ability
of ecosystems to continue to provide these services. Resilience
offers the best protection for maintaining this flow of services
and for coping with unexpected shocks to the system. The report
even suggests that we will have to increase the resilience of our
social-ecological systems considerably if we are to cope with future
climate events and other components of global environmental change.
A resilient system is not only better able to absorb shocks and
remain within a given state, but is also more capable of self organisation
and has the capacity to learn and adapt.
The extensive list of references that accompanies
the report lends support to the theory underlying the processes
and mechanisms behind resilience and also provides several illuminating
examples of shifts in state in different kinds of ecosystems. When
a grassland is abruptly converted into a shrub desert or a coral
reef collapses into algae-covered coral remains, the rangelands
and fisheries that once supported human communities disappear. The
difficulty in predicting when these state shifts might occur is
exacerbated by thresholds that change over time.
The dynamic nature of such complex systems
demands that those who rely on natural resources appreciate that
the limits of natural systems may be neither obvious, nor fixed
in space. Which is why a management approach that strives to build
resilience within the system may be the optimal strategy for sustaining
the flow of naturally-derived goods and services that support the
sustainable development of the world's populations.
Allyson Quinlan
More
at:
Download the report at Resilience
Alliance
Sustainable
agriculture and climate change in South Asia
The
South Asia Expert Workshop "Adaptation to Climate Change for
Agricultural Productivity" was held in New Dehli from 1-3 May
2002. Hosted by the Government of India, UN Environment Programme
and CGIAR, the workshop raised issues of climate change policy relating
to agriculture with a focus on South Asia. The workshop benefited
from high-level participation from South Asia, including two ministers,
and several secretaries of agriculture and the environment. Experts
from the region and around the world reviewed the range of threats
and impacts of climate change, and the kinds of policies that might
provide a resilient agricultural sector in the future. The Stockholm
Environment Institute (SEI) was represented in sessions on vulnerability
and resilient livelihoods.
The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate
Change (IPCC) considers agriculture in the South Asian region as
particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Effects
include thermal and water stresses, sea-level rise, increased flooding,
and intense tropical cyclones that threaten crop production and
aquaculture. Projected climate change will adversely affect human
health, and also whole nations' economies as countries in South
Asia generate between 24% to 40% of their GDP from agriculture.
Considering the population growth and limited availability of land,
agricultural productivity needs to increase in the region, not decrease,
to meet the growing demand.
One observation at the workshop was that
the agricultural sector has not been particularly prominent in international
negotiations, which are largely dominated by the 'northern' environmental
agenda and handled by environmental ministries in developed countries.
Thus, the linkages between adaptation and mitigation at the local
level are fairly weak. For example, there is considerable emphasis
on forest carbon sequestration but few pilot studies or policy initiatives
including vulnerable farmers or catchment/landscape level processes.
The recurrent calls for greater investment in agricultural research
(including sharing of intellectual property rights for major food
crops) and redressing that the present vulnerability to climatic
variations are important. However, it will take considerable effort
to bring these concerns to the forefront of the negotiating process.
Dr. Tom Downing, SEI
More at:
Press
release from after the workshop.
Press release from before the workshop.
The
Stockholm conference thirty years later
The
17th and 18th of June, the Swedish Government will arrange the conference
"Stockholm Thirty Years On" to celebrate the thirty-year jubilee
of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment that took
place in Stockholm 1972. The conference in 1972 is regarded by many
as the landmark event that placed environmental issues on the international
political agenda.
The
subtitle of the upcoming Stockholm 30+ conference is "Progress achieved
and challenges ahead in international environmental co-operation."
The purpose is to reflect on implications of lessons learned for
the future, particularly in view of the upcoming Johannesburg Summit.
Conference participants will be drawn from a wide range of experiences
and areas of expertise. They will include veterans of the Stockholm
Conference, scientists, and representatives from the business world,
non-governmental organisations and youth movements.
One
of the parallel sessions of the conference will deal with the need
to build resilience, the capacity of ecosystems to cope with disturbance
and maintain an adequate supply of goods and services in times of
global change. There is growing awareness of the challenge of managing
ecosystems as the foundation for economic and social development.
This implies understanding transformations in coupled human and
natural systems and clarifying economic and social dependence on
life-supporting ecological systems. Questions to be discussed include:
How can livelihoods be secured by building resilience in coupled
human and natural systems? What are the challenges from the perspective
of global warming and other expressions of global change?
The conference
that will take place at the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm is only
open for invited participants.
Louise
Hård af Segerstad
More at:
General
information, programme and documentation.
New
phase of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
After
nearly three and a half years the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
(MA) now has reached the assessment phase. The MA is a collaboration
between several UN-agencies, government agencies, leading science
organisations, non-governmental organisations, and the private sector.
The study covers ecological, economic and social aspects, focusing
on the capacity of ecosystems to provide goods and ecosystem services
important to human development.
Actually, less time will be spent in analysis,
peer review, and dissemination of the findings than has been spent
on the preparatory phase. This is because the goal of the MA is
not only "getting the science right," but also to bring the findings
of science to bear on the needs of decision-makers, says Walter
Reid, the director of MA. In such a process it is important to build
strong engagement and to make sure that demand exists. Therefore,
the prepatory phase has focused on designing an institutional mechanism
authorised by governments, identifying the needs of the users, and
creating a conceptual framework and technical design to address
those needs.
According to Reid it has become quite obvious
that much of the information needs and questions identified by MA
users are fundamentally holistic and cannot be addressed by sectoral
assessments or answered at a single scale. These include questions
such as: How can environmental management contribute to poverty
alleviation? What effect will the growing human contribution to
global nitrogen cycles have on ecosystems and human well-being?
Recently, the MA further strengthened its
collaboration with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
This was settled at the Sixth Conference of the Parties (COP 6)
of the CBD, 8-20 April 2002 in The Hague Netherlands. During 2002,
the Assessment Panel and 30 other experts will produce the first
MA product, the Millennium Assessment Conceptual Framework Report,
to be released in 2003.
More
at:
Millennium
Assessment
The quote:
"By spending just one cent out of every ten dollars earned in industrialized
countries, roughly $25 billion annually, we could control the spread
of HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and tuberculosis; we could end death during
childbirth and from diarrheal disease… This is a bargain on a global
scale."
Source:
Jeffrey Sachs, Earth
Institute Director, at Columbia University's second
State of the Planet Conference on May 13.
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