Thank you very much to both of you for coming here.
Dr. Shadian, I'll start with you. I'll go back to the Fairbanks Declaration of 2017. Something important that came out of there was the funding model for their permanent participants. The endowment that was created provided some stability in terms of an annual funding model for them and also funding for projects that were specific to collaborative initiatives.
One thing that was not.... I go back to an article that I read. You talked about infrastructure specifically, saying that it will cost at least $1 trillion for infrastructure spending in the north. No country or entity, I don't think, can do it by itself. However, you have eight Arctic Council members. You have 39 observer states. You have six permanent participants who are there. Let's just focus on the observer states.
Right now, they are limited by a 50% spending rule when it comes to specific projects. If we are really going to tackle the infrastructure problem in the north, do you still believe that the observers should be limited by that 50% rule, or should there somehow be a more collaborative nature, irrespective of how much someone is spending, to make sure that the north is developed in the way that it should be?