I would like to thank the dignitaries for opening the event today, the Tagore-Geddes Festival. May I now request Lord Deputy Lord Prost Leslie Marian Cameron to come and say a few words? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council General Malik, distinguished guests. On behalf of the Lord Provost and on behalf of the people of the city of Edinburgh, it’s my very great pleasure to be here with you all today at the Tagore Gettis Festival on day one of the two-day celebrations here at the Tom Fleming Centre, hosted within Stuart’s Melville College.

I really am pleased and honored to be with you here today to celebrate the very real impacts that Rabindranath Tagore and Patrick Geddes had on our capital city—a real credit to our city and a real credit to our sustainability movement.

The theme of the festival is “Forests Are Our Future: By Leaves We Live,” and in that vein, I hope that you all very much enjoy tonight’s dance drama, “Palash: Flame of the Forest,” and also tomorrow’s screenings of Satyajit Ray’s “Days and Nights in the Forest” and “Gautam Goes in the Forest.”

Again, Tagore and Geddes held great foresight, with Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian Nobel Laureate for Literature, speaking about the sanctity of forests, and Patrick Geddes, his close friend, saying, “By leaves we live,” as leaves embody life on Earth. These past messages strongly and urgently resonate with us today as we jointly face a climate crisis that threatens the biodiversity of our planet, where forests, rainforests, and the green canopy are vital if we collectively are to secure a future for the next and subsequent generations.

This Tagore Geddes Festival celebrates the friendship between these two great thinkers, environmentalists, and nation-builders, and their shared desire for a thriving biodiversity and green space environment, all of which support our shared well-being and heritage. I’m deeply grateful to the Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies, which worked so diligently in bringing together such an exciting program of events for this festival and celebrating the work and impacts of Tagore and Geddes. I’m very much looking forward to tonight’s performance, and I hope we all enjoy the celebrations and feel able to come together in a true spirit of preserving and enhancing our precious biodiversity and green and blue spaces. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.

Thank you very much, Deputy Lord Provost; that was a very moving speech and very perceptive, and it has left a positive message.