 Welcome to this plenary session of the International Conference of Sustainable Development. It is our great pleasure and deep honor to be hosting her Excellency, Mia Amor Motley, the Prime Minister of Barbados. Professor Sacks, please kick us off. Thank you very much. I could not be more excited. I also want to apologize to the Prime Minister and to everybody for the bit of delay on my side trying to get the logistics in places. We're running around on this first day of the UN General Assembly. It's been a very interesting day and we want to hear from the Prime Minister about that. We're about to listen to one of my favorite people in the whole world, one of really great world leaders. Prime Minister Mia Amor Motley has been Prime Minister of Barbados since May 2018, but she's been a national leader in Barbados and in the Caribbean region in Caracom and globally for a long time. She's had several ministerial posts, been in parliament, been Attorney General and now is a really beloved Prime Minister. I know that firsthand because I was in Barbados recently and everybody adores the Prime Minister because she's taking such good care of the country in these very difficult circumstances. But the Prime Minister Motley is also the chair of the Development Committee for the IMF World Bank. That is the political leadership to oversee development finance and so that's an absolutely crucial position at this time of global upheaval and we'll want to hear about that. Prime Minister, thank you so much for taking the time to be together. I'm thrilled and I love to give you the floor to make some opening remarks and then I look forward to a discussion together. Thank you so much Jeffrey and I want to really say how much I'm pleased to be here with you. The truth is that we don't need to say how much we admire your scholarship, your leadership, your courage because it's exactly what the world needs at this point in time and indeed our ability to have you speak truth to power throughout whether to political leaders or to all of the leaders across all of the sectors is absolutely essential for the kind of communication and conversation that the world needs. You know, I really welcome this opportunity to talk with young people and some of the people that are going to be listening here because it's really in your hands to be able to make that strategic difference as to one, what are the conversations that we have informed by the rigor of research and two, what are the policy decisions that political leaders and others will make largely driven once again by the rigor of your research. And we don't have all day. So I'm going to zero in very quickly to the whole issue of the planet and sustainable development and Jeffrey, you have done excellent work and have distinguished yourself by the work that you've done with the United Nations across Secretaries General and also with the training that you've done of the students and educating that you've done with the students. But let us look back to 2015 when world leaders took the historic step to commit to achieving the sustainable development goals by 2030. And this presented the opportunity for the reinvigoration of sustainable development research, as you well know, the fact that the United Nations and the member states pledged to the attainment of these goals by what seemed a long time, 15 years by 2030 added a sense of urgency, not only to the need for pertinent study and research on sustainable development, but for the pressing needs for research results that would have real world application and that would enable every member state to achieve the SDGs. I like to call the SDGs really and truly the development path that most former colonies as independent nations would have normally set themselves if they had the kind of resources that would make the difference at the point of independence. Equally, we all know that the notion of sustainability is by no means a new concept and can be traced back in one form or another for centuries. But I think that the modern aspect of it is really found in 1992 at the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development, which was held, as we know, in Rio de Janeiro, and it has come to be known as the Earth Conference. The importance of sustainable development began to take shape and emerge as a key component of that global political agenda. Coming out of Rio before we went any further, you know that they came to Barbados for small island developing states and the Barbados program of action. And therefore, I feel a particular closeness to the whole issue as well. Ironically, it was just months before I took up a position in the government in cabinet for the first time, but the months before while being an opposition senator, we played close attention to what was going on, building on what happened out of Rio. The global family developed an increasing awareness thereafter of the ecological duress that was being placed on the planet's resources and the challenges that came with that pressure in which the world's population continues, as we know, to consume much more than could ever be replenished. And I use this point because growing up and certainly as a university student, there was talk about it, but it was not mainstream. After Rio, we began to interpret development as having three interconnected pillars, society, economy and environment. And what we truly not yet acknowledge then or now is that the strength and reinforcement of those pillars rests on a body of research that allows for some sensible and sustainable development policies. My friends, modern research must mirror our understanding of development and enable us to come to grips with and to resolve some of the intractable challenges of underdevelopment, geopolitical factors that entrench social and economic inequities, and the systemic causes of poverty, and even my dear friends of racism and the unconscious bias that may relate to it. We cannot, as a global family of persons or nations, researchers or policymakers, eliminate the development divide between the geopolitical north and south, the experiential divide between people of color and Caucasians, the empowerment divide between men and women, the growth divide between small island developing states and other countries, and the opportunity divide between rich and poor without treating to the causes of these deep chasms. And to treat to these causes, we must know what they are. You cannot, cannot prescribe without diagnosis. To know what the causes are and how they might be remedied, we must have in my view a research platform, but a practical application. The value of research assumes even greater importance in the knowledge economy that now drives the global markets. And it takes on newer and larger dimensions when regard is given to the digitization of international trade, business, or the way people live and the accelerated search in technology that characterizes regrettably our pandemic environment and indeed will similarly characterize the post-COVID world. Nelson Mandela, who is my personal hero, reminds us that poverty is a man-made construct. And I want to add to that, so is underdevelopment. These twin ills of poverty and underdevelopment made by man, or I should say reinforced by man, can be unmade by our research combined with man's concerted effort to effect change, to reverse current harms, to sustain development gains, and to ensure equity and justice for all who occupy the planet. But it's a question of choice and the choices that we make have distinct distinct consequences. Let us acknowledge therefore that our planet and the vast majority of our people are being severely affected by crises that threaten our very survival. The climate crisis, the growing social and economic inequalities, food, water, housing and fuel insecurities, COVID-19 and the threat of our other deadly pandemics. Yet governments in the private sector allocate relatively small budgets to research and development initiatives that might identify solutions to these existential crises, while also building the innovation capacity of less advanced economies and small island developing states. My friends, there is a critical need for the international development community, and in particular the international financial institutions to allocate greater levels of grant funding to research for impact and sustainability. And this is particularly important in developing countries and small island developing states such as Barbados, where there is no dearth of talent and ability, but there's a dire shortage of research capital for developing country researchers to engineer or to finance the development challenges of our countries. I'll refer to something here. Just literally about three months ago, I announced in Barbados at the University of the West Indies, ironically, Jeffrey, just feet from where you spoke when you came down. That we would establish something called future Barbados, where we are looking to persons under the age of 30 to come forward. Many of them haven't left university or post-secondary institutions in the last year, 18 months, not able to find jobs largely because of the severe economic depression with a country that is tourism and travel dependent, where our GDP declined by regrettably as much as 17% last year. And we felt that even in these difficult times, even in the midst of an IMF program, even in the midst of facing the worst pandemic in 102 years, or the worst asfall as we did in April in 119 years, when the ash came from St. Vincent 90 miles away and turned day into night in Barbados, or the worst hurricane that we had in 66 years, even in the midst of all of that, you cannot lose your eye on being strategic. And therefore, we felt that if we could get a number of young people and give them five major challenges to be able to help us to come up with what is the research that must end up in it, and what is the action that must flow from that research such that some near term goes in five years time, how do we reduce childhood obesity by 50%. Delta is now showing us, for example, that it is hitting families and it is hitting young people. And if we don't deal with the underlying comorbidities that many of our young people have, we're going to lose more and more of them. And it's not just the COVID pandemic, but as you know, I chair the One Health Global Initiative, which is dedicated to being able to help us fight the problem that has developed antimicrobial resistance. A lot of fancy language, what is it simply that we've developed the resistance to superviruses and the antibiotics that we have and other medicines are not capable of helping us fight these viruses. And it is expected that this is going to be the biggest killer of human beings by 2050, by far. But in so doing, it will reverse potentially a century of medical progress with the use of antibiotics and other things that have been developed over the last century. So a visit to the dentist or a mother having a baby can now become a life-threatening experience if we are not careful. And if we don't do the kind of research and funding that we need in there. And I can go on and on and on with some of the other challenges, but given our time, I just want to add by making these points. Funding should be made available for research and development efforts of smaller companies and independent innovators in the private sector and those linked to academia, allowing them to do far more and to freely explore and finance this as some of the most daunting challenges of our time. And why do I say so? We spoke in the Broadband Commission on Sunday, Jeffrey, and I really want to quote you again, because you reminded us that the five or six global tech companies have a market capitalization of 9.4 trillion. I didn't say billion, I didn't say million, 9.4 trillion dollars. And that within that, there ought to be a greater commitment, one, to bridge in the digital divide, two, bridge in the learning deficit that has taken place as a result of the pandemic by removing from our children the opportunity simply to be able to learn as they would normally expect to. But because of the online education platforms that we've had to resort to in order to protect them, they're not in a position many of them to even benefit because they might not have electricity, they might not have tablets or they might not have access to the internet. These global inequalities have to be redressed and have to be changed. If not, we're going to face moments as we did in our past where people just stood up and rose up and said, enough is enough. Indeed, it is ironic that the Secretary-General of the United Nations this morning reminded us that we've entered a period of time with coups again and governments being threatened by their citizens in ways that really and truly we thought had been behind us, especially as we sought to focus on the sustainable development goals. I have been in some instances a little abstract here, but many of you are potentially global change makers. And I want to share some of the other issues that I believe that are ripe for research at this point in time. One, with the climate crisis threatening the very inundation of island states like mine and the Maldives and many others in the Caribbean, the Pacific and Indian oceans. What are the implications for immigration, refugees and the concept of state boundaries? How are we going to get around that and what are the options that we can put in place so that states both in North Atlantic and in the South can begin to plan? If the entire population of a country relocates to another country, do those who have relocated still carry their original national identity? Does the country cease to exist? Does it barely exist? Particularly when you look at somewhere like Montserrat that therefore proves to us that this is a potential that can happen. Montserrat when I was growing as a child is known as the Emerilisle, beautiful, populated. Today Montserrat had the majority of its citizens evacuated 20 years ago because of the volcanic eruptions. Similarly, let us go to Barbuda. The sister state of Antigua. That country also faced full evacuation after Hurricane Maria back in 2017. I go to another issue. What are the legal implications with respect to the delimitation of maritime postal and national boundaries? As small island development states face the ever present threat of rising sea levels and loss of land mass due to that climatic phenomenon. Can we continue to see sovereignty and jurisdiction exercise over our maritime area? Particularly since I expect that we will continue to see an expansion of maritime boundaries in the way that we went from territorial sea to exclusive economic zones and to which they're looking at other forms of data, geomorphological data and other types to determine how much further those boundaries can be extended. Another one have existing economic models work equitably for the global north and south. We all know the answer to that, Jeffries. And what new models should be pursued? What is the new form of development? Can we continue to literally build our development models on an educational system that was intended only to educate an elite few in a post-colonial structure leaving the rest of the society to be literally capable of being controlled, directed and manipulated. Let us go to another one. Given the nature of the threat as outlined in the IPCC reports and the Code Red for Humanity and the lived experiences of those of us between the tropics of cancer and Capricorn, what prevents the United Nations member states truly? What prevents us from agreeing to a 1.5 degree pathway? Knowing full well as the president of Maldives said this morning at the General Assembly that his people and his young people in particular do not believe that their interests and their future is being taken seriously enough as do our people. We do not believe that it is being taken seriously enough by those countries that can with the political will make the difference. Are the development institutions, and this is one of my favorite ones, that we merged after World War II, the United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions, are they relics or are they relevant to today's development challenges? Are we seeing the right structure even for the development committee that I chair? And are we ensuring that those voices and countries that did not exist in 1945 or 1946 or even 1948 with the WHO, that now exist? Have we given them sufficient room within those institutions to play a role, to meet the concerns that matter to their citizens or are they just another voice in the audience? In the face of a boarded economic growth due to the looming specter of this pandemic, what is it that can be done by small tourism dependent island states to reinvigorate our sustainable growth to levels that would allow us to continue to meet the commitments and to achieve the SDGs? And I say so conscious that history must not record that there are two rules. After the World Wars, Britain was able to be able to recognize and to say to all, we cannot pursue the rebuilding of Britain if we had to face the servicing of debt incurred during the war. And they were able then to put in place long-term financing that meant that they had the space then to rebuild Britain without it being crawled out by the debt incurred during the war. Why can't this be done now for the majority of countries in the world who see the G7 countries have access to more than $15 trillion through borrowing and quantitative easing, but then the low-income countries, not even the middle income, the low-income countries are relegated to a DSSI, a debt service suspension initiative that was supposed to be $12 billion that effectively hasn't really gone much beyond $5 billion. How do you have $5 billion for 80 or more and a handful, Jeffrey, share in $15 trillion? And then in the middle, countries like my own and others, some small island development states but other middle-income countries with limited access to international capital markets are virtually squeezed in the middle. The importance of this research is that it would give empirical data to policymakers like myself and other governments and then other development institutions to allow for informed, more informed decision-making. As I speak to you, therefore, there's an urgent need across a myriad of disciplines, particularly with people working to a strategic objective rather than staying within the disciplines only that will have life or death implications for at least 58 countries categorized as small island development states or those at the brink of crisis. The African-American anthropologist and author Zora Neale Hurston once said, and I quote her, research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prodding with a purpose. Well, we need to poke and prod and with the purpose of saving lives. If we can do that, then we will have made a difference in what have come more and more to describe as this relay race. Let us pass the baton on knowing full well that we have encouraged people to be curious, to poke and prod and to help us find strategies of sustainability which can save our planet, save our people and ensure that those who we leave and will follow behind us will inherit a better place than that which we have today. Thank you. Wow, bravo. Now it's so good. I'm actually going to ask you to do that again, not right now, but one of the things that we're planning this fall is to bring together hundreds of presidents of universities and chancellors about the purpose of universities and what they can do right now. And I want them to hear you. So I'm going to recruit you back to action because we're going to do that for Asian universities. We're going to do it for Europe and Africa, for the Americas, very important, very powerful and we will follow through. Also, I want to get that research agenda spelled out what these young people have said, what you've identified, what UWI has identified. The Sustainable Development Solutions Network is 1,500 universities around the world that are committed and have committed themselves to promote the sustainable development goal. So we ought to give some assignments, some research assignments and get UWI together with its counterparts and work specifically on these questions. So I'm also going to come back to you with that fantastic list. Now, I liked the idea. I pointed out when we were together in the Broadband Commission that that morning, the market cap of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook combined, that morning was $9.3 trillion. Let's go to them, you and I, and say, come on, this is a research agenda. Google, which has incredibly powerful and interesting tools, says they want to organize information for the world. They, let's see, they were $1.9 trillion, their company Sunday morning. They could help on that. And these other companies could help on that. And I think that that is absolutely very practical, doable and it coming from you a very powerful and compelling message. So I'd like to take you up on that, not only figuratively, but also literally that we go to those five. I know people in most of them and we can find some way to do that. And then the third point is the global financial structure. And I think we are at a moment where obviously we need to rethink the global financial structure. And the Secretary General was very clear this morning in his opening that the advanced economy and so-called, they've taken on trillions of dollars of spending during the COVID period to both cushion the population and to invest for the future. Whereas developing countries and especially low income countries have been so hard hit, they're tightening belts, they're being squeezed, they're facing debt crisis. So the world gap opened up incredibly during this period. It was already horrible, unfair. But now we've had two years or almost two years of a complete drama. The rich countries get vaccines, the poor countries don't. The rich countries borrow at 1% interest or zero interest or in Germany's case, negative interest. And the poor countries can't get capital, can't grow. And so we need to face this head on. And I believe that with your powerful voice and the IMF World Bank institutions, and I know that Kristalina Georgieva agrees with your analysis. And she spoke this morning in this forum very compellingly about the need for a new financial structure. And I have my eye on the G20 process also, where 85% of the world GDP comes together with these 20 seats. I'm also calling for the African Union to become the 21st of November, come on. Yes, it's incredible. And by the way, you add one seat, you add 1.4 billion people, as you know. One seat, you add $3 trillion of income and you add some justice to the table also. And Caribbean comes along with that too because we're seen as a diasporic member. You got it. So let's push for that. I've spoken to this year's lead of the G20 Mario Draghi, a classmate of mine, a wonderful person, a friend for 40 years. And I'll meet President Chisiketti, who's the chair of the African Union tomorrow at the United Nations. And I think we should really push the seat at the table, the representation, and then within that forum to say, you know, Bretton Woods was a long time ago, that was 1944 under US auspices. When the then nations, mostly imperial powers got together to set out the post-World War II financial structure, we need to set out a new structure now that ensures access for development, real access and real sustainable development. Not some nice words, nice goals, but no way to do them actually. You know, I spoke yesterday with the finance minister of a major country in Africa who was telling me, he doesn't have a budget for primary school. You know, he was asking for filling the gap. SDG-4 is supposed to be through upper secondary, but he can't get international help. He's told, tighten your belt, you know, live within your means, and the kids have no place in school. And this is completely intolerable. And in the meantime, it's not only those five companies, 9.3 trillion, but when I looked it up on Sunday, the 500 richest people in the world, well, they, 500 people, people, not companies, had 8.3 trillion of wealth. Come on. No, it's now- That's weird, that's weird. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. And I'm with you on the G-21 and I will use my voice to continue to echo that call. I am with you on the reform of the Bretton Woods institutions, as you heard just now. And I think that it is absolutely critical that the pressure come from every sphere, including universities, including civil society, governments, but if we don't do it, what is gonna happen? Nature, of course, is a vacuum. Let's get real. And the insecurity that is going to flow in terms of migration and pools and all of the other social implosion and the things that go with that will flow naturally because you're asking too few people to do the impossible. You cannot live on what you're asking people to live on in today's world. Now, let's talk about research again. I'm not an economist, but I think I've been around enough public policy to understand a few things. Why can't we revisit this whole notion of a 60% debt anchor? Because that has been used as a noose around the necks of developing countries, but yet it is okay for other countries to have high debt because of how the system is structured so that Japan and the US can get away with it. Now, similarly- If you could print the money, you get away with a lot. That's the point. And therefore it comes down to how do we deconstruct and reconstruct the system that allows it to be more equitable? What are the safe assets? What is it that we can consider as safe assets in Africa or in the developing world such that a Greece and a Ghana don't pay astronomically different rates while having the same international credit rating with respect to access to capital? And I don't want to go to the other reasons that people will call emotive or not real, but people will begin to see it through colored glasses. It's a fascinating issue, by the way. I said why some countries in the North can borrow at rates that others in the world who have the similar circumstances and in some instances may have even a better institutional framework can't do it. But other countries have backative of larger groupings and safe assets that can be considered acceptable. Well, others don't. But people like yourself and the students whom you have, we're relying on you to deconstruct and reconstruct. When I came to office, I asked the members of cabinet and the members of the public service to do one thing. Always, always question. And that's why today's topic is so dear to me because that curiosity means that how do we deconstruct and reconstruct? Because without that, we accept the status quo. And what are the questions that we have to ask? What is the public purpose that we're really trying to achieve? What is the public mischief that we need to avoid at all costs in doing it? In what way can technology help us to deliver these services or this policy in a more efficient and effective way? And in so doing, is there a group of people who are currently disenfranchised that will be empowered or a group of people who are currently okay, but may end up being disenfranchised as a result of the policy initiative? And if you ask yourself those simple questions, it's not rocket science, but what it does is to allow us to deconstruct an entire system, particularly in post-colonial countries who have inherited a lot of the systems that were designed for elsewhere. And regrettably, the world has foisted on many of us today a one-size-fits-all prescription that does not have anything to do with our reality and comes across like a man with a cutlass going well as opposed to a surgeon with a scalpel being strategic. We're on the case, Prime Minister. Absolutely. You're guiding. You're asking all the right questions. You're giving us good homework assignments. We're going to work together on this. Let me say on behalf of all of us, you really inspire us and your leadership is absolutely wonderful. And the power of your vision is just what we need. We're going to do this work together on this in the coming year. I'm going to put our Sustainable Development Solutions Network to work even more intensively on these questions. And we're going to make a better and fairer system. That's our goal. And I want to say to you, when I speak about global moral strategic leadership, I'm not just speaking about heads of government or heads of state, although there are people like Carlos Casada from Costa Rica and Nana Okuru from Ghana that really have this shown themselves to be leaders of class. But I'm also speaking about persons like yourself, whose scholarship and whose voice cannot be quietened and who continue to be a beacon for the rest of us, recognizing that we're not crazy. And the other people also understand the logic and the passion with which we must pursue these things if we are to have greater equity in this world. I'm speaking about Pope Francis. I'm speaking about a range of you outside of the leadership of government. And I keep making the point. When you look at those leaders who stood out, Carlos made the point yesterday as well in our sessions. Invariably, there are those who stand up because they stood for something that had greater moral purpose, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela. Even Fidel Castro, in his own way, was able to be able to challenge aspects of development. You might have agreed with everything that he did. But the bottom line is that you either stand for something or you fall for everything. And I hope that we can inspire in our students, in our young people, that if ever there was a moment for them to stand tall and to stand firm, it is no. Thank you. You've done it. You've inspired us. You've inspired them. Let me, on behalf of everybody, thank you. This will be watched over and over again, your wise remarks. And we'll be in touch very soon to continue the work together. So grateful. Thank you. I look forward to that. And please, my best to your family. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. And Lauren, back over to you. Thank you so much. This was a wonderful session and inspiring and energizing session. We have a couple parallel sessions continuing. So I look forward to seeing everybody sign off this Zoom link, visiting the program. I put the link in the chat and connecting to one of those parallel sessions. Thank you again, Madam Prime Minister. This was a pleasure. Bye. Bye-bye.