 Excellencies, distinguished colleagues, guests from all around the world, ladies and gentlemen, it is a very great pleasure for all wider staff, myself included, to wish you a warm welcome to the September 2016 UNU-Wider Development Conference on Responding to Crisis. We tried to put together a stimulating program for this two-day conference, which includes an important keynote by Elizabeth Rehn, former Minister of Defense, Minister of Equality Affairs and Undersecretary-General of the United Nations. When we early on discussed the topic for this conference, we held a series of meetings and discussions with the Crisis Management Initiative, CMI, FinChurch Aid, the University of Sussex, the University of Copenhagen, and the International Organization for Migration IOM, which is now a member of the UN as a related organization. I'm pleased and indeed grateful that we managed together to arrange a subset of the sessions to be held at this conference. I'd therefore like to extend a warm thanks to CMI, FinChurch Aid, Sussex, Copenhagen and IOM for excellent cooperation. Our appreciation also goes to our regular donors, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, DFID, CEDA and DENIDA for their sustained collaboration and financial support, without which we would not have been able to bring you all here. It's not quite as sunny today as we had hoped, but the weather forecast for the rest of the day is very good and tomorrow should be excellent. I hasten to add that our donor group and we at WIDA would warmly welcome new members. The topic responding to crisis could, as I see it, not be more timely. And to get us going, the Minister of Finance of South Africa, Praveen Gordon, a close teammate in the struggle against apartheid, would like to make some welcoming remarks. Praveen Gordon knows more than most what it means to respond to crisis and importantly, he looks to think stands such as wider for advice and interaction on how the bigger policy issues of the day should be faced and addressed. I invited him some time back to be here with us today, but urgent matters kept him in South Africa, but he kindly agreed to do a video welcome message that we will now play for you to get us going. Good morning to colleagues, friends and I imagine comrades who are in Helsinki for the WIDA conference on responding to crisis. Firstly, thank you very much for this privilege of addressing you as part of the welcome to this conference on behalf of WIDA. I certainly would have preferred to have done it personally, but regrettably the pressure of work in South Africa prevented me from doing so. I want to congratulate Fintab and his team and of course all of the participants for organizing and attending a conference like this that is very time-yous, very important and one which policymakers like myself around the world who have a progressive orientation will be looking forward to answers for. So what is the crisis about? What's caused the crisis? What are the underpinning currents within this crisis? And where do the solutions lie? I imagine we'll be amongst the questions that you will address and whose answers we would certainly look forward to. The concept of responding to crisis also behoves us to ask some tough questions of ourselves as a global community in trying to understand the crisis itself. And as we said today, many want to know what does inclusive growth mean? And what are the standards or parameters and the dynamics by which each of us would be judged in terms of whether we are inclusive enough, so to speak, in terms of the growth models, the quality of growth, the extent to which ordinary citizens who are becoming increasingly active in virtually every part of the world, in expressing either their frustrations or their aspirations and expectations, certainly of policymakers, but I imagine of your community as well. In demanding answers to the question, how do I benefit from the kind of growth that we are actually seeing at the moment? And so above all, in addition to the benefits question, the challenge for us is how do we increase the standard of living and well-being of 7 billion people on the globe? And what are the different types of dynamics or systems that will assist us in answering that particular question? Of course, as we all know, the global economy is going through a particularly difficult period. It seems that that period is going to last for a few years to come, a period in which growth is low, where investment is low, where financial flows still dominate possible disruptions to particularly the emerging world, where trade has been diminishing, trade finance is a challenge. And the all-rounded development of society in terms of the kind of expectations that the sustainable development goal sets for us is today a demanding proposition for governments and organizations to actually meet. Equally, citizens, as I said, are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their state of affairs. And the fact that a group of elites, and they can be defined differently in different contexts and in different parts of the world, seem to be appropriating for themselves the fruits of the work that ordinary people put into their different environments and the kind of outcomes of growth patterns and investment patterns as well. This is leading to challenges, as I said about what inclusivity means. It's leading to challenges about how we find very different but answers nonetheless, which are consistent with the objectives of creating a more socially just world for ourselves and for the majority of the people. But social justice will then mean greater inclusivity, less inequality, a more advanced way in which, particularly in the developed world, the billions of people who live in that part of the world can actually improve their standard of living, their standard of education, the standard of health, amongst many other factors. All of these factors are also giving rise to serious questioning, as you do in your program, of the phenomenon of globalization. Some are talking about de-globalization. Others are questioning the benefits of globalization. And yet others are talking about reshaping globalization so that if you like, we can correct some of the aberrations of globalization and unintended consequences if one can talk in those terms that globalization has resulted in. But equally important as you meet in Europe is the kind of populism that we see rising in Europe, but in other parts of the world as well, amongst politicians and political systems and the populations who are frustrated with the range of things that I have mentioned and which you are very familiar with and can't find the right answers to, one, express themselves clearly, two, have themselves listened to clearly, and three, more importantly, have themselves responded to in a way in which meets their expectations both for now and the future. This populism is giving rise to the wrong kind of, if one can call it ideologies in the 21st century, the wrong kind of political developments and political formation developments, all of which could result in very negative outcomes which could impact upon the kind of progressive, for example, social security systems and safeguards that working classes over decades have created as their mechanisms for well-being in different parts of the world. So clearly in all of this, the financial sector has been increasingly questioned about its role, about where it actually benefits the rest of the economy and more importantly, the population as a whole, the kind of this great recession that it gave rise to as a result of Invertecoma's Wall Street banking practices. It was fascinating a day ago in South Africa to view the CEO of Wells Fargo being questioned. I think it was in the US Senate in a television program coming from one of these 24-hour channels. And the blatant lack of willingness by the CEO to take responsibility for the kind of damage that was caused and the tendency to repeatedly pass on the problem to people that had actually reported to him. So the great recession of 2007-2009 has clearly had a massive impact both in the developed world and the developing world. It's created problems around sovereign debt crises in different parts of Europe. It's raised questions about banking regulation and from a developing country point of view, some of those banking regulations that have been developed over the past few years by the FSB under the aegis of the G20 have in fact potentially created problems for developing countries and their financial systems and their stability as well. But most importantly, these developments have resulted in some serious questions about where do jobs come from in the future? What is the role of technology in the diminishing number of jobs that will be available? What does it mean for how human beings across the globe are to be educated, trained, retrained and retrained in order to fit in with a very different kind of the world? In that sense, the world economy today is at a critical juncture. It cannot be held to ransom by either political inaction or by political populism. And clearly conferences like your own that you're attending can help us to demystify many of these processes and give us some guidelines as policymakers as I said earlier on as to what could be propositions that we could begin to consider in developing a more inclusive growth path but one that takes into account some of the developments that we have seen around the globe and I'm sure you are going to see well into the future as well. We all familiar with the fact that if you like some of the centre of gravity of growth globally speaking has shifted from the advanced economies to the large emerging markets, China and India in particular but equally we know that the last two years has seen countries like Brazil and Russia find themselves in a recession and in countries like South Africa we stay just above 0% growth for this year and slightly better prospects for growth next year and on the African continent all we see for 2016 in terms of the IMF estimates is a growth of 1.6% and better prospects of about 3% as we go into next year but at the same time have we actually dealt with all of the factors that led to the Great Recession have we dealt with adequately the way the banking sector and financial sector more generally behaves have we dealt with the search for short-term yields and the kind of unmanageable financial flows that are happening once interest rates change in one place or negative sentiments emerge in the second place or positive sentiments emerge as well which begins to attack that capital have we actually come up with answers about how the capital senders can find new ways of ensuring that these kinds of disruptions to exchange rates and other phenomena in emerging markets which might or might not lead to so-called currency wars as we've called them in the past are actually averted rather than reinforced how do we avoid the kind of observations that Raghuram Rajan, Robert Schiller and others have made about the negative results which could emerge from credit dependence by consumers and the willingness of financial institutions in different parts to actually lend in an inordinate and sometimes unsecured way on the other hand the financial system itself requires some inquiry in the post recession period how stable is the financial system in different parts of the world have governments in particularly most of the advanced economies all done enough to in fact stabilize their banking systems and ensure that they don't become the source of a problem is the link between the status of the financial system and sovereign debt problems being adequately resolved as we go forward and some of these issues are no longer concentrated in the advanced economies is beginning to impact certain parts of the emerging economy world as well excuse me clearly as I conclude the FinTAP and his colleagues together with their collaborators have taken a fairly wide view of the world crisis as it obtains to our world today including issues of climate change, trade, refugees the sharing of the use of the Nile is a fascinating topic and if you like the state of states or governments at this point in time and the kind of ability or inability they have to influence the kind of environment in which they find themselves so let me repeat the crisis is certainly one which is economic in character at one level but there's no doubt that the other factors that are in your program including the political, the refugee crisis the crisis of uneven development across the world because the development status of different parts of the world is as important as the developments that take place in a particular country the politics that actually influence decision making so political economy becomes some parts of your program indicate a very important topic in our current situation and above all geopolitics is becoming a prominent factor both in terms of being the cause of crisis but also in terms of its inability to resolve these crises in an inadequate way but we all seek the world where there is social justice where there is stability where there is even development where all of the sustainable development goals are addressed in an even way across the globe so that all seven billion people can lead a life of well-being and increasingly see that their lives are being transformed by the things government do, by the things they do and by the thing other actors do and therefore an increasing standard of living begins to emerge what is critical and becoming more widely accepted today is that unless we give content to what inclusive growth means and focus on the real causes of some of the crisis factors because we can't address all of them together nonetheless we cannot begin to understand them as you are attempting to do at your conference we are not going to create a better world we are looking down a tunnel where the world might remain in the current state of what some might call secular stagnation I'm sure you'll have a fascinating debate on that what others might call a low growth scenario for the foreseeable future which is something that the billions of people who look forward to a better life can't actually afford at this point in time so finally thank you very much for this privilege of addressing you as part of the welcome to the conference may I wish you well in all of your deliberations and certainly we in South Africa will be awaiting your outcomes and hope that you could elucidate a clear path to a better set of propositions about how we improve the lives through economic, political and other means of the billions of people around the globe but particularly on the African continent and in our own very young democracy thank you very much thank you very much I hope you will allow me to extend the gratitude of all of us to Praveen for his welcoming remarks it's certainly nice to touch upon the major themes of the UNU wider ongoing 2014 to 2018 work program on transformation, inclusion and sustainability and you also pointed to the broad way in which we have approached the underlying themes for this conference after all, wider is wider