 OK. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to this press briefing which is about the launch of a very important collaboration involving the public, the private and civil society which is at the ethos of the platform of the World Economic Forum. This is the launch of the Global Battery Alliance. This is a pretty interesting innovation where big technology, mining, manufacturing, auto and energy companies are joining forces with the OECD, UNICEF, the African Development Bank and other international organisations and NGOs to try and rethink the global supply chain of batteries to create a responsible alliance around batteries in a market that is set to be worth over $100 billion by 2025. You will have seen the fourth industrial revolution concept that the World Economic Forum has identified for this massive change in the combination of science and technology and how it is transforming businesses and governments. What we often don't think about is what powers that revolution, obviously mindsets, creativity, innovation, but in a very practical sense batteries power that revolution, not just batteries in a cell phone but batteries in a car, not just batteries in a car but soon batteries in your home, batteries in the workplace and that is the heart of this alliance because many of us don't realise what goes in to a battery or what happens to a battery. Some of those who form this alliance absolutely do and that's what we're going to find out some more about. What's the problem? Why is there a need for an alliance and what is it going to do as we launch it? So I'm delighted to welcome just a terrific panel of speakers, the champions if you like of this alliance and to my left is Benedict Sabotka, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Eurasian Resources Group. Then we have next to him, Marcus Bonturi, who is a special representative to the United Nations OECD here in New York and for the United Nations. Then we have Takayuki Morita-san, who is the Executive Vice President and the Chief Global Officer for the NEC Corporation in Japan. Welcome. Finally, but by no means least, is Jane Nelson, who many of you know is a Director of Corporate Responsibility Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University. May I point out that there are a number of champions in the audience from NGOs such as PACT and others who have been working hard on this battery alliance and we might call on you to offer some thoughts as we go through the discussion. But first of all, Benedict, if I can turn to you, as someone who I remember almost perhaps a year or so ago came to us at the World Economic Forum and said, you know what, I think we have a pretty important issue that requires much more attention and perhaps the building of a new kind of collaboration to help solve some of the problems. If I may say so under your leadership and your astute knowledge of how to build collaborations in this space, we are now here today with a pretty wide-ranging alliance for global battery improvement. So perhaps you could tell us, sir, what is the problem as far as you see it and what are you hoping that this new alliance will achieve? Thank you, Dominic. Are you giving me far too much credit for the alliance? After all, this is an alliance of the World Economic Forum, which we thought is probably the platform best suited for being successful. This is a topic I'm incredibly passionate about and have been for several years. We all use batteries in our daily life and I think Dominic, you've put that very rightly, and we're going to use them more and more. But nobody knows what goes into those batteries. We know because we're one of the largest producers of cobalt. Cobalt is a product that goes into your battery because it's very energy-intense, very dense, it keeps a lot of energy. So there's no Tesla without an lithium-ion battery and my colleagues from NSC will be able to contribute much more than no much more batteries than I do, and that cobalt predominantly is mined in places like the DRC. The DRC is a very poor country and it has a tremendous problem with artisanal mining. Now, our mines are large industrial scale production sites, but when we use or we go around and look what is around our sites, when we see what happens in the country, there's thousands and thousands of children mining in artisanal mining sites. Cobalt that it then ends up in your smartphone, ends up in your electric vehicle, ends up in your home storage. There is not a single phone in this world that does not contain cobalt that has been mined by children. Why? Because there's no traceability in the supply chain. The product gets mined, it gets sent then to converters in Asia, mainly in China, where all the materials blend in with different products from different parts of the world and it ends up in a battery. So it's actually completely impossible at this point to be 100% certain that no children has been involved in mining this material. So for me this is a very important point because I see it every day. I mean I go to the DRC as part of my job. We have 15,000 people in the country and I go on a regular basis and I see it. You fly over these sites and you see thousands of people digging with their bare hands in the dirt and cobalt is not a mineral that you want to touch, particularly if you're four years old. I think there's been some reports out and where you've been taken, I think Sky News did an excellent report about where the children are used in the mines. It's terrible. I mean how can the electrification, the revolution that is taking place today in the space of batteries, how can that be based on child labour? How can the 21st, 22nd century technology be based on 19th century work practices? It's something that needs to stop. So for me this is a topic that really goes to my heart. For us we try to do a lot on the ground. We sponsor schools for about 9,500 children. We've just signed a three-year agreement to support the good shepherd sister that work around artisanal mines and how women and children in particular and female and girls are treated in those artisanal mining sites. But we're just one company in that whole space. So how do you bring all these players in the supply chain together? You have to bring both the public and the private sector together. This problem is too big for all of us alone. So we have to come together. What is exciting about this because it actually goes from the whole value chain. It goes from the people that like us we produce metal from the ground. It goes to the converters, the manufacturers in Asia and China and Europe. It then ends up in your end customers product that we all touch every single day when we wake up. The first thing we do in the morning I guess I mean I do it. I guess you all do it. You touch your mobile phone right. Which means you are touching a product that has gone through all this massive supply chain and so it touches our lives and it will touch more and more for the next for the next decades. It's going to be incredibly important. So this value chain approach and then the best platform to use is we agree. I mean the world economy forum has done an incredible job in bringing together a first coalition. I remember in the beginning of 2016 we had a perfect time and sometimes the stars are just aligned. We had Amnesty International coming up with a report saying that 60,000 children are working in the cobalt supply chain at the DRC. 60,000 children. That's incredible. Of course that brought a lot of momentum. Suddenly the companies downstream in the value chain and the colleagues from DSF and EC they know what I'm talking about. They suddenly got more aware of the problem and something has to be done about it. So the stars were aligned for this to be successful. I'm incredibly excited that we've got this group together here, that we've got this formal announcement. I would like to see the entire industry from the minus to the end uses of the product to be evolved in this and to make it a success and to make real impact on the ground for the children that are involved in the supply chain of cobalt but also battery materials in general. Thank you. Ben, thank you and thank you for your leadership in this space. I think you kind of sketched out pretty much the vision there which is not a one company issue. This is a global supply chain, hundreds of billions of dollars which is set to grow enormously over the coming decades but with roots in as you very eloquently put a sort of 19th century start point. It can't work. That feels such a sort of disjunct when we hear about technologies and fast moving connectivity. In terms of this supply chain and the battery value chain, if we look at how that connects together and maybe from the industries in DRC and the challenges of cobalt, if we move to the electronics and energy storage industry, Takioki Muratysan from NEC Corporation, you are a large energy storage business. Batteries are important and enable to what you do and demand for energy storage is growing so strongly. How are you linked to what Benedict just set out and why are you part of this alliance and what do you want to see happen from such a collaboration? NEC has been involved in this development and since it's already it is. We see the great potential of this technology and today we see a lot of people talking about active vehicle and application of renewable energies and energy storage in the grid environment. So I think it's very essential for us to use energy storage or energy battery in order to achieve very clean energy environment. So I think we need to build up a very healthy development or environment which assure the very healthy and circular economy around this. So I don't think any single company can achieve these objectives. We really need to revisit the current regulatory environment and standardisation and also business model and in order to realise all the things we really need the collaborations between public and private and to harmonise and all the things and face the difficulties and also the opportunities. I see the opportunities in front of us in order to capture these opportunities we really need to build up these type of collaborations. Thank you. What is so interesting is we often think of new green energy renewable energy as clean as the future away from the dirty fossil of the past but the illustration here is that there are things that need to be cleaned up in the clean energy revolution. The battery to storage process perhaps hasn't got to itself in the same way that some of the more radical technologies have that we still have this footprint that goes through the supply chain and not only that from what I understand as well in terms of the disposal of batteries a lot of e-waste and a lot of battery waste and all of those minerals and chemicals in batteries are not so good leaching out into the ground afterwards so there's a whole supply chain problem. Do you see Maritysdann that there are many Japanese companies and interest from others in the ecosystem of industry in Japan that are also aware of and keen to engage in this Yes. We watched these opportunities and since early days and especially in the case of lithium-ion batteries different from the acid and others it lasts long and normally it lasts 10 years or some cases it lasts 20-30 years so we really need to think out how we can reuse or refurbish and remodeling those type of things and so many industries and the people and the colleagues are thinking about those type of things but in order to accelerate these things we really need to review our current regulatory environment and also the sometimes we need some incentive and with which people can be encouraged or motivated and to grow their initiatives that's I think what we really need to do. Thank you. It's fascinating that the lithium battery we said 20 years or something it lasts a long time and yet you've probably seen ladies and gentlemen research that suggests at least in the United States that an average of smartphone is is kind of used for about a couple of years 24 months two years and then discarded so this contradiction between how long the battery would last having been disposed of versus how quickly we are turning around our use of these appliances is something to be thought through very carefully now you've mentioned several times there about policy incentives regulatory environment and I think that gets to the heart of the vision of this as being a public and private partnership we have many other industries involved obviously have colleagues from BASF and others who are who are here and championing this but if I can turn to Marcus Bonturi you are you know one of the leadership group of OECD and one would expect perhaps a resistance to be engaged in alliance in fact the firm law of regulation to be to be put in place so how interesting is it to be involved in an alliance with some of these companies were struggling with these issues it seems confusing it might be that you know you would be one of those who'd be regulating to stop it yeah here we are in what seems like a very interesting and substantive collaboration absolutely thank you Dominic I think this corporation with a private sector is into the DNA of the OECD now from the visit there's their institutional partners their president in many of our committees so we're very keen and we seek very very much the participation of the private sector and in most of the work we do so this is not new for us and it's definitely something we welcome very much so I want to start by thanking the web for taking the initiative and bringing us together is a very worthwhile endeavor and just to give you a little bit of background where the OECD comes from and on this debate we have had for many years the due diligence guidance for responsible mineral supply chains is something that OECD countries that 35 OECD countries today but even some non OECD countries have adhered to those guidelines there are eight non OECD members and and this this work that can be applied for a number of minerals I think up until now we have not worked enough on on the issue of lithium and cobalt but but it's been used for for for gold and and and and other minerals but not for this one but I think this is very important this initiative that we can we can use that as a basis for working together and the way that the system works is indeed a multi stakeholder process we we have that in this particular initiative that we're taking and in all the multi stakeholder initiatives is very important that we bring not only of course the regulators and the decision makers in the public sector but but companies at different links in the chain in this particular we're very very seen with with great interest that the all those those a new stakeholder initiatives like this one we are bringing of course the companies who bought by the raw material like in a DRC like like like you mentioned in this particular case the the companies are buying this and transforming this very often in this case in China or the countries in Asia and the consuming countries so you the US Japan so it's very important that that we work together with all the elements of the change so we very much support all those attempt to to carry the due diligence together it has to be a common endeavor I think this is very the very first message and you can only work if we do it together I think that's the first message I like to leave with with you today the the the second one I think Mike my colleague from from from Japan mentioned that very very clearly the environmental impacts we should we should look at this part of the of that alliance that we were building today we we want to make sure that there are indeed challenges with the growth of the usage of those minerals but there are opportunities as well and and from the OECD side we're very interesting to work with you to better understand how we can make and help countries make the policy frameworks conducive to to to investment in the new capacity to to treat the state that the end of life products so so we're very interested to have the dialogue with you so we can better advise our member governments on how to to to build that that policy framework that is that is indeed conducive to to to say innovation in in in that area and then finally the issue of of extended producer responsibility something that I would like to put on the table as well we need to look at it is an established principle on the environmental policy it's been around with us for for for almost 30 years but again it's something that we also can only work if we have all the the main stakeholders at the table and again this initiative is is exactly what we need and I'd like to thank you very very much from from our point of view to have brought us together. Marcus thank you very much and for those of you listening you can see how deliciously interesting these things are when you have people who come at this from a policy perspective and people who come at this from a business perspective and how language is different how viewpoints are different but how does a common goal attach and this idea which I thought was very nice that you said about actually you know we cannot do this alone you know a policy maker can't make policy in vacuum without understanding some of the real challenges across the supply chain particularly given how much the innovation is moving so fast but nor can any of those work without some of the understanding from the ground particularly from civil society groups or those who are really working on some of the very kind of particular issues which really need to be understood in quite some depth and so this alliance that brings together civil society the policy maker and companies along these global value chains although it's hard to do it sounds like from your perspective sir OECD this is the thing we must do absolutely fascinating fascinating now Jane Nelson of Harvard Kennedy School you're not part of this alliance yet but you have you know a worldwide reputation for studying this kind of curious phenomenon of these alliances and collaborations which are starting to emerge we are at the forum the international organization for public private collaboration but we rely upon experts and international readers like you of the situation to kind of assess how impactful these things can be and you've studied many of these I mean what would your advice be to this group in terms of what it needs to achieve or to show that it is a meaningful and impactful alliance and what areas do you think it should particularly focus on or watch out for thank you thank you Dominic and I think I think you hit the nail in the head when you said these are difficult to build and yet we actually don't have a choice I think if we're going to achieve the sustainable development goals we absolutely have to build more of these alliances and I think there there's three key lessons that have come out of similar alliances and which I think the global battery alliance is already going very much in the right direction and first is having a very clear shared vision but also set of goals and commitments at the global level and sort of set of principles and I think we've got all the partners here to make that possible and as all of my colleagues have already said not only the public private civil society dimension but within the business community different industry sectors and I think there's fantastic work going on in the mining sector around sustainable development fantastic work going on in the electronic sector but you get mining and electronics and utilities and automotives together around a specific value chain has enormous potential and likewise with the non-governmental organizations getting human rights organizations and environmental and development NGOs together with government and business so first of all having this this global coalition that has already identified a very clear vision and goal and now I think the challenge is well what are the commitments that the companies are going to make you know what are the what are going to be the the policy commitments and incentive commitments that governments will make and the commitments of the NGOs will make at the global level so that's sort of challenge number one and you know sort of vision with some clear goals and commitments I think secondly so importantly is that on the ground action and implementation and again already I know the alliance is talking about focusing on specific countries and specific issues in the in those countries so your child labour in the DRC getting the local partners together with some of that global support to achieve action on the ground and and you know clear again very specific deliverables and goals on the ground and then thirdly I think an alliance like this has enormous potential to then hold each other to account and mutual accountability so you've got your global vision and set of commitments and sort of shared commitments and demands of each other then there's the on the ground implementation and action and then you can bring it back up both on the ground but also to the global level to say well have we achieved our goals has government done what we call government to do have we as the mining sector done orbit have the electronic sector done orbit you have the NGOs contributed and and and you hold each other to account in ways that go way beyond regulation you know to a a shared set of responsibilities and results and I do think that the global battery alliance has another enormous contribution to make and that most of the alliances that we've seen in agriculture and water and energy are sort of retrofitting social and environmental management and due diligence on to well established long term global value chains and the battery value chain obviously it's been around for a long time but all the dramatic new innovations that are happening the new technologies which are going to be truly transformative to actually embed strong commitment to social and environmental and good governance issues at the outset of this massive growth in a global value chain I think has enormous potential and has been addicted several other colleagues also said it's not just about doing no harm on the ground but you know how can we ensure that their livelihoods for artisanal miners for various people on the value chain people doing recycling so at both ends of the value chain where there are opportunities to be not only more sustainable and innovative but also more inclusive of low income producers consumers and end users. Thank you so insightful. I mean this idea of intentionality to announce you can't just have an alliance has got to do something with a specific goal by a specific time and when you were talking about mutual accountability I noticed that all of our panel and many in the order of writing that down. It's exactly that sort of construct which I think will create a create a vibrant scene in terms of this practical action. It might be some for some of those it might be a bit abstract so what is you know is a bunch of companies and organizations and international people. What is it do well. You know for those of you ever try to construct a project that is meaningful. The ability to bring together different actors to kind of then focus in an issue and raise the resources and get something done. But be part of a broader movement so it's not just in one place it could happen again and again and again is a difference we might call it a program and a project or these days sometimes a platform and a project and I'm very well aware it's very exciting that some of the members of the alliance have a particular focus as Benedict you were saying in the in the DRC already coming together and leveraging some of those combined resources the African development banks and country knowledge packed if I understand it from the civil society community to start working. On one of those particular problem areas I don't know if Benedict or I think Mark you're in the audience of one to like to talk about it because it's quite important as you say Jane that there are some practical developments. Yeah I would imagine there's this in the room here and there's no disagreement about the why right. We have got to fix the problem. We're still debating a little bit about the what and what the targets are and what the commitments are going to be and they're going to be tangible and they need to be hard financial commitments as well because no money no honey as they say so there's no money spent on the ground you will never create alternative livelihoods. That's just the fact of life but the how I think is the very important part is how do we now translate sustainable development goals translate the great why that we all agree on how do we translate in that into into impact on the ground. So how do we deploy funds in countries like the DRC. How do we get children to school. How do we create alternative livelihoods for their parents so they don't have to go to the mines. How do we bring a long term. It's interesting anecdote actually the schools we have nine thousand five hundred students it costs us less than 10 million dollars to do that. That's probably the profit of one of the big electronics company per minute. I'm exaggerating now but it's it's not a huge amount of money required to fix these issues but you have to do it in an environment that is very challenging and it's very difficult to deploy funds in countries and that are that are there are struggling. I think that's where organizations NGOs that have a foot on the ground that packs the the good shepherd says this UNICEF they've got infrastructure on the ground combined with our infrastructure reason. Obviously we have we build roles. We build power plants infrastructure that you need then to go and deploy these these initiatives where they have to work together and at the moment it's still very much piecemeal. We do all the we do small things and we do smaller the bigger things together but it's not coordinated. But it doesn't take a lot of funds to have a measurable impact on the livelihoods of people that currently work in the battery supply chain. So interesting. Some people can call it a systemic change that actually Robin just little micro projects you can come together and make bigger change happen across a whole global value chain. But with specific actors working on specific problems at different bits of the value chain. Mark and if you want to have a microphone in the audience to help you and maybe introduce who you are. Yeah my name is Mark Bezzo and I'm the CEO of an organization called PACT and we've been working in 40 countries around the world but extractive industries is a real focus of ours and we've been working on 10 Tungsten Tantilum in the Great Lakes area and traceability and social and economic and environmental issues and now have been involved with the Global Battery Alliance. Two things I'd like to share coming off what Benedict says is you know it can be frustrating to build an alliance because those of us like my friend Gary Haugen here from IJM you know we're doers we're in the field we rub shoulders with the miners I myself have been down in the mines and you want to you want to move to action. And we have to keep the urgency of that now first and foremost in our minds in our hearts but we also need to be smart. And so one of the things that is going to happen in October November is good design. So we're going to have an in country design session in the DRC mostly to make sure we know what that what should be and how we should make what should be happen in an intelligent inclusive way. And that last part inclusive is none of this works unless it's owned by the local organizations the local populations and the national and local governments and PACT is already working with the DRC inter ministerial group and have have designed frameworks to support their their five year plan of doing the types things around cobalt and child labor specifically, which I think is the key entry point. And after entering that child labor you can have these concentric circles. The last thing I say is once we get working and now that we have this integrated holistic courageous group of policymakers and governments and the business community very courageous. They're stepping forward. I'm deeply impressed. It can be done. This is something we should pick up because it can be done. It's been done in the in the three T's in the Great Lakes and all it takes to your idea of the platform is to adapt, adopt and replicate. That's it. It's right there. We have the will and now it's got to get our act together and do it and it can be done. So shame on us if we don't pick it up. Mark, thank you so much. And again, thank you for the leadership that you've shown. I think we've got time for it. If anybody's got a question or two, please tell us who you are and what your question is, whether there's a particular person you want to direct it to. That's hard. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. My name is Irene. I report for Newsweek Middle East and I'm so glad that I have something I can catch on because this is really your doers. It's really a wonderful example how how something's getting off the ground and have significant impact on the lives of many people. And so maybe you can give me a little bit more information on this global battery alliance who is going to recharge the UN goals now. Very good. Very good. Thank you. So there is some sort of material available, I think, which will give you some some facts and figures. I don't know if anybody from the from the panel wants to offer a few useful things. I was very interested what you just said, that it is it's always interesting how it all comes together. Everybody outside who is not in your elitist circles says, oh, they just talk, you are nothing that's getting done. Oh, World Economic Rome. It just shows a beautiful tale of suits and but this is a wonderful example that you really get something done. So this having the channel of Amnesty speaking to the business leaders. So what actually happened after that is this global battery alliance a spin-off of this meeting or this is something I could really explain to all our readers that it's really not just looking good and being important. Thank you. Well, thank you for the complement to all of us for looking good. So it's a very, very good question. Maybe Benedict, I mean, what triggered this? Well, we've been aware of this problem for for the last 10 years. I mean, in the country we operate, artisanal mining is a fact of life because there's nothing else to do. Right? Usually during the dry season, they come in mine and during the wet season, they harvest their crops and plant their crops. It's very seasonal. So the problem of artisanal mining is a well known problem, but it's never been actually linked directly to the electric electrification, say the electric revolution or what you want to call it. And I think the fact that we now can actually link it to your actual mobile phone and that we can link it to your electric vehicle and to your power wall at home, I think it's very tangible. Right? So it's very abstract if you talk about these social problems in Africa, they're very far away and people don't have to see them. And if they don't want to see them, they can avoid them. Right? You don't have to watch Sky News reports on artisanal mining in Africa. Right? You can avoid it. But the fact that it's in your face, the first thing you touch in the morning, you turn on that electric vehicle driving to work, you are going to touch it. And I think that's a point where when the Amnesty International Report came out, the end user industries, they started, I wouldn't call it panicking, but they started to see that we've got a bigger problem here that we were maybe thinking it didn't exist, or maybe we're trying to avoid, because the response to the Amnesty International Report was quite interesting. They requested comments from the end customers and the end users of batteries. And I mean, we're one of the largest producers in the world. And but we're not that large that when all these people responded and said, where do you buy your cobalt from? They all said we buy from our company or one of our competitors. If you add all this up, it's impossible. Right? They don't buy from us. It's impossible. Which means those companies through secondary and tertiary intermediaries, they buy from artisanal mines. Right? You can't avoid it. So I think the Amnesty International Report was a trigger point. And then, of course, we at Davos, it was it was voted or elected one of the 10 initiatives of Davos 2017. So I think there were a number of trigger points. And at the same time, the industry is changing dramatically. I mean, we've got a an automotive company a week announcing that they're going to convert that many series into into electric vehicles. And we're going to go all electric by 2028 or 2729. I mean, I don't know the automotive space very well, but that's that's a revolution. When an entire industry, one of the top five industries in the world starts to think about what is going to be my product in 15 years from now. Ladies and gentlemen, we could carry on this conversation for quite some time. There's a lot to get one's teeth into. There's many more things going on. I think there's even another press conference that wants to come in. So I'm going to draw this to a close, but you can see from the passion in the group here and from some of our interventions and the materiality of the issue. The image that you leave us with sort of every morning when you wake up and you touch your your smartphone or when you get in that electric car, we have to clean that up because that sort of connectivity is not just a connectivity for us to be in touch on social networks or through the internet of things. But there's a connectivity from the mine all the way through to the consumer. And that's a real change in mindset. We're delighted that the World Economic Forum to host and do what we can to help advance this fantastic global battery alliance. We're delighted it was launched today at the impact summit for sustainable development. It touches multiple sustainable development goals. We're delighted with the engagement of UNICEF, the African Development Bank, the OECD, multiple civil society groups, some of whom have been represented here and others. I think we're a kind of 45 stakeholders and growing. So there will be more information for those who want to find it on our website and such. With that, if I may take your indulgence, I'd just like to close and thank the champions of this alliance. It is a brave step, as was said by one of our audience members here. But without a bit of bravery, you can't get a champion. Without a champion, you can't get change. And if anything the SDGs are trying to tell us to do, it is to change. So thank you so much. I think we'll pledge ourselves to come back in 12 months time and next year is the impact summit with some achievements and progress along the way. With that, thank you very much and have a great rest of the day.