 Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to Helsinki to this conference on climate change and development policy. We've been looking very much forward to this event. The wider conferences, they have become a very, very important and really central focal point of UNU wider work. And I'm really delighted to see today both old friends, old colleagues but also new people because we are constantly trying to expand our global network. We do want to engage people from across the world. Let me also start by saying that we very much appreciate all of the support we are having from our Finnish hosts. And let me express our warm gratitude to our donors, to the Finnish government, to Sida, to DFID and to Danida. Because without that support, we would not be able to pursue the research work we are to launch these types of conferences. Some of you will know why there was established as a research and training centre of the United Nations University some 25 years ago. And we have tried over the years to address quite a broad range of topics within the development economics. And we are proud that we can say that we are continuing this and that we are now engaging ourselves with some of the bigger challenges that are facing the world. Finance, food, climate change, these are all big challenges. And related to this, of course, the issues of poverty, inequality and human development. We have also been in the process of reinforcing our activities in capacity building. We are now seriously trying to pursue those together with partners such as the African Economic Research Consortium. And I am very pleased to say that in parallel with this conference in the run-up to it, we have been having a workshop with 12 AARC scholars who were identified together with us and who were selected out of 120 submissions. So we are really proud that we can be contributing to developing capacity in this area. We have increased our focus on the African development issues but I would like to stress as strongly as I can that we are a UN institute. We are a global institute. We are interested in development across the world. And I am sure that those of you whom I saw yesterday and who participated in their 16th wider annual lecture will realize that we do have a broad scope. The topics of our development conferences, they vary. We have sort of tried all the time to be what we sometimes refer to as ahead of the curve. Now that's a rather ambitious statement because how does one manage to stay ahead of the curve? Well, we try to do that by engaging a global network of scholars, policymakers, students, seniors as well as juniors and in that way really trying to think about where are the bigger challenges, how can we try to come up with new and insightful information, data analysis, forcing people to think about this, putting issues on the agenda. And I think it's absolutely pertinent that the theme for this conference is climate change and development policy. We do see it as a very important issue. It is critical when you start thinking about where is the world today? What are the challenges? I've sometimes sort of been asked about why is it that wider, which is at the core of it sort of a social science type institution, why is it that we are really getting into climate change? Well, I think one can make a number of points there. First of all, climate change is a global phenomenon. It's a frame-setting characteristic of the world today. And the various challenges, finance, food and climate change, they're interlinked. You cannot really speak about socio-economic development without relating to climate change. There's another aspect of this, which is that low-income countries, they have tended to be climate takers. In other words, they have not so far contributed much to greenhouse gas emissions, but they will have to face the consequences. So adapting to the ongoing climate change is going to be critical in the years to come. And adapting has to do with socio-economic policies, which is what social science is focused on. We need to come up with strategies that can help in this process of adapting to the already ongoing climate change. We need to come up with strategies that are resilient. And in this process, interdisciplinary work is indispensable. Now, sometimes people think of interdisciplinary work as being just interdisciplinary within the social sciences. But it does go broader than that, and that has been a focus in our activities over the past years, because we tried to engage not just within social sciences, but with real science. Another aspect of this is that climate change is happening and developing countries are not going to continue just to be climate takers. A lot of the addition that we're going to see to greenhouse gas emissions over the coming years are going to come from what was, and what in some cases still are, developing countries. It makes sense to analyze what would be in their interests in terms of adapting and changing and helping mitigate climate change. This is an important area, because this balance between adaptation, mitigation, who were the ones who contributed in the first place, what should some countries who have not contributed that much so far, what should that do, where are the costs, where are the benefits, how do we develop strategies and policies to deal with it. A fourth reason is that 90% of the world's poor actually live in middle income countries by now. 20 years ago, that statistic was very different. How can one make a switch to low carbon growth without losing track of the fact that helping, supporting, developing living conditions for the world's poor is absolutely critical. As far as I'm concerned, that is a core first priority. I cannot go as an advisor to the most embezzled government and say, by the way, you are not allowed to use that coal you have in the ground. It's a pretty hard sell. We need to come to grips with that. So finding low carbon development strategies, that is a challenge for both policymakers and researchers. And we know that human development and sustainable development have somehow to converge. But we are of course seeing within the UN now serious attempts at trying to do that. I hope that this conference can be an important step in trying to address some of these challenges. I hope that we can in the usual wider way be frank, be open, engage and not be afraid of putting up also the controversial points. We are not going to seriously tackle these issues unless we dare speak open also about the dilemmas that we are facing in these areas. I welcome you all. I really wish that we will have a great and successful conference and I will hopefully be able tomorrow to come up with some concluding remarks and I will also tomorrow acknowledge the contributions from all of you and all of the wider staff who have contributed to making this event both hopefully exciting. Thank you all. I will now quickly move on and the word will now be given to Tony Addison and the opening panel. Thank you very much for coming and I look forward to a couple of really great and inspiring days. Thank you.