 We are immediately moving to the final session, I believe and I see President Carlos Alvarado Quezada on the line. Mr. President, can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me? I can. Wonderful. So let me, if you give me a moment, it's Jeff Sachs here, and we're really thrilled that you are joining us from San Jose, Costa Rica. One of the leaders of sustainable development in the world. In inspiring new president, and we congratulate you on the new presidency. President Alvarado became president of Costa Rica on May 8, 2018. As I'm sure many of you know, Costa Rica is an unusual and a remarkable country. First of all, gorgeous, incredibly biodiverse, very beautiful with its Pacific and Atlantic coastlines, its mountain ranges, its forests, and its people. It's a country that already 70 years ago eliminated the army alone of all its neighbors because it said we want to focus on social challenges and social issues. So Costa Rica is known as the great social democratic country of Central America. And Mr. President, as you know, this shows up in Costa Rica's very high rankings in the Sustainable Development Goal Report. It shows up in Costa Rica's very high rankings also in the World Happiness Report. These go together, by the way, sustainable development and happiness. That's why we're here. So we're really honored, and I want to turn it over to you to make some remarks. And then I believe if you can stay for a few minutes, we'll have a brief discussion after your remarks. Thank you, Mr. President, thank you very much. Thank you, Professor, and thank to everyone there in Colombia that's part of this gathering. Actually, I was looking forward to be there in, well, in New York. But, and thank you also for your generous words about Costa Rica, I really do thank you that. We also have challenges. Actually, I stayed in San Jose because currently we're working on a process. There is a strike because we're advancing with a fiscal reform to make more progressive our fiscal and tax system. And because of the strike, I decided to stay here. So well, that's the reason I'm not there. But still, I wanted to have the time to address you all. Also I wanted to know that, ironically, 10 years ago, I was looking forward to listening to you in Sussex in a lecture, and I got the flu. So that's give us two strikes, I, for not to, I fan, I look forward not to miss my first strike on meeting you and having the chance to talk directly. And also I wanted, well, to talk about the challenges in the case of Costa Rica of the SDGs, but also on the challenges we have as a generation. I do believe we currently live in extraordinary times. The advancement of technology, the challenges we have as a human race facing challenge as climate change is those are challenges that never before humanity has faced. The way technology is advancing, communications are advancing, but also the threat of climate change. So I do believe we live in a unique time. And it requires from us to, from a moral stand of view and an ethical point of view, it requires for us to be the best version of ourselves. That can sound a little bit poetic, but it's not because the extraordinary times we live in demands that we provide an extra effort to move forward with humanity, to be more generous to prosper. In that sense, SDGs have really echoed in the national spirit in Costa Rica. In 2016, Costa Rica became the first country that presented globally a national commitment not only for government, but in the private sector, NGOs, and other sectors of society to propel the SDGs. Also in that sense, during the political campaign in our political program, we proposed to the people that went to vote. Our plan was cross. We fought the SDGs in a sense that it was designed to answer not only the local and national necessities, but also to focus on how to address the different SDGs. And currently, our law determines that by the end of the first year of government, and that is in currently in December, we have to present our national development plan for the government. And currently, our plan is being designed with the guidelines of the SDGs, but not only in the objectives, but also in how we are managing the budgets, how the budgets are going to address certain of the goals, using baselines and using data, and analyzing how that investment and how the interventions are going to make us move forward in the direction of achieving the SDGs. In that sense, I want to provide a concrete example. It also comes from my background. In the past administration, I was Minister of Social Affairs and then Minister of Labor. But there I was involved in my previous life before being president and being minister in the development of a tool that's called a multidimensional poverty index that we in Costa Rica worked with Oxford University. Before that, we were measuring poverty, one of the extreme poverty on the SDGs. We were measuring it only with income, using the measure of income. But we realized that income is not a, it's a consequence from this perspective. But the measure of income does not give account of the different causes and the different dimensions of that poverty. In that sense, we, with the Institute of Statistics in Costa Rica, with 17 public institutions, in a process of one year, we developed a multidimensional poverty index. And it measures five dimensions, it measures education, labor and social security, housing and internet health and social networks, I believe. And in those five dimensions, each have specific indicators. It's a total of 19 indicators, specific indicators, that bonded together have a multidimensional poverty index. The important part of this is that each indicator is linked with public policy. This means that with different institutions and budgets and civil servants and the effort of NGOs and the effort of the private sector, one can drive change for specific goals, having a baseline and keeping track on the effects we have. And that happens on 19 different variables. Those variables were determined for Costa Rica's reality. But that method can be used worldwide, depending on the level of development of the region or the country that it's being used on. That's key, I believe, for the SDGs. Having good data, that's the essence, I believe, of an important public policy, especially in a time when we have lots and lots of data. When I came to the public service, one thing that really struck me is that there's lots of data. But on the other hand, data is not necessarily being used to design public policy or being used to measure impact, because there are lots of politics involved, because there's lots of inertia, because of several reasons. But once one starts using data with the focus of designing public policy, one can see change happen. In the sense of the case we worked a couple of years ago in poverty reduction, in the three-year period, we have a reduction of poverty, both by income and by multidimensional index of 2% points, which is statistically significant. And extreme poverty, in the case of Costa Rica, it was a bit more than 6%, we managed to reduce extreme poverty to 5.3% with that effort, specifically addressing programs for these populations, also using maps to locate families with specific needs, addressing the regions with specific public policies. And that multidimensional approach we use on the SDGs, in this case of extreme poverty that we're working to, before the year 2030, to eradicate extreme poverty, that approach we're using in the different areas to accomplish these goals we have put in our plan. And also I wanted to talk briefly about decarbonization of the economy. Why? Because that's one of the key elements for our generation. We need to build a new economy, economy that's not based on carbon and on oil, but an economy that's based on knowledge, on sustainability. And Costa Rica has committed on the Paris agreements to be a international laboratory to test all these technologies and to start building this new economy. Why? Well, because we have elements that point to that direction. You mentioned, Jeffrey, that we do not have an army. More than 50% of our territory is covered by forests. And that's not only a natural process. In the 80s it was because of deforestation, 20%. But with public policy, we managed to regain coverage of forests from 20% to currently more than 50%. And also that has proven to be economically profitable. Why? Because its conservation, in our case, is the base for a ecotourism model that has proven to be sustainable in economic terms as well. Now, we also want to leverage on our electric matrix. Costa Rica produces 99.9% of its electricity from renewable sources, hydroelectric from solar panels and others. So currently our effort is how to translate that electric matrix to the rest of the energy field. Because still currently 70%, 70% of our transportation, of our energy, is on transportation. And that transportation is basically from gasoline and diesel and bunker. But we have this huge possibility. If we change the way transportation, we mobilize ourselves in Costa Rica rapidly to have a no-carbon model and transportation, which will show also that it's possible to achieve decarbonization. And that's currently the plan we're triggering, which I believe we saw in plan. As 70 years ago, we managed to abolish the army. Currently we want to start the process to abolish the use of fossil fuels. And also to provide an example to say to the world that it's possible. It's possible in no-carbon economy, and it's possible to make change happen. And also not only because it's the right thing to do, it's because we can do it. Our generation can do this. And I find it's an inspiring goal, not only for a country, but for the whole planet. And well, you're also everybody that's looking at all to this conference. It's invited to be part of this. Also, I believe there are also students in Colombia from Costa Rica, which I want to send a saludo. Hola a todos. And I'm here available for a few questions or to share some comments in this really key topic for Costa Rica and for the world. I hope you hear the prolonged ovation. Really, congratulations for what you're doing. And anytime you want to come teach my course on development, you are absolutely would be an incredible, incredible professor, different from some other countries. I know here you have a president who has studied development, lived it, and is producing it. And it's very remarkable. Mr. President, any way that we can help you here at Columbia University we're eager to do. And I should also mention that we have launched in the Sustainable Development Solutions Network a new initiative this week, actually in Bogota last Friday with President Duque presiding a new SDG Center of Excellence for the Latin American region, so a close neighbor of yours. And the idea it's at the Universidad de los Andes and it is really to bring together the scientific and development leadership throughout the region to work on the kinds of problems and challenges that you identified, for example, the decarbonization of the transport sector or regional grid. Costa Rica has so many outstanding universities. We'd love for them to be partners of this initiative and I'll follow up with information for you to make sure that we really engage tech of Costa Rica and Universidad, the Costa Rica and the other great universities. And I think it would be very, very exciting. We also want to learn from what you're doing. The 19 indicators, the links to public policy is exactly the kind of effort that is crucial. And as you mentioned, how to turn all of the flow of data into usable, quick form. I keep pressing throughout the UN and in our discussions that we need real time data because typically we've been using survey data that is two or three or four years old often, but with all the flow of information we can know the vital events, we can know people's conditions, we can know health outcomes, we can know energy use, we can certainly know pollution and land use in real time. So we're very much committed to developing those tools and we again love to work together with you and further all of your efforts. They're very path breaking. One of the reasons I want to pull Costa Rica more into the SDSN network is you have so much to teach the world. So we're very grateful for that. Now the first time it was the flu, the second time it was a strike. We're going to have to plan this better, but I'm very much, I'm very happy to be an ecotourist and come visit you soon. I can tell you in personal response the ecotourism in Costa Rica is perfect. So I would really strongly recommend it. What a beautiful country. Mr. President, we'll end here. We're coming to the end of our conference for the day. We want to thank you warmly for being with us. You have an open invitation to Columbia University. As soon as it's convenient, let us know we want to host you here. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you all.