 as I have the very great privilege now to introduce the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo and a good friend and somebody that I admire and who is doing a great job in leading Mr. President. Mr. President, I think will the President speak in just a moment? Just to, if I could introduce the President briefly, Mr. President, it's a great privilege to have you at Columbia University and to have you on the campus. It has been my great privilege and honor to meet with you several times in Kinshasa and other parts of the world at the United Nations in Paris on many occasions to discuss the challenges that your country faces and your vision for how to surmount those challenges. And you have a big vision. And this is absolutely exciting and wonderful. You have in front of you as well as your distinguished delegation. I want to make sure you see the Director General of UNIDO, Mr. Mueller, whom you know as one of the world's leaders in sustainable development. And before you arrived, we were talking about how UNIDO can play a great role in helping DRC to develop the battery supply chain or Grand Inga and the other great opportunities that you face. Well, President Chisaketti is leading a country with many, many challenges and many huge opportunities because, of course, the DRC is a vast country with vast resources with the great beauty, with great natural wealth, with remarkable biodiversity, with remarkable cultural diversity, and also a country that has been plagued in history with a tremendous amount of exploitation from outside because the President inherited a country that really went through more than 150 years of outside exploitation and difficulty, a country that was brutally colonized by an individual who happened to be a king of the Belgians, but he took much of the region of today's DRC as a personal fiefdom, not even as a Belgian colony originally, but just as a personal possession, told the world that he was engaging in humanitarian activities when in fact he was engaging in ruthless, brutal, slave-based exploitation of the great resources of the country. That continued for many decades. It was followed by Belgian direct rule of what is today's DRC. At the end of Belgian rule, there was a really horrible period where instead of what could have been the beginning of a bright democracy with a brilliant young political leader at the time, Patrice Lumumba, the CIA and the United States got in between and really destroyed the early days of DRC's chance for democracy, even with the assassination of this young leader that is still admired around the world. And what ensued was many decades of dictatorship backed by the United States, I'm afraid, and then many, many years of conflict, and there still is conflict. So, Mr. President, we know the great challenges that you hold on your shoulder. We admire you and your country. We're here also to hear you, your ideas for the future and how the world can help to support them and to build the democratic Republic of Congo that you seek and that we all seek. Thank you for being here, Mr. President. Thank you. Madame Zémecieux, representing partners of the Republic of the Republic of Congo, dear experts, distinguished guests and participants, Madame Zémecieux, it's a great honor for me and a real pleasure to be among you here at Columbia University. I would like to seize this opportunity to express my deep gratitude towards the United Nations network for the development of sustainable solutions, to have agreed, the privilege, to take the floor on the occasion of the 11th International International Conference on sustainable development in view of sharing experiences and practical solutions to achieve sustainable development objectives. I would also like to thank the organizers, the Global Masters in Development Practice, and in particular, the Professor Dierfrey Sachs, President of the network for sustainable development, for his unconditional and unconditional commitment to the problem of sustainable development in the Republic of Congo, my country. I would also like to greet the remarkable presence of representatives of universities, governments of the civil society, agencies of the United Nations and the private sector, who have come from different approaches, who actively participate in the reflection on the main challenges and opportunities in terms of sustainable development on the path of the 2030 United Nations agenda. Ladies and gentlemen, the reports of progress follow-up to the DD 2022, indicating that the progress in terms of development are reversed under the effect of climate disasters, recurrent conflicts, economic recession and persistent effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this wave, inequality and poverty are aggravated. The end and the malnutrition are increasing. Human needs and the movement of populations reach new heights. Climate and environmental disasters are plunging the world into a systemic and existential risk of the most serious. Ladies and gentlemen, the principle of not letting anyone on the other side is at the heart of the 2030 agenda. A target cannot be considered as reaching if it is not reaching universally. Thus, acting to win vulnerability and poverty by leaving no one on the other side therefore constitutes a sine qua non condition to reach the ODD in the Republic of the Republic of Congo. Courageous and urgent policies must be taken in order to expand social protection measures and to address the inequalities of income but also to support vulnerable people, including young people and women. Accelerating progress towards the ODD remains a major challenge for a country like ours. To respond to the ambition, it is necessary to launch an action-based dynamic that involves new forms of governance in favour of both a transversal approach and a consistent approach to action at different levels by all the relevant parties to development. This vision and this approach of the ODD have inspired the speed of acceleration of the ODD adopted by the Government of the Republic of the Republic of Congo in view of action in a more in-depth, fast and ambitious way in order to provoke a social and economic transformation necessary to achieve the ODD in 2030. Its main objective is to have with the sectors and other actors of the ODD specific interventions a strong training effort to raise efficiently and efficiently the flows that brake the implementation of the ODD over the next few years. The proposals and commitments taken in the speed of acceleration of the ODD are structured around six prior acts that group thematically the 17 ODDs. Ladies and gentlemen, from the start, a peaceful climate and good governance are a major asset for the implementation of the ODDs. Effective institutions have positive effects on all the ODDs by allowing a better allocation of human material resources a space for accountability, responsibility and participation. The triad constituted of good governance, sustainable peace and strong institutions allow a better junction between the three pillars of sustainable development the economy, the social and the environment. If advances were recorded on the institutional level in the Democratic Republic of Congo, several conflicts persist. Corruption remains endemic. Also, persistent conflicts, mainly in the East, do not allow institutional development. There can be no development and even less sustainable development in a context where instability, violence and conflict with their water of suffering for the populations and their extremely negative impacts on the economy. Of course, peace is not enough. There needs to be a framework that allows the country to take adequate measures to innovate in terms of reforms. This is only possible in a country where institutions are effective and distortions linked to corruption are banned or contained. The second priority of the Road to Acceleration of the ODD concerns the development of energy, hydraulic, transport and digital infrastructure to support growth. Speaking of this, it is good to remember that the Democratic Republic of Congo has a huge potential for energy. With the potential of solar, wind and biomass, 890 sites have been identified and located for hydroelectric power on the entire country, totaling more than 100,000 megawatts. Paradoxically, more than 80% of the Congolese do not have access to electricity with strong disparities. With an increasingly intensive energy economy, this lack constitutes one of the main constraints of a sustainable and inclusive growth. Modern technologies, the growth of productivity and the development of more strong added value need more electricity. The energy deficit, coupled with the transport infrastructure, constitutes one of the main constraints to the acceleration of progress to the ODD in the Democratic Republic of Congo. For a country as big as the RDC, in terms of surface, the rehabilitation of damaged transport infrastructure remains a priority. A better connectivity can revive economic activity and stimulate growth, the necessary conditions to bring out millions of Congolese from poverty and vulnerability. Moreover, universal access to a water source is located in our country, mainly in rural areas, where less than 40% of the population has access to water. At first glance, the urban water sector is relatively well-performed. Today, more than 80% of the urban population has access to a water source, mainly by the National Public Service, the Régis des Eaux. However, a deeper examination reveals a more problematic image. The rapid growth of the urban population led to a rise in the number of citizens without access to a water source and the quality of the supply is deteriorated. The third axis targets the development of agriculture and transformation industries to ensure the structural modernization of the economy and create low and well-regulated jobs. Indeed, the years of bad governance, conflicts and instability led to the collapse of agriculture. Agricultural development is a prerequisite for the improvement of revenues, drawing agricultural activities and non-agricultural rural activities to contribute to the creation of a virtuous circle in which the demand that generates agricultural growth creates a demand of goods and services produced locally is unbearable. One of the challenges of the Democratic Republic of Congo is to make agriculture more productive in order to achieve a greater food security and to allow the development of a more efficient and diversified productive capacity. The Democratic Republic of Congo will have to work to increase the agricultural production in the raw domestic product. This is the whole meaning of our objective of the revenge of the soil on the subsurface. The fourth axis meets the proposals and commitments aimed at strengthening the human capital, particularly the questions related to health, education and social protection. One of the main factors for the growth of the productivity of innovation is the development of the human capital. A system of social protection well designed and put into operation constitutes a powerful element to value the human capital, reduce inequalities, strengthen resilience and fight poverty. By installing universal social protection regimes including social protection sources, the Democratic Republic of Congo can guarantee that no one is excluded and that prosperity is shared. Thus, the three social security tests in the Democratic Republic of Congo constitute a real work of strangle for a development that leaves no one on the side. We only estimate 9.6% of Congolese who benefit from at least one element of the social protection source. Moreover, security, access to health and education are a powerful vector of sustainable development. They contribute by their transverse efforts to break the vicious circle of poverty and vulnerability. This is due to the education of very appreciable progress. This has been accomplished over the past years. The gratitude of education established in 2019 has come to accelerate progress by recovering millions of children once excluded from the school system. The number of newly registered students is also between 4 and 5 million children and more than half of these children are young girls who were able to take them to the school thanks to the degree of gratitude of education. However, despite this progress, the Congolese educational system still faces many challenges. As much as the reform of gratitude has undoubtedly brought back non-scholarized children, it has also generated other problems in the educational system among which there is a pressure on the infrastructure. So now we have to face a growing need for school construction. As for health, the Democratic Republic of Congo still faces many challenges. Palludism and other endemic diseases continue despite the registered progress. For example, for the first year of 2021, more than 21 million cases of palludism were registered, so 48.76% concern children of less than 5 years. The health infrastructures are not only insufficient, but also elaborate and dysfunctional, and lack of an essential trend for better care for the sick. The vaccine coverage, despite the progress achieved, remains low. In front of these challenges, efforts are focused on the implementation of a universal health coverage. The goal for the future is to ensure health services are of high quality and affordable, whatever the financial capacity of everyone. Once set up, the universal health coverage will allow to strengthen the solidarity of primary health care systems, reduce financial risks associated with degraded health, and increase equity between citizens. Under this reform register, in order to ensure the universal health coverage, it is advisable to note that in the eyes of concerns of maternal and infant mortality across the country, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has proceeded at the beginning of this month, in September, to launch the program for the freedom of maternity and care for newborns. Moreover, in the perspective of reducing poverty and spatial inequality, the government has begun the local development program of the 145 territories, PDL 145 T, in cycles. This program, which is currently in the execution phase, aims to reduce spatial inequality, to re-dynamize local economies, and transform the conditions and the lives of the Congolese populations living in the areas that are poorly served by infrastructure and basic social services. The fifth ax concerns the fight against climate change. It regroups all commitments, programs and projects aimed at restoring terrestrial and marine ecosystems. The Democratic Republic of Congo contains 10% of the tropical forests in the world, and the largest turbines in the world cover 100,000 km². The Congo basin is one of the last regions of the world to absorb more carbon than it did. It absorbs nearly a billion and a half tons of CO2 in the atmosphere, including 4% of global emissions, equivalent to 10 years of global emissions. The country should work to preserve its forest resources by mainly fighting against deforestation. This is more crucial than the Congolese forest under pressure. It is inevitable that the fight against deforestation and the good management of the forest must be based on rural development, the reduction of poverty and a better food security. The country must therefore mobilize diverse resources to respond to the double challenge of food security and climate change. Moreover, the Congolese government is working, but rather working, to fight against climate change and to limit, even to put an end to the destruction of the marine and terrestrial ecosystems. This is in this perspective that the country has committed since 2015 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from 21% to 2030 according to international funding with key actions in forest, agriculture and energy sectors. The last axis of the road is to strengthen the mobilization of resources and partnerships diversified to support the implementation of the ODD. Indeed, one of the main challenges of the 2030 agenda is financing. The ODDs are extremely ambitious and demand colossal financing for which it will be impossible to reach them in 2030. According to the International Monetary Fund, a report from 2023, the additional expenses are necessary to the implementation of significant progress in five primary areas, health, education, electricity, water, electricity supply and road infrastructure in 2030 is rising to 43.9% of GDP. 9% of GDP. In front of such a need, the Democratic Republic of Congo will have to mobilize internal and external resources on the basis of a roadway to ensure the financing of the necessary expenses. However, it is today widely admitted that the financing of the ODDs relies primarily on decisions to take to the national and local plans because it is at this scale that they can be assured the coherence between the different objectives and the reliability that takes them. Also, is it indicated to be assured that mobilized resources are effectively affected for more results? To accelerate progress towards the ODDs, the government must rethink public spending by protecting it against price shocks by mechanisms such as the sovereign fund, but also by creating enough budgetary space to invest public resources in growth carriers sectors. Also, it is crucial that the country accelerates reforms in mobilizing internal resources without natural resources. Ladies and gentlemen, representing the partners of the Democratic Republic of Congo, dear experts, distinguished guests and participants, ladies and gentlemen, while there is only 7 years left before the 2030 disaster, we are well and well in front of a major challenge that can not suffer from any negligence. While reaffirming the vocation of my country to continue to work on accelerated measures during this decade of action, I would like to end by reminding general mobilization to reverse the current trend and to respond to the emergencies that are facing the Congolese. Thus, the effective acceleration of progress towards the reach of the ODD in the Democratic Republic of Congo requires an effective and sustainable support of development partners of the private sector, of the civil society and of an inspired and committed youth as represented today by the prestigious University of Columbia. Thank you. We just have a minute to thank you. We know you have a busy, very busy schedule. It's a really great honor to host you here and also to hear about the roadmap, the roadmap to sustainable. Mr. President, I was thanking you again and saying how gratifying it is to hear about the roadmap to sustainable development that you have laid out with the priorities of education, healthcare, green energy, sustainable agriculture, urban infrastructure and digital economy. You've really laid out a comprehensive approach to the DRC's sustainable development and you've also called on us for partnership and I want to reassure you of that full partnership. We have a great commitment to your country. We have great young leaders such as the one whispering in your ear because Harmony Kobange is our graduate from Columbia University so give her a round of applause. And she leads the SDSN team in Kinshasa working with your team, Mr. President. So we're very, very excited and pleased and you've laid out a plan of action for us to help you as well. I think when we reflect on a couple of the things the President has told us, it's extremely important. DRC is home to the greatest untapped potential for green hydropower in the whole world in the Congo Basin. Grand Inga has the potential if you develop the Congo Basin for at least 70 gigawatts of absolutely high quality hydropower. The electricity that's needed to provide the electrification of the DRC and much of Central Africa, other neighboring countries as well. And the DRC is an absolutely vast country is also home, as you heard, to 10% of the world's tropical forests and home to some of the greatest biodiversity in the world. And also humanity's closest cousins, the Vinobos and other grade 8 populations in this marvelous, wonderful habitat, this unique habitat of the DRC. So the DRC plays an absolutely central role in achieving the two great environmental goals of clean energy to stop the global warming and the protection of biodiversity. One point that I'd like to add in encouragement, you do have many, many friends and partners. And UNIDO is one of them. Another we saw yesterday, and I had the chance to speak with President Lula of Brazil, who will be president of the G21 next year. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, we now have a G21, not a G20, because the African Union has become a permanent member. And this is very important, Mr. President. If you as one of Africa's great leaders can help all of your colleagues to really take advantage of this new, this new important opportunity, this puts Africa right at the front of the world's deliberations. And with your partner in Brazil, President Lula, who is a great partner, this is a tremendous opportunity in the year ahead. And Brazil also, just to say, together with the president, President Lula, President Chisiketi, and President Jacawi of Indonesia have launched a partnership for the great tropical rainforest around the world. So there are the bricks, but there's also the bix, Brazil, Indonesia, and Congo. So, Mr. President, we want to conclude, if you'd like to say any more words, we've already asked you and kept you a little bit beyond time, but we wanted to thank you so much for being here and pledge to you the full support of all of us for the success of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Thank you very much, Professor, for your continued support to ensuring the sustainable development of the DRC. I know that you have a very strong support and I would like to thank you for the invitation today. So the professor, Professor Sacks, explained the crucial role that the DRC, Brazil, and Indonesia play in order to protect the world's forests. So, Professor Sacks, you have a very strong support and I would like to thank you for your continued support and I would like to thank you for your continued support and I would like to thank you for your continued support to ensure the sustainable development and to protect the world's rainforest, to protect the world's rainforest. As you know, these three countries hold more than 52% of the world's rainforest. And as I said in my speech, the Congo rainforest is one of the largest, most important trees in the world to have the CO2 capture that it is capable of. And as I put the emphasis in my speech, the Congo basin with its rainforest has the capacity to captivate most of the world's global emission of carbon. So in order to ensure that we can continue, and to improve the need we have not only to protect the forests today, but also to re-drink more of our forests. So in order to ensure that we can continue, we need to ensure that we can protect our forests in order to fight against climate change. And on this note, I would like to draw the attention of the opinion here on the fact that our forests are in danger and for various reasons that I am going to share here. And I would like to draw the attention to the fact that our rainforests are in danger, and I will explain why. The first reason is the activism of armed groups. For example, in the park of Virunga, which is one of the largest natural reserves in the world, which is located in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the north, which is more precise, where currently, activities of armed groups are supported mainly by the Rwanda to destabilize the Democratic Republic of Congo, to pay the natural resources of our country and to donate because of these activities to the destabilization of the fauna, to the destruction of the flora and in short to destabilization of the ecosystem of this natural reserve. So the first reason that I would like to draw the attention to is the fact that there is an armed group to activism in the eastern part of the country. So for instance, in the Virunga park, which is one of the biggest parts in North Kivu, armed groups with the support of Rwanda are contributing to the pillage of resources of our country, which leads in result to deforestation to the destruction of biodiversity as well. The other threat to deforestation is the galloping demography. The populations that grow more and more get closer to deforestation and live from this to have heating for housing or sometimes even for their agricultural activities to destroy the forest to plant their products. Another threat in relation to deforestation in English. Sorry. Another threat regarding to deforestation is population growth. So as a result of population growth, we have populations who live in this forest use wood to cook and also use the forest in order to live there as well. And they also use the forest that we have to lead the agricultural activities. The countries that pollute the least and who contribute to fight against pollution of countries like ours and to help us strengthen our positions and our capacities by helping our populations by learning to our populations other substitution methods in order to preserve our forests. And there are some of these methods. We can today have products that would avoid cutting the wood to heat up or to cook. We can use today substitution products. We can do, for example agriculture agroforestry without having to destroy the forest as is the case today when we do agroforestry where we have to burn important extensions to have to plant. So you see that there are methods without destroying the forest, on the contrary by cutting it we can maintain the standard of life without destroying the forest on the contrary to learn to protect it and understand what is the essential importance for their own survival of this forest of the state of this forest. We need to mobilize funding as promised by the international community. So I would like to put the emphasis on the fact that this is not aid to our countries this is in fact to ensure that they can support countries that pollute less in the world in addition to helping reinforcing our capacity to teach our populations the means to preserve our forests. For instance, we can have products to avoid cutting woods in order to cook we can also engage in agroforestry without destroying the forest there are methods to ensure that we don't destroy the forest and to ensure that while doing so we can preserve the way of living of our populations while teaching them the importance of preserving our forests. Mr. President just to say that this is exactly our commitment to help raise the practical means for protecting and saving the forest we know that's also President Lula's objective you President Lula and President Chikawi have a big voice in the world and so I think that this is something absolutely practically achievable during the coming year even for commitment and announcement and funding during the coming year. So we're going to work with you on that my colleague Emma Torres who is in the front row works with the Brazilian government and the Indonesian government and now with your team to help put this in place and we can assure you of our strong strong commitment to that very practical results exactly as you call for. Let me thank you Mr. President again for being here ladies and gentlemen please thank President Chikawi. Thank you.