 we will move to the first discussion of this conference which is on pathways to achieve the sustainable development goals will be hearing from national governments, scientists and international organizations on how to maintain this long-term vision and leverage long-term planning in the context of multiple crisis to achieve the goals. So let me welcome our distinguished panelists first I would like to invite on stage State Minister Mr. Abdullah Ibo Chanay, Minister in charge of Development and Coordination of Governmental Action. Monsieur le ministre, je vous invite à me rejoindre sur les strades. Please if everybody could take a seat that would be great we will move to the next session of the conference. Then I would like to invite Mrs. Lamia Kamal Shahoui, Director of the OECD Center for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities. I would then like to invite Mr. Obi-Jon Kakimov, Vice-Advisor to the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan and Director of the Center for Economic Research and Reform under the administration of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan. We will have in principle online if she can get connected Mrs. Simona Marinescu, Senior Advisor for Small Island Developing States at UNOPS and last but certainly not least I would like to invite Mrs. Shirin Malikpur, Associate Professor at Monash University and member of this very important group, this independent group of scientists that just released the Global Sustainable Development Report 2023 a few days ago. So without further ado I'd like to invite State Minister Chen to kick us off with a keynote intervention on the progress and the strategies that Benin has put in place to achieve the SDGs and for context Benin was the first African country in 2021 to issue a financial instrument at the sovereign level and SDG bond to finance long-term progress for the SDGs. Mr. Minister, c'est à vous. Thank you very much Mr. Guillaume. Ladies and gentlemen, yes has left but I would like to you know salute him for his work as professor but also as leader on SDGs. A friend from the panel, ladies and gentlemen, halfway toward the deadline of the SDGs it is now possible to get the precise idea of the trajectory that allows us to achieve them. In our discussion today I would like to propose that we consider such trajectory as a continuation of all the activities that lead us to the SDGs. It's also often said and a quote all roads lead to Rome but what the thinker misses to tell us is how soon. Regarding SDGs, time is an important impediment and therefore we cannot take just any path. It is precisely this time constraint that justifies the relevance of this exchange or this discussion we're having today. While I believe it's relevant to talk about it at the same time I think it's spent pertinent or pretentious to do so. Of course it's pretentious to talk about it because when it comes to the SDGs we are all learners. No one has yet fully succeeded to be lecturing others. On the other hand the nuance as well as the positive point is that many are doing well in certain areas and we could effectively learn from each other. And as a result by tracking these successes in the various SDGs we should be able to map out a trajectory that will lead us to be refining over time. It is this therefore these successes, these good practices whose promotion and will be beneficial to the SDGs. An important point on the road is a vision or planning that carries ambition of achieving the SDGs. There is a quote that says and I quote, if you fail to plan you plan to fail. So everything starts with good planning. It put the SDGs at the heart of a strategic framework, provide for the necessary reforms and investment and define the appropriate programmatic monitoring and evaluation framework. When we arrived at the Minister of Planning and Development in 2016 some were surprised that our government took six to seven months to define our strategic framework and program. This planning involves, among other things, the prioritization of the targets, the localization, the appropriation and the coursing of the objective to be achieved. Public opinion prices and this impatient will justify as there was so much to do. But we took the time to do some good planning because we agree with Nelson Mandela that in a quote, a vision that is not accompanied by action is only a dream. An action that does not stem from a vision is waste is time, vision which is followed by action can change the world. End of quote. Consequently in Benin we identified that seven fundamental changes or transformation should drive our ambition to achieve the SDGs. Those transformations relate to the field of energy, digital, industry, education, health, gender equality and demographics. Let me please elaborate on them. First, as far as energy transition concern, this energy transition concerns all countries and wealth. Benin is stepping up its effort to ensure sustainable and affordable access to electricity for the entire population with an energy mix of 30% by 2026. The installation of solar power plants and the promotion of off-grid electrification are core to this transition. Second, when it comes to digital transformation, it starts with availability of the infrastructure. That is why Benin has placed particular emphasis on the nationwide coverage of the fiber optic. We developed digital users and the skills needed to support the country digital ecosystem. This is through the creation of a school on digital themes as well as the development of Semicity, a smart city project located in Benin, with the objective of becoming a regional pool of excellence in the higher education sector. The government is setting up, is setting a good example with the implementation of intelligence administration projects which aims to digitalize and dematerialize all procedures within the public administration. In addition, Benin in recent years has put the fight against cybercrimes at a national issue level. A special core dealing with these crimes is operational. The idea is to secure digital activity and thus promote services and users that are likely to accelerate the achievement of the SDGs. Third, in terms of industrial transition, Benin is currently developing one of the largest special economic zone in West Africa, the GDIZ. The idea is to create a learning platform and reduce infrastructure gas to enable rapid industrial growth along with the creation of more than 300,000 direct jobs. Fourth, decent work can only be promoted if a profound transformation of the education system becomes a reality. Imprimant is a primary means by which public policies can lead to the eradication of poverty. This is what Benin has understood by making efforts to develop technical and vocational education and training to increase its share from 10% today to 70% in 2030. Six, five, sorry. The other important step is gender equality. Benin has made the commitment to making a very rapid transition from a situation relatively unfavorable to women to a situation where they are fully and perfectly integrated into the country's political, economic and social decision-making process. To this end, a series of reforms have increased the proportion of women in parliament from 7% five years ago to 27% today. The National Women's Institute has been renovated to promote gender equality in all its aspects. A new family code was adopted to better protect women and harassment in all its forms is converted and a special court is set up to deal with these cases. Finally, countries, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa, must further work to realize a democratic dividend. We have a large and young population which is still largely underutilized and does not yet participate sufficiently in the productive fabric. The search for demographic dividend and subsequent investment must lead us to strengthening human capital, better engaging women in the country's development process and improving the delivery of public services in general, in all countries. In this contest, a national conference on population growth and the country's development is planned for next November with the objective to reach in a consensual manner the main orientation that must drive family planning in the sixth sense as well as in the broad sense for better and responsible parenting. These are some critical steps in Benin's trajectory towards the SDGs. I hope that these are aspects that could inspire public policy in some other countries. The real challenge is to be able to stick to this trajectory. Emergency sometimes trumps us over what's important as emergency or shocks related to health, economic situation, security or political issues can drive countries away from what's important. Ladies and gentlemen, let me conclude by saying that we are committed through investment and reforms to put Benin at the forefront of the best performers of the SDGs. But in such an integrated global world, we need the same commitment from others, particularly from other countries and development partners. That's why I'm happy to be here today and I thank you. Monsieur le ministre, merci beaucoup de nous avoir fait un lancement parfait. Thank you so much for kicking us off so well and congratulations of course for all the efforts that Benin is doing to implement this agenda and in particular for Benin's pioneering role in connecting SDG pathways with financing including through its SDG bond. I know you have a very packed agenda. I believe you need to leave in a few minutes but thank you so much for being with us today. Let's move on to the rest of our panelists. I think we have a great representation of different actors that are involved in some way or another in defining pathways to achieve these goals and that are committed to this agenda and I'd like to actually start because we're talking here, we're at the midpoint and when we speak about implementation, pathways, key actors are of course cities and regions. I think there's obviously an SDG 11 that's dedicated to cities and regions but there's also I believe two-thirds of the goals, that's one of the estimates that have been pulled out, that two-thirds of the targets actually that won't be achieved without the involvement of cities and regions. La mer de l'OCD, you've been doing phenomenal work in tracking progress of cities and regions on this agenda and not only this but also looking at how cities have been incorporating the SDGs into public policies and planning and monitoring. Can you tell us what are some of the conclusions at the midpoint of this work and then I'd love to hear from you also because we're here to talk pathways but pathways without the financing needed to implement the investments that are needed to achieve the SDGs is not enough. So can you tell us also a bit about the conclusions of the work of the OCD when it comes to financing the SDGs in cities and regions? Thank you very much Guillaume and good morning everybody. I'm very happy to be here at the Columbia University with students. I see a couple of students in the room. I love to talk with students because they remind me what are the realities. They are always challenging us. In this discussion on SDGs we really have to remind that cities and regions are very important actors and by the way the president of the Republic of Congo mentioned one of his pillars was to go really local and regional. He was mindful about the question of spatial inequality. So at the OCD we have a dedicated department that is looking at the role of cities and regions in doing a lot of things including in advancing the SDGs and Stefano Marta who is now taking a photo of me so I have to behave is the head of this program. So what we have been doing we have been first doing what we do the best at the OCD is to create indicators and measurement framework. We need the data. We need to have stats. We need to understand better what is going on. So we have produced what we call a localised indicator framework for SDGs. We look at all the SDGs not only this SDG number 11 because we believe that cities and regions are relevant for all the SDGs and we have created a web tool and by the way any of you coming from any cities in the world you go on the website you type the name of your city and you can see how your city fare vis-à-vis the national average to achieve the SDGs for all the SDGs but also how it shares vis-à-vis the peers. So this was the starting point we have been able to do that for 600 cities and 600 regions from OCD countries plus Argentina and Brazil now we are in urging the sample to other countries and in parallel we have been using this result to work really with you know a number of cities we produce 10 case studies engaging them in a policy dialogue because they have been using this data to discuss okay what we're going to do now you know to advance the SDGs. So based on that I want to share you a couple of you know findings where we are today with this type of data. The first things that I want to say is that we have still a long way for many cities and regions to achieve the SDG. I'm talking about the distance you know and we have seen for instance that 80% of all the regions have not yet achieved the SDGs in any of the 17 goal and at least 70% of cities have not achieved the 2030 targets in 15 out of the 17 SDGs and the areas where cities and regions are liking the most they are climate they are biodiversity they are energy and gender and there is the question of the fact that they have not reached and then we measure the distance right so where are the distance the bigger well we were surprised to see it was about industry and innovation SDG number nine and partnership SDGs number 17. So this are very interesting findings because they can inform a policymaker at local and regional level and you know that there is a dedicated SDGs for cities called SDG number 11 which looks like housing transport inclusive and green gross and here you know all the work that we have been doing show that we have to be very very careful when we interpret the data the question of the pathway to achieve the SDGs not all cities and regions are starting from the same point within countries and across countries and I give you an example if you have you know a region located in a remote rural areas you know the this the problem of transport become extremely acute they are much more emitter of CO2 emission because they are using more transport and it's not the case in metropolitan area housing which is part of the SDG 11 has become a crazy crisis in many cities from around the world we have seen you know our data tell us that it's 40% higher to the rent is 40% higher in metropolitan area than in non-metropolitan areas so here when you know they're not starting at the same point so we have to be very careful about we have to consider this type of granularity now in terms of policymaking what we have been seeing is that the cities and region and I'm sure you have been hearing a lot in the discussion here that countries during the pandemic they were not really you know a preoccupied to advance the SDGs agenda and what we have been doing we have been tracking during the COVID pandemic what cities were doing and the contrary they were using even more the SDG framework because they found it as a very useful you know tool and now even more for the recovery they continue they like they like the tool actually they enjoy it and they use it very effectively and with SDSN we conducted a survey you know to identify more or less you know who are using that and I give you a just a couple of data half of the respondents in the survey cities and regions they said that they have established a dedicated strategy or an action plan for the SDGs and around 40% say the SDGs you know they were using they were not using it but they're going to use it afterwards for the recovery so that's another important thing a last point about you know the importance of the SDGs we have also to remember that it's really crucial for local policymakers because it helps address the question of synergies and trade-offs we know what to do in any individual policy areas the big problem is how to reconcile the trade-off the synergy you know we identify if we invest in climate whether it's going to be good for or so you know for people and for firms but the trade-off is when you know you have to make a choice between for instance equity and the environment right and we did a lot of analysis and one example that I like to come to to mention is for instance the city of Bourne they have a big problem they use you know the car use in the city so they were considering introducing a congestion charging which is a good instrument to limit you know traffic within cities but they made because of the SDG they had they were forced to made an assessment to see the potential impact on inequalities and they found that it was it would have been too high so they decided to go for another instrument so this question of trade-off is essential Guilla would you like me to say just one word about financing please please please talk talk about to us about financing so about financing of course you know which is here a big subject everywhere at national and international level yesterday it was the big topic in the UN General Assembly so that's the big issue how to fund the climate transition how to fund you know the implementation of the SDGs this is a national issue this is an international at the local level it's super relevant it's essential so on that front we have been working a lot in the OCD we have collected the data I invite to everything is available on life by the way I wanted to tell you you can take anything you want on the website here we have a unique local finance database called the Woffy it looks like a dog that's Woffy World Observatory some national investment and finance where you can find any type of indicators and thanks to the results of this database we I'm going to give you two interesting data around the world some national government when you aggregate all the some national government they are responsible for 40% of public investment in OCD countries it's 55% and when it comes to climate they are responsible for almost 70% of climate related expenditures so this is something that we have to remind because you know they are important very important actors so if we want to make things happen we have to count on them so what we have been doing we have established a subnational finance client climate hub again I invite you one stop shop where you can find anything related to local finance and the OCD has been very very active in contributing to the G20 presidency for Indonesia for now India so I'm always saying we have progressively infiltrated the G20 by pushing this subject about the importance of looking at the local dimension to make sure that ministers of finance governors of central bank they recognize the fact that they have to work with cities and for cities in advancing this agenda so what we produce for them first they endorse G20 OCD policy to look at on financing and finding a quality and inclusive infrastructure for cities I want to remind that you know we have calculated that there is a 15 trillion dollar infrastructure gap now to address in the era for cities and the other thing that is really recent that just two weeks ago they endorsed for the first time a report called financing cities for tomorrow where they recognize the importance to finance city they recognize the financial gap they discuss the different type of instruments they recognize the fact that cities they need to have more local revenues and they discuss also the fact that there are some alternative type of local revenues like land value capture because the fiscal environment is very tight they recognize the importance to provide a conducive environment for cities to leverage private investment because it's not going to be all public so there are many interesting recommendations and there was there was one point that we wanted to put in the report that we are pushing very hard is when we talk about funding or financing it's not only about money it's about having really good urban planning tool because if you want to have to leverage private investment you need to demonstrate that behind you have you know a serious urban planning you have a you know framework you have master plan you that can provide some stable predictable transparent indication for the private sector that is really essential I'm going to stop here that's fine thank you so much but I was just thinking on your last point I think this is the key this combination of those long-term plans pathways that can then be backed by the adequate financing that's needed to implement them thank you so much for highlighting the specificities also of the financing challenges faced by cities and the need to integrate those conversations especially at the midpoint now on the SDGs in those international discussions including at the G20 possibly also at the next cup in Dubai as well and in all those international discussions where the question of financing is getting picked up and I really encourage everyone to go take a look at the work that your team has been doing on tracking the SDGs including those very interactive data portals that the OECD has developed I think another interesting point is what you mentioned about how much the SDGs have been picked up by a number of local leaders and regions even though those goals initially were actually developed and applied at the country level so there's been a lot of efforts also if we look at the positive side of things over the first seven eight years on the SDGs to translate those goals also at the at the local level we're going to move up one level up go go to the national level with the with the Mr Kakeemov first I don't think we will have Simona Marinescu connected she had to join a panel with two under secretary generals so unfortunately she won't be able to join us but Simona was supposed to speak about the specific challenges of small island developing states which are of course not responsible or very little responsible for the global warming but that are paying very serious consequences for this so unfortunately Simona will not be able to join us but that's a good opportunity for me to to mention that this is a hybrid event so we have hundreds of people also connected online with us today so Mr Kakeemov Uzbekistan is also one of the countries and I think that must be mentioned that also pioneered those innovative financing instruments for sustainable development Uzbekistan issued an SDG bond I believe the inaugural issuance was in 2021 so can you tell us a bit more about this SDG bond but also why this is an important financial instrument to accelerate SDG progress in your country Uzbekistan thank you very much first of all I say thank you for University of Columbia for organizing such you know the important event good morning the participants at this high level event so I would like to say that this year we you know the marked halfway past the SDGs and as 170 countries in the world Uzbekistan also you know the became part of this you know the big action so we also in 2018 accepted set the 16 SDG goals and 127 specific indicators in order to achieve SDGs I'm not gonna talk much about all indicators 16 but I will talk about the some important ones so that the big changes happened so since 2017 I would like to mention that you know especially this goal number one poverty eradication Uzbekistan made significant changes for example let's say in 2020 the president of Republic of Uzbekistan announced that the poverty eradication as the main government policy direction in Uzbek and we first accepted you know the poverty measurements we first set the national poverty line and you know the now we are working on multi-dimensional poverty indicators and as you can see that when we talk about innovations you know the especially achieving SDGs and or in poverty directions I would like to mention one innovation in Uzbekistan which was established like since last two years so the working at the community level you know the setting the responsible people for poverty eradication and entrepreneurship programs at the community level gave significant results in poverty reduction so they start working at the household level they working they worked with each household depending on each household's demands yes and this kind of you know helped us a lot so as returning to your question SDG bonds yes in 2021 we issued $325 million worth of you know the sovereign bonds so as you can see that these SDG bonds were very important in fighting or in achieving so these SDG you know the goals so when we look to the analysis of this you know where we spend this money it contributed 11 SDG goals yes if you looked at the regional distribution almost all 14 regions benefited from this one so if you looked at the large portion of these SDG bonds where it's going it's going to the transportation sector health sector education sector where kind of you know the key important areas of development process so one more thing I have to mention that in this case so the recent IMF studies says that in order to achieve until 2030 Uzbekistan needs about 7.9% GDP additional fundings so the large portion of these fundings goes to the 3.4% this is for health sector and 2.4% it's infrastructure and 1% for water infrastructure so as you can see that yes Uzbekistan made significant development in achieving the SDG targets so we are on the track but we still need the 7.9% so this innovative financing and especially if you compare the 2021 you know the market risks and interest rates and right now so that it creates significant challenge not only for Uzbekistan but also for all other developing countries who struggled during the last two three years pandemic and other kind of political events which kind of you know the interrupting interrupting our economic development processes so I think that you know the more and more funding more and I would like to mention that more and more long-term concessional funding for developing economies will be more and more demanded in the near future in order to achieve our SDG goals right well thank you so much for for describing a little bit what Uzbekistan has been doing to connect its planning efforts with access to financing looking ahead at the next couple of years what are some of the specific challenges and priorities for Uzbekistan to accelerate the implementation of the SDGs and maybe to help me a little bit make the segue with the next speaker from the science community how does the the government of Uzbekistan partners also with you know scientific institutions and with with science at large when it comes to implementing this this agenda definitely you know when you are in development process so the basically development is about the productivity productivity is based about like what science so that's why you know the government of Uzbekistan closed the corporates and one of the main challenges in these next for example let's say the decade for all developing economies it will be human capital so for example developing the human capital scientific development innovative development will be kind of most important part of the you know the development process as you know this artificial intelligence you know creates more and more challenges for us for example when you say that what will be our you know upcoming challenges for the development I would like to mention that if anyone doesn't know about Uzbekistan Uzbekistan is located in the Central Asia so Central Asia kind of you know that it's between the two rivers Amudaria and the Sirdaria what I would like to think that in the next ten years the biggest challenge not only Uzbekistan of the all Central Asia will be water issues because you know the global climate change it's reducing the global you know the water supply for example let's say recent study of our center with the Berlin economics for example let's say it will create additional challenge not only cutting the water it also creates what environmental damage is also so additional to this water scarcity so we have a neighbor which is Afghanistan yes Afghanistan is also kind of you know the tries to you know to create this new canal Kostepa it's called and if this canal will work so this the Amudaria basin river the level of this Amudaria basin river up to the net if it goes up to the third level it will be decreased up to the 30% as you can imagine that this 30% decrease in the water supply it will create first of all significant decrease in the value added in agriculture sector second huge unemployment sector third we will lose lots of lots of arable lands so this will create another challenge for the food security so that this will be another challenge for the food security another issue I would like to mention that it's the energy efficiency yes so the region is can be fully energy autonomous because region has a lots of energy resources but at the same time we have commitments before the Paris Agreement to cut our energy missions and Uzbekistan committed so until 2030 increase renewable energy sources up to the 40% of its energy supply so the another one is like kind of as we mentioned the recent political you know the tensions creates kind of you know the challenges for the transportation channels the recent announcement yesterday and you know that the presidential meetings Central Asia plus you know the United States president of the United States also mentioned that you know the trans-caspian transit channels will be more important and in order to develop this one it requires more and more investments especially these investments will be coming from developed nations thank you thank you so much also for yes congratulations to Uzbekistan for all its efforts to implement this this agenda thank you also for highlighting the importance of partnerships global regional with neighboring countries so that we work together to implement those goals let me now turn over to you Shirin and already I can congratulate you for the release of the global sustainable development report 2023 I believe you were the lead authors for chapter three on the pathways to achieving the SDGs yes good to have you here on the session but also chapter four accelerating transformations so can you first I mean this is probably related to the chapter three of the report but can you summarize a little bit for us when we look at the models that are available out there on you know the potential SDG scenarios and the projections what are those models telling us and what are some maybe some of the biggest opportunities when it comes to making rapid gains the rapid gains on the SDGs based on these scenario sure so maybe just for the audience if you're not really familiar with the global sustainable development report I can just say a few words what it is so it's a science policy report that is produced now by an independent group of 15 scientists who are appointed by the UN Secretary General every four years to produce the report so we had one report back in 2019 and this is the second report in 2023 and it was meant to also work as sort of like an input into the SDG summit which we had on Monday and Tuesday under the auspices of the General Assembly and and really inform the political declaration that came out of that summit as well so in the report as you say in one of the chapters we talk about scenarios and scenario modeling exercises really looking at what has happened in scenario modeling across the world to really try to understand the SDG outcomes and also understand what policies and interventions really work for the SDGs one of the key findings of this scenario literature that was particularly interesting to me is that basically on a business as usual trajectory we are not going to achieve any of the SDGs by 2030 or even by 2050 so you know there are some discussions here and there you could see you know some people say oh maybe the 2030 deadline is just too soon too short and we are really only have seven years left to get there and maybe we should move the deadline back shift the deadline back a couple of decades and then maybe we can work with that but the scenarios are showing that if you shift the deadline nothing is going to change what is going to change actually is a shift in policies a shift in the way governments but also other societal actors organize themselves around the SDGs and also a shift in the way financing and investments work and are reoriented towards achieving the SDGs so I was really pleased when I heard also this morning by the president of Congo and he was also talking about you know there is partly that international financing that we are talking about but also really about how national and local resources could be mobilized and could be reoriented towards achieving the SDGs so to your question about some of the you know rapid gains based on this scenario literature it is there is no silver bullet so there is no such a thing that you can do one thing and then you will have a rapid gain it interventions and things that work very across different SDGs and also very across different contexts but one thing that we know for sure is that we always need a mix of different interventions in place so some of the things that for example some of these mixes that work is that in the human development space for example you know a mix of investments in health in public infrastructure in education actually get us really quick gains on human development goals for example one study showed that doubling investments in these areas would lift more than 100 million more people out of poverty by 2030 or on environmental goals so the mixes that work really well are carbon pricing, phasing out fossil fuels, EV mandates but also really looking at shifting lifestyles towards more sustainable diets for example so these are the things that we know work but really the tough questions are about implementation of these interventions because we know that a lot of these interventions involve very sensitive political navigation and highly contested political issues are involved in these but also they involve reorienting investments as I said before and also for all of us as citizens as people really changing lifestyles and these are really really tough issues and that's why I think that sometimes you know the kind of scenario modeling that we're seeing now which is happening very much at the global level is very useful for giving us that perspective for global governance and what needs to happen at the global scale but also a lot of national scale modeling exercises is needed on the SDGs and currently we are seeing very very few of that one was done actually in Australia where I'm from by my colleague Cameron Allen and others really looking at what works in the Australian context because I think we really need to get to the specifics and that is not possible really when you look at the global scale scenario modeling exercises and what Lamia mentioned around you know we know that you know what works in a particular sector but when you start looking across different sectors and across the different SDGs because of those synergies and tradeoffs that are involved a lot of the problems arise actually there and again national scale scenario modeling really gets us to those specifics and let us think about those synergies and tradeoffs in a particular context considering some of the existing policies and capacities that are in place and can show us some more useful pathways for accelerated action in the next seven years. Fascinating and I you know as always the GSDR is such a great resource to understand you know the state of scientific evidence and the literature on the SDGs we've been talking a lot about financing as one of the big lever for accelerated action I believe in the GSDR another lever that's very much discussed is the role of innovation as a potential accelerator of progress on the SDGs you discuss in chapter four this this concept of the S curve for innovative ideas I'd like you to talk to us a little bit about what might be some of the the the levers that can be further leveraged to accelerate the emergence and acceleration of innovations because I think there's maybe some good news here building on what has happened over the past couple of years that where we might be able to build on this to accelerate progress. Yeah so the scenarios what I was just talking about really tell us about the what right what needs to be done what interventions and policies might work and what type of outcomes could be achieved with different policies and interventions the S curve that we present in the following chapter in the GSDR tells us about the how it provides a temporal view on how transformation processes evolve over time it and it can be used in a very useful heuristic if you like to really analyze where we are at in the transformation process and where we want to get to and in order to do that what needs to be done and thinking really strategically about managing and navigating this transformation process over time so what is the S curve the S curve basically says that transformation typically go through three distinct phases if you think about the S shape the first the first phase the bottom of the S is the emergence phase this is where new technologies innovative behaviors sustainable practices start to emerge after some time these innovations could kind of like join forces get stronger mature and then through targeted interventions decisive actions targeted policies or sometimes triggered by crisis events or things that might happen in the external environment these innovations could actually scale up and become widely adopted so this is the steep part of the S if you like and they become widely adopted this is where we are in the acceleration phase and finally the top of the S is where these innovations start to stabilize they become the new normal they become embedded in our institutions now this is of course a highly stylized model of how the transformation works and it glosses over a lot of the dynamics that are involved in the process but it is still a useful tool for us to really think about the transformation process and one of the usefulness of it is actually in thinking about levers or what you were asking about the levers because it also tells us because transformation goes through these different processes you actually need different levers in different stages of transformation so again we heard here today that you know different cities some of us mentioning are in different stages and they have different distances and different starting points also and this is again one of the ways that the S curve can be used to really think about what sector in what geography is in which stage of the transformation and then in order to move to the next stage what are the things that are needed so we know that these levers need to change as you go through this process for example in the emergence phase the kind of things that work are you know investments in R&D piloting prototyping experimentation and sharing the learnings from these experimentations but you cannot get too far just by doing that if you actually want to get to the acceleration phase this is where you need really decisive actions by governments shaping markets you know setting targets setting standards regulating business and for you know again civil society really building coalitions and advocating strongly for change and holding governments accountable for that process and of course in the stabilization phase again you need capacities for maintaining the outcome so that you know you don't face a backlash for example or things can be before they are completely embedded and institutionalized they can just you know go out of the way suddenly so this curve really helps us also think about these levers in a more strategic way and try to really change the way we target issues and we navigate transformation based on where we are at in the process. Fascinating well thank you so much there's this and much more in the global sustainable development report but congratulations again to you and all the co-authors of this year's DSDR really a great resource so it's going to be time to close this panel we've heard we started from the city level then to the national level then to more the global level and what scientists have to say on pathways so thank you for joining me with a big round of applause for our panelists today