 Good morning, good afternoon and good evening from wherever you are joining in to see this World Economic Forum Sustainable Development Impact Summit session on Uplink, scaling local innovation for sustainable development. My name is Dominic Waray, I'm a managing director at the World Economic Forum and it is my pleasure and privilege to emcee us through the first part of this session which is a panel discussion. We've got a super group lined up for you and we're thrilled to be joined on my left by Professor Klaus Schwab, who is the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, by Simon McCulhey, who's the chief innovation officer of Salesforce, by Michelle Parmalie, the deputy global chief executive officer and the global chief people and purpose officer of Deloitte, USA Deloitte, and Nicole Bishop, who is the founder and CEO of Quartolio, an uplink innovator. We'll be talking in particular about the importance of innovation in achieving the sustainable development goals and in particular to introduce you to an innovation accelerator called Uplink, which Salesforce, Deloitte and the World Economic Forum have been collaborating on. Uplink was announced this time last year in the SDG action zone at the UN headquarters and launched at the annual meeting in Davos in January 2020. In this panel we'll learn a little bit more about Uplink and the impact it has had since then, in particular in relation to the COVID-19 response, forests and the ocean. So I'm delighted to welcome you all, a global audience streaming this session live through our platforms and also our audience joining us through Toplink. I must tell you as well that there is more on Uplink tomorrow. We will be holding an Uplink session tomorrow afternoon, Geneva time, to select the winners of our trillion trees challenge where you'll be able to help us choose the People's Choice Award through online voting. You can find more details at uplink.weffforum.org. So with no further ado, let's get started. Professor Klaus Schwab, founder, executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, perhaps you can kick us off. You've been a digital pioneer and a champion for entrepreneurialism in the global interest for many years. Uplink seems to bring these two ideas together, especially in relation to meeting the SDGs. Could you tell us a little bit more? Thank you very much and welcome to all of you. I'm very proud that so many people joined us for this important session. It's right just a year ago we actually inaugurated it. We started Uplink by signing a strategic cooperation framework agreement with the United Nations. And one of the issues which came up is how can we perform, which is a multi-stakeholder organization, but how can we engage all those entrepreneurial talents around the world behind the SDGs? How can we create a digital platform which allows those young people, those entrepreneurial, innovative people, really to contribute with solutions to the big issues which we have in our world today. So we developed the platform and I would like to thank our partners, which made it possible. Salesforce and Deloitte represented here by Simon Malkai and Michel Parmoli. Great thank you because without you this platform would not exist. I also want to thank John Dutton and his team in the forum who worked very hard not only to get the technology right but also to fill the platform with life. And I'm very proud of what we have achieved in a relatively short time. I suppose that Dr. Goodell will join us later, I hope so. But in any case, preparing for this session, I have found the quote of her which I think is very characteristic for how we developed uplink. We will only attain the great potential Jesus of the great reset when head and heart work in harmony. So let's take our heads and our hearts during the next 60 minutes and apply it to the further success of uplink. Back to you Dominic. Thank you so much Professor Schwab and this vision that has been turned into reality over the past several months has truly been quite astonishing. It's evolved from an aspirational idea uplink to a live digital platform with nearly 4,000 entrepreneurs, change makers, experts and investors, already over 500 solutions to the proposing innovative approaches to ocean, reforestation and COVID-19 challenges related to the SDGs. And in fact the social posts from uplink have been seen by nearly 30 million people around the world and have created a real pathway for engaging with the forum's mission. So we're very, very excited about the impact that has been created already. I think it's early days. We are starting to see some of the outcomes advancing, but perhaps Simon Mackay, together with your founder and CEO at Salesforce, Mark Benioff, you guys have been a champion of uplink and its vision since the origin of the concept. And Salesforce of course has such a massive network of customers and corporate engagement and drives for purpose and a desire for the impact on the sustainable development goals, like the ocean, like the trillion trees initiative, like on COVID, like on social justice and reskilling among many other areas. Perhaps you could explain what drives the involvement of Salesforce and uplink for you on these sorts of issues. Simon, over to you. Thanks Tonic. Well at Salesforce we believe strongly that business is the greatest platform for change and we really view the environment as one of our key stakeholders. And you can just see this over COVID-19, which has really magnified the whole issue of climate change. On the one hand you've got hundreds of millions, if not billions of people who are staying at home. And that's really given the planet a breather, including here in San Francisco. On the other hand though, we've really seen how global climate issues haven't subsided or slowed down. And we've got these astonishing weather swings in the Rocky Mountains, the most destructive wildfire season ever, at least by acreage on the west coast of the U.S. And so many hurricanes on the east coast that we're running out of names in the English language. Climate change is not a potential challenge, not just a potential challenge for future generations. It's real. It's a real pressing threat for our businesses, our economies, in the near term. And I think global damage from 2.7 degrees of warming is estimated to be $54 trillion. So now, more than ever, we need innovative solutions that are driven by partnerships. And our ability to scale innovation will therefore require unprecedented coordination and communication across the globe. An uplink, thanks to the incredible vision of Professor Schwab and the leadership Dominic Avue and John Dutton provides the framework to make that happen, connect incredible entrepreneurs with the capital, regulatory power and know how that they need. And it's urgent. We're never tipping points and whether the impacts of climate change are going to be irreversible. Simon, thank you for that and for reminding us about the urgency of the context in which we face things. And you mentioned entrepreneurs and how one can bring them together through a digital platform of uplink. Let's turn to one which has been engaged through uplink and is an uplink innovator, Nicole Bishop, founder and CEO of Quartolio. Nicole, perhaps you could chat to us a little bit about how you've been working on various issues out there in relation to some of the purpose driven outcomes that you seek and how you've experienced the uplink network. And what's your motivation for getting involved? Because I think it's quite interesting to hear if you like from those who've been experiencing the platform for others who are listening and such. Nicole? Absolutely, thank you Dominic. I'd just like to say thank you to each of you for creating the platform. It's necessary avenue for entrepreneurs to have a space where we can connect and not only entrepreneurs in general, but those with a like mind focused on impacting the world. My own journey with Quartolio stems from a desire to connect the world's research. And so when we saw COVID, we wanted to essentially put our resources into analyzing the scientific articles, clinical trials, patents and everything that we could, all the different data sets and bring those together in order to bring insight to researchers sooner. And the uplink platform parallels that very much by essentially bringing together like minds and bringing those connections together. So we've been appreciative of the experience on uplink and look forward to connecting with like minded entrepreneurs, but also partners and potential investors as well. Nicole, thank you for that and congratulations on the great work that you are doing. I mean, when we conceived and started to design uplink, we didn't anticipate a world like we have today with the COVID pandemic and the other issues that it's revealed in terms of social justice challenges, the economic challenges. But Michelle Palmer Lee at Deloitte, I mean Deloitte and yourself in particular, you've been supporting uplink since it was conceived over a year ago. And Deloitte, you know, you're a hugely purpose driven company pushing hard on ESG issues and many other areas of purpose. So what excites you and the Deloitte leadership team about the sort of digital innovation interface, the innovation accelerators and the uplink platform for the SDGs? Michelle? No, it wasn't letting me unmute myself, but I'm here now. Who we are, Michelle? Thanks Dominic. If you have a chance to think about the question. I was doing some hand motions, unmute me. No, thanks for that question and that's right. I mean Deloitte is a purpose led organization. Our purpose is to make an impact that matters. We say make an impact on our clients, on our people, on the communities where we live and work. And our purpose recognizes that in times of uncertainty, society looks to business to lead the way. And so we believe we have a responsibility to respond and we want to be a force of good in this world, but we know we cannot do it alone. We know that solving the world's biggest challenges such as social inequality, joblessness, the climate crisis Simon spoke to that requires that we work across sectors, requires that we work across generations because it's when we combine our strengths that we can deliver the kind of end to end solutions that today's problems require. And Deloitte has collaborated with the World Economic Forum for more than 20 years, and we were honored to join it and Salesforce to support uplink. And we are proud to have contributed our technology expertise and our execution capabilities. And what we have built together is a one of a kind platform that connects SDG innovators and entrepreneurs, many of which are nontraditional contributors to other like minded groups like funders. And so uplink enables the collaboration, the connection that we believe is so fundamental to accelerating action towards the SDGs. And we believe that the impact that we are making, and we'll be able to make through uplink is not anything that Deloitte or any of us could achieve could have achieved on our own. Michelle, thank you very much. And thank you again for the collaboration and partnership. It's been truly extraordinary to be able to leverage all the fantastic assets and knowledge that Deloitte and Salesforce have to help people like Nicole and 4000 others get to a kind of global set of interactions which might not have been possible before. In that context, I think Dr Jane Goodall is now with us. Jane, are you there? I've actually been with you right from almost the beginning before Dr Schwab left. Fantastic. Well, it's good to see you and it's wonderful to have you with us. So thank you for joining us. Now you've been someone who everybody knows has been inspiring change for decades, especially in the environmental and reforestation agenda, and including in particular community led involvement to respond to the challenges that Simon and Michelle and Nicole were talking about. We were delighted in fact to launch with you, the trillion trees initiative back in Davos in January. So perhaps you could tell us all about the scale of the challenges you feel we face and how these new kinds of digital innovations which can connect together so many communities and individuals like uplink can help communities and others to mobilize, engage and innovate at scale. Dr Goodall. Well, first of all, I'm sorry that Schwab has left because I wanted to thank him so much for putting the environment up you know, high up in the priorities of the Economic World Forum in Davos this year. And that's really made a difference. And also, but jumping in to help support the trillion tree challenge. Well, about the uplink, the uplink program, nobody can do it these days by themselves. We face unprecedented crisis in the world today. First of all, there's the right now, the pandemic. And the tragedy is that this pandemic has been predicted. And in some extent, it's been caused by us because we've disrespected the natural world. We've disrespected animals. We've created environments which make it much easier for a pathogen to jump from an animal to a human where it may cause a new disease, a zoonotic disease as it's called, such as COVID-19. Unfortunately, COVID-19 was incredibly contagious and has raced around the world, causing so much havoc, so much suffering, so much economic chaos. But at the same time, all the time, we have been threatened by a much greater challenge. And that is climate change. And to a great extent, it's the same disrespect of the natural world that has led to this climate crisis, because this planet has finite natural resources. And we've been plundering them in many places faster than Mother Nature can restore them. And we have to realize that we are part of the natural world and we depend upon the natural world. And we have been destroying the natural world. We've been destroying the forests, trees that can absorb carbon dioxide. We've been polluting the ocean, the ocean that can also absorb carbon dioxide, and both forests and oceans give us the oxygen we need to breathe. We're in the midst of the sixth great extinction. We depend on healthy ecosystems and the healthy ecosystem depends on the biodiversity. And gradually we are poisoning the land with chemicals and as well as destroying forests and oceans, we're destroying so many other environments. And so both of these major crises that were in the midst of right now, but in particular climate crisis, which threatens the future of all life on the planet, including human existence, if we don't get together, we'll be emerged from the pandemic and join hands. And that's why linked up is so important, because we can't do it alone. We need everybody who cares about the future generations to link up and try and work out a new green economy that is less destructive of the environment upon which we depend. And somehow move into non-renewable. I mean, we need to move into some of these innovations of science, like solar wind and tide energy. Otherwise, for my grandchildren and theirs, the future is more than grim. It's very dark. We mustn't let that happen. We have a window of time which is closing and we need everybody who cares to get together and find solutions now. Dr. Jane Goodall, thank you for those very moving and profound words. I suppose if I could follow up, if I may, a question for you. I mean, over the time that you've spent working on these issues, I guess on the one hand, you've seen us not learn the lessons and humanity is destroying more and more of its natural resource base, not getting better, but perhaps getting worse. But at the same time, these incredible changes in technology and in the ability to connect together digitally and that ability to perhaps mobilize hundreds, if not thousands, if not millions across communities and networks. Does that offer hope, would you say, from all of your time and work on these issues? And if so, is that the sort of thing that Uplink can perhaps inspire to create the mobilization of the millions that we might need to solve this challenge? Yes, I think, you know, let me preface my remarks by saying there's three major challenges we have to overcome. And one is poverty, because while people are living in abject poverty, they're going to destroy the environment to grow food, to feed their family, fish the last fish for the same reason. By the cheapest junk food, they can't afford to say, did this harm the environment? We have to solve the problem of the unsustainable lifestyles of the rest of us. And we have to recognize that right now, there are 7.2 billion people on the planet, and already we're using up natural resources in some places, as I've said, faster the nature can restore them. In 2050, it's estimated there'll be nearly 10 billion of us. So what's going to happen? We cannot afford just to put that aside, because it's politically incorrect, we've got to think about it. So to come more directly to your question, when I flew over the tiny national Gombe Park, where I've been studying chimpanzees and my team since 1960, when I flew over in 1990, the tiny national park, which had been part of the great the great equatorial forest belt that stretched across Africa, was a tiny island of forest surrounded by completely bare hills. More people living there than the land could support to buy food from elsewhere over farmed land. And that's when it hit me, if we don't help these people find ways of making a living without destroying the environment, we can't save the chimps or anything else. And so we began a program involving the local people right from the start, called Take Care on Takari. And these 104 villages now involved in this program, where people are learning about agroforestry, about permaculture, about tree nurseries, about all the different ways that they can make a living without destroying the forest. One, they've understood that protecting the forest is protecting their own future, not just wildlife. And two, in all of these 104 villages, there are volunteers who've been to our workshops and learn to use smartphones. This is technology for you. And they go into the forest reserves in their villages, which is where most of the wild chimps and other animals are quite unprotected. And they monitor the health of the forest, they're very proud of their work. It gets uploaded into a platform on the clouds. And it's worked. So if you fly over Gombe today, you don't see those bare hills. The forest has come back. And we've got this program in six other African countries. And a major part of it is involved is scholarships to keep girls in school during and after puberty and empowering women by enabling to get small grants from microcredit programs based on the work of one of my heroes, Muhammad Yunus and the Grumine Bank. And this has made the villages in all of these seven countries our partners in conservation. It's all ready to be scaled up. And technology and our amazing brains, that's what can help us scale it up with satellite imagery, GIS, GPS, and of course, funding. Thank you so much. It's quite inspiring in terms of the potential, certainly that you've seen and you've experienced, have had the digital capability through smart phones and things can connect smaller communities and locally based activities into a much bigger mobilization, which is, as you say, the link upward, the uplink kind of core element of the platform. Perhaps Simon and Michelle, we can turn back to you because there's something very interesting, isn't there in here about the small scale entrepreneur or innovator community based initiative startup, but it's not small scale because lots and lots connected together is a massive change. And I wonder through your journey and experiences with uplink, Simon, Michelle, there's been any particular startup or individual entrepreneur that's caught your eye. Maybe Simon, we could start with you first. Yeah, great question. Actually, there are so many phenomenal entrepreneurs and I know that I think tomorrow there's going to be a big focus on trees. So there's a couple there who are truly inspiring. So I won't talk about the trees ones coming up, but certainly the oceans and the deep dive on oceans. There was one that really blew me away and that was Recyclo. So the CEO is Shui Yaminu who founded Recyclo three years ago in Myanmar. And what they do is they focus on recycling and waste solutions in Southeast Asia. This is a part of the world where that technology and those services are scarce. And they basically target a region where they can really make a difference. And they're working hand in hand with companies operating in that region to institutionalize recycling and sustainability as a norm for doing business. And I also love actually that they're they're providing data analytics on the on the amount of waste that's recycled and the impact of on the carbon footprint. I think it's about 500 tons of waste that they're managing. And they've saved 1500 tons of CO2. And on top of that they've educated nearly a million people on the on the merits of proper recycling. So that's a really great example of what one small entrepreneur in Myanmar can do. Just think about all those others. It's a brilliant example Simon. We were delighted to find them when we kind of put out the ocean and waste challenge on uplink. I think that they came in on the plastic pollution solution set. And if I recall correctly you might remember that through a discussion like this we had a global range of stakeholders watching and literally quite soon after those entrepreneurs were put in contact with the city of Jakarta to see if what they were doing in Myanmar couldn't be replicated in Indonesia. And so the power of these connections and of course how it gets investors and others on the financing side interested can go exponential quite quickly as as Jane was saying. So it just sort of goes to show how small innovations if we can kind of find and connect together on a platform can actually start to change the game quite dramatically. Michelle are there any other particular innovators or entrepreneurs or or or or start to sort of caught your eye on the uplink platform. Sure. I'd like to highlight one that that that came through the COVID innovation sprint and specifically the idea was submitted by Hello Better and they're calm through the crisis campaign. This campaign provides people with free professional psychological support from a fully digital solution. And at Deloitte we recognize that one in four people experience poor mental health and our annual research of millennials and Gen Z's has shown that 48 percent reported being anxious or stressed all or most of the time and 44 percent ranked mental health as their first or second priority in life and half of those who took time off from work gave their employers a different reason than their true reason which was mental health. So at Deloitte we want all of our professionals to thrive. We know people are not at their best when they're experiencing poor mental health and so positively enhancing mental health of our people through an inclusive and supportive environment as a global strategic priority for us in COVID has only brought the urgency of mental health even more for the four to the forefront not just for us but for all employers and so let me come back to Hello Better and its solution and highlight two advantages which really which really struck me. The first is that it enables self-service so a person get assistance and information on their own and this is important because as I shared earlier people still face a stigma when it comes to mental ill health and second the information provided is evidence-based and this is important because there are a lot of tools and apps out there to enable mental health but an evidence-based approach meaning it's grounded in what works is really critical when it comes to effectiveness. So what I want to say to conclude is kudos to Hello Better right first for submitting an idea to our COVID challenge and specifically one that reminds us especially in these times that it's okay to be not okay and then second for providing a very valuable tool to aid people in order for them to get access to help. Michelle that's a brilliant brilliant example it's so exciting I mean for those who are listening in the way we sort of structure this and my colleague John I'm sure will talk more about it and you'll find more on the uplink website uplink.wefforum.org is we have sprints so for a short period of time six weeks or so maybe solutions to problems that people see in terms of the response to COVID or oceans issues we heard about plastic pollution or how to upscale massively the planting and restoration of trees and landscapes as Dr Jane Goodall was talking about and what's really exciting about that is through the global reach of uplink all sorts of smaller more purpose-driven initiatives or startups or ideas can be collated and people like Simon or Jane Goodall or Michelle or others from actually you know the wide range of networks that we're able to curate at the World Economic Forum and can find out can connect together can scale up and take things to an altogether new dimension of impact which is which is really quite exciting um to that extent Nicole coming back to you I mean you've sort of been part of this from the other side and I wonder from your perspective what sort of reflections you might have about how we might you know expand our networks or what people like yourselves who are engaged in that startup and innovation space are looking for from something like uplink Nicole over to you thanks Dominic well this is a great start the platform itself through what I've been able to learn about a number of different innovations as noted by Simon and these innovations have the power to be essentially amplify each other and by bringing us together we can assist essentially assist each other in in in in that way with say for instance with Cortoglio something that can connect the research that each innovation each of the innovators is is working on so the access to each other as well as part potential partners is something that's really vital for us to essentially scale up these these research these resources as well as access to additional data it's really important for with the advent of COVID for us to essentially get out there and get as much knowledge connected into the to the researchers as possible and uplink provides that opportunity by connecting us with partners as well as like-minded researchers and innovators that we can essentially bring that together and excuse me and and bring those innovations together and and leverage the platform in that way thanks Nicole I think that's that's excellent again and people like yourselves we would never have found through our kind of usual networks at the World Economic Forum so it's just a privilege and a pleasure to be able to make those connections and see what we can do to help scale up I have a favorite which I'm going to take prerogative to to talk about I'm a kind of a sort of oceans water person a little bit by background and we found this super outfit who also submitted through the uplink challenge called cubex global and these are is co-founded by a couple of young pakistani entrepreneurs who are part of our global shapers community I don't know if there's any global shapers who are tuning in and watching kudos to you Chappell but what they'd created was a digital marketplace for seafraith that maximizes the empty shipping container space because when shipping containers go on the ship it's not like they're always full so in fact you could be shipping big containers but only half full of stuff so if you can have a smarter digital marketplace to fill up the gaps between all those shipping containers a couple of things happen first of all it becomes a lot cheaper and more agile for you to ship things around the world and secondly it's a much more sustainable process for ocean transport because you've got less ships because you've filled up all the ships and all the containers full up and they've even run some numbers on how much greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced which are not insignificant and in fact having done that they're now going through their series a round of financing and having been connected to the forum shipping industry group and others so I just thought I'd get that one because that was my favorite we have we do these sprints we have juries and they all start to vote they're all very big experts and things and they start to vote on which ones they like I put that one forward as my one that the others voted for other things but I thought I'd use that to get my point across well done cubex so there we are see all our all our sponsors and champions have their favorites listen Dr Jane Goodall, Michelle Parmalay, Samim Khauhi and Nicole thank you so much for your time and being with us for this and thank you for your engagement with uplink if you are watching this and you're thinking hmm I reckon I've got a pretty good idea or two or I'm actually running a sort of small shop purpose driven I've got some entrepreneurial clout in me I've given you the site before uplink.weffforum.org get in touch get in touch to kind of put yourself forward in one of the sprints that we've got or generally become part of the community or indeed bring others who you know who are working in this space along because as we grow this network we're on 4000 could it be four million just imagine what that could do to triggering the change that we want to see across all of those SDGs and to finding a mobilization of bottom up grassroots solutions to some of the things that we've heard about on this discussion already. So I hope that gives you a flavor of uplink and again thank you to Nicole Bishop, Michelle Parmalay, Samim Khauhi and Professor Klaus Schwab a founder and executive chairman at the World W Forum, Jane Goodall of course what we're going to do now is play a little film to give you a little bit more of a feel for uplink and then from here on my colleague John Dutton who heads the uplink initiative will take forward the next part of the conversation. So for this segment thanks again to the panelists thank you for listening I hope it's got your juices going and you're already starting to submit your applications to join the uplink community and with that let us move to the film thank you very much indeed.