 Your Excellencies Minister Mohammed Al-Gargavi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs, Your Excellency Sultan Syed Nasr Al-Mansuri, Minister of Economy, the UAE government. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, members of the Global Agenda Council, friends. It gives me great pleasure to preside over the closing ceremony of this remarkable summit. What you have all taken part in over the last three days is nothing less but the world's foremost brainstorming about the future. 80 councils, also meeting in six metacouncils, but beyond that in the myriad of formal and informal cross-council meetings, has helped us in a tremendous way to continue our work, to develop and understand the future agenda. We bring together people from so many different walks of life, thought leaders, political leaders, academic leaders, business leaders, people from the civil society and geo-communities, who each and every one of them work on those issues on a very high level, on a daily basis. The added value, we think, from the World Economic Forum, is that we bring you together, and we bring you together in an informal setting where we try to stimulate debates that might not otherwise have happened between people who might not otherwise have met, if not at least not in this type of format. And we do see great things coming out of that. As you will have noticed, this has been a summit where we have been trying out a number of innovative approaches. We have introduced the concept of metacouncils. That was very much a response to the requirement of the feedback that we got from the previous council chairs, and some of you are still here, saying that we want to meet across. We see so many connections, and hence we're looking for ways to actually develop these connections and stimulate them in a more structured way. We have been developing together the concept of transformation maps. I know you all are being exposed to them. We're looking forward to the feedback because this is truly work in progress. We have a long way to go, but I also think we have come a long way in order to define and develop how these different issues are related. As some of us spoke about during the opening, everything is related to everything else. But that's not a particularly interesting insight, because you can't use it for any practical purpose. What we need to know is how things are related to each other, and what are the most important relationships, and what does that relationship mean? May there be connections and relationships that we do not see? Vice-President Gore mentioned this in his statement earlier, that there are externalities that we do not see when we make our economic decisions or other decisions. This is what we try to highlight when we work on transformation maps. So many people in so many councils have also been addressing, as you said, Vice-President, the need to think long-term, and that one of the challenges of the day is the short-termism in decision-making models, be them private or public or elsewhere. We try to introduce a stronger emphasis on mandates. I know that some of the councils were struggling with that at the beginning. We're not surprised it was an invitation for a discussion, a thorough, genuine, oneness discussion, but we hope that the outcome is that it's clearer when you leave in a few hours, or maybe tomorrow or later on, where you're going to take your work further. And maybe, most importantly, the emphasis on impact. Of course, it's interesting to get together and discuss together and understand at a higher level, but that's not really why we bring you here. Why we bring you here in the close partnership with our generous host, the UAE government, and the Government of Dubai. We do that because we want to shape the future, not only understand the future, we want to have impact. So the work we've been doing to try to enhance the emphasis on how we actually get to impact, what is impact, how do we measure impact, how do we know it when we see it, and how can we improve, has been very important for us. I have had the pleasure of walking around in many of the councils, unfortunately not everyone, but I've got feedback from practically all of them in one way or the other, and I can see that several common themes emerge. It's quite interesting. It seems to be, now November 2014, a remarkable year in many respects. There are many common themes that comes up in the several councils where we can see the connections of what people care about. We're living in a world of enormous opportunities, tremendous technological change, major breakthrough in robotics, in space technology, in several emerging technologies, nanotechnology, and we're also seeing that we are now at the stage we're up to now. Most of technological innovation was creating tools that we could work with. We're now entering into a phase where much of the technological innovation will be about us, will be in modern medicine, how we will actually be changed ourselves by technology. Endless opportunity, but also a world of significant challenges and challenges that are even more obvious and visible that only a few years ago. We talked about, even in this last panel, the rise of inequality and the concept of hyper-inequality. This came up everywhere, from the economic focus council to the socially-focused, politically-focused, or even industry-focused councils. This comes up, the subject of inequality and lack of inclusion, but also, of course, how to improve inclusion, how to create the real jobs of the future, how to educate, not only educate, but also to develop the skills that are necessary for the future. It was a major theme across several councils. There was a lot of focus on the rising emphasis on geo-economics, the relationship between geo-politics and economic trends, and how they are interrelated. Many discussions were about what started what, but the phenomenon which is clear is that we are living in times of major change and the question, still unanswered, but which was illustrated and questioned and thought about in very advanced terms in many councils, is actually globalization going in reverse? Are we becoming less global and maybe more regional than we were? An open question still, but a lot of interesting discussions to follow up in several councils. The return of strategic competition between major players, security concerns where for many years asymmetric and they will still be, but we're also seeing, in a sense, the return of symmetrical challenges between strong states on two sides of the equation, often playing out in the third country or a third region's area, but which remembers times past in a way that we have to understand and address. What happens to leadership? Many councils talked about the erosion of governance. That's government, it's global governance and it's informal governance. What's happening? How can we substitute classical forms of governance with new and innovative forms of governance, network governance and so on? A key word again was trust. Trust or the lack of it seems to be a theme in many councils. There seems to be a challenge that a lot of people are observing that trust between those governing and those governed is going down in many countries and the trust between countries is going down, the trust inside society is going down and trust is social capital at a high level. How can we restore trust? How can we get people to trust each other, governments of the countries and so on? And here comes a whole series of ideas about innovative governance, how to build, deserve, maintain and strengthen the trust in society. Trust comes up in many councils. One example was in the Ebola response where we see that the countries whose governments have been trusted when they communicate what to do about the disease seems to have been more successful than the governments where for good or bad reasons there have been less trust in authorities. Very important insight, very practical insight to share. There are so many things that came up, this is just a small portion of course of what was discussed. But I would underline the purpose is not only to understand but also to shape agendas, to bring people together. And I think one of the most important outcomes is not necessarily the reports or the specific initiatives while very important. It's all the connections that you bring with you when you go out there after this meeting in your councils, across councils, back to your normal work. We bring busy people here, that's why you're here. You're here because you have important roles wherever you are and of course we take time out of your busy agendas. We respect and we thank you for taking that time to share with us. But we also hope that we inspire you in your daily work when you go back. I would now have a great pleasure of introducing or representing our generous host, his excellency, Mohamed Algargavi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs. And while he takes the lecture, he will speak in Arabic. So please put on your translation equipment. Excellency, the floor is yours. Say that. Ladies and gentlemen, good evening or good afternoon. We meet here today in the closing of this seventh edition of the Global Agenda. We are all comfortable towards the discussion conducted in the past three days. We met here and we brought together the best brains and the best capabilities from different sectors and they could achieve more than 20 hours of work during three days. I would like to call it hours of intellectual exchange, contemplation and reaching conclusions, suggesting ideas towards 86 challenges facing our world. When the brains of the intellectuals, experts and researchers meet with the commitment and the determination of the governments, we feel good, we feel comfortable and we become more optimistic of a better future. Ladies and gentlemen, throughout three days we spent with you, we listened to many discussions and we attended many sessions. We were really surprised to realize the amount of changes in many sectors, whether education, technological, environmental or others, the world was discussing in the past few years. 15 years ago, and with Mr. Al Gore, the Vice President of the United States, we met at MIT. He received me in his home and after that he was very interested in developing education in this region. We, since 15 years, worked together to develop education in the region and here we see him today with us with his different interests that they all focus on the human resource development on a global level. And in the past few days, also enjoyed the morning coffee with Professor Schwab, coffee that is filled with ideas, prospects for the future and discussion of the future with lots of realism. So we would like to thank him for all the efforts exerted and for dedicating his life to be in the best interest of global objectives. We do hope we are part of. In the past period, in this forum, many young male and females from the United Emirates participated with lots of enthusiasm in many sessions. They presented their ideas and we benefited from the ideas and proposed many innovative ideas. In brief, I can say that this forum has become an annual developmental opportunity and an opportunity to have an outlook for the future. We enjoy in the United Arab Emirates hosting it. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to convey to you the greetings of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Vice President, the Prime Minister, Rurer of Dubai. I would like also to convey to you his welcome to you all to present your ideas here in Emirates and wishing you all success in the best interest of happiness and happiness of humanity. I think that the United Arab Emirates is the number one country in extending developmental aids as a proportion of its GDP and His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum believes that extending knowledge and developmental solutions, creative ideas, innovative approaches is the most precious thing that the United Arab Emirates can grant to humanity, ladies and gentlemen. Through the different councils met here in the United Arab Emirates in the past three days, distinctive ideas were proposed and discussed. Yesterday I met with the Artificial Intelligence Council and there is an agreement now between the Global Agenda Council and the Government of the United Arab Emirates to establish an advisory council that brings together the best brains, the best universities to improve the life of humanity and to work to develop a global strategy to use robots and artificial intelligence. In this council, there will be the best brains on the world level, in addition to the best facilities and academic institutions such as Berkeley, the University of Berkeley-Mellon, Califa University and the Institute for Developed Sciences and the American University of Dubai, in addition to many other universities that will join us in this process. We would like through this Global Council to develop the global criteria for robots and artificial intelligence. And we want to be here in Emirates, the first station in the innovation of robots and artificial intelligence. Ladies and gentlemen, humanity is approaching a new era of civilization, as it was the case when the human being discovered fire more than one million years ago. Culture and civilization developed through the use of agriculture and farming more than 10,000 years ago. The wheel was invented 6,000 years ago. It really brings distances shorter. Today, we are in a new phase of human development through robots and artificial intelligence. We witness and we approach a new era in the history of humanity, in the life of humanity. And through this cooperation with the World Economic Forum, we want to be with you as pioneers of this technology. Under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the government of the United Arab Emirates and in cooperation with the World Economic Forum would extend the award or develop an award for the robots that service education, health and social services. The value of the award, the value of the award, one million US dollar, and it will be open to all participants on the world level. We will launch the details of this award during the government summit in February 2015. And we will see through this award the humanity capabilities to innovate in this field. And we will see also a glimpse of the future during next year, sorry, ladies and gentlemen. I wish that the organization of this summit this year is up to your expectation and I do hope that you still consider it as a forum for bringing us all together. And we are together with the World Economic Forum. We'll always seek the best development needed for this summit in order to develop ideas, initiatives and approaches discussed during the summit. We would like to greet you all and we wish we'll meet you next year in Abu Dhabi in the eighth edition of the summit on the global agenda that will be held between the 20th to the 22nd of October 2015. Thank you and salamu alaykum. Thank you very much, Your Excellency Minister Mohamed Al-Gargavi. I now call upon our co-chair, His Excellency Sultan Syed Nasir Al-Mansuri, Minister of Economy of the UAE Government. The floor is yours. Good morning, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen. It's such a wonderful, actually good afternoon, it's already 12.45. But it's such a wonderful day also for all of us because we just heard from my colleague, His Excellency Mohamed Al-Gargavi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs. He's also the Chairman of the Organizing Committee of this wonderful award that has been announced. Recently, Your Excellency, I was in the US and we went with my delegation from the UAE through a number of institutions in the US. We were eager to look at innovation and how we can implement that into the agenda of the economy of the UAE. And one of the stops we had, and I always mention this because it's very important for what I call the international relationship between countries, the UAE and the US, is one example. We stopped at the National Hospitals in Washington, D.C. This hospital is a children's hospital, actually, and it has a special kind of relationship with our leadership, with our late Sheikh Syed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan, who actually donated $150 million to that hospital. And in the lobby of that hospital, this is beautiful painting of him sitting with our national crowd and a child in his lap. A lot of Americans, they come by and they look at that and they start asking questions. What is the relationship of this guy in Washington, D.C., dressed up this way in the middle of the lobby of this, and wonderful stories start to connect. And that is why we have something like this here, how we connect between nations, peoples, ideas, and so on. But this is not the end of the story because we went there and out of the gesture that came from his highness, late Sheikh Syed, he created an institute, which is an institute of research on the biomedical. And that fits very nicely with what has been announced by Excellency Hamid Grigawi on this award, an innovation in the biomedical. Already, I've seen a lot of the development in robotic that is going to be utilized in the medical fields, which are why it existed there in that institute, which is called Sheikh Syed Institute, for research. And I think this is for us and for the whole of humanity is a good way of exploring, developing, investing, and creating a much better life for all of us on the earth. But also let me, on behalf of the UAE government, it's actually my honor to welcome you to the closing ceremony of the seventh summit on the global agenda. It was indeed our privilege to host this milestone event underlying the growing prominence of UAE in driving the global development debate. As we come to the final day of the summit, there is an immense sense of satisfaction at having been able to once again facilitate this intellectual dialogue that helps identify solution to some of the pressing challenges that the world faces today. The UAE leadership under President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Mizaid Al Nahyan and Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, is committed to fostering the spirit of global citizenship. They have consistently underlined the importance of peaceful dialogue and sustained engagement with multiple stakeholders as they way forward to overcoming global challenges successfully. There are no quick fix before us, but we certainly do have the option to address issues by listening to one another and sharing our concerns. This is why aptly demonstrated again at the summit on the global agenda during which the UAE brainstormed for a better world with the participation of over 1,000 governmental leaders, business experts and representatives of the civil society and academia. They shared their ideas and concerns and looked at best practices exploring the latest development in business, society and technology, and to come up with innovation recommendation that can help overcome global challenges. Talking about innovation, I think a lot of you have heard about our agenda also on innovation and the strategy that was announced by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, the Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE on innovation strategy for the UAE, which is based on three main pillars, education, R&D, and finally the commercialization of this. Now, this is going to be a subject that will be discussed all the time, and it's a subject that will be of great importance for us here in the UAE. It's part of our agenda in how we can impose, and this is a very important word, innovation and build it into the diversification of our economy. And we have a target. We are a nation that works on targets. 2021, we should have up to 5% of our GDP coming from innovation. To do that, we have already set the strategy, and we can do it. We have no problem doing it. My only problem is not going to be 5%, I think we'll do, we'll manage much more than 5%. But this is where you all can also participate in this, because this is how we look at this country. You know, everybody is a partner here. And we cannot really, at the end of the day, achieve this agenda without your support and your cooperation, and you're also hopefully participation in the realization of this agenda as we go on. Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, the debate on socioeconomic development is an ongoing process that we meet at this summit. We raise hopes for over 7 billion people, citizens of this world. I have a problem with the microphone. There's something happening there, but it's not me. I don't know what's going on there. But also, when we came together two days back, our primary concern was to get a better understanding of the fundamental transformations impacting our world. Our goal was to come up with strategic recommendations toward a new growth model that would make a difference to the world. Ultimately, our efforts was to create a more peaceful, more environmentally responsible, and more inclusive world. Our debate was not just centered on the immediate concern related to health issues, extremism, genocide, and refugee crisis the world faces today, but also on the persistent challenges, such as unemployment, food security, poverty, as well as climate change and energy crisis, all of which are showing down the world in its march to progress. The summit has once again made us realize that as citizens of an interconnected world, we have a responsibility to expand the scope of good health, peace, and happiness beyond geographical boundaries. As an economic block of more than 350 million people, the Middle East and North Africa region, has a prominent role in making this possible. Our youthful population offers great possibilities, and therefore their demand for good education, jobs, homes, and a better standard of living have always set the agenda of growth. And this has always been central to the UAE's development approach. Also as a modern federal country that presents stability and sustainable development, the UAE is consistently working as a catalyst for positive change in the world. And with peace and progress, the UAE contributes to opportunities for shared prosperity in the region. At the same time, our focus is on a sustainable development and growth activities that benefits everyone who lives and work in this country, and hopefully we extend this also to the rest of the region. The UAE is also an example in human capital development, capacity building, and promotion of the cultural of sustainable development, which is regarded as a model worth emulating. Our country has emerged as a global hub that connects nations, peoples, and ideas across the world, and also contributes to international dialogue and engagement. The UAE, ladies and gentlemen, is a truly country that bridges east and west, connecting over 2.5 billion people within a four hour flight and serving a gateway to emerging markets in the Middle East, Africa, South Asia. Now when I say beyond, I think we have a lot of flights now connecting North America, South America, and the rest of the world. We are probably one of the best connected places in the world. And I think this is quite an amazing development. If we look at our figures of 2004, passenger-wise, we had 28 million passengers. I look at the figures expected for 2014. It's going to be 98 million passengers are going to be using our airports in 2014. Huge, huge growth. Of course, this was all led by our visionary leadership, guided by our vision of 2021. For those of you who do not understand the year 2021 for us, this will be the year that we celebrate our golden jubilee, 50 years as a nation. And through that, of course, our ambition is to become one of the best nations in the world. The figure number one is always raised everywhere here, and I think we can achieve a lot within this. We will also continue to serve as a beacon of hope for the region and the leading destination for the world to connect and conduct business. As we conclude the summit today on behalf of the UAE government, I once again thank you for your positive and productive contribution to the healthy debate at the summit on the global agenda. I also thank the World Economic Forum for hosting the summit on the global agenda in the UAE. I very much look forward to welcome you again for the summit next year with the satisfaction of having contributed to addressing some of the challenges in the world that we face today. I, of course, would also look forward very much to maybe bring my overcoat and also meet you and Davos with the rest of the team from the UAE. I thank you, Wank, again, and have a safe journey. Thank you. Your Excellency, Minister Mansoori, thank you so much for this and thank you for your continuous support. Now, I'm the only one that stands between you and the farewell lunch. I will soon proceed to close this event. But first, I want to once again express our warmest thanks to the UAE government and to the government of Dubai and our close partners, who is a generous host, as you all will have seen in the days you have been here. But beyond being just a generous host, it's also a very close partner because, having in my former lives, I have visited many countries and worked with many governments, and I can surely tell you that this government is really a star performer when it comes to the desire to innovate and the ability to innovate and the openness to new ideas and the way to welcome world expertise into your country and listen. Tomorrow, we will have a follow-up event, where some of you have been invited especially to, which we call the Future Circles. Future Circles is a meeting between some of our experts from the Global Agenda Council and a similar number of experts and leaders from the UAE, who will meet in six specific circles on six select topics and discuss very practical outcomes of this summit and what it means to the UAE government. I think that's a great innovation. I very much look forward, myself, to take part in the Future Circles tomorrow. And I also will tell you that we are developing the concept of this whole summit in order to even more clearly focus on the future and making it even more relevant to people who, like this government, want to think about how to take their country, their society, their economy into the future, as they've already done. Then I want to thank all you participants for coming here, for spending time with us. A particular thank you to the chairs and the vice chairs, who, by the way, whose job is not over. Just remind you that after the lunch that we will have, we will call upon you for a debrief from the councils, just after the lunch. And thank you all for your efforts, for your ideas, for your willingness to share. Your willingness to share here. There were so many fascinating ideas developing and also so many experiences as I visited the Peter Maurer Council on Fragility, Violence and Conflict, who told me that after a few days of focusing on Fragility, Violence and Conflict, they wanted to see something positive. So they linked up to the Resilience Council to see how one could come out of Fragility, Violence and Councils, and both of them were interested in good governance. So they have to link up with the future of government and the Global Governance Council and the Regional Association Councils, who again need to understand the developments in industries and technology. What I'm telling you is, please take this with you. It's not over. This is just the beginning. It's the beginning of a two-year term. And we want you to connect and interact with each other as councils, but where possible, also across councils. And we will provide venues for that. Much of that will be interactive and virtual. Some of it will be physical in our future events as they evolve, and we had many good discussions on that. And thirdly, I want to thank our own staff, because if anybody here believes that getting over a thousand people here and organizing 80 plus six conversations and many others on top of that private and public is easy, you're actually wrong. The reason it works is because we have a really excellent team or set of teams, and I want to thank them all personally. Martina Larkin is the main responsible for the team that runs the Global Agenda Council people. I also want to thank all your, all the council managers and everybody else in her team. Everybody, and I want a special thank to the event team because much of the practical work of actually organizing all this in such a smooth way is, at least I hope it looks smooth to those of you who are on the participant side. We are, some people are working day and night to make it look smooth. And thank you to you, the events team and everybody else in the forum for doing this. So in welcoming you to the farewell lunch, which will be served out there in the water garden, I now have the pleasure to declare the summit on the Global Agenda 2014 for closed.