 It's my pleasure to now introduce Mr. Akam Steiner. Akam has since June this year been serving as the head of the United Nations Development Program and he's also the chair of the United Nations Development Group which brings together the 32 UN agencies delivering together the sustainable development goals. As the administrator of the UNDP he oversees deployment of five billion per year. The UNDG which includes the biggest UN agencies UNICEF, World Food Program, UNHCR and World Health Organization, overall delivers 25 billion per year. Akam has argued that the future of development will be defined through the relationship between people and economy and the transition of a green economy is an imperative. As a former head of the United Nations Environment, Akam has had considerable success in adopting for the realignment of finance to environmental sustainability. Now his and our collective challenge is to support the realignment of finance towards the sustainable development goals. Please welcome Mr. Akam Steiner to the stage. Good morning ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for the warm welcome and for the introduction that John just made. I want to begin by thanking him and SoCAP and many others who have sought to develop a conversation between that world that we often call public policy, the United Nations, that sphere of globalization in which I happen to be working right now and your world, the world of opportunity, of entrepreneurship, of having the means to put your money where your mouth is to put it simply. I stand here before you this morning, first of all, as somebody who a while back was born on a farm in Brazil. My parents were farmers and over the course of my life I found myself now leading the largest UN agency within the United Nations system, an organization that John just described in terms of financial turnover, but actually it's most powerful foundation on which it can influence what happens next in our world is that we are present almost everywhere in over 170 countries with people working on the front lines of the challenges of development, of understanding the risks locally but also collectively. And I happen to now be in New York heading this agency in three months and as part of our Secretary General's initiative also extremely interested in trying to address the future of finance and development. But before I do so let me also emphasize that the focus of the presentation this morning was meant to be on these sustainable development goals. Many or most of you will have heard of them. You may know of its genesis and the link to finance and impact investing. Let me also say and some of you will be familiar with Douglas Adams hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy and the answer to the question about life the universe and everything was so simple 42. I want to emphasize the SDGs are not attempting to be the answer. The sustainable development goals as they have evolved and were then agreed by every nation on this planet was first of all a common framework with which to recognize the challenges that lie before us. Secondly they are also a declaration of interdependence. First of all of issues we know from our 20th century history that economic development that ignores social dimensions inequality alienation marginalization sooner or later runs into crisis just like ignoring our planet the environment sustainability can ultimately destroy economies and societies so that linkage between the economic the social and the environmental is central to an integrated approach and it is a declaration of interdependence amongst us as peoples at the beginning of the 21st century with seven billion people on this planet soon eight nine and ten billion people decisions taken in the city like San Francisco can influence the lives of people literally thousands of miles away and vice versa so this group of goals is not the answer but it provides us with a framework with which to look first of all at a simple fact life is complex at the beginning of the 21st century let's not pretend otherwise but to argue that everything is connected to everything else and therefore nothing can be done is also very paralyzing features so the power I believe of the sustainable development goals that we now see unfolding across the world is that it tries to accept complexity but not let us be paralyzed but it provides us with a common framework with a common language it also gives us a way in which to understand how we can achieve win-win outcomes rather than trade-offs and win-lose outcomes whether across the social the economic the environmental or indeed between poorer nations or richer nations the opportunity it speaks to and why I am here with you this morning is that financing is critical it is central and it is also recognition that governments and we in the United Nations system have had to come to terms with that public finance governments as investors are just a small share of our economies to try to address the great challenges of the 21st century that we need to address together collectively requires us to bring the three quarters of four fifths of economic activity in alignment with these objectives the sustainable development goals are an expression of a common and shared strategy and remarkably it is not only resonating with governments across the world and whether they are developing or develop countries industrialized or poor island nations but what I have been most astonished about is how people in the private sector world in the investment world are beginning to look at these sustainable development goals as a real opportunity we have extraordinary human ingenuity at our disposal never in the history of humanity have we lived in such extraordinarily powerful times in terms of possibility science technology knowledge education just to mention a few are at our disposal as never before wealth and money has reached unprecedented levels in terms of the wealth that is at our disposal but the extraordinary thing is that we live in a world where many people are looking to invest their money and can't find the right place to do it and yet much of the world is actually looking for money to invest in solving problems problems for ourselves but also for the common good of humanity I know that this is part of the reason why you are here together and therefore let me speak for a moment to this idea of why a united nations family and the family of impact investors should be talking to one another we work at the front line of understanding the risks to the future of humanity we intervene unfortunately very often as a crisis response as you very often can watch on television sets when health crisis breakout conflicts natural disasters civil wars but under the leadership of our new secretary general prevention has taken a far greater place in the work of the UN and in terms of how we would like to work the SDGs are our opportunity to start investing together in different futures and that requires us to come together what we need however for that to happen is to have good public policy this is one of the core tasks of the United Nations family whether across health international aviation the universal postal system whether it is in the international labor organization or indeed in the world trade organization the extraordinary thing about the United Nations family of specialized agencies is that they cover virtually every aspect of what allows us to trade with one another communicate with one another invest in one another and that is part of the proposition of these sustainable development goals how can we invest in one another's common future you represent a part of the world that has the means and the resources to actually bring the finance to the kinds of agendas that we know we cannot address in isolation from one another let me just give you a couple of examples to illustrate that this is not just abstract thinking it is not just pros and rhetoric it is in fact a very real investment proposition public policy often is viewed as big government and more government but let us also be frank that discussion of the 80s and 90s that the less government the better the more market the better is too simplistic an answer public policy is in the first instance an expression of our common interest it is how we would like to have our economies and societies function and we make different choices in different communities and nations but without public policy without a regulatory environment we know that there would be too many failures in the United Nations what we try to do is to bring the best of science and of political analysis and economic analysis and point out to leaders across the world where the greatest risks for the future lie health crisis you have seen just in the last few years how close we came to sometimes almost having to shut down our global economy because of the outbreak of infectious diseases we spent the last 25 years trying to bring to the attention of the world the threat of carbon dioxide something that most of us would have learned about in school and then forgotten about it it is transforming everything on this planet and we have helped by bringing nations together every year in these painfully slow processes of agreeing on what to do to act collectively because climate change is another illustration that shows why one country acting to solve a problem has no chance of succeeding if others do not join on the back of that and this is part of the DNA of the STG's extraordinary markets and opportunities have opened up the renewable energy revolution that you know in the state of California has one of its homes is however a part of this effort of bringing the global community of nations together to say we have to transition to a low carbon economy many of you are already investors in the sectors of energy of transport of cities and urban infrastructure or indeed of agriculture and on the back of this common agenda that unites us and will hopefully allow us to look at global market spaces and places as acting in unison unbelievable opportunities for investment are opening up but our financial system is not aligned with addressing these in fact much of our money is invested in maintaining a 20th century economy rather than facing the challenges of the 21st century take for example an issue such as food waste we know that we have to increase agriculture production or at least food production in the coming years significantly if you are going to feed another two to three billion people on this planet and yet our agriculture production system today is already producing food in such a way that we are destroying land on which we grow food we have a net loss of arable land added that the fact that more than 35 percent of all food produced every year on this planet is never consumed because it is lost between farm and market or it is just thrown away sell by dates the luxury of buying cheap food it rots in the fridges it gets thrown away cafeterias restaurants the waste of food is unbelievable our opportunity is to work with you to look at ways in which we can address this turn problems into opportunities and address the space for solutions in a way that we can scale up in our work every day in the United Nations we can try to bring pilot projects to demonstrate possible solutions we cannot and we are not in a position to take them to scale countries are not in a position to take them to scale they need you particularly as impact investors to be the pioneers the entrepreneurial leaders the catalyst that can create confidence and trust in an economy that rather than adding to our problems begins to make investment a part of the solution my hope is that the sustainable development goals as you can use them in your everyday decision-making and thinking will increasingly become a concept and a language that unites us much of the economic paradigm of the last 50 to 100 years was premised that somehow our individual well-being is premised on out competing the other now competition is good many of you in this room wouldn't be sitting here if you hadn't been a very good competitor in what you do but as a human family at the beginning of the 21st century let us be honest we cannot simply premise our common future on out competing one another in a world with 10 billion people where pollution where the risk of disease of economic collapse or of social upheaval because of inequality and poverty threatens the very fabric of our global economy that we so often invoke is a real challenge my plea my invitation to you is to engage with us in the United Nations we are part of that ecosystem in which you operate we have a particular role that we can bring to this as we recognize increasingly that you have a unique role to help us awaken a financial system a financial market a universe of investors that accepts that you can as you have so often discussed in so-called meetings bring meaning to money and bring money to meaningful solutions ladies and gentlemen the 21st century could be the greatest century in human history it could also be the worst those were the words of Jim Martin whose school I had the privilege to lead at the University of Oxford for the past year a school focused on the great challenges of the 21st century now one of the most manageable challenges that we have is to actually bring all that money all that wealth all that capital that is looking for good and valuable and also profitable things to do in alignment with humanity must find new ways of doing business I invite you to join us on that journey I thank you for the time that you have given me here this morning and above all I thank you for the interest that you have already shown by being here by doing what you do to be part of that community and that voice across the world thank you very much