 Your Highness, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, first of all I would like to extend my gratitude to His Highness Maktoum bin Muammad, Deputy Ruler of Dubai, His Excellency Muammad Algargabi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs and the future of the UAE. For this great tradition and partnership, no entering its eleventh edition. Also, welcome to all of you, the Council members. This is the world's biggest brainstorming that lays the intellectual groundwork for our annual meeting in Davos. Climate change, polarization, trade wars, a looming recession, and geopolitical tensions are straining societies and risk the prospects of future generations. But the cohesive, peaceful, and sustainable world is possible. As 700 of the globally leading experts, I know you will bring with you ideas on how to shape and optimize the equation for the future that inspires action today, breaking some of the impasses that we are faced with. Compromising 38 distinct councils, your recommendations are crucial in the World Economic Forum's work on topics as diverse as cybersecurity, biodiversity, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, education and work, skills and upskilling and reskilling, the state of the financial system, mental health, cities, urbanization, and geopolitics. The list could even have been made longer. Mr. Churchill said once that the farther backward you can look the farther forward, you're likely to see. Now, 50 years ago, we created this Davos manifesto written by our founder and executive chairman Klaas Schwab outlined the principles of the stakeholder approach. This year's annual meetings theme in Davos is stakeholders for a cohesive and sustainable world. It aims to give concrete meaning to stakeholder capitalism, help governments and international institutions progress on the Paris agreement and the sustainable development goals and facilitate discussions on technology and trade governance. The new technologies can play a crucial role in solving many of the most pressing global challenges. Data is the new oxygen, but it isn't only about big data, but also about smart data. These are topics that we are grappling with at the World Economic Forum's four IR centers, also establishing traffic rules, making sure that the new technologies work in the interest of humankind. And it was great also to be able to inaugurate the affiliate center for the Ford Industrial Revolution here in Dubai some months ago. And the center is already contributing very strongly, as expected to overall work. We are living in a truly multi-polar, multi-conceptual world. For the first time, Asia is no more than 50 percent of the global GDP. America's unipolar moment has passed as quickly as it appeared at the end of the Cold War, but still the U.S. is the world's largest economy, around 22 percent of the global GDP, five percent of the global population. In many ways, we have moved from Cold War to hot peace. And we got to develop the new tools to collaborate against such a backdrop. The world's problems are more and more integrated, but the response to them, unfortunately, increasingly fragmented. We just have to realize that we are living in a truly globalized world where your problems are my problems and vice versa, and we have to act accordingly. The world economy is facing real headwinds, with the lowest growth in a decade. And we are paying the price for geopolitical polarization. Uncertainty about the future of the global trading system is no negatively impacting global growth. What would happen if we were faced with another serious recession? Would global leaders at this time be able to come together as global leaders were following Lehman Brothers' fall in September 2008 and agree on orthodox initiatives to make sure that the global economy did not end up in a really, really serious recession? I think this is something to think about for all of us. And these are issues that we also will address, of course, in Davos, trying to find solutions together in a global dialogue, even against this backdrop of more polarization. As the international organization for public private cooperation, the World Economic Forum will continue to offer our platform to connect, integrate, and scale necessary efforts to address all these challenges. And none of these challenges that I mentioned can we deal with without doing it in a multi-stakeholder way, bringing in also the business sector as an important part of the solutions. And what better place to brainstorm about these issues than where we are today? Where our collaboration with Dubai has deepened on each of these fronts and with you, the council member, 700 of the most prominent thought leaders in the world. We really need to use these two days in a very effective way. It comes with a huge responsibility based on the challenges that we are now faced with. And we also have to create some optimism and find some solutions because that is possible. On that note, I would like to hand over the floor to my dear friend, Minister Gehgavi, Minister of the Future. Can you think of a better portfolio? Minister, the floor is yours, but please also take on your headphones for those that are not fluent in Arabic. Thank you and welcome. In the name of God Almighty, Your Highness Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohamed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Vice Crown Prince of Dubai, Mr. Burje, Brandy, President of the World Economic Forum, ladies and gentlemen. It's my pleasure to welcome you today on behalf of the government of UAE to the annual meeting of the Global Future Councils that brings together 700 leading experts and thinkers to address future global issues. This is the 10th gathering we host in the UAE as a result of the close cooperation and collaboration between the government of UAE and the World Economic Forum in Davos. We have made sure to use this fourth industrial revolution for the best of humankind. Today, we start this edition under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of UAE and ruler of Dubai, who placed a great passion in the future of all sectors in the UAE. We also take great pride in launching the affiliate center for the fourth industrial revolution in Dubai as part of our continuing collaboration with the World Economic Forum. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a popular saying in our culture about key to knowledge and as the saying goes, the key to knowledge and wisdom is constant questioning. I can say that over the next two days, we will have the largest gathering of the biggest questions about the future of the world. We have 41 future councils and each council features plenty of questions that need answers. Answers that will help governments, decision makers and international organizations globally to understand the future and respond to its challenges. How will the future financial systems look like? What is the future of the digital economy or the future of geopolitics, world trade and investments? What is the future of jobs, entertainment, education, transport and energy? The future of fighting corruption, the future of urban planning, the future of the internet of things and there are hundreds of other questions that we look forward to answer through the sessions of this global forum. Ladies and gentlemen, today we are searching for many answers for the future. Allow me to briefly address three questions about the present we live in. Three questions that we need to answer for a more stable, safe and happy future. The first question has the fourth industrial revolution contributed to increasing or decreasing the gap between rich and poor societies? We know that today more than 600 million people around the world are still living on the traditional means of agriculture with no machine intervention. In other words, 600 million people are still leading a life similar to the one before the first agricultural revolution. We know that today more than 1 billion people still live without electricity, which was also an outcome of the second industrial revolution. We know that one percent of the world population owns more than half of the global wealth and half of the world's less fortunate population owns only one percent of global wealth. We know that today around 2 billion people are connected to the internet and are benefiting from the data revolution, but what about the 4 billion people who do not have this advantage? What will happen when half of the world starts adopting the internet of things, artificial intelligence and blockchain and other technologies, while the other half remains light years away from advanced societies? There are big moral questions that mankind needs to answer. Technology is rapidly advancing and growing, but this great advancement needs greater wisdom to use this technology for the greater good for the benefit of mankind. The second question has to do with the level of trust, trust in companies, trust in governments, trust in media and other institutions. Advanced technology is a neutral science, but sometimes its wrong use leads to bigger challenges. Do people today trust the news they see on the internet? Do people trust companies with full information about their lives? Do people trust that government technology systems are secure and protected from hacking? Do people trust that their phones are not spying on every detail of their conversations and handing their information to technology firms for sale like any other product in the market? Cybercrime now costs the world almost 500 billion, 50 billion dollars in addition to hacking different systems. Governments, companies and experts are responsible for providing answers to these questions that worry millions of people because trust forms the basis of stable societies. The third question is related to governments and the impact that the fourth industrial revolution and emerging technologies have on building or destroying bridges between people and their governments. Has technology helped governments better understand and meet public needs? According to Edelman Trust Biometer 2019, the level of distrust in governments have reached 47 percent, that is half of the general public do not trust their governments in general. However, even sometimes the rich countries that have advanced technologies are not taking into consideration the impulses in these societies. In the last few weeks we have witnessed some changes and some policies that led to social unrest that the governments did not expect in France. A small change in fuel taxes. In Chile, a change in the metro fare. In Hong Kong, new fugitive offenders policy. All these changes aren't big on the surface, but have driven social outbursts in rich, stable and advanced countries. Again, I stress that we need greater human wisdom to manage and use the rapidly growing future technologies. Ladies and gentlemen, the UAE is an effective part of the world and is also a part of the future. It's a country that fulfills its duties towards the rest of societies. And with constant guidance of our leadership, we always try to stay positive in dealing with the challenges facing the world. We have established a center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution with the World Economic Forum to try and develop a global ethical framework for this technological revolution and to help other governments understand and benefit from its digital tools. Last year alone we trained more than 10,000 government employees across the region and the world to implement technology in government services and use the technology for the best interest of our societies. The UAE has always been supporting human affairs as per the United Nations statistics and we rank first when it comes to the development donations in comparison with the GDP. We also rank second most trusted country in the world with a trust score of 82% on Edelman Trust Barometer and we try to share our successful experience with the region and the world. At the end, through the work of all of these councils, the UAE in collaboration with the WEF, we are trying as much as possible to create this model for the country of the future which will be able to balance between the technology, scientific and knowledge advancement, wisdom and social care. At the end, I wish you all successful, effective and influential meetings and may God's blessings be with you all. Thank you so much, Your Excellency Minister Kergave. After this, we will have the opening plenary and a discussion but I would like then to use this opportunity to then formally declare the opening of the annual meeting for Global Future Councils 2019. Thank you and please be seated.