 Welcome to plenary four of the 2022 International Conference on Sustainable Development. We're thrilled to have a keynote address by Sandrine Dixon-DeClave, as well as the presentation of the best paper awards. Dr. Walsh, over to you. Thank you. Welcome, everyone. My name is Patrick Paul Walsh. I'm a Vice President of Education at UNSTSN, and I'm also Director of the Academic, the SDG Academy. And we're absolutely, as you all know, we're celebrating 10 years of the conference, and we are going to have the best paper awards, but after our keynote. So without further ado, I just want to introduce Sandrine Dixon-DeClave, who is the Co-President of the Club of Rome. And I believe it's the first time that women are presidents or leaders of this esteemed... Absolutely. Wow, so that's brilliant. And I know her as a TED Talk speaker, actually, that's how I know her. And I'm also very eager to get her new book, which is the Survival Kit, Earth for All, from the climate crisis. I think we all need that to kit, but I'm going to turn it over to you, Sandrine, for the keynote on our plenary. And after that, we'll have a few questions. So get the questions in on the Q&A. I'll be taking them down. And like the questions, et cetera, since we get the best ones. And over to you. Thank you so much, Patrick, and what an honor to be keynoting on this very important time of 10-year anniversary. We're also celebrating our anniversary of 50 years of the limits to growth. Whether we're celebrating or commiserating is another key question. And I think part of what I want to talk about today is very much how we've shifted our thinking around sustainability into a variety of different areas. But also most importantly, how can we create system tipping points to leverage transformational leadership? And what does that look like within the sustainability space? We've known, at least within the Club of Rome and those that read the limits to growth, that for 50 years we were risking collapse. And actually, if you look back into the limits to growth and you see the way in which the scenarios plot out particular possibilities of what the world would look like in particular in the 2020s, you can see that with continued population growth and continued extractive economy, we would actually start to face some of the tipping points that we're seeing today. And that is why it's so important for us as we sit here, all of us, some of us, including myself, that we're involved in the Rio discussions, Rio plus 20, Rio plus 10 to shift into an understanding of what does sustainability mean when you are actually in the midst of chaos? What does that mean when you're actually risking collapse because you've got compound effects? We know with Johann Rockstrom's incredible work around the planetary boundaries that we need to think through what's within the boundary and still beyond the zone of uncertainty. And we've seen that we're tipping now through those boundaries in a variety of different spheres, which is why actually with Johann we wrote our planetary emergency plan 2.0, which first asks us, if we're truly going to become sustainable, we have to first address and declare that we are in a planetary emergency. We then need to understand how of the nine planetary boundaries that keep Earth in a relatively stable state, we can actually bring them back, those that are already past those boundaries and keep those that are not yet outside of the boundaries within a habitable space so that actually human species can continue to live on this planet. What we're also seeing is that the 2020s, 2022 period has been a real wake-up call for the future that we want. We are, as I said, out now of the safe operating space across multiple Earth systems. We also have the three Cs, climate, COVID and conflict, which are creating the compound effect that we feel right now in particular in Europe with inflation and price increases, both for energy, access to food. We have the economic reset that we saw post-COVID, where many of our European, but also global states had to put in place recovery budgets and needed to start to address value chain disruption and understand what that means in terms of sustainability and resilience. But we also have multilateralism on the test bench. We see that even though China and the United States joined our climate agreements and COP, we now see very clearly that with the geopolitics around the Ukraine, we're starting to see a real shift and again a growing tension between the United States and China and obviously with Russia. But then we have activism with renewed vigor, the fact that we actually have youth in the streets saying that they want a different future, that they want to stop having climate and future anxiety, that we must work with them in order to create that future, which gives them hope. And we also have in some ways a paradigm shift where we're starting to actually see economies that are shifting to well-being economies, politicians that are actually starting to truly integrate sustainability and climate change within their policies. Again, in particular through the European Green Deal, for example, or through the Green Deal proposals that we saw in the United States. So what does this actually mean for sustainability? What does this mean for the new era of understanding how we have these interconnected global instabilities and what is that net zero impact that we have to achieve? A net zero impact which very much looks at poverty, inequality and also very much decarbonization. We need to understand and unpack the interconnectedness between the social system, the economic system, the global commons and the political system. We need to get away from still the very siloed thinking that the environment and sustainability is completely separate from economic activities. And in particular from the way in which we set up our governance. The fact that environmental ministries unfortunately still are quite weak within government systems, whereas foreign policy or economic or financial policy is much stronger and fully integrate sustainability across all of them. The reason we need that is because what we have seen through Earth for all the survival guide for humanity and our system dynamic modeling is that as wealth has gone up in many regions, well-being has absolutely gone down. That as we see that this becomes the new generation that will actually make less than its parents, a generation which is being crippled by high rates of suicide and mental illness, very much also climate anxiety and future anxiety as I indicated that we need to somehow bring together the proper distribution of wealth and understand poverty and inequity in order to start to truly bring well-being to more people across the globe. So we call this the importance of understanding our social as well as our environmental tipping points to truly shift us towards an age of well-being. It means that we need to manifest and bring together mass movements, political progress, market forces and technological disruption during this very key decade of action in order to ensure that we shift towards zero carbon, zero loss of nature, zero poverty and zero pandemics. That is the sustainable future that we need. It also means that we need to make economics fit for the 21st century, that this is not just about tinkering around the edges. This is about shifting our economic and our financial systems to truly service people, planet and prosperity. It means that we bring in social and environmental risk into financial and economic decision-making, that we expand our perspective of public goods and socialize the rewards of environmental and the social commons, that we correct the inequity between high and low income countries created by international finance and trade systems and that we start to increase the agency of women and workers to drive the direction of the economy. There are a variety of new approaches to economic well-being. Well-being economics, which are actually being practiced by five governments, which we call the well-being governments of New Zealand, of Finland, of Iceland, of Scotland and Wales, but also mission economies that we're starting to practice at the European level or green growth discussions or post-growth donut economics and beyond GDP discussions, all of which, whether you look at the OECD work on beyond GDP or some of the work that's being done by the European institutions or many countries across the globe, looking at how we can have new indicators to growth fully integrated into our balance sheets and into our economic models, what we call 21st century well-being economics that have the three columns of economic indicators, societal indicators and environmental indicators fully integrated into how we measure moving towards human development, a type of growth that gives hope as we see, for example, in donut economics, because we know that currently we have an absolute failure to meet basic needs and that we need to actually meet basic needs in order to ensure dignity. The challenge is to meet these needs within the planetary boundaries and to ensure that no one falls short of life's essentials. What I often say is, we actually have been through the greatest transformation we've ever seen when we went through COVID. For good or for bad, we knew that our governments told us we had to wear masks. We had to actually get vaccinated. That transformation forced us to be different, to go back to what was most essential to our lives and livelihoods, to the protection of our families, to having access to hospitalization and healthcare, which is a reminder that actually we can transform the communities, entire localities, cities, nations, regions fully transformed over the last two years. This is a reminder that we can apply that transformation, those skills, and we can indicate when people tell us it's just too difficult to transform. We can't have access to different shifts, capital shifts and budgets in order to facilitate that transformation. That actually, no, that's absolutely false. We've done it, but that means that we need to get back to what does it mean to be in a situation where we are in a fair consumption space, where we actually have a guiding framework in terms of our impact on the environment and the way in which we look at society's impact at large. To shift between the overconsumption that we see on a daily level, which we actually, through COVID, realized was not essential because material goods would not enable us to be happy, to be healthy, or to necessarily be wealthy. But the fact is, tapping into that now at this stage could be our greatest savior as we try to truly implement a shift from limits to growth to growth within limits. A shift that enables us actually to get to what we say is so indispensable within Earth for All. Five key turnarounds, poverty, inequality, empowerment, energy, and food. With those five key turnarounds, we can absolutely shift ourselves into a well-being economy. Two to 4% of GDP cost per annum in order to actually transform our economies to truly service people and planet, to break down the North-South divide, to ensure that we define the nature of growth in a very different way, which actually fosters people, planet, and profit, but not profit as much as prosperity. To ensure that we alleviate that poverty and ensure that we have that equity to start to have integrated super policies that have, as their core, sustainability, and the SDGs, but SDGs, which are no longer just a checklist, but are fully integrated into the way in which the economy and the financial system functions. To use exponential technologies once again, not just to give finance or to support technologies that will not serve as people and planet and prosperity, but actually to totally transform the way technologies are developed so that we can actually move towards well-being. And these are some of the shifts that we will need if we are going to move forward in an Earth for All approach. To ensure, however, to do that, we must look at language and communications. We must build a broader campaign. What we did through Earth for All was to take the system dynamic model that was already presented through the limits to growth thinking, to look at the interrelationships between those social tipping points and environmental tipping points, both positive and negative, to then stress test that against the knowledge that we have in the thought leadership across the globe, economists and scientists coming together to see how this could be tailored to their region. And now the pillar of shift which we are trying to bring forward is how then do we create a movement? How can we now all coalesce those of us who are supporting the SDGs, those of us who believe that those SDGs are core to the way in which we can build a new society that fosters people, planet and prosperity. How do we use that language and shift into a wellbeing mindset? One which is truly a paradigm shift within our economy and within obviously our financial system. So I will leave it at that because we believe that there will be critical feedback loops that will have to happen between the knowledge of what we have been speaking about now for so many years of what sustainability can be and should be through the SDGs translated into a paradigm shift within our economic, political and financial systems to foster wellbeing within the planetary boundaries so that we can remain safe. This is an upgraded world, an upgraded world towards wellbeing for more. And I'll leave it at that and hope that there will be a nice conversation afterwards. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. That's very inspirational. No, I love the, a lot of people used to talk about the triple bottom line, society, economy and environment, you know, working together. But now you're emphasizing the fourth pillar and I think coming out of RIA plus 20, you know, there are four pillars of sustainable development and governance is just so important and policies. And I love the way you're emphasizing that how policies have to have this integrated approach on the bottom line. And the other thing I'd say is for many, I'm an economist by training for many years when we saw economic growth they actually debated whether there was it was actually creating or driven by inequality. I mean, there was just so many papers, you know, and the somewhere saying what if you use the genie index, that's true. But if you use the coefficient of variation, it's not true if you put China in or take China out. But I think as a, I think we are all very clear that the global GDP growth has created within and between country inequality and there was no debate about that. And I think what you're saying now which I know you've been saying for a while is that there is absolutely no debate that the nature of GDP growth at the moment is basically using nature for free as photosource in the sink. And it's actually pushing us beyond planetary boundaries and the safe operating space for humanity. And we have to be very honest with that that it's absolutely broken. And I love that message about reform of the financial system, the economic system, integrating the kind of social and environmental aspects or constraints. And they should be constraints because it's not acceptable to have the inequality we have or it's not acceptable to use the environment for economic growth. This is not, we should be creating positive linkages to the environment with nature, capital and the way we use it for waste or something. That just shouldn't be happening. And so that was an excellent speech. Keynotes I should say. And we do have some questions. So poor e-comedy. Thank you for the interesting presentation. It seems to be an era of populism. How can the public have been motivated to engage with with this transformation that you suggest, right? So basically, where's the political will or how do we drive this through populations across countries? Thank you for a great question. And what we've tried to do through for all and many of us in particular myself are engaging on a daily level with politicians is both to bring some of the new systems thinking to the forefront and then bring in what those specific policy recommendations would therefore be. I think that within and I fully agree with populism on the rise and the risk that we may have in particular in Europe when we look at energy poverty and this is a conversation I've had directly with President von der Leyen. The real fear is that we will have a backlash because of high inflation and energy poverty and potentially transport poverty that actually some of our governments will very much shift to right wing conservative governments that then will not even support the shift towards decarbonization. What we need to do at this time and that's why poverty and inequity is so important. We need to work with policymakers, those that truly want to lead and show them the tools in the toolbox in order to enable them to take care of citizens first. Now that will be tough. We're talking obviously at the European level now of making sure that we issue checks, EU bonds, et cetera that will support the poorest in order to get through the winter. We've done some of that thinking through Earth for all create actually what we call citizen funds actually tax the commons, bring in some of that tax and those revenues in order to ensure that you properly distribute it as we see in the Norwegian case which is a much more egalitarian society where actually the global commons are shared across citizens. And actually we've seen it in some states you wouldn't expect such as Alaska that actually do the same. But we also are saying very clearly that for those that are the poorest, the low income countries, we have to think about debt cancellation. We need to think about trade deficits. We need to look at actually a minimum income of $15,000 per annum for citizens within those countries and those economies in order to stop that backlash and the potential of true populism. So if we start to service the needs of people first with planet, then hopefully actually we will stop the propensity for some governments to go to the right or to become populistic. Yeah, very good. So I tell you, I want to, there's other questions but I'm going to group them and I'm going to give you a vote with them. So there's a question from Katie and an anonymous person, but they're basically talking about in Europe we have this kind of mission, you know, the mission sort of concept, the stakeholder concept. And they're just kind of wondering how do we get the corporates, the government and so the society working together to achieve this, right? So that's one question. And then the other question is about this emphasis on the well-being economy. One is kind of worried about how narrow is it? Like does well-being economy say something about family, religious beliefs, culture, you know, other things like this and then another person is just not so convinced how, you know, the current economic system can embed these ideas. Do we not need a complete transformation of the economic system as it is? So there are two questions. Okay, so first in terms of the missions and stakeholder approaches, I actually think that this is a perfect time to bring all stakeholders as we look at the transformation. Well, we often talk about our short-term levers for long-term systems change. And where are those leverage points now? Working with corporates, especially again, if we take Europe right now, in the situation of crisis that it's in and knowing full well the gas issues and also the food issues, plus the compound effect already of inflation and COVID previous to that, we have to work with industry. We may not be able to go as fast as we would like right now in terms of pulling out of gas. And this is a conversation that I've again have had directly with many of the cabinets inside the European Commission or ministers. But what we need to do is give it a timeline. We need to be strategic. We need to say if we are in the midst of this crisis, we cannot create even more stranded assets. We may need to work with all stakeholders to ensure that, for example, there's a big risk of our highest emitters moving out of Europe right now because they don't have access to cheap energy. And because actually they're not being buffered by the impact of we're seeing from the Ukrainian invasion. So we have to work directly in stakeholder consultation between governments and industry and citizens to ensure that we buffer both industry and keep industry in the economy and at the same time ensure that citizens and the most vulnerable are not hit the hardest. This means we're going to get rid of perversities in the market. We have to shift our subsidies which actually are perverse and not enabling the transition while still create short-term buffers in order to make sure that people are not going to suffer those ramifications. It's about tax incentive structures. There are many different potentials within the toolbox of fiscal policy that we could use. Create a fiscal policy looking at our VAT structures in particular again in Europe but in some other countries as well, you may not have that differential or that buffer. And that is where you need to get much more creative and it may be in some of the other countries that it's more the debt cancellation. It is more actually working with industry in a very different way or also with citizens. At the end of the day, what we also need within stakeholder engagement is we have to make sure that it is a full stakeholder engagement bringing in citizen views through citizen assemblies and that it is still very much a democratic process not just driven by special interests. Now to come to well-being, well-being is not about going to a spa. Well-being is about assessing what actually gives us the highest quality of life. And when I say us, I mean the greatest amount of people, not just the wealthiest. One way to do that is to start taxing the wealthy, the 1% ensure that actually they do pay 10% of the taxes and redistribute that across the economy. That would be huge in any economy. But the other is to actually ensure that you have indicators that truly measure well-being. That means access to education, access to hospitalization, access to social care and social services, bringing in the care economy and the parallel economy which actually should never be parallel, ensuring that you bring more women into the economy because that enhances diversity and also ensures that women who are the caretakers in most cases of families are able then to redistribute their incomes and be able to work for a fair wage. So the way in which we look at well-being is those three pillars of real economic indicators, social indicators and environmental indicators fully integrated into the balance sheet and the economy of a country so that it actually becomes more resilient. One last fact. If you look at companies and countries that have started to build resilience through sustainability mindsets, whether it be a much greater well-being indicator level or whether it be other frameworks but that still integrate environment, social and governance factors, we have seen through COVID that it is the ESG funds that grew the fastest. It is the ESG companies that were the most resilient to shocks. Why is that? Because they have buffered their value chains. They have already seen what isn't sustainable often is what is the greatest risk in terms of assets and in terms of products and services. We've seen the same in terms of the well-being economies that have actually done quite well through COVID. Again, because they have looked at those triple pillar indicators of social, environmental and economic at the same time. Okay, thank you very much. So that's excellent. So we're going to move on to another segment but I'm absolutely delighted with that talk and there's a lot of very nice comments. It's an inspiring way to think and we look forward. You have a new book coming out. Do you want to say the title? Yes, it's just been released today. It's called Earth for All a Survival Guide for Humanity. I hope that it's on a variety of different services including Amazon. They seem to be the widest spread for most countries but we also hope that it will be in bookstores locally as well. Great, so we'll encourage all the students and staff and people in the SCCEN network broader to have a look at this book because certainly we're excited to read it and today was really excellent. So thank you very much and the link is there. We put the link to everyone who's on the call at the moment to the book. Okay, so thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye bye. So we're going to move on to the second segment. So we are going to announce the best papers and maybe that's why so many people on the call but like any good show we're not going to do them at the beginning. We're going to announce the winners at the end but what we wanted to do now in the second segment was just to celebrate in a sense the 10 years of the International Conference of Sustainable Development and I have Lucia Rodriguez with me here who is the director of the, she wants the secretaries and director of the Global Association of Masters in Development Practice Programs and we're just going to maybe just bring you through the history and the things that we noticed as IC and then maybe have a forward look on our wishes for ICST and of course, anything at all put in the chat or into the questions about the future ICST but I have Lucia here and we're actually together because otherwise we'd have to be turning mics on and off so forgive us for putting together but I'll hand it over to you, Lucia. Well, welcome everybody, greetings. So happy to see so many of you so interested in what we're going to do this first hour. So there, I've heard there's 4,000 people who have registered for this conference and about 70% of them are students. So I think it's a good moment just to take a break and just quickly remind people in terms of, you know, as Paul was saying, a little bit of the history. So let us begin with who we are. And when I say who we are, it's really the Global Association of MVP programs because we really launched the first ICSD conference and I think it's important for people to know that. So we, you know, and because I'm a teacher, I'm a professor as well, I am going to go back a little bit and give you a little bit of a sort of background on what is MVP. So the MVP, it does, it arises out of a shared commitment to create a new profession in sustainable development practice and one that integrates really, Paul has been saying pillars, well, we have four specific pillars and those pillars are natural sciences, social sciences, health sciences, as well as management. And in 2008, yes, 2008, we launched the Masters in Development Practice program. We launched it with a commission report that's called the Education for Sustainable Development Practice. And then in 2009, Columbia University here in New York City became the flagship program because they launched the first MVP. By 2013, we had several academic institutions that were offering the MVP around the world. And by several, I would say about 20 of them that at that time were offering the MVP. We had students and alumni that had graduated because this MVP is a two-year program, more or less. It can be face-to-face, it can be online, but definitely by then we had students. We had a mass. And so, and something that also helped us that we made us sort of ready to launch this MVP that we also had something called the MVP Summit. So every year, you know, 2008, 2009, 10, 11, 12, 13, we would hold an annual MVP summit. And so at that summit, we would share best practices, or, you know, we would talk about the curriculum. We would discuss, you know, what the students were doing in terms of the field practicum that was a required core component of the MVP. And specifically in 2013, that conference was held in February 2013 and Jeffrey Sachs, who is the intellectual author of the MVP, was invited to speak. So he came to the conference, I don't recall exactly where in the world that conference was held. In Senegal. Okay, in Senegal. So he came to Senegal and he sort of, you know, casually suggested a conference. He said, it's time, you know, this growing network of MVP programs is sharing all kinds of interesting knowledge and information. It's time to share it with the world. And being a network that's really focused on practice, we are practitioners. We said, we took that idea. And I, when I came back to New York City, and this is where we've been housed, or since we were really launched, we came, I came back to New York City. And I remember thinking, you know, well, what are we waiting for? You know, Jeff has a point there. It's really time for us to have this conference. So in five months, we launched the conference. And when I say we, it started with an idea that I sort of shared with the global members of the MVP, the leaders of different academic institutions were on board. They were offering their assistance, you know, in terms of speakers, in terms of, they were elsewhere in other parts of the world, but, you know, two or three days before the conference was actually to happen, they were willing to, you know, lend their, literally their hands, because this is what I needed. I needed them here physically to help us with this program. And so that is what happened. And then at the same time, SDSN had opened up offices in 2012. And they heard that we were really, because we're in the same building. So we're in different floors, we're in the same building. So at that time, we were sitting at Columbia University in the Center for Sustainable Development. And so SDSN launched in 2012 and they were on the fifth floor, we were on the 10th floor and we talked. We're like cousins that talk about everything that we do. As though they heard about this conference, they were interested and curious. And I remember Lauren Borreto came to my office and Lauren is one of the prime organizers today of ICSC and she said, you know what, why don't we work together on this? And thank goodness, yes, because I was at that time a one-person office. What do you think? Is that what you remembered or? No, absolutely. So my kind of memory of it a little bit was that so many of us were stuck in curriculum development and recruitment that, I mean, I think that there was a feeling that if we're an academic association, you know, one thing you could do is have a conference and we knew the students would do their capstones or thesis or, you know, we'd be writing up their projects and it's just very normal for, you know, people to come together at an academic conference, present their work. So this was nothing radical, actually. It was just saying, instead of at the summits being so involved in curriculum and certain issues, like particularly with the first graduate students coming out, let's have a conference where we can actually celebrate their work and, you know, see what type of impact and research that's actually going on. So that certainly was my memory. And in terms of, it is true at STSN that on the other side, it was, you know, students in a professional program like to think they'll get a job because they're working towards a career path. And of course, STSN in its mandate was to work with corporates and civil society and government folks in the area of sustainable development. And if we were bringing them to a conference and then we also bring the young professionals, well, isn't that a nice way to network and to actually talk about career paths and to talk about, you know, a future role in sustainable development. So I guess that's why STSN were going to be a natural partner, but also STSN, you know, had the capacity to, and Jeff Sachs in particular, had the capacity to bring in world leaders into the plenary. The capacity to rent out spaces here to funds because it's nothing as free, nothing as cheap. And certainly STSN was a good partner from that dimension as well. So that's right. That's so it was a very natural partnership and it always has been for the last 10 years, yeah. So then the first conference was held actually September 6th and 7th, 2013. It was held at Columbia University on the 15th floor. It was a nice spacious room or where we held this first conference. The theme of that conference was advancing evidence-based solutions for the post-2015 sustainable development agenda. And so I would say that kudos to STSN because they did suggest a similar sort of theme. They as an organization were working on, they had like 16 thematic lines and that really, you know, when we spoke to them as our new partners, we decided, you know, that makes sense. Why not? And most of our students had a lot of around the world have been doing research on this topic in one way or the other. So it made sense. And then the first conference we had, like again, we really created it five months. We had 400 people who attended. And to our surprise, and of course a surprise because we, most of them, yes, were MDPs, but we had other people from civil society who were there, governments who were there, private businesses that came and attended, even the U.N. sent some people to attend this conference. So that was almost a nod to us in that, okay, we're doing something right here. We need to continue this. And this is not going to be the last conference. There you recall. Yes. So again, I think one of the benefits being with SDSN was they had a focus on, if you like, the policy line. So obviously, this was a period in the post-25th, like this agenda setting, what would happen after 2015 in terms of the development agenda. And that certainly, again, would have been useful. But I think one of the good things, I don't know whether it happened by accident or it just fit it nicely, is that we've always had the conference in what's called the U.N. General Assembly. And that actually gave a lot of options because leaders of country, top corporates, top civil society people are in town, as they are now. This is generally what's called Unger Week. And Jeff, particularly working with Columbia University, found it raised the easy to move people into our planaries and into our talks. And just to give you, which is quite amazing on the keynote speakers for the first conference was Amina Muhammad. And at the time, she was working here in the Arts Institute with Jeff, had a role in the U.N. But of course now, she's the Deputy Secretary General, completely responsible for the implementation of the SDGs. So we had a lot of foresight there, I guess. And then we also brought in David Donohue, who was a new permanent rep of Ireland to the mission in the U.N. And he was actually the co-pacilitator with Ambassador Kamao Kenya of the SDGs. So basically two of the biggest architects of the SDGs were in the room on that first conference, Amina Muhammad and David Donohue alongside Jeffrey Sachs and they were the keynote. So marvelous keynotes. And I must say, Lucia excelled in terms of the way that room was presented and the food and the hospitality. So it was an absolutely very successful first conference. Yes. And more important, I think, also the commitment, the enthusiasm from the participants, you know, faculty members were really, they were there presenting their research. The students were there presenting their research and feeling really acknowledged for the, you know, experts that they were becoming. So I think that really, that was really good. And then what happened is, you know, after this first conference, we continue every year. We have ICSD and the numbers continue to increase. So from 400 to then 800 to then 1500 to 2000 to this year, 4,000 people have registered for the conference. Of course, there will be dropout, but that's really a very successful number. And one of the things that we have continued since that first conference is, you know, well, to a certain extent, face-to-face, we really like face-to-face conferences because people use this as a networking opportunity. Because of COVID, of course, we went online. But, you know, we're thinking of the face-to-face also to the future. We created a specific website for this conference. We have a handbook on the conference so that the participants that participate in this conference actually can say they, you know, they have their abstracts or even papers in this conference proceedings. So they can see themselves as published members of society. And we also brought on new speakers. Again, as a result of the partnership with SCSN, Kapucinski Lectures, which Paul can probably talk more about them, but they came and they spoke as speakers throughout the years, of course. And one of the things that we have done, and we will do in a little bit, just be a little bit patient, but what we're going to do is really the best papers, selecting those best papers and publishing them again in that conference handbook. So this is like, you know, we're encouraging students to really present. You're presenting, you have opportunities, you have other conferences around the world where you can present. But I think this is the most friendly and encouraging conference where you can do so. And you really feel respected as a professional that you are. What do you think? Yeah, so the, I mean, I think one of the great things that MDP did was we certainly disciplined the conference to be more academic in the sense we wanted these parallel sessions. We want to pay for presentations and posters. And I think a lot of QDOS has to go to the scientific committee over the years who, you know, they're very dedicated to reviewing the papers, chairing the panels, encouraging all the students to go. And I think even in the first conference, I remember Waterloo bringing the water panels. And this has existed for the last 10 years where you really get a top class presentation on water and sustainability from Waterloo, which is one of the MDP programs. But I mean, that was right across the board you had academics dedicated to putting on the program and giving the students an opportunity to present their projects. And I think that we should certainly care for that and look at that very carefully just to keep the old academic peer review and the academic way of doing things. But having said that, you know, when we bring the corporates and the UN leaders and leaders of the country into the hall, the planaries, you know, to actually have to be up to date on what's happening on the global dialogues, potentially have an influence on that. You know, I think it's very interesting and when the students are going for interviews or they're trying to get jobs just to be up to speed with these sort of things and indeed get contacts and be able to do it. So before you go on, I really also want to really re-emphasize what you've said, which is really important. Thank you to the scientific committee members. I mean, it's so true all what you've said because without them, we wouldn't have this conference. I mean, it is them who really, you know, read the abstract, read the papers, organize and facilitate the panels, serve on panels as speakers as well and the planaries. So that is really something I think, I don't know if all the conferences have a scientific committee, but we definitely, ours definitely has been helpful in making ICSEA what it is today. So thank you. So I guess future directions, I think we go back to basics in the sense of what was happening before COVID, but then we're actually going to, it's just so wonderful to have the conference going on 24-7 and virtual and, you know, you see people who would never really make it to New York putting their heart and soul into sessions and chairing sessions and so proud of the certificates of participation that they get and they're very proud of this conference. So I think we have to keep that as well. So we have a bit of thought to do in terms, like the whole world has to think about how to be hybrid, but we certainly have to think about that. I think people want to hear about the best papers on ICSEA has the juries in and here are the best papers for 2022. Yes, and I will definitely get to the best papers, but I just want to say one last thing. I think it's important that we have these regional specific conferences that parallel ICSD. I know that some countries are already starting to do that, but I hope that in the future in our plans, we really think about that and do a little bit more because not everybody, whether we are hybrid or, you know, 100% on the ground, there's not everybody will be able to travel to New York or travel anywhere. So that could be a way of making sure that they remain involved. And then so without much to do, I know everybody is waiting the first, you know, this is, and I'm going to say this is in no particular order of importance. So we have six best papers and the first one is the SDGs and value chains customized solutions for an inclusive global value chain governance by Ms. Lodivica Trippiana and Mr. Luca Osvaldo Uthello. The second theoretical aspects of the development trap in new conditions, Ms. Vera Barinova, Mr. Rob DeMere Potenshishkos and Mr. Alecander Gulov. The third one is passing the baton, understanding the public-private partnership, model of pre-primary education in Mumbai, India by Ms. Pooja Pandai, Ms. Nisha Brnaker, Mr. Avinash Reddy, Dr. Raheela Kodakiwala, and Ms. Sakshi Power. The fourth one, COVID-19 and digital learning in higher education in India, unpacking the inequity in the students' experiences by Dr. Pradeep Kumar Chahari and Mr. Amit Kumar. The fifth one, comparative studies of the impact of U.S. foreign aid on economic development in the Global South, the Middle East and North Africa versus Sub-Saharan Africa by Ms. Cecilia Gomez. And the last one, again, in no particular order of importance, sustainability priorities for modern politics and economics, Dr. Eugene Itaris. Congratulations to all of you for all your hard work. I've read some of these papers. I really enjoy them. So thank you. Thank you for working so hard. Okay, so we've come to the end of this plenary. I hope you enjoyed the keynote from the friends of Art to Art for All, and it looks like an excellent book. And we all need that guidebook or two, in case for how to deal with what's happening with the climate as we live. And I'm delighted to have that conversation about where the ICDs were celebrating 10 years at this conference. So I think I hope you found it useful, because I think myself and Lucie have been true each and every year. So we're very thankful to everyone, and SDSN and NDP in support of that share of the years. And continue to support us. And continue to support us. Thank you. And congrats to people who got the best papers, because the money you get, the best papers go on to excellent careers. And congratulations. They're already in excellent careers, but congratulations. Okay, so thank you. And enjoy the rest of the conference. And we'll see you soon. Bye-bye.