 Good afternoon and welcome. My name is Nairie Woods and I am Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University and it's a huge pleasure to moderate this panel this afternoon. As many of you are aware, there's some 239 cities around the world that have been classified as fragile. And the task of governing those cities, the task of trying to build companies in those cities, the task of trying to lead international efforts to help those cities often feels overwhelming. It feels overwhelming to all those different groups of people. This afternoon, we're going to show that it's not, that it doesn't need to be overwhelming. The one place we can start is to really think about what most needs doing instead of trying to think about everything that needs doing all at once. And we're very lucky today to have four panellists bringing four different perspectives on the issue. On my far left is Minister Jitendra Singh, who's a minister in the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India, but who has had particular responsibility for the northeast of India where last time I counted, there something in the range of 16 different insurgency movements and real challenges to making that a governable space where investment can flourish. Coming along, one, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, who is currently chairing a high level commission on fragility and growth, which is being led by both my own institution, the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University and the London School of Economics. And our former Prime Minister is just doing, if I might say, an amazing job of chairing a group of international thinkers and practitioners to really draw out lessons for fragile states. And we'll hear more about that from David Cameron. And then, moving along a further one, we have Basima Abdul Rahman, who is an engineer trained in both Iraq and on a Fulbright scholarship in the United States, who has actually been building a green energy company in Iraq, so in a fragile environment. Her company, Kesk, is now six months old. So I really look forward to hearing what have been the challenges and what are some of the things that are most important to get right if in fragile states and fragile cities we're going to encourage entrepreneurs and business people like Basima to build and invest. And last and certainly not least, we are very honored to have here with us today the president of the Swiss Confederation, Alain Bersee. And Dr. Bersee, who has been an academic, as well as a politician, at the local level in the canton of Neuchâtel and Fribourg, so has a long experience in the public sector of local democracy and inclusion and how you make that work. And it might seem a stretch to think that fragile cities around the world could learn from Switzerland. I know that once you've heard what the president has to say, you'll see that there are some really deep lessons about inclusion and how inclusion can work and that could be thought about in fragile cities. So thank you for joining us for this conversation. I'm just before I invite Minister Geetendra Singh to kick us off. I'd just like to ask you, did any of you come here today with a burning question, with a question that you thought, right, I'm going to go to that session because I'd really like to know such and such. Any burning questions from you? Because there's no point coming up at five o'clock and saying you didn't touch on the one question I wanted to see touched on. No, then I assure you, I'm going to bring you in between, during, after speakers, so please have your thinking caps on and be ready to participate. It's a lovely small room. We can make this an interactive conversation. Minister Geetendra Singh, you've spent an extraordinary period of public service in the purpose of governing in the northeast of India. Could you share with us some of the things that those who are trying to make fragile cities work should not do, should avoid doing, if you like, mistakes that we can learn from and some things and what you think, as it were, their one or two priorities should be. Thank you. At the outset, before I try to dwell on certain issues pertaining per se to northeast part of India, I think the very definition of fragility is very fragile. And to an extent, at least as I look at it, it's more of a relative term. May not be always static. What is fragile today may not be so tomorrow. And what was it yesterday may not be so today. I think it equally as much applies when you talk in the context of the fragile cities or fragile habitations. And maybe some of the conventional factors that we usually tend to link as contributing to the fragility of a city or a habitation may not be absolute. There's a popular perception that maybe larger cities or rapidly urbanizing places may be more fragile. But I'm not sure. Maybe the more faster developing cities could be more fragile regardless of their size. So I don't know whether to have an absolute mathematical connection between the two. And therefore, I think somewhere as the society evolves, I mean, there are certain issues which can't be left to government alone. And so also is this one. And the subject is too large to be left to only the government. And there may be a number of social angles to it, social aspects to it. And as the societies evolve, they learn to be less vulnerable, less fragile, more stable. And in maybe in the societies which are in the process of evolving, particularly in the context of Northeast where we have a host of heterogeneous factors, we have had insurgency for a long period of time, which now, thankfully, is pretty much under control. And at least I can reasonably claim that in the last three, four years of the Modi government, there has been a tremendous change except for the occasional incidents of extortion or encounters. You don't have that kind of scenario where there were certain conflict zones persisting continuously around the year. And also the kind of prioritization which has been given, I think that's a very important aspect during the last three, four years in the present government because this was relatively a neglected area. For example, there were two of these states in this region called Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, which had never seen a train. Now they are on the road map of the world. So maybe that was a different kind of prioritization which could be partly depending on the defining of the priorities by the political dispensation of that time or the administration of that time. So when there is backwardness, there is joblessnessness. And at the same time, there is also, at least in India, there has always been consistently a tendency to move from the rural to the urban areas for a variety of reasons, looking for greener pastures, looking for livelihood. But in situations like this, that journey or that it assumes the form of an exodus. So you have a huge youth exodus happening from one place to the other in search of higher education, in search of livelihood, which could also contribute to an unplanned situation, which eventually, sequentially could end up in fragility. But as I said in the beginning, I don't think it would be fair to call a fragile place a fragile because it doesn't remain fragile all the time. And Minister, can I ask you, you've mentioned bringing trains, so infrastructure, in the Northeast. You've mentioned security and quelling the insurgency. And you've talked about jobs and urbanization. Are they, do you pursue all those three at once? Or does one follow from the other? So given the challenge that I posed at the beginning, you can't, one of the things about if you're sitting in Syria or Iraq or Yemen, you certainly can't aim at doing more than one or two things. So where would you start? How would you prioritize those? I get your point. They operate separately and also in a combination. And I tell you how, because it doesn't happen in isolation. Now for example, if there is an urge to look for jobs, which is contributing to the movement of the youth or the others, then maybe when you give a flip to the infrastructure development, even if you are introducing a train into a region, you are laying rail tracks and you are in fact generating revenue, you're generating jobs, all the things happen as an ancillary. Similarly, if you do not have enough of connectivity, that comes in the way of a lot much of entrepreneurship or the young startup initiatives and the, which would otherwise be expected to be coming up there, would then start looking for other places. Similarly, if you have not enough of resources to actually exploit the potentials, I'll just exemplify that with a small instance. For example, in Northeast, we have about 40% of food just lying on the streets on the roads. It goes waste because all these years, there's not been enough of provision to have a proper storage or proper transportation. Now, if we had something like that, you could actually generate a food industry at a much cost effective budget with a host of other gainful consequences. And of course, the present government is trying to now address all those issues, but what I'm trying to say is that all these factors then tend to unite in producing a cumulative effect in one way or the other, maybe at different times or maybe later or sometimes sooner, sooner than later. Thank you so much. Basima Abdurrahman, so Minister Jitendra Singh has highlighted for us infrastructure, connectivity, finance, resources, security as necessary for trying to build and trying to govern as well. But you've been building a business in Iraq, which is quite short on some of those things. Can you tell us what for you in order to build your green energy business, what have been the most essential things from all of that list? Is it the whole list or is it something else? So for me, for example, if we're thinking of only one aspect, only rebuilding without taking into consideration the safety, security, people, government, readiness. For you, yeah. It's not possible. But we've been going through the crisis. There has been a lot of destruction because of the military operation. The amount of destruction is so high. So we have cities that have 80% in Mosul, to be exact, at the west of Mosul, we have 80% amount of damaged buildings. So we are going to rebuild. We are going to reconstruct these cities. My business is about rebuilding right. So we are in this phase, so I need to make sure that we are incorporating sustainability in rebuilding and reconstruction. Because we are not rebuilding for our current population. We are rebuilding for future generations, for us in the future. We need to think, we need to be visionaries, futuristic in design and construction. But at the same time, we need to make sure that our solutions are applicable and the government and the people are ready for this type of change. And do you come across people who say, look, green energy is a luxury that Iraq can't afford at the moment. It so desperately needs energy. We should use whatever energy we can get our hands on. So I get this a lot. I hear the exact phrase that there are people dying, nobody cares about the environment. When I go and approach, I try not to talk about environment, although environment protection is my passion. I try to talk much about the economic value of building green. Because when we are building green, we are saving. We are saving energy, we are saving water, we are saving environment. So we are building to make sure that social, economical and environmental factors all incorporated when we talk about green buildings. So this is usually my approach, is about the financial and the economical aspect of it. And has there been, have outsiders helped you do that? Outsiders by providing finance, ideas, support, a push on the government or not? What do you mean by outsiders? Outsiders, other governments, international organizations, private investors from outside Iraq? It's been so far, just individual effort by myself, but I've been using knowledge and experience from the United States, especially the US Green Building Council. They have a significant rating system for green buildings. It's very efficient, it's very common. It is applicable all over the world. So it's flexible design. This is something I would love to incorporate while doing design and construction in my country. Thank you very much. If I can turn now to David Cameron, who is chairing the High Level Commission on Fragility, Growth and Development. You've been collecting, thinking about distilling the lessons. Where would you start? Well, I think the first point is you can't separate out fragile cities from fragile states. You're very unlikely to have a truly stable city within a otherwise fragile state or vice versa. So I think that the key thing is to, and I agree with Japan, is their relative terms. But I think we all know what the makeup of a fragile state or a fragile city is. It's one that is driven with corruption, that has debt problems of conflict, that has a very weak capacity, is enabled to deliver the key services that people want. It's often one, a city or a country where the authorities are seen as lacking legitimacy, so people don't trust and believe in them. There's the chance of chronic failure due to internal, external factors. They tend not to be very resilient. So we know what a fragile state looks like and why we think this commission is so important, just to give it the one second advert, is soon 50% of the world's poor will be living in fragile states. Because by and large, India with its economic success and China with its economic success are lifting their own poor out of poverty and will be left with 50% of the world's poor in countries like Bangladesh or Zimbabwe or Bangladesh or wherever. So I think this is incredibly important and it's also very difficult. Because of course, if the challenge is how do we tackle disease? Will you pay for a vaccination program? If the challenge is how do we educate more children? Can you build more schools? But this is much more difficult. It's harder to build a legitimate tax authority than it is to vaccinate a child or build a school. So it is very, very tough. But I think the focus, second point, the focus on cities is good because urbanization is a vital part of development. It is one of the things that drives development. It's where the miracle of specialization and productivity takes place. And here's a statistic for you, which sort of made me realize how important this is, if you take Africa, between now and 2050, we're going to see another two thirds of urbanization. So put another way around, two thirds of Africa's cities haven't been built yet. They will be built in the next 30 years. So there's an enormous opportunity to get it right or get it wrong. When it comes to getting it right, I think the answer we are coming up with, specifically for cities, is the absolutely bleeding obvious one, which is its infrastructure. But when we say its infrastructure, it isn't just the physical infrastructure of the roads, the railways. It is actually the legal infrastructure. One of the biggest problems for cities in developing countries and fragile states is actually the lack of a legal infrastructure, the lack of a property registry. Nobody knows who owns what. If you go to some cities in Africa, you see signs saying this house is not for sale. The reason that sign is there is people are worried that someone else is going to come along, claim their house and sell it. So one of the most important bits of infrastructure you can put in place is a legal registry. I think if the other point I think we'll be looking at is when we look at infrastructure, there's a tendency to think big, whereas actually some of the most important infrastructure is actually the roads, the sewage capacity, the really basic stuff. And I think infrastructure will be the biggest answer we come up with in terms of how to make cities less fragile. And that leads to a fourth point, which is absolute crucial, which is the sustainability of that infrastructure. And I don't mean here in a green sense, obviously it's good if we do build green infrastructure. I mean sustainability as in can it be paid for and can it be upgraded? And here it leads to I think a really important conclusion which is one of the most important things in helping to tackle fragility is tax and having a buoyant and working tax system. And cities ought to have an advantage here because of course as a city grows, the property values and the land values tend to go up. And so it should be possible for city authorities to put in place tax ways of capturing some of that benefit, whether through a rating system or land value taxation or whatever it is, but that's absolutely crucial. So when we're thinking of how do we help other countries and how do we help cities be successful? Thinking of the sustainability of the tax revenue that city will have in order to provide the services is going to be absolutely vital. And that leads me to my final point and I promise I'll shut up, which is see what the commission is thinking about is how should this change the debate about aid? How should it change the debate about how better off Western countries seek to assist developing countries? And I think there's a lot of changes need to be made there because obviously I'm very proud of the fact that as Prime Minister, I got 0.7% of gross national income, Britain, the only G7 country to do it, although all the others have promised. Let me just make that point, very good to put it on the record. It's not just about money. I mean, it is going to, in a way, I think there are a whole series of conclusions that we will come to giving security a greater priority, giving infrastructure a greater priority. But crucially, I think a lot of it is about how we help and often the way we help is we do things to other cities and other countries rather than with them. And if the crucial determinant of the success of a city is a sense that the people who live in it think that the city authorities are trustworthy and legitimate and can deliver public services and therefore it's right to pay your taxes and all the rest of it, that is absolutely crucial. We won't do that if the way we act is Western countries is often undermining the legitimacy and the capacity of the very countries we're trying to help. So long way of saying we need to make sure as we try and help other countries, we are helping them to deliver rather than delivering for them. And I think that will be a very big theme of the work we do. But I think tax and infrastructure and sustainability of developing a city is going to be absolutely crucial to the difference between, there are plenty of examples of successful unfragile cities and ones that are deeply fragile and I think those will be the key components. Excellent, and I think in our discussion, let's come back to what feels like a little bit of a gap between your starting definition of fragile states driven with corruption whose governments have lost legitimacy and as it were the solution, infrastructure tax, does that solve the problems of corruption and lack of legitimacy or do we have to do these separately? Let's hold that thought and come back to that in discussion because your last point leads us beautifully to President Bersee. David Cameron has said we've got to think about how we help. We've got to think about how it is put another way that communities need to do the doing themselves. And we live in a world where there is a reaction against outsiders, experts, high-up governments coming in and imposing their will on communities and Switzerland is always held up as the example of where local democracy works. So share with us both some examples of the smallest levels at which we can even think about inclusion and then what are the challenges of it? If you were trying to apply the lessons that you learned sitting in the constitutional court of Fribourg or of Neu-Chateau to a fragile environment, you know, what are some of the lessons that you might try and draw from it? All right, thank you. First of all, I must say I'm sure I'm not the best person to speak about fragile cities because we do not have cities in Switzerland described as fragile. We have a lot of cities described as being boring but this is another debate. It means I'm not able to tell you what is to do. I maybe can just highlight how it works in Switzerland. And it is so we've made very good experiences in the cities. Well, in the majority, small cities, it is also not to compare with big cities. And we have a very long tradition of direct democracy, of participation, of consultation. And that allows to, when we mix the size of the cities, well, our biggest agglomeration in Switzerland is to work with one million people, very small. With the size of the cities, when we see the mix between these side of cities and the direct democracy, it allows to have a strong participation of the people. And it includes the services, schooling, for example, where the people can decide on the local level, on the city level, how is it to organize it. It could also be for the infrastructure, road construction, for example, or also for the taxes, tax rates. And it makes real, a very strong inclusion. But how does that- People feel really- You mentioned to me getting children involved in the design of their own community playground, but how does that work? Because in practice, you've got, you know, child psychologists, engineers of playgrounds, consultants galore, you know, the experts, say, look, this is how you can design a playground and this is where you should build it and this is how it can be cost efficient. So how do you carve out the space to do this? It sounds lovely, but how practically do you make that work? Very concrete, very easy. Meeting people, connecting people together. I think with the direct democracy, you have only one thing is sure. At the end of the process, you have a popular vote and you have to find a majority to make an investment, to organize a place, to organize a school, to build a school or a road. You need a majority. And if you are looking for a majority since the beginning of the work, you must try to take the people with you since the beginning. And well, it is not so complicated to organize. It is possible to organize in the cities maybe with associations, with support, public support for neighborhood associations or maybe with, well, associations of, not of children, but of parents to discuss with. Very easy and I must say, very important thing is the size of our cities that allows really those contacts. Because you say direct democracy, there's such a difference for anyone in the room that spent time in California and that spent time in Switzerland that in both places, there are plebiscites. In one, it's every four years where you suddenly hit with 51 balloted issues, some of which are unusual to say the least in California and suddenly a whole population who are not otherwise consulted have to vote. And that's not how it's working in Switzerland. And I think the contrast between this established system of ongoing consultation and inclusion, which leads to a vote being meaningful is rather important. I think it is also related in Switzerland and maybe the difference with a very big state like California. California is, I mean, eight times bigger than Switzerland. And the strong thing in Switzerland is also the federalism, this strong decentralization. And you know, well, I live in a village since 40 years, more than 40 years with my family. Three thousand people living there. I know personally each of them. And when we have to choose something for the village, we meet. There is a meeting, how is the name in English? There is an assembly where the citizen can go, they can say something and take a decision. And I think it's those direct contacts between people is really a strong thing. But it is not too to export, I think. It's not so easy to export. But surely there's, I mean, it's quite difficult to compare a city of a million with a Mexico city or a Lagos or one of these mega cities. But surely the common factor is that you're looking for is you need a narrative that people will buy into about being prepared to give up some current benefits for future benefits because cities only work if you're prepared to pay your taxes, build infrastructure, invest in the, you know, you have to have that. And the point about, I mean, I'm no expert on Switzerland, but it seems to me there's a remarkable consensus in Switzerland about the sort of national story, about who you are and what you want to do and the sort of cities and communities you want to build. And so the direct democracy works very well in that context, but the shared narrative is already there. And so in fragile cities, in countries that are growing very fast, what we've got to try and do as well as build this infrastructure and what it is, is try and help them to get to a situation where people are prepared, yes, to give up some current benefits for the future benefit of having a more successful, more stable city. And that's where the Swiss example maybe has some relevance. When it is growing very fast, I think the main problem is to contain the risk, to have a rise of inequalities. That's a big problem, I think. And it's also an advantage for Switzerland. We are not growing so fast in our cities and villages. I would challenge that a bit. I mean, it seems to me that part of our problem in trying to work out how to help the most fragile countries, the most fragile cities, is we haven't had enough of a sense of priorities. And I think the biggest priority of all is security. I mean, if you take very unstable situations, like perhaps recently in parts of Iraq or Syria, just knowing you're gonna wake up and still be alive in the morning, security is the number one. And I think sometimes when the West thinks about how we help other countries, we design the perfect strategy for tackling inequality, but actually the first thing you need is security. So the first thing is security, the second thing is economic activity. And I think sometimes we get our priorities wrong. And as we do this work on how we help fragile states, I think we're gonna have to be very hard-headed, very practical about the things that matter the most. The West often thinks, well, what we need is a roadmap towards early elections. And in many cases, that is a disastrous idea. I'm all in favor of democracy, don't get me wrong. But what matters more than the fact of holding the election is making sure that you've got the building blocks of democracy. You've got the rule of law. You've got certain rights and all the rest. When the election comes about, that there's a sort of shared understanding that it's not a winner takes all. It's not one man, one vote once, as it were. So I think it's about getting the priorities right. And I think if we say inequality is the top priority, I think we've been missing the point. Minister Jitendra Singh, just on this issue of putting security first, I recall the United Nations unops doing a survey in Afghanistan two years into the war in Afghanistan. And to their surprise, citizens did not put security number one. They put number one, their children being able to go to school. And I thought that was very interesting and thought-provoking, but what's your experience? Would you put security first? I'm glad you raised this issue, but if you permit me before coming to that, I'll just try to pick on from where the discussion was going on. From, I'll try to put across a different perspective. I think the prioritization is also fragile. And I'll just try to explain how. Looking at a so-called fragile city from Swiss perspective may draw difference inferences compared to looking at a Swiss, so-called fragile city in Switzerland from an Indian perspective. And I think it's not easy to quantify it, but for example, the entire population of Switzerland is just about eight million, if I'm not wrong, which is less than the population of a city called Delhi. So I think that about sums up the whole thing. So in a way, at least as far as India is concerned, now for example, this is absolutely a heterogeneous nation or a collection of several sub-nationalities, that's why for generations together, it has been referred to as Indian sub-continent. So I think it's unfair to compare the two and draw certain inferences because the inferences can't be uniform. That is one thing. But one of, I think, the president's... No, no, no, no, no, let's go. No, but sorry, just on size, though. One of the president's points, I think, is that the smaller the community that you're governing, the easier it is to include people. And is that not your experience in India? See, absolutely, see, I'll tell you. No, this is a very relevant point and the president also put it very nicely. Ideally, that should have happened. Now, in a village of 3,000, he's able to get in touch with everybody and rightly so, and that is what is the sense of an ideal democracy. In India, we have to actually slog to form this kind of a citizen contact, though, ideally, that is what is expected. And in today's days and times, the citizen participation is the sense of democracy. You have to be, you have to have an arrangement which is absolutely transparent, it's really accountable, and it can't happen without the participation of the citizen and to have the participation of a population which is as much as 1.3 billion or whatever is not easy. So our representatives also have to slog day and night. By the time, now, the president grew up in that village which was 3,000 population, right from his fourth standard, as he said. Now, I, too, grew up from a village. When I go back to my village, it's no longer the same village which I left. So the entire thing, the pace, either say the prioritization is also very fragile from place to place because the world is such a fascinating thing to live in. And having said that, the other part which I was looking at is that although the Modi government has launched on a very ambitious plan of bringing up smart cities, but I think that definition also will crystallize over a period of time because smart cities, of course, will essentially have a good smart infrastructure but then smart citizens as well. And the smart citizens means the citizen who can contribute to the successful conduct of a democracy as the president was pointing out. As far as two things, as far as the inequality in developing, just as a brief point what the president said, of course, that's to be taken care of. Maybe that is more relevant, and of course, relevant elsewhere also, but that's the only inequality that is to be taken care of in the context of the Swiss milieu. At my place, the inequalities pre-exist even before the development starts. Now, for example, you refer to Northeast. Now, I'm dealing with eight states in the Northeast. Even in a single given state, if you take the instance of a state called Manipur, which is a small state, you have some of the districts which are placed on the hills, others placed on the valleys, there's so much of topographical difficulties, so much of challenges which are inherent to those places to ensure the equitable development itself is a challenge within one place to other. So, what I'm trying to say is that it's not easy to draw a parallel, but I agree with you when you try to supplement Mr. Cameron's suggestion about the security with the urge to have good education for children and good health. I think that is the basic. And I think the fragility, as though I would agree with Mr. Cameron as far as the state fragility, leading on to add to the fragility of a state, because of course, state is ultimately responsible for keeping everything non-fragile, including the cities. But the aspiration itself adds to fragility. If all the other factors are held uniformly, the state is ideal, the place is ideal, the city is ideal, the growth is ideal, the growth is equal, there is no inequality. Aspirations would differ. Now, she's working on a startup thing. She has a huge rage of aspiration working inside her. I have another rage of, so that in a given population, that also adds to the more aspirational given society, the more you have to address, be awakened to that kind of a situation also. So, I think that also, to a great extent, ultimately would fall into the responsibility of the state as well. But that also can't be missed out. That's what I'm trying to say. So, thank you. So, there's been a rich array of issues put on the table, inequality, corruption, environmental sustainability, financial sustainability, inclusiveness, good decision-making structures. Are these all luxuries for a fragile state? So, I know we've got students that go from the School of Government back to their own countries, Syria, Yemen, both strike to mind, who say that the minute they go back to take leading roles in government, they're simply overwhelmed by the demands of helping outsiders, helping international organizations, helping NGOs, helping who have a list of aspirations a mile long and it drowns them. So, there's a trade-off here, isn't there? Now, what are your questions to our panelists? Are any of you gonna vote for one of these coming right to the top of the agenda? Chief Lal heads India's Infrastructure Investment Bank. So, I'm gonna predict where you're gonna come out on priorities and it's gonna begin with infrastructure. No, it's not actually, because actually one of the learnings infrastructure, even in India, is precisely this. A40 or I in fragile cities and states, it starts with state capacity. If you don't address state capacity first, nothing else matters. You can dream about infrastructure, you can dream about improving your tax systems, you can dream about giving good public education if you don't have basic state capacity. It's a problem, even in a country like India, at a municipal level, administrative capacity is a challenge. So, I would say, and we've looked at the range of these issues over the years, no matter which way you cut it, you come back to this fundamental issue and nobody is talking about what we need to do to build state capacity. I completely agree with that. I mean, that is what we're finding in our commission work is these interrelated things of the lack of state legitimacy, the lack of state capacity, problems of conflict, problems of corruption, they're all interrelated to each other. I think you summed up that very beautifully when you said the state fragility is something that is to be guarded against. But this point, I think he's right, that if we look at a fragile state or a fragile city and just simply think that needs some infrastructure and just sort of plonk the infrastructure in, that will help in one way, there's a bit of infrastructure, but often it will be done in a way that totally undermines the authorities that are there and if the fundamental problem is that the authorities aren't seen as a legitimate enough and they're not actually capable enough, you haven't solved the problem. And so this is why it's much harder because it's, as I said, it's much harder to build a legitimate tax-collecting authority than it is to build a school. But nonetheless, if you don't have the first, you'll never in the end sustainably get the second. And so I think we need to change the whole focus of the way we do aid and development and assistance to try and back the capacity point. And as a former prime minister, I can tell you even in a highly developed country, you often feel, prime minister, you pull a lever and you find there's absolutely nothing connected to that lever and the thing you thought was gonna happen doesn't, that often happens too. I'd just like to bring in, thank you, from Peter Pio, another perspective, because as a global health person who has dealt with Ebola, who is doubtless watching cholera, epidemics, et cetera, in fragile cities around the world, what would you put as your top priority, Peter Pio? Thanks, Gary. I'm always looking for opportunities and even in, let's say, fragile situations and I've lived myself in DRC, for example, in Congo where the state is basically absent. And I'm always impressed by the creativity of citizens to survive. They find solutions that we may not think of. And so I don't have a top priority, I would say infrastructure definitely from a health perspective, water sanitation and all that services. But I think try to nurture the creativity, the inventiveness, I mean, you go to places in cities in Nigeria and they, or in India, people have found ways that we may not have thought of. And so my small priority would be talk to people, listen to them and they may come up with some things. But it's the sustainability of all this that is always a big issue. That's very much reinforces President Berset's point. Other questions, comments? Could I just add to what was being mentioned in the context of global health, actually? I think the disease spectrum is so variable from one part of the world to the other part, that fragility on account of sanitation or poor sanitation may be a factor in one part of the world. May not be in other parts of the world where much of the morbidity may be happening in spite of the best of the best sanitation. So I don't think it's such a simplistic understanding of it at all. Thank you. I'm going to call on Andre Hoffman who's sitting there because Andre, you're an eloquent exponent of the case for sustainability. But what would your response be to people in Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan who say we can't afford that luxury? When you talk about luxury, you talk about green infrastructure. Well, I think green infrastructure is not a question of luxury. It really is a question of long-term sustainability. I'm sure we addressed that a little bit earlier before but I do strongly believe that if you do have the opportunity to build infrastructure, just doing it quickly in order to cover the needs immediately and seeing it going obsolete in a matter of years is not serving the purpose at all. So it's not a question of can you afford it, it's a question how long do you want it to be efficient, how long do you want it to help the communities which are going to rely on? And I think that's what you were saying before. Very much, Eiko, is what you were saying, Basima. I think there's a scale issue there, isn't there? Sometimes, you know, Western aid agencies or financial institutions will want to try and propose a sort of massive sustainable scheme whereas what might actually work better is small-scale solar and batteries and lights that actually work with the grain of what people want them. One of the things we found in our commission's work is so often we make the best the enemy of the good. I mean, actually, we had a great bit of evidence from a Yemeni politician who said it was exactly at the moment when in the parliament in Yemen they were writing the absolutely perfect natural resources law and how natural resources are going to... And it was at the moment they just finished the work that the Houthis arrived in the capital and the whole place collapsed. And it was a sort of brought home to us the importance of, you know, security comes first, you can't make every country end up like Denmark, try and work with what you've got and try to improve the situation you have and rather than trying to aim for perfection. I know it's rather a sort of downbeat thing to say at Davos, but the more we've looked at examples of what works and what doesn't, the more we've found that so many of the outside interventions have had totally unrealistic expectations and have not only undermined the capacity and the legitimacy of the authorities they're trying to help, but actually being done on a scale in a way that simply doesn't work. So David Cameron's mentioned legitimacy and corruption a number of times. How many of you think that fighting corruption should be a key priority in trying to rebuild the fragile city? Or trying to make? How many? So, and how many think not? Oh no, there's too many people in the room not thinking. Let's do it again. Stretch, come on, get your brain going. So how many of you think corruption should be a priority? And how many think that it's important but not necessarily a priority? Okay, so. Because a lot of the academic work we find sort of treats corruption as a sort of natural byproduct of other problems rather than, as the audience would seem to suggest, see this as an absolutely crucial problem. And one of the things, when we did the panel on how to replace the Millennium Development Goals we did some research on what people most cared about and of course, material poverty in the developing world came first but very close on its heels. The second was justice was the sense that people are being robbed by corrupt authorities, don't have access to justice. And I think that the academic community can sometimes make a mistake of not realizing just how important what a burning injustice people feel about the corruption that they experience in their everyday lives. I think from the perspective of lots of fragile states it's not actually on a kind of moral issue. It's that some of the intensely complicated procurement policies that there are us to adopt in order to avoid corruption, simply overwhelm them. Could I add to just what David Cameron was saying and I also to, in fact, endorse your point to an extent. Corruption should not be actually, it may not be right to view it purely from a moralistic point of view. In a highly corruption-ridden states there's huge amount of pilferage of a checker happening. So leave aside the moral aspect of it. There's also a huge, huge loss happening. Both of the taxpayers' money as well as the state checker which could otherwise be gainfully utilized in the building of a non-fragile habitation. So I think that also is what requires to be considered. Other perspectives from the room, yes at the back. Do introduce yourself. Sorry. My name is Esteban Bullrich. I used to be Minister of Education in Argentina and now I'm a Senator in Argentina. I wanted to bring up social capital. I think building trust within those fragile communities through education and training is as important. We've seen it, we have 30% poverty level in Argentina and we are doing a huge investment in infrastructure but I think if we go to those fragile communities and don't help them build trust among themselves so to develop their own social capital that will help strengthen the local authorities, strengthen the community itself, getting everyone involved, business, local judicial officials, government officials to really help in getting that community to be a sustainable one after you leave because then the infrastructure will be able to be redeveloped by that same community and without the help of external forces. So I wanted to bring up the education factor not only at the basic level of primary and secondary but also retraining of the workforce in the community and giving new abilities and skills to the community. One moment Senator, how do you build that trust? I think last year at Davos there were some of the mayor's team from Buenos Aires who were talking about involving locals what was interesting is when they first tried to involve citizens in big issues they got very little engagement and they spoke about a project about the zoo, closing the zoo as I recall. I recall that one of the big problems was once they all agreed to close the zoo they had to try and work out what to do with the elephants and giraffes which you can't ship very easily but that was a, sorry that's a side issue but it was the difference between taking very local issues to engage people and taking big national issues. Yeah and sometimes when we talk about infrastructure and community development or getting out of fragile communities we turn to only look at governments or public officials and what we're trying to do and I have some business represented from Argentina here that are working in that kind of project is getting the private sector involved in that development of the community because then you can work together in looking what are the different avenues of growth and what are the skills and abilities needed and then the infrastructure also works towards that goal. But can you give us an example of something that actually built trust? Yeah, well, for example in, we started working in a shanty town in the south of the city with a local company there in developing skills that that company needed and opening up the relation between the private sector and the community itself which was not there because of the fragility of the community the trust is not there. So you need to rebuild trust and it's not only with the government officials that come to the place with the infrastructure and compromising and corruption is an issue but also the fact that several times deadlines are not accomplished. So that's also a way of building trust with the local officials. But then showing that that infrastructure will also bring private sector involvement and then the community strengthens and so trust is not only built there but also with the community and the private sector can also help in developing local associations within the community. So cooperatives that is a form that is being exploited in Argentina quite a bit making sure that the community knows how to work together. Business sense is not built into those communities usually because the education system failed. So it's kind of we were not giving them fish anymore. We taught them how to fish but we didn't tell them what to do with the fish they catch. So now we're telling them how they can elaborate social capital and financial capital and economical capital from that ability that they gain through a welfare program. Thank you very much. President Bersee is there a relationship between in Switzerland with this intense local consultation? Is there a difference? Is there a sort of spectrum where if you're consulting on something local to the community you give them complete control. If you're consulting on something national like immigration policy you leave yourself open to take a decision the opposite way. Is there a sort of sense that locals have the highest rights to decide when it's a really local issue? It's quite a complicated question. I can say maybe it is possible to find good solutions on a local level because on the local level when you decide something it has consequences for your life personally. On the national level it's possible to take a decision without to feel the consequences of the decision. Could be it can be more difficult and we had in that sense in the last years well several quite complicated popular votes. That's why I think that on the local level it's very a good place to make these consultations and this work. You decide. You decide how to finance what you decide and you feel after that the consequences for what you decided. I think it's very concrete. And I think Peter Pio's intervention highlights how that can work even in some of the poorest, most fragile communities where people are forced to be more creative in order to survive and that we need more trust of those communities to use that creativity. You had a comment. Yeah, I actually have a question. First of all, my name is Said from Arab Emirates and my question is what is the relationship between the fragile cities and fragile governments or fragile countries? Because most of the priorities listed by the respected panelists about security and safety, rule, flow and justice system, education and all of these issues are usually controlled by the government, the country itself, not by the cities. So if all of the solutions are in the federal government or in the government hand or the state government hand, what are the role of these cities? I mean, and if we take like an example of China where the central government is very strong, where they have put in place a very strong education system and a very strong infrastructure and a very strong, and then the cities come with their other priorities. My question is if all the priorities for fragile cities are controlled by the fragile governments, why aren't we are talking about the governments, not the cities themselves? Great, I'm gonna hold that, take two more questions then come and give each panelist a chance to leave us with one take away thought. So there was another, yeah, here. It's a very simple, very new age, what is state of optimism and pessimism? I mean. Right. Is it, are you optimistic or pessimistic? I mean, you can definitely say that there are some places, some cities that are very optimistic, no matter what the present situation is. Oh, I see. Right, so morale is really important, morale and aspiration. I think this was mentioned. And that itself is a relative comparison. What is optimism for him may be pessimism for me. Yes. But I think he's echoing minister, your point earlier that the level of aspiration is very important. I think the theory of relativity is ultimately the crux of the entire discussion. One more question from over here and then I'm gonna come to each panelist. Hi, sorry, I more have, I have a comment rather than a question. Great. In my line of work, I work for the international community of the Red Cross so mostly in fragile environments where we feel every time we propose like a big urban project, the citizens would tell us, we'd need individual boreholes, individuals. We feel more and more that public property has no value anymore in fragile environments where everything is turned for survival, basically. I spent five years in Iraq and I totally agree with what you said, where again, public property has no sense. And I think what Senator Esteban just said links back to bringing back citizenship to enable states, enable basically state capacities to grow. Otherwise, there's no basis. There's nothing to build upon because again, the fragility of the war, the violence has disrupted all of that negatively. So there was only a comment rather than a question. Thank you. A tension that's run through this panel is between big solutions that might be efficient, that might be technically sound, and local solutions, small solutions, which people are demanding, your local communities that each want a borehole because they think that's what they can protect and that's gonna help save their lives or the locals that President Bersee mentioned, who want control over the things that really affect their lives. So we've had this kind of tension between local solutions, empowering communities to make those, and bigger solutions where how do you rebuild Syria, Iraq, Yemen with, is it through very small individually, borehole by borehole community by community or is it with a national plan? So I'm gonna let each of our panelists leave you with one takeaway thought. We have 30 seconds, that gives them about 10 seconds each. So Minister Jitendra Singh, what would your takeaway thought for the audience be? The crux of the discussion is that as the world shrinks, it's becoming a global world and notwithstanding all our heterogeneousities and other factors, the world would ultimately be looking forward to a new infrastructure roadmap with certain globally defined and as far as possible uniform parameters taking to cognizance all the concerns. And I guess the citizen participation at all level, not only at the local level or at the larger level, is essential not only because of the physical participation part of it, but also because of the satisfaction that it gives to the local citizen of being a participant which might take care of a lot much of grievance which might otherwise arise to confront with the state. And therefore the citizen himself would also be responsible for taking care a lot much of its grievance. And as we head for a global, democratically governed ideal state, I think we would actually have to work for that. Which of course, as David Cameron said, would also take care of a corruption-free governance which would ultimately happen because the citizen participation, the more and more it happens, would not allow that to happen because they too are not compatible with each other. Thank you very much Minister David Cameron. I think boreholes is the key, I mean why do people want individual boreholes, not public works, because there's a lack of trust. Why is there a lack of trust? Because there's a lack of capacity in government and a lack of leadership, a lack of good leadership and a lack of a shared narrative that people can buy into about what the leaders are doing, what the country is doing. And in the end, I think the more work we do on this, it does come down to the legitimacy of the state, the leadership that there is. Why is Botswana a success and Zimbabwe a failure? They're both neighboring countries resource rich, one had great leadership, one had terrible leadership. So in the end, this is the optimistic note, is these things are fixable. They're fixable with leadership that can bring forward the sense that in every country there are sacrifices you have to make in the present in order to build a stronger future. And to do that, you've got to trust your fellow citizens and you've also got to trust your government. And if you do that, then you can have a stable city and not a fragile one. And I think to answer your question, that you can have a stable country with fragile cities, I think we saw that actually in Western countries not that long ago when we had some very unstable and rather fragile and not very secure cities. But I think it's very hard to think of a stable city in a fragile country. And so therefore, the emphasis on trying to build stability at the state level, at the leadership level, at the capacity level of someone put it, I think is probably the key. Thank you very much. Basim Abdulrahman. So I will not talk about fragile government or building trust between government and people because everybody knows how complicated the situation in Iraq and I'm not a politician. All living and all of my life in Iraq should make me a very professional one. So I'm going to talk from an engineering perspective and how things are going to make my life easier. If we talk about the future, we need to make sure the government will be the key leader, the stakeholder in this. But we need to have all stakeholders from private sector, from civil society, individuals, all involved. So it's important to start with accurate data, clear national strategy, and matching long-term commitments by the government, directing all stakeholders using lessons learned, for example, from Switzerland, and incorporating the multi-stakeholder consultation concept while planning and designing and making sure it's flexible. So by using Mr. Singh's phrase, what's sustainable now might not be sustainable in the future. We need to make sure that the design is flexible, is able to incorporate future needs, future technologies. What's been developed 15 years ago should have taken into consideration that we're going to have shared bikes, zip cars, and all these new things that has been introduced to the society. So this is in terms of the, if we're talking about the future and the planning. But for now, I agree with Mr. Cameron. International donors, it's very important for them to take into consideration that whatever money they're putting into assisting Iraq or Syria or any of these fragile countries to make sure that they have the obligation or like a list of obligations that this money is spent to make sure that people are resilient and cities are sustainable. So this way the money is not spent to be used for like a one-time thing. There is a huge amount of money being spent now. So this is like a building on what Mr. Cameron was saying. It's a very, very important point. So that's for the current moment. Thank you. President Darcy. Well, maybe my last point will be related with culture. We didn't speak about culture and the importance of culture in the building. How we built, we spoke about infrastructure. But an infrastructure can have a really big influence on how we live in cities, for example, to make a house, to make a road, to make a place with a high quality. We'll not have the same consequences as if you make that without to think about the quality. And I think there is a lack of policies in that sense. And we had, at the beginning of this week, here in Davos, 18 culture ministers of a member state of the Council of Europe in order to exchange about that. And we adopted the declaration of Davos for the high quality in the built environment, in the Bauchu tour. It's quite difficult to define in English. And I think it is a concern not only for us, but it's a concern for all countries in the world. And I think we need to improve, to do more in that sense, to improve the quality in the built environment. Thank you very much. There's a surprising theme that we're ending on here, which is that issues like culture and sustainability go to the question of who we are as a community, for any community. Expressions of culture help cement. This is who we are. This is our identity. We are a culture that celebrates this. Sustainability is a way for a culture to recognize that it cares about its children. It cares about its grandchildren. We're a community that cares. And that we've talked about a new kind of leadership on this panel, a leadership which is more attentive to local inclusion. That's more attentive to the innovation and creativity of local communities. That crafts a narrative in David Cameron's words, but it's a narrative that's gonna have to be one that the local community recognizes as theirs. So can I thank you all for a very illuminating discussion of fragile cities.