 It's now my great pleasure to introduce Ms. Amina Mohamed, who's of course the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations and Chair of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group. Previously, she served as Minister of Environment for the Federal Republic of Nigeria and as a special advisor to the Secretary-General, Banki Moon. At that time, she led the process that resulted in the global agreement around the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. So it's our great honour, Amina Mohamed, to have you here today to speak to the International Conference on Sustainable Development. And can I start by asking what is the news from the United Nations, from the SDG summit and how do you feel about the week? Thank you very much, John. And thank you to everyone who's in the audience, both there and online. It's fantastic to join you again. Well, the feeling around the UN is one of determination to really pivot from talk and perhaps talk around the 15% of the targets reached, which is pretty miserable, but to find some momentum in the solutions that are there. So we're coming out with new momentum. We're coming out with a lot of hope, direction and a concrete to-do list. We've had over 5,000 people from civil society, academia, women's groups who've come in to the UN over the weekend and they have connected, they've engaged, they've shared, they've recommitted to the SDG promise and they've given us a lot of energy and they're certainly not leaving here without anything to do. And with that, it has been a clear direction. The political declaration that we had and it was hard to come by, it was almost like being in 2015 all over again, does convey the commitment of governments to deliver on the SDGs, but better still, it tackles that means of implementation, the finance, technology, and the trade that needs to happen. So they did give us a nod for the SDG stimulus, which will help us to tackle the debt pressures. It'll help us to look at how we are going to recapitalize and reform the MDBs. And of course, in the longer term, fixing the global financial system. And that's all 193 countries agreeing that. And then last, as the SDG closed the summit, he left everyone with a to-do list, over 110 heads of state and government, really pivoting for commitments to concrete actions. And on finance, it will be about how we translate more concretely the SDG stimulus into action and it will be what we go to the annual meetings with, it's what we'll go to COP with. So before the end of the year, we will have a really clear momentum of how we can go about some of these actions that need to be taken on finance. On implementation, we've seen a lot of momentum behind about six different transitions that we've spoken to, from food, systems, energy, digital education, social protection and to nature. So lots to take away, determination and grit there. It is the stakeholders really that have provided that momentum and really countries have heard and we're hearing them ask our country teams, the UN, okay, how can we take this forward? Well, as you said, Deputy Secretary-General, we've got a long way to go with only 15% of the commitments on track. But out of the last few days, have you heard solutions that are particularly inspiring and you think can be followed across the world to help us increase that implementation much faster? Yes, we have and we continue to harvest them. I'm just coming out of a room on the discussions for how we're going to operationalize the loss and damage fund that was pretty historic coming out of COP 27 before we get into COP 26. And so we're still harvesting. We did see eight member states announce concrete plans to drive the energy transitions that are so urgent right now in our climate action. We also heard very clearly how economic policies are being anchored in preserving nature for the benefit of also a recognition that the triple planet planetary crisis goes beyond climate. It is also nature and pollutions. And then building on the July food systems summit stock take which was really quite amazing. The number of plans that are now in engagement with companies on how to transform those pathways from production to the supply chain and access to finance. Really good combinations of seeing the programs and the financing. But also we've seen data being picked up here and technology. This is really important for us. We've seen with technology the use of AI in the food systems. Again, commitments to support that in countries. So when someone's talking about a smart farm it's not just a theory that they can actually take that out there and show you how that could be done. We've also seen commitments made to the urgency of investing in students and teachers. And these are a number of new UN tools that were unveiled to support member states on delivering the commitments they made last year in transforming education. There was a high level panel meeting of teachers and this is really quite important because in transforming education teachers really have to be at the forefront and sometimes the discussion is about technology being at the forefront but they've all got to go hand in hand but we've got to have a transformation also of the teaching constituency. We had seven countries announced their progress on what we have which is a global accelerator. That's really about enabling framework for developing decent jobs and social protection. And those countries include in Malawi, Namibia, Indonesia. So with that you have a better discussion on those decent jobs and how they're targeted with some of these green transitions that we have. We saw the launch of the SDG Digital Acceleration Agenda and here two digital use cases for each SDG and new pledges from our ITU and the Inter-American Development Bank. They're really stepping up to investing in more digital solutions and you'll know that we've got the digital compact that the SG will pull into our common agenda next year to help us put some guardrails around what is an incredible potential but could also be pretty dark. And then I'll say that a recurring theme through the Governor through the weekend was about effective institutions and multi-level governance. Local 2030 coalition got a lot of attraction. So did the power of data and we saw 15 national data partnerships announced to revolutionize the decision making and we saw again a lot more that's being done in the public sector. Finally I would just say that we took another step forward towards unlocking the SDG stimulus. It's not been easy. We thank Jeff Sachs for the work that he also put into this to give it ambition and now the follow-up is about how we can take pieces of that and at least make the $500 billion we're talking about available to developing countries and really robust discussions with the bank, with the IMF and with other financial players. One of the things that was in the political declaration that I found really interesting was the commitment to SDG localization and to working with local governments and local communities for the SDGs. Do you think there's real opportunities to boost that as we look at the next 15 years? It's been the most difficult part of this agenda to discuss because if you want to do Local 2030 you've got to do it with institutions. This is about the foundation of a nation that is building itself up and out and including everyone. But you know those institutions are pretty weak and people don't feel they've got the time to invest in them. But now we're coming back to see that without that we're never going to build this house. So we have seen traction. We've seen traction from mayors in cities. We've seen traction from parliamentarians at the local level who are asking us to engage through some of the sectors. But we've also seen education and health and these are all local and basic first charges to your social contract. And so I think yes, finally we are turning the tide to get back to basics to start from our foundations in Local 2030. And I think that will come out and it won't, you know, there is not a one size fits all. The regions differ in how they deal with this, countries differ. But we're getting a lot more specificity to it now and the UN consortium of agencies and stakeholders will carry that forward. I think we're going to start seeing that in some of the VNRs that we bring to the UN every year around July. We've started to see local VNRs, Local 2031. So yeah, there's a lot of work to do at the local level. Take us to scale. We mustn't lose its connection to the rest of what happens at the national level and then plugs and plays the international opportunities. But short, long answer to that is yes, we're very enthusiastic about what's happening at the local level. Next year around this time we'll be having the summit of the future. What's your hope for that? And perhaps you could tell us a bit about the sum of the future and what your hope for it is. Well, the SG put on the table at the request of member states a couple of years ago. UN at 75, what next? And that's really what the summit of the future is about. It's giving us thoughts that we're witnessing some major changes. We're also witnessing that, you know, what we've been doing in 1945 is no longer fit for purpose in 2023 nor will it be in the future to embrace and respond to this new era of technology, the connectivity, climate, climate change is crossing borders at speeds that we cannot keep up with but populations that will be moving into cities. So it's a different remit that we're going to have to respond to in institutions and of course financing frameworks, peace agendas, no longer working and we can see this collapsing everywhere we're 75 years old on our human rights charter this year and we're seeing rights regressing for women, for young people. So the common agenda just brings that common thread of all those issues we see ourselves facing individually and collectively. And I would say there are probably three big issues that we will carry forward next year. One of course around the means of implementation addressing the fact that international financial architecture is broken. It's not fit for purpose. It doesn't do justice to an equal world that doesn't leave anyone behind. And that's okay because it wasn't meant to when it was designed in 1945. But today we have to imagine that we woke up and faced our 8 billion population with what we have today, potentials and challenges and crisis. What sort of an international financial architecture would we design? It's not tweaking the existing. It's really having a major overhaul to make it more responsive. And then we've got to face technology and the digital era. And that's moving so fast, whether it is AI or quantum computing, whatever it is, there are no guardrails for society to benefit the full potentials. There's so much more concern and a distraction on what could go wrong. And so here again, in our common agenda, we want to be able to put the digital era to the best use possible for our young people, especially our women, close the divides, but put those guardrails around it and that's in the digital compacts that we are putting on the table for people to get their teeth into. Last but not least, the context of this, I mean, beyond the climate crisis, which is obvious for everyone and when we are trying to deal with that with the Paris Agreement, is of course peace. And with peace comes the new peace agenda. The UN was set up for that that we would know no other war. What do we have today? We have frozen wars. We have terrorism. We have unconstitutional changes in government that people celebrate. We have a war in Europe that we never imagined could be possible. So obviously we've got to rethink the peace agenda and what we have to offer and our responses that worked in the past no longer respond in the same way. And so these are some of the things we want to pick up to say that the UN after 75 years has a youth office is a really big deal. Now we are really trying to say that network multilateralism needs to have young people at the center. Science needs to be in there. Business needs to come in the door. But for an institution like this that is this old and very much a bureaucracy, change takes time and the UN is looking at and I ask you to read up this up and give us your feedback what we call the quintet of change, UN 2.0 how we use that to change mindsets that will also use tools that will help us think into the future and provide the necessary substance behind the hope that we are always convening for in this multilateral world. Well, Deputy Secretary Amina Mohammed thank you so much for spending this time with us. You've honestly set out a lot of the big challenges but also I think left us with a message of hope too as we move into next year in the summer of the future. So we'll everyone thank Deputy Secretary Amina Mohammed. Thank you so much for having me and good luck and I look forward to hearing the outcomes. We need them for sure. The SDSN has done an amazing job in this ecosystem to support the work that we do both here in New York and Geneva but more especially I have to tell you at the country level. So thank you all so much for hanging in there. Let's try to keep the promise of 2030. Thank you.