 So many people have been speaking about the climate crisis, but the real question is why is it that we're still not acting at the scale and speed that is necessary? For 150 years we built up a world based on the assumption that we can exploit the planet for free and it translates to very dramatic impacts happening right as we speak. The climate crisis is a threat multiplier, which means it exacerbates existing inequities in our society. We need to remember we're on the same planet and this is the planet that we need to make sustainable for the whole of humanity. Making much faster progress toward all 17 sustainable development goals is the best pathway to adjust the future for all and public-private partnerships will be absolutely crucial to this transition. We know that this transition will require a fast adoption of a lot of new technologies and the question today is how to find the appropriate way to find this technology. Younger generations are demanding a sense of purpose, they want to look at companies and say I am investing with you all for this reason. The solutions are there, what we need is governments to regulate, to invest and we need business to act with values. History will look at us, people, politicians, corporate leaders. These times require not only solutions but speed. There is nowhere else to look than the mirror, we are the ones that need to do this. Good afternoon from New York. We are here together at the starting day of the United Nations General Assembly. Today there is a high level conference on the sustainable development goals. Where do we stand? I think the conclusion is that only 13% of the 17 goals are on track. So there is a way to go until 2030. On Wednesday there is a climate summit in New York and we have seen this summer that we have critical challenges when it comes to climate and climate change. We also are faced with a very fragmented world. So this panel will let us know on how we can try and achieve collaboration even in a fragmented world. Because many of the challenges and problems that we are faced with do not travel with the passport, being COVID, being climate change. We do need to find solutions even if there is great competition between nations. We have a great panel with us today. On my right hand side we have Rania Almashat, Minister of International Cooperation from Egypt. Welcome Rania. Thank you. And we have Sven Tudorulsatter, the President and CEO of Yara International, one of the large fertilizer companies in the world. And then we have Miroslav Lychak, who is the former president of the General Assembly. Also a decade the foreign minister of the Slovak Republic and now trying to make peace in the West Balkans. I don't know which of these jobs that have been the most challenging. But let me start with you, Minister Rania. You showed so much leadership in the run-up to COP 27 and that was on climate change. And we know that there is a huge financing gap. If we're going to make sure that we have the energy transition that we need until 2030, I think there is a need for like 18 trillion US dollars. And we even have a problem of getting the 100 billion US dollars a year that was promised in Copenhagen 15 years ago. So where do you feel we stand on climate change, the run-up note to COP 28 in the UAE, and is there a movement on the financing side? Thank you, Borgie. And let me maybe start by saying that this week, ahead of the climate summit, there's the SDG summit. And this is not a coincidence. There is a very strong relationship between SDG's development and climate. They are not mutually exclusive. And this is a message that we were emphasizing at COP 27. I think it's a message that we're hearing more of and in order to fulfill the 17 SDGs, we cannot not focus and zoom in on climate action. The other very important point is that in order to move forward on climate, finance becomes key. And when we take a look at the type of finance, especially for developing countries that is able to achieve development and climate action, here comes the concept of just financing. And just financing is to ensure that countries are able to get not just quantities of finance but quality of finance, so finance that creates sustainability. And here comes, we've been discussing also today resilience, we've been discussing the conversation of collaboration, South-South collaboration and so forth. So the quantity and quality of finance is important. The second point is also to have additionality. So when we talk about the gap, as you mentioned, 100 billion was several years ago. What is needed today is much more. And the third point is that there needs to be affordability and access to countries. Now, when we take a look at the financing landscape, we find that most of the money has actually gone to the north rather than to developing and emerging economies. And that's because there's a regulatory and a background of environment which is less risk, there's bankable projects. There's been more spending on mitigation rather than adaptation, even though developing countries do suffer from food security, water security, and we'll hear more about that. So this is a reality that most of the pledges have gone not to necessarily where they are most needed. So these are realities. And to say that, or I'm not trying to push the responsibility away from the countries that need the financing, they also need to have country ownership over the projects. There needs to be a detailed discussion on creating regulatory environments that attract private sector. And let me maybe conclude by saying that, and this is also in all the discussions, it's not just the public sector that can provide the needed resources. It's not just the concessional finance, but it's also very much the private sector that has blended instruments. And here comes the concept of blended and innovative, which we have been discussing over the past, since Glasgow actually, through Sharma Sheikh and going forward to COP28. And in the case of Egypt, as president of COP, we tried to create an example, a country platform for the nexus of water, food, and energy, NWFE, it's pronounced in Arabic, which means fulfilling pledges. And through this platform, we have identified projects that are also available for the private sector and have leveraged concessional finance from the different partners to be able to say, here's an example, country ownership at the heart, concessional finance to drive in private sector, and we hope we go to COP28 to show what has been achieved over this year. So on the positive side, though, is that access to renewable energy because of the dramatic fall in prices has been a game changer. We know from Egypt that there is a lot of solar panels being installed, and if you look at the prices 10 years ago, today, solar panels cost one-tenth and wind one-seventh. Has that changed the energy landscape in your country? Absolutely, and let me tie this to the nationally determined contributions. There has been a call globally that all countries have to update their NDCs. In our case, we started the energy transition in 2014 by introducing wind farms and also solar plants. The NDCs before June 23 were 42% energy mix from renewables by 2035. We updated our NDCs in June 23 so that the energy mix is 42% by 2030. So we brought it forward, and this is to show commitment. It was also based on collaboration that we had during COP 27 with many of our partners, the US and Germany, and many MDBs, where through the platform of NOAAFI that I spoke about, we were able to update our NDCs providing a concessional financing framework. So absolutely, renewables have come in to show that they are much needed. Prices of gas and fuel have gone up, and hence, very important. But nonetheless, this could have only been possible through structural reforms that the government did in 2004, redirecting the feed-in tariff, providing opportunities for private sector to come in and invest in such projects. And finally, the concessional finance, which was available in 2014, provided to the private sector that was engaged in renewable energy. So we have a very interesting story, and we are pushing from 2014 to the NDCs now and hopefully into the future. I think it has changed energy landscape quite substantially. Not only in Egypt, I was just in China, where renewables are now the biggest source for electricity production. More important than coal, that has just changed in five years. So then to the whole sector, we know that we need fertilizers to feed the world. At the same time, we know agriculture sector is also responsible for 30% of the global CO2 emissions. When it comes to the fertilizer industry, it's critical for feeding the world. At the same time, we know it's hard to abate sector. It's a sector that also do emit a lot of CO2. And how can this sector go from being a sector that emits a lot of CO2 to still be critical in feeding the world, but also have less of a CO2 footprint? Well, indeed. But again, we're one of these hard to abate sectors that are hard to do without half of the world's population gets food because of fertilizer. We need to provide nutrition or nutrients to the plants so that they can grow. And we need energy in order to produce it. Why do we eat food in the first place? It's to get energy, right? And it takes energy to produce food as well. And in the production process of fertilizer, yes, there are significant emissions, and we have to do something about it. And indeed, the industry has done a lot through the International Fertilizer Association. We're fiercely competitive for market share everywhere. I think you were depressed at that, Tartua. Well, I was chair-up until this summer, and I've been on the board for a number of years, still am on the board. And there are some things that need to be in place and our role in society as well, and where before we put demands on everyone else and what they need to do in reducing emissions, it's about reducing our own industry's emissions as well. And we embarked on work together in the association to create the roadmap for reducing our own emissions, but also coming up with ways to reduce emissions from the application of fertilizer. And that's something that can be done pretty comparatively and where we need to take a lead in the industry. But with that as a basis, then we can start to talk about full value chains. How do we work with the farmers? How do we work with the food companies, the retailers, the consumers, and governments to look at the totality of this? And in reality, there's only so much we can do as individual companies. We have to do this in collaboration and doing full value chains, like what you're doing in the World Economic Forum as well with the First Movers Coalition. We should do something similar to that on food as well, where you support the pioneers with new technology to have a market as well to really foster and drive innovation throughout. And we are in the beginning stages. So this week, actually, we're now producing the first green hydrogen molecules that will then, in turn now, in the next few days, be turned into green ammonia and green fertilizer. So it's a step on the way. Now congratulations on that. I think that, I guess, that hydrogen is part of the solution here. But as you said, there also has to be a demand then. And someone been willing to pay for a fertilizer that leaves less of a CO2 footprint. Is there a demand for that today? Not sufficiently. And here, this is also a leap of faith that this has to happen. And with the carbon footprint that the total food industry has, it's not possible to reach the Paris Agreement unless we fix the food system. And in order to fix the food system, we need to change how we produce part of the products like fertilizer and then we have to go to hydrogen. So what is going to come first? Are we going to produce it and then hope someone will buy it? Or will we need to wait for demand and then build it? I think we have to trust that we have to do both at the same time. And as you said in your introduction, we're now, did you say 13% of the sustainable development goals are on track and we're more than half way to 2030? That's quite alarming. And then it means that we have no time to waste. We have to work in collaboration and at a scale that we've never seen before. So then part of this is that we also from the industry have to get started on making these changes. When it's starting up in production, show that the product is there, but then there has to be demand as well and that has to be driven by consumers. It has to be supported by governments as well. The US is a good example now with the Inflation Reduction Act where there's a co-investment to avoid a climate catastrophe. I think that should serve as an inspiration to many countries. But is this a change when it comes to producing fertilizers that you foresee in the future? Or is it already a fact that fertilizers are being produced with less CO2 emissions than in the past? Or is this an aspiration for the future? No, no, we've done a lot. And just to use my own company as an example, we have reduced our emissions by 40% compared to where we were in 2005, for instance. And our R&D department in Norway actually came up with a catalyst that we're licensing to the rest of the industry that reduce the CO2 equivalent of 30 million tons of CO2 every year. So from that perspective, if we were a country we would already have delivered on the Paris Agreement, but the thing is that we're not a country and the world is not on track, so then we need to do more. But have all the fertilizers companies been through that development or can you buy fertilizers that emit much more CO2 than other types of fertilizers? There are still very big variations in that. And you don't get a higher price for those that have less CO2? Not yet. So even if you have a carbon footprint of the global average that's not really something that is priced in today. But I think this will change in the future. And the whole industry is seeing that as well and that's why the whole fertilizer industry is also supporting this pathway to reduce emissions. And there's a lot of great work done by a lot of the companies in the fertilizer industry. But yes, there are some fertilizers still being produced at way too high carbon footprint. And as you mentioned, the whole thinking around this first movers coalition that was launched in Glasgow by President Biden and also the World Economic Forum and you were there was to create the demand for the grid products. It was having the big companies in the world being aluminium, being on steel, being on transportation, cement fertilizers. If a big company says that we will only buy this if it's 25% green, then there is the demand and they're willing to pay for it. But today when we were in a fragmented world as we started with I guess to get an agreement between countries that you like create a level playing field and this is not that easy. But it's possible. And that's the great idea with the first movers coalition because you create a market big enough to make changes that are large enough to create so-called tipping points where you can change industries and you're opening up new opportunities as well. So we're part of the first movers coalition, first and foremost as an ammonia producer where green ammonia can be used as a fuel for the shipping sector. So we're actually moving into a completely new segment. I mean who would have thought we would do that five years ago but we are and that shows how fast the world is evolving now and in addition to being in the fertilizer space we're moving into the energy space to support the shipping sector to decarbonize. So a lot is happening in this. And hopefully there will be further technology breakthroughs in the years to come as we have seen on renewables. Maybe we'll see even fusion breakthroughs. I think it might take a couple of decades. So over to you, Mariuslav Lychak. You were the president of the General Assembly also at the critical point for the Sustainable Development Goals. The MDGs, the Millennium Development Goals we reached before they were due. That was really also about eradicating poverty. It doesn't seem like we're on track this time. And any reflections on the reasons? Can we then blame COVID? Can we blame the global fragmentation trade wars? Or were they too ambitious and unrealistic and without financing when we agreed on this SDGs? We can always blame somebody else but we should start blaming ourselves obviously. These are our goals. These are goals that SDGs represent the pathway towards a better world towards a more sustainable and safer world. But unfortunately we are not on the track to deliver. And there are many reasons. As the president of the General Assembly to see how different is the approach of different countries, how much attention is paid to SDGs in some countries and how little in other countries. Or there is a huge desire in sufficient financial resources in many countries. I've also seen many concrete positive examples like you just spoke about. But what I was missing was making them a universal model for others to follow. So there is little knowledge about how things can be done that can be then used in other countries. But of course all this is happening against the backdrop of a fragmented world. So we are living in times with no clear rules. And we still don't know what world are we going into. Unipolar world is over. And now Secretary General Antonio Guterres spoke of the fear of having a fragmented world where we will have two blocks which will be completely disconnected with a different environment, different IT system, financial banking system. That would be very bad for this planet. We can have a multipolar world and we see countries or regions emerging and claiming what we consider their legitimate rights. The most important for me is not whether the future world will be bipolar or multipolar but whether it will be rules-based or power-based. And we really need to contribute all of us to our world where rules apply to everyone. And we are not there unfortunately but we need to focus. And of course the fact that we live in these uncertain times prevents us from focusing fully on addressing the needs which are crucial for the survival of this planet. And obviously SDGs are the right way there. But you see we are losing on the climate change and we are losing on a number of other issues. And I also believe that in this new arrangement which has to be based on rules what will be different or should be different from the post-World War II global arrangement is that we have to have a very strong public-private component. That means governments themselves cannot do. We really need to have a partnership. We need to have a contract with the private sector that brings expertise, experience, technologies, investment of course. And there are things governments cannot do without private sector and vice versa. So it's really important to bring the stakeholders together. And I think it's becoming more and more clear that fighting against each other is really making us all lose on this global battle. And I hope that also this discussion that we are going to be part of this week will help us understand that we only have one planet and it's our generation's responsibility to hand it over to the next generation in better shape than what it is right now. No, I couldn't agree more, but it seems like we're acting like we have one extra planet in reserve because our footprint is not what it should be. Unfortunately, you are right and it's still too much of us and them and too much of talking about each other rather than talking to each other. I see also different countries or organizations being sort of locked in their own information bubble where we talk to like-minded because we like to hear what they have to say because they say what we want to hear, but we don't interact enough with others or we reach out to the others when we need their help but we are blind or deaf and they reach out to us to ask for help and of course this is not how this can work and I think the war in Ukraine is also a wake-up call for the transatlantic community to see that all of a sudden the reaction from the rest of the world is not what the community has expected and this also helps to understand that maybe this is the price we are paying being too arrogant or listening too little to these countries when they reach out to us so it takes leaders, it takes responsibility we need to be able to address global challenges we have no other option, we have no planet B as Antonio Gutierrez likes to say and I think one of the challenges is also some of the developed countries and for example in Europe also are quite indebted so their leverage is lower than it used to be then we also have seen some positive developments in some big countries India had the G20 presidency and there we are now seeing 8% economic growth we are seeing that they are doing well when it comes to also being digitally connected so how much do you think policies, domestic politics do decide on the growth opportunities and the competitiveness and productivity of a country is based on external situations? well still too much, still too much we live in democracies that means you go to elections every 4 years and therefore unfortunately the majority of politicians is really thinking in terms of next elections rather than next generation and therefore we really need to build a coalition understanding what are the priorities, you can have political differences on number of issues but not on sustainable development goals for example not on fighting or countering the climate change and poverty and hunger so that means we should not be in a situation that elections in one country in an important country can bring a fundamental change of the policy course as we have seen and this is obviously very difficult than to plan for several years or for many years ahead so this is extremely important but I am very happy to see the successful Indian chairmanship of the G20 the fact that the countries of Briggs are more and more visible because this also shows that there are groups of countries that have their say and they want to be heard and they also want to have their seat at the high table where the most important decisions for this planet are being made and I think this is really important to understand that we need just redistribution of the seats at the table where these decisions are made starting with the United Nations Security Council obviously that's a place where there is less cooperation than in the past there was something you mentioned that I think I would like to get comments from the two other panelists too is like you said that we cannot meet the STUG's without thinking out of the box and there has to be more private public cooperation I think you are preaching to acquire when it comes to a lot of people watching this but what have we seen of really consequential public-private cooperation during the last years and how can we make that happen because some people say that the business of business is business but I guess today also business has to be part of the solution I don't know Rania or Centauri who wants to go first well yes if we go some 50 years back with Milton Friedman and the shareholder capitalism then the business of business is business but at the same time Professor Schwab also came up with the stakeholder capitalism looking after also the more than the P&L and the balance sheet but rather the place in the societies where we operate and I think that's deeply embedded in many companies right now it's about purpose it's how you attract people to work it's what drives people every day and at the end of the day private sector will not prosper in a society that is not prospering and your owners appreciate that that you have that priority none of them have criticized that not really because at the end of the day we need to have a strategy that is future proof as well and that's also keeping in mind that the sustainable development goals are not a barrier to business it's an enabler of business there are huge benefits from this if you get it right so we need to build on that and really see the opportunities and here more needs to be done both from the private sector but also from the public sector and how big a crisis do we need to see before we act we saw strong response to the pandemic when we're all faced with a really clear, tangible danger then we see political leadership and we see business leadership getting together to seek solutions as well and this is one of the worries I have with the climate side that it's not felt clearly enough by enough people to really create the urgency to drive this change but many are feeling it right now but worry here is that we're passing the tipping points where we have irreversible damage and then the tasks that need to be with our exponential so we really need to step up and I mentioned the inflation reduction act, what the US is doing right now thinking about putting incentives in place thinking about a co-investment or an investment to avoid the climate catastrophe where there's strong collaboration between the private sector and the government for green solutions and also to decarbonize and we should need to see more of that Indeed, Rania, you've been working a lot on this public-private cooperation A few points, in emerging markets and developing economies the risk barrier now is quite high given the implications of what happened post-COVID and then the implications of the war in Europe and what happened to food prices, oil prices and so forth so there's a perceived risk which is quite high and to be able to entice more private sector to come in that's where more concessional finance to attract private sector is very, very important and let me go to the G20, the outcomes of the G20 where it was mentioned that there's a triple objective for MDBs first of course to eradicate extreme poverty think about national priorities in line with global public goods but also to triple the lending capacity, concessionality by 2030 so this in itself is also supposed to create opportunities for private engagement into emerging markets this is not to say that it's also not the responsibility of the countries and the policies themselves to create an enabling environment more predictability with respect to fiscal policy deregulation in certain industries which are much needed for the climate ambition and so forth so there's again all hands in deck, a multi-stakeholder approach government needs to do a lot the concessional finance innovative blended instruments are very important but this needs more capital in MDBs and this is again going back to the calls that we have been hearing over the past year from the UN during the G20 and I'm sure it will also surface this week during the discussions and then of course the private sector itself purpose being the driver of most of what's happening but overall it's a very tight environment currently with the increasing interest rates to fight inflation everywhere but of course disproportionately so to emerging markets so I think when it comes to the energy transformation we are faced with many dilemmas at the same time and we have built the whole industry revolution that we've been through for more than 200 years we built on fossil fuel and we know see that that has to change but we're also seeing how difficult it is to change that overnight because at the same time as we know that we have to emit less CO2 greenhouse gases we know there are still 700, 800 million people that don't even have access to electricity we know that also energy security and diversification is a big topic so we have to decouple growth from growth in CO2 so are we on track to manage this how much has to be done by technology breakthroughs and how much can we do with the current technology and access to renewables that's a very complicated question but I think I go back to something you said very early on the common denominator among all countries is exactly what you describe but there's much more that needs to be done we are nowhere close to filling the gap that has been identified I think August was the highest degrees on record across countries so no we are still far away from being able to fill that gap but the key concept here because of the disproportionate distribution of electricity or access or finance is the word just and we need to see how just financing can get to where it needs to go the contemplation of what modalities of just energy transition can take place in different countries so that this two phases of the same coin climate and development do not come or jeopardize the trade off itself does not jeopardize the trajectory for countries or the pathway for development in countries it is a bit like squaring the structure but at the same time we are seeing more and more indications that the cost of inaction really cost us more than the cost of action because we are seeing climate change having so severe impact on the planet but still it is very hard to come up with common solutions because also countries do compete and they don't necessarily look at it in the same way and there are also differences between oil and gas producing countries and those are big importers indeed and it is also a responsibility on several other wealthy nations that have built that wealth based on the use of fossil energy to also support the transition towards a low carbon society and I just came back from or I was in Africa two weeks ago in an agriculture summit and a lot of positive is happening in African agriculture right now but it needs to accelerate even faster a lot of the solutions are in place in terms of regenerative agriculture but it will take an investment to get there but with the backdrop now of US, of Europe and other countries battling inflation they are doing that with raising the interest rates strengthening the currencies but also weakening the currencies across many nations in the world which means that financing is a challenge and that's putting farmers in a very challenging situation governments in a very difficult situation as well and here I think we need to ensure that there is financing available at reasonable rates to support the nations in that transition and here again as you say the cost of inaction on this will be far greater than taking action right now and thinking about that as an investment in the future of these countries as well to support in this period where we need to move to low carbon solutions this is a common sense but it seems Miro that common sense is not that common unfortunately common sense is rather a rare commodity it's hard to believe but this is where we are and we need to be aware of the fact that there is a great divide on this planet we have part of the world which is building smart cities and constructing flying cars and artificial intelligence is becoming reality but then there is a huge part of our planet where people have no access to water have no food, have no access to education and do not see the future in their countries for many reasons and the one cannot exist in isolation from the other so therefore to redirect the finances and to invest the problems where they are most urgent to bridge the gap rather than to widen the gap so the financial resources are there but what is missing is of course the common commitment to direct them where they are most needed so as if we live on two different planets or on several different planets this understanding must be here and also I would always advocate for participatory rather than prescriptive approach so if we agree on what the global goal is we also have to give each other the freedom to contribute to this goal the way which best suits your country your geographical location, your economic potential so that we are not all equal by size, by many other indicators so it's really important that everybody understands or agrees what our common goal is but of course we do not have one prescribed approach how to get there and to get as often as possible the global leaders, political leaders with the leaders of the business world unlike 50 years ago many companies today are global companies of global impact and their decision really changes the planet and it is therefore so much important that we are all on the same board and after the same goal, that's extremely important and I don't know, in the past we always had to come on the verge of a tragedy or almost the extinction of the humankind to understand that this is not the way so then we produced certain rules how the current multilateral system was born it was right after the world war two and humankind said never again so it looks like we again need to get on the verge of another tragedy to understand that common sense is what is needed I really hope we will not go that far, I really hope that there is a growing understanding we need to act as one and we need to act now and we need to cultivate and strongly support that Thank you to this great panel I think there is also a fact that we are moving in the right direction but not fast enough as we said in the beginning if we met 10 years ago I think very few would have believed that solar would cost 110, wind would cost 170 in most countries in the world now you can roll out solar without any kind of subsidies and it's cheaper than fossil fuel, cheaper than natural gas, cheaper than coal so we just have to continue to put resources into research and development but we also have to implement all the technologies that are there and remind ourselves that we just have this planet and that's the boundary we have and we have to work together to also agree on some traffic rules, traffic rules that we all will have to comply with so thank you very much, it's been great to have you here and good luck with the next week here at UNJ and we will not talk about why but how we will make a difference Thank you very much