 Welcome to the Deutsche Welle Debate at the World Economic Forum Sustainable Development Impact Summit in New York. My name is Sarah Kelly. Our central question today is how can we build a market that people want, one that prioritizes not just profits, but also rewards those who are tackling some of the most pressing issues of our time, including sustainability, inequality, and climate change. What will it take to redesign today's business, today's economic models in order to provide for that sort of long-term value, and ultimately, a more sustainable and a more inclusive society? To discuss, we have a very distinguished panel. The CEO and Chairman of the Management Board at Royal DSM is joining us, Fika Sibisma, Senior Advisor to the World Economic Forum, and also the Inter-American Development Bank, Caroline Antie. And we have the co-founder of Bye-Bye Plastic Bags and also one of the co-chairs at this year's summit, Molati Weizen. And we have the Prime Minister of San Lucia joining us from there, Alan Chassane. Thank you so much to all of you for being here today, and please let's give our panel a very warm welcome. And Fika, I'd like to begin with you, because you have a company, you're helping to run a company, that was not always sustainable. You've been around for more than a century, you started in mining, then went to chemicals, now you are a leader in nutrition and food ingredients. And I found it quite interesting, I've heard you claim before that you can both make a profit and improve the world. So you've cracked the code. Well, I appreciate the compliment, and indeed, thanks for rubbing it in. We were one of the most polluting companies in the world. We were a real stiff coal mining company, 117 years ago. After the Second World War, we changed and we became a bulk chemical, petrochemical company. And last 15, 20 years, we changed again and transformed ourselves completely towards a science-based company. We're the largest in nutrition, nutritional and food ingredients in the world and sustainable energy, sustainable materials. When I started with that transformation and journey over the last almost two decades, I said, indeed, I would like to change the world and I would like to make the company successful. Many of my investors said, oh, my Lord, and what is more important? I said, well, both. I would like to make money by making the world a better place. Okay, now, then we can forget your stock and should invest somewhere else. I said, well, preferably not, by the way. I just started as CEO, so please support me a little bit. Because I believe that the role of business is to make the world a better place. We are not a charity foundation, so we need to make money. But we need to make the world a better place also. So why are more businesses doing that? Well, we changed our portfolio, we changed our business models, and I will say something more maybe later on about how to change the markets, because sometimes it's hard. But we went into different business. We now make sustainability our living. We make electronics greener, we use agriculture waste for energy, we make food healthier, we make cows cleaner in terms of their emissions, et cetera, et cetera. We make our money with that. Now, at this moment, and our share price did very well, the company did very well, so investors say, okay, apparently it is possible to make the world a better place and to make money. And I say to those investors, you know what, come back in 10, 15 years. Those two things are not exclusive, like you said 10 years ago. Those things cannot go hand in hand together, which you said today. Those two things have to, will go hand in hand together in 10 years from now, otherwise the millennials don't want to work for your company anymore, they don't buy your products, you forgot to put the price on carbon, you wake up in a nightmare where you lost your license to operate. I believe in that business model, and it was only, it didn't went automatically. It was hard. There were growing pains along the way. And I want to ask you a little bit more about those in just a minute and how you coped with them. But ultimately, there is still this gap when we're talking about transitioning the markets towards sustainability. Caroline, I'd like to bring in your experience, because you bring a very interesting view to this panel. You've worked in the public sector, in the private sector, held leadership positions over the past decades, the World Bank, UBS. Where do you see the biggest gaps right now, and the ones that we have potentials to close? I think that the good news, and following on from Faiki, is that things are changing. The bad news is I'm not sure they're changing fast enough, and there are a lot of pitfalls. It's true that recently we've had some good progress, we've seen the business round table move away from shareholder primacy, say the stakeholders, and we must think now about stakeholders. And today I saw a bumper sticker which said, no more share value, but shared value, which was a nice little slogan. The bad news is that a lot of companies are still thinking about corporate social responsibility. They're not running it through the business, through the strategy. They're not really putting it into the plumbing. And without any global metrics, consumers and investors and others really don't know who is sustainable and who is doing greenwashing. And my worry is that over time, there will be a big scandal, reputational risk, and people will become disillusioned with the whole talk of sustainability, because it will turn out that their investments or the companies or the supply chains aren't really sustainable. So I think we need global metrics, and they need to be mandatory, and companies need to show how they're running the business in line with people and planet and this broader group of stakeholders that the business round table talks about. And we need to be able to compare companies, and they need to be a third party. And regulators need to hold them to account for that. I think we also need to look at how we use product labeling so that consumers, consumers control about 60% of global GDP. They make choices every day using their pocketbooks, their wallets. With proper labeling and disclosure, we've seen it with food labeling, but also with product production, supply chains. Consumers can make that choice, but it's very important that consumers don't have to pay more for doing the right thing. At the moment, sustainable products, the goods, as we might call them, largely cost more. And all the bads, the things that aren't necessarily sustainable, can cost less. And we have to change our system of taxation and subsidies and incentives to align with a sustainable future. Now, these are all big ticker items. This is not just about one company or several companies changing. This is really about making the financial system fit for sustainable purpose. And it will take work by regulators, governments, civil society, and the private sector. So I think we've come a long way, and we shouldn't be too cynical. But now's the time to really make sure that the labeling, the standards, the regulators, the integration of environmental, social, and governance into the way companies work. So that it really will mean something that we've moved away from that idea that the bottom line is how much have you made to how did you make it? And that how you made it and how you treated all those people along the way and the society, the long-term value is key. In a way that can be verified, in a way that can be trusted. And Mr. Prime Minister, I'd like to turn to you now because I think that you would underscore the urgency for that change. You're on the front lines of the climate emergency. You're a small island, but you most certainly have a big voice. And you're here in New York this week on a mission, aren't you? What needs to happen right now for your country? Well, most of the small island developing states are facing two things, extinction and being viable. And unfortunately, the extinction part comes first. So we have had now several years where there is absolute evidence of the climate change. It's numbers that are uncomprehensible. So for instance, Dominica, two hurricanes. The second one, Maria, 200% of your GDP. I mean, can we fathom that? That all of a sudden, life as you knew it on an island is completely destroyed. That the people who are staying there are really the ones that were self-employed that were on the farms and teachers, doctors, nurses leave. Do they ever come back? And so, Bahamas, and if I can just take you for a moment to be in a house in which the sea level rose more than 15 feet and that you're hanging on to the rafters of your roof to breathe because the water is underneath you. And that instead of the wind blowing off the roof, the water basically took the roof off with it and that you were there for 36 hours. And then now another 24 to 48 hours afterwards, there was still sufficient wind that did not allow planes or helicopters to come in. So for five days, you were literally by yourself. And then when the water subsides, what do you have? You have an island that had 25,000 people that has nothing. So for the next year and a half to two years while the island is being rebuilt, who's thought of the logistics of where those people are going to go? Who's thought of the logistics of who is going to support those people? And I was just saying, when they left, they left with just the clothes that they had, no ID, no job. So imagine they have to now get their IDs, be able to get into their bank accounts, who's paying their mortgage, what's going to happen? And so these are the logistics that we have to start thinking of when I talk about being extinct. The final nail in the coffin for us is that we become now uninsurable. So if we don't build the physical resilience to reduce the amount of economic impact and chaos that the storm causes, then we become uninsurable. So a good friend of mine who has a hotel in Dominica, his insurance went up 600%. 600%. 600%. So it's now 20% of his operating cost. There's no model in which you can pay 20% of your operating costs for insurance. That's just not viable. And that's now, and since that hurricane, nothing has happened. So the second thing that we're trying to compete against is basically competitiveness on a global basis. And for a lot of the small island developing states, the macro rules of the IMF and the World Bank have unfortunately not been kind to us because it's one size fits all. And so we've been arguing that we need to start from micro when you're a small island. The number of things that we have as a choice to do is limited. So that's what you have to start with. And then you have to make sure your macro policy is in support of that. Now here's what happens. We have the storms coming. I know what I need to do. I need to slope stabilization, broaden and widen my rivers, put utilities underground, dedicated shelters, coastal restoration programs. But I don't have the money. If I have to go and borrow the money on commercial terms because the OECD has now classified me as a middle income country because of my per capita GDP. So I mean, you need action not only from the private sector. You also need policy changes. You need public sector action as well. I want to get to that in just a second. But you mentioned the micro level. Now we're going to the grassroots level with you, Milati. Your generation, they're out on the streets. They're demanding action on climate change. You've actually been taking action yourself. At the age of 12, you started this organization in order to tackle an issue in your home country of Bali. That was the use of single-use plastic items that were being disposed of and polluting your waters there. A big initiative for a 12-year-old to take at the time. I mean, how did that make you feel? Surely you must have felt a sense of anger. I mean, where were the adults in the room? Why was this problem not being handled? Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I mean, I'm not 12 years old anymore, but at times I'm 18 now. I like to say that I'm a full-time changemaker, dedicating my life entirely since I was 12, where growing up on the island of Bali, definitely there was this deep frustration as to why nothing was happening in this situation of plastic drowning our island home. We learned that 40 other countries around the world banned plastic bags. So you can imagine at the age of 10 and 12, my sister was 10, I was 12. We looked at each other and said, 40 other countries, we can do it too. And so it was as simple as that. It was no business plan, no agenda, no strategy that we pulled together. It was just this, it came from this pure intention and this vision to make our island home of Bali plastic bag free. That was six years ago, you know? And with our NGO, Bye Bye Plastic Bags, we've really managed to mobilize the masses on the island. We've gone into classrooms, we've gone into conferences, we've also gone into government meetings. And I think this is where you see the integration of what needs to happen on a society level, how we have to mobilize, how we have to collaborate to really get change happening. Now it shouldn't have taken us six years, but I can now say finally with a smile on my face that as of two or three months ago this summer, we finally saw the implementation of the ban come in place for plastic bags, straws and styrofoam on the island of Bali. But you know, I really resonated with what you said earlier that things are happening and I see that again and again entering these sort of spaces, learning from so many different people from all around the world, things are happening, but they are not happening fast enough. And you know, one of the four front questions of this panel is, you know, how do we create markets that people actually want? And through my work with Bye Bye Plastic Bags, through my work with meeting other young change makers and the discussions we have, our answer to that question would be to involve people in the planning for those markets, involve the young people, take our ideas as crazy as they might be. We have things to offer. We are smart, we are passionate, we are motivated and we are ready to be part of those opening markets and we're ready to completely change the world and the lifestyle that we're having because at the rate that we're going at, it's not enough and it's not fast enough. And you feel like your voices aren't being heard now? I think we're going, we're demanding past just being heard. We don't wanna just be heard. It's not enough for us anymore. We expect a seat at the table. We expect to be invited to these high level discussions. We expect to be involved in political meetings because I think that we grew up with a reality so extreme that no other generation has ever experienced. Our childhood was completely taken away from us and so in order to have a say with what happens in our future, in our lifetime, we not only expect to be heard but we expect to be a part of the decisions that are being made today. And one of the decisions, I mean, we're seeing at least potentially a shift in the world of business right now. We had the business round table come out about a month ago with this commitment, essentially, to benefit all stakeholders, not just shareholders. The issue of shareholder primacy, they say is not going to be so predominant in doing business, something that Caroline just mentioned. We actually polled everyone through the World Economic Forum on Twitter to ask whether people believe it. We asked the following question. Business leaders say they want to be more sustainable. Do you believe them? I can imagine that you might imagine how people answered. So 23% of people said yes. 22% of people said I'm not sure. 55% of people said no, I do not believe them. So I mean, there is clearly a distrust out there. Fika, I'll turn to you. Essentially, people saying CEOs like yourself, you're greenwashing. Yeah, this is a devastating score, of course. Let's go back and let's see what you do. I mean, what is the essence of business? It is a simple model in which we have a distribution of competences, you're better than this, I'm better than this, you do this, I do this, and then we exchange at the end of the day and we live all happy here together. It is not more complicated than that, that's the role of business. In the last decades, we saw that making money is not a tool, but it's a goal. It is not a goal. I mean, making money is a tool to exchange a little bit of goods and to live happy all together. If you look to her business and what you have done, it's nowadays called a social enterprise or a social entrepreneur. I don't like that word, although I admire what you do. I think all entrepreneurs, all business leaders should be social entrepreneurs. You should go to jail if you are not one, because all business should serve society. CSR, like Caroline also said, is out. You need to do it in the mainstream of your business. That is what we need. And I don't like this score, because look to yourself, look to other people. I mean, I've said it a few times this week also. It's not true that after high school, all the good guys went to government and all the bad guys went to business. Life is more complicated than that. There are good people in business and also social people in government, but let me not go there. And they want to, with what we want with our company, I want to leave a better world behind. That's all I want. But Faka, I mean, you don't like the score, right? But do you see validity to it? I mean, is there a point there? And what in your view separates a sustainably run business from one that's just greenwashing? And what are you seeing more of out there right now? Are you seeing people really doing the work or is it just... Well, like Caroline's saying, it is changing. The world is changing and that's the positive news. And companies are changing. The new generation is coming at the helm and want to do things in a different way. I see myself also as a new generation, maybe compared with, don't laugh. I want to do it in a different way. And that means that CSR is out. You do, in the mainstream of your business, something good for the world. And that goes with resistance of shareholders. That goes with greenwashing of some other people who do it on the side. The matrices are unclear, et cetera. What annoys me, I give two very short examples, but we have been helping the World Food Program for almost 15 years. And I had a debate with Ban Ki-moon and Kofi Annan. How long do we continue? Well, for another 20, 100 years, I don't know. I said, but I don't want it. How can we change that? Changing markets, we have competences, let's do so. Yeah, then you need to produce food locally in Africa. Good, so we go to Rwanda, first country. We ask 9,000 farmers, in the meantime, 25,000 farmers. All you grow, I buy. I make a big factory in Kigali. I bring all the crops to Kigali. Locally sourced, locally produced, locally processed for the local population. One and a half million people are not stunted anymore in Rwanda due to that. Now we get the systems. Sometimes development aid of some richer countries comes into the country and gives crops for free. My farmers cannot compete with that. I say, I continue buying from you, then I make a loss. Okay, otherwise I lose their trust. These kinds of things need to be changed. Sometimes it annoys me also that the systemic changes in the market take long and I need it for the simple goal to live all happily here together. Africa should be a food exporter, but for sure not an importer. Okay, let's talk about how we can make that change happen. Caroline, I'm turning to you because I wanna get concrete steps, actually. What would you need to see from CEOs and from business leaders to make you believe that they are serious, that this isn't just a piece of paper that they've all signed to make themselves feel a little bit better at the end of the day? I think the biggest issue behind the lack of trust is how many different systems there are to measure these sustainability. And even to define what sustainability is, I was just in a meeting earlier where I heard there are 600 different types of metrics, not talking to each other, not necessarily compatible to say whether a company is running itself sustainably. And many of those just focus on the immediate footprint of the company. They're not actually looking at is the company creating long-term value for the society. So we have a financial system, a regulatory system. Some might say it's too onerous. We have a compliance system that asks companies and banks to conform to a whole host of issues. We need to start extending that to conforming to a clear set of metrics about how is environment, social governance, whatever it may be, is integrated in your business. One set of metrics so that people can see and people can make comparisons across companies. I mean, companies love competition. Let's have some competition. It's not easy to do, but we've already seen central banks beginning to talk about integrating climate risks. The Financial Stability Board is talking about disclosing climate risks around stranded assets. So it could be done. I think that's the single biggest change. And I think without it, people will continue to not be able to make comparisons and there will be scandals and there will be greenwashing. And then, as I said before, disillusion will set in and will be pushed right back. So that would be my main concrete example. And going back on the hopeful side, our present market system was entirely predicated, perhaps on Adam Smith, but it was also predicated on economists saying people will only act in their own self-interest. That is what it's all about. If we all act in our own self-interest, we'll also act in ways that we have to get on with each other. Now, behavioral economists are saying no, that is not always the case. People will act in the interests of their community, even if it isn't necessarily their own self-interest. A whole new school of economics has come up questioning that premise. And on the basis of that, we can move to sustainable markets, I believe, because we're seeing that people are not that those animals that don't care about the collective. Actually, we care a lot about the collective. We just got to find a way of integrating not just financial capital, but natural capital, physical capital, social capital, into the way we measure with global metrics. So Caroline, it's not the best thing you can do then, is give a mirror to every CEO. What do you think of that proposal? No, I want to take that challenge. I think a mirror for every CEO would be good, but even with a mirror, I think some might turn out to be rather short-sighted. They need to do something with the mirror, to look into it and to answer the question whether they, with their activities and their companies are contributing something meaningful to society. And if not, then you can maybe call your company successful, but you missed the point why we have an economy. But I think, Faiki, not all CEOs would know, of course, you accepted, not all CEOs would know what contributing to society even necessarily meant. They might think it's a share price. So that's why we need this rather boring issue of definitions. Even green, not everybody knows what green means. Is it light green? Is it dark green? And I'm curious to hear what you actually think about where regulation might step into all of this, whether this is just voluntary or whether we need something with a little bit more teeth. I'm gonna get to that in just a second, but Malati, I just want to ask you for your quick reaction. How do you feel? Do you trust business? I mean, you've had the experience, you partner actually with businesses. What have you learned in your experience what is incentivizing them? And just generally speaking, how does your generation see the business world as a step to getting to where does we want to go with sustainability? I think we're seeing a lot of commitments come out. But again, I think that we know that at the, I think we're just expecting a lot more. And with the timelines that are set in place, with the budget that we know companies have behind them, they're investing in 70% when they could be investing in the 100% solution. And I think that we're living in a time where we're waiting for this leapfrog to happen. And that's where I think young people play a huge role. And I think the biggest mistake that any company can make is to look at us and invite us to meetings or lectures as an inspirational part. I think we are beyond just an inspiration. And I think that a lot of us young people, we wanna really give voice to what matters for us. And I think that with the changing markets, we're already creating a bigger push and a bigger direction of where we wanna see it go. And that's also the consumer's role. As us individuals, we do our homework. We go above and beyond and we have phones, and this is the first time I don't have my phone on me. All right, handy. But we have our phones on us at all times. And especially as kids, we go on social media, we check out what the company stands for, what the reports are. And if we can't find it, we start questioning. And it's those big hard questions that we're asking and when we don't get an answer that sits right with us, when we feel a hint of greenwashing, that's when we decide as consumers where we wanna use our pocket or where we wanna use our wallet for. That's where we can make the decision. And actually I'm gonna quote actually one of my friends, Shiteshka, who says, people power is more powerful than people in power. Right, and that's where we see the collective gathering of people uniting and understanding what kind of market we wanna make, what kind of future we wanna make. That's where you start seeing the shift happen. So you're holding up the mirror through your consumer power. Yeah, but I also mean like. As young people. I mean, I also think that the, yeah, and I think that the mirror, it's a reflection of what is happening every single day. And when we're still ignorant with it, it's disappointing, especially for the reality that we're facing on a daily basis. Mr. Prime Minister, you lay in here. What do you wanna see from business? I think the world is a challenging point, but that's no news to everybody. The question really becomes the disruptors. So Caroline is right. We're not pricing our products out properly. Right, so the idea that you would transport a tomato to St. Lucia, which is a small tropical island, because the economies of scale suggest that it's cheaper to produce it somewhere else. Right? How does a small farmer in St. Lucia survive if in fact the product that he's producing, which may have substantially less carbon emissions, but he cannot produce the volume of that tomato to be able to sell it at the price that's currently in the market. So to Caroline's point, that's the disruptor. We're talking about that we wanna be able to get off oil. So if we imagine if we were to price oil appropriately, we did that a couple of years ago in 2014, the price went up to $140. What happened? The whole world started collapsing. Financial systems started to shut down. All of a sudden commodity prices started to go up. And so the fact is the world is not in a place right now, in my humble opinion, to be able to start addressing some of these bigger issues. But in the meanwhile, you have a new consumer that's coming out that is now demanding that change and is now purchasing totally differently. So you hear people saying, I'm not gonna eat meat because meat or cows are second largest emitters of carbon emissions. So if the consumer now starts reacting to those things, is the system set up to be able to deal with that? I mean, see, this is where I think a small island developing state comes in. So imagine if a country of 180,000 people can find the solutions to be sustainable and viable. And that you now go the way that we're thinking. We're saying, let us, I had to write it down again, think small and act smart, right? Because it's about being small now. All of a sudden where the big part was the economies of scale, but it wasn't being priced in because you have the transportation to bring everything else to the distributor on a world basis. Whereas I go to a restaurant in an island, Bali, I wanna get fresh produce from Bali. And now people are saying, that's what they want. They don't want the canned juice that comes from somewhere else or canned juice that really is the same prototype of the same canned juice that I can get anywhere else in the world. And how much did that cost and how much did it disrupt? So we have a staying in England, I think it's called free trade in terms of that we're trying to figure out what products were produced, how would they produce, what were their employment strategies? Once you start now imposing these new rules, whether we call them rules or requirements, then all of a sudden the distribution process is gonna start to change quite dramatically. And we start becoming a bit more sustainable. And why is that important? Because the system that we've been currently doing has marginalized the poorer people of society. They can't compete. The value of a carpenter being able to produce one cupboard. That's been lost because now we have factories that can produce thousands of cupboards cheaper than what he can produce it at. And that driving of the marketplace has completely changed. And I see a value system changing in younger people but not just in younger people. I'm seeing a lot of people now when they're traveling around the world, what's the number one word? Authenticity. And that authenticity and that requirement to be different is what I think is gonna be that fundamental change. And she was like, Milata's right in that the power is in the consumer. The consumer now is starting to realize that they actually in fact have a lot of power. And we have seen some game changers. So the internet has made information more readily available. The internet allows me to go and book my vacation and research my vacation whereas what did we do before? The lazy way. Went to a travel agent or a tour operator. They had a nice brochure cut down a lot of trees to be able to produce the brochure. And we were being told where to go versus the ability to research and find things that share the same values as us. So this is the game changer that we're depending upon to make the change. And I think that if the world can genuinely focus on one thing because we've asked the UN, the UN was established in order to prevent in a third world war from taking place. And I think the greatest threat to a world war right now is the inequity. I genuinely believe as a politician that there should be a minimum standard of living that every single human being in this world deserves. And if we were able to focus on that and hold that up as a great value, access to education, access to healthcare, housing, and economic opportunity, and security, those basic things would fundamentally change now how our value system works. Okay, so let's talk about a universal basic income. No, I'm just kidding. No, don't worry. I think that's a little bit too much to bite off for this particular topic but I do wanna talk about the actions that can be taken. Fika, I'm gonna turn to you with that one. Perhaps you can give us some lessons learned from your company through its transformation and ones which can be extrapolated and perhaps used by other business leaders, for example, going forward. And I just wanna remind us also of the central question that we're asking today. How can we move beyond growth to create greater alignment between nature, people's choices, and the economy? For me, it still starts with the mirror and your own belief and your own moral feelings and opinions. If you don't have that feeling on what your contribution should be, then it goes wrong. If you have impact, if you have power as a CEO or a company, you need to take the responsibility going together with that. It's not enough. It's not the only thing I will build but there it starts with. The second thing is we have not priced in all the wrong things we do. We are still, I'm leading the global coalition for putting a price on carbon. We just reported last Saturday that if you put a price on carbon between somewhere 30 and 100, 150, there's no reason to say that you lose out competitiveness. So put a price on carbon and therefore create a market with low carbon products. So more of those tools to price it in. The good thing is that younger generation, new innovations, technologies, it's all there to do things. So we will come there and we will get the solutions. We need to wipe out the greenwashing by the mattresses of Caroline to have clear what is true, what is not green. And then as a CEO, as a company, I understand and I've been there myself, you come into attention, we should shareholders who said, yeah, but I want to return. How do you convince them? By communicating with them, not saying just trust me like to the public also, by communicating with them. I think that this is our role, this is our responsibility. I will not deliver every quarter maybe the numbers you expect. I will miss out some quarters. Over a longer period, I'm convinced that I will generate value because I changed the portfolio to the needs of the world. It will be strange if the world has no money for its main needs. So I will make money and you will make money but it will take a little while from time to time and follow with me. And I need to communicate well, I need to be close with them, not say, hey, you are investors, just listen to me. No, I need to interact with them to take them with me in that journey. And that is what we did. Transforming the company, I missed quarters, I had issues. Over a longer term, I did three times better than the index but on the short term for sure not always. So it is possible but price in, start with the buying a mirror then price in the wrong things like carbon, wipe out the wrong people by the right measures, who is really green, who not? Embrace the younger generation and the technologies and communicate with your stakeholders to take them with you in your journey. I think it is possible. Malati, what lessons do you think we need to learn? I mean, you've talked a lot about the role of the individual, for example. Or you can tell us how you might see the possibility to scale some of your initiatives, for example. I truly believe that we don't need more mirrors but we need to look more at each other. And I think that we need to build a true community where we can build trust and where we can have that authenticity that we tap into because we have only each other to depend on. And how we get rid of that greenwashing is not by holding up a mirror but by looking at each other and by honestly calling out each other for when we feel like we're wrong and when we know there is another way. So one of the initiatives where I think taps into an answer to the question of how we create that new market that relates people, the economy, the environment, it's called Mountain Mamas. This is something that we created. It's a social entrepreneurship where with bio-classic bags, we kept getting the question, well, what alternative are we supposed to use? And being a young woman myself, I saw an opportunity here where we could empower other women in Indonesia and come up with an alternative to the plastic bag. So Mountain Mamas, here's how it works. We empower the local women in a village up in Wanagiri Kau on the slopes of Mount Batukaru. And we have them make alternative bags from pre-loved materials. So this is where partnerships and collaborations with hotels like the Hilton give us their sheets and their towels that they would otherwise throw to the landfill. We dip dyed in organic dyes and the women make them into bags. We give the women each bag they make individually they get paid. 50% of the sales profit go back to the community where the women are from and this gets put into a budget for three things. Healthcare packages for families, waste management systems that aren't currently set up, and education. So here's a model that's easily replicable around the island of Bali, around the country of Indonesia where we see women taking lead and moving forward economies, moving forward communities, and bettering the environment. And this is something that I hope to see happen more and more because again, truly I believe that we can make new markets and it's already happening. We know the ways, we know what we want. And so I think we have to go a little, we have to just be a little bit, we have to think a little bit bigger and encourage each other and be brave enough as business leaders to just maybe jump into the oblivion a little bit deeper. And I think big thoughts is something that you would certainly welcome, Mr. Prime Minister, a big action as well. Your final thoughts, how can we go beyond growth to create greater alignment between nature, people's choices and the economy? Briefly, please. From an economic perspective and Caroline talked about it, the greatest impact on GDP is consumption. So for me, I always say that the difference between a socialist and a conservative, I happen to be a conservative, is that so many socialists believe the solution to that problem when there's a problem in the economy and they can't spend enough money is to raise taxes. For me, whenever I'm seeing I'm not raising enough money then it tells me that the economy is not turning around enough for me to earn enough taxes. And once I understand that model and I'm not seeing people consuming and I didn't see enough consumption then it now is to start working backwards. So the problem that you have is, as I said, you have a market that is contracting because individuals are finding it more and more difficult to be able to make an ends meet. So this idea of a job, right? Is it just about saying statistically a person has a job or is it about a person earning enough money that they can own a house, go on a vacation and do the things that we're talking about and empowering them as a consumer. So this is one of the huge challenges and that's what I would say to you is that a small island developing state is facing those things on ground zero. And we're having to deal with the world economies of scale that is against us. We have macro policies that are against us and I think that the solutions that we're finding can easily be now transformed to small towns in bigger countries. The solution will come from the small side first. Malika just told you an incredible story of how it can work and you can make a difference in people's lives. And that is, I honestly genuinely believe the key to what we're talking about. We've got to bring the individual human person back into play. And this idea that we're hearing about populism or nationalism is coming back to what? Individuals who are feeling that their rights are being threatened and are losing their ability to compete in this global change. And I genuinely believe that we can have the best of both worlds. We can have innovation and I watch what's taking place in Estonia, a country that decided to become of what do you call it, e-commerce. But guess what? In becoming e-commerce they now think of a borderless country. And I watch young kids design a product, pattern the product, put it out to source that they have different manufacturers around the world that are producing it and an internet which now can take the purchase orders. So here is in a little town, a bunch of young people that are able to run a business internationally because the system has been set up to do that. Let's take advantage of the great innovations that we have. We're not doing that enough. Caroline, I'd like to give you the final word now. Take us one year from now. We're at the next Sustainable Development Impact Summit. What action would you like to see in the next year on this particular issue? Well, I would like to see something on metrics. I would like to finally see something on redefining growth. There's not just growth domestic product, but about how resilient are your communities? How integrated are your old people? Do your young people have jobs? What we measure, we do, and we measure it in the wrong way. But I think there is on the horizon a very interesting pincer movement. And I think it looks like this. I think it looks like modern companies recognizing that their long-term value means they have to be sustainable. And the more that show that they can be sustainable and still deliver to their shareholders, the more it will spiral. Young people and others who are gonna vote with their pocketbooks and say, we are not gonna buy this stuff unless it's sustainable. We want sustainable transport in cities. We don't want to own cars. And I think you will get those coming together. And I think what you will see is that you begin to change the market as consumers will not buy the public bads. They want the public goods, the things that can really make a difference. Now we can overstate that, but with the right metrics to measure it and a bit of naming and shaming, those that don't live up, those that do greenwash, I think we can make a lot of progress. Accountability. So how do we build a market that people want, one that is more inclusive, one that is more sustainable? We thank you so much to all of you for being here for this Deutsche Welle Debate at the World Economic Forum Sustainable Development Impact Summit, and especially a very special thanks to our panelists. Thank you, gentlemen. So just when you thought it was over. Enormously touched I was to have been asked to join you today. And it is with deep regret that I cannot be with you in person at this World Economic Forum Sustainable Development Impact Summit. I pray therefore that you will forgive my absence and the fact that I am appearing as a rather disembodied video message. We now at last have a hugely important opportunity to reimagine our world through the lens of sustainable markets and to put people and planet at the heart of global value creation. For we are in the midst of an existential crisis that should now be well understood, accelerating and catastrophic climate change and the devastating loss of biodiversity is the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. The destructive and costly nature of short-term political and corporate agendas is something I have observed with mounting despair over many decades. Our collective failure to make sustainable choices has put the future of life on earth in peril. Small steps therefore are no longer sufficient. As one people sharing one planet and one future, we must now pause and reflect on our trajectory. Behind us are some 50 years of unprecedented progress largely as a result of the conventional but now increasingly unsustainable market system we have come to know. But unless we act now, the price for progress will prove much too high. Looking forward, we must think of the future we wish to build. As the world finally begins to awaken to the sustainability movement, calls are increasing for a new kind of market, a sustainable market, one that is inclusive, equitable, green and profitable, and where sustainable principles drive growth. Sustainable markets generate long-term value through the balance of natural, social, human and financial capital. They drive systems level change through consumer demand, sustainable alternatives and an enhanced partnership between the private and public sectors. And they inspire the kind of innovation we so urgently need. There are promising moves in this direction already. We see bold, sustainable market creation emerging in the areas of food production, renewable energy, transportation and construction. Multinational businesses, global investors, asset owners and financial institutions are beginning to grasp the full extent of potential profitability and value associated with integrating positive environmental and human impact into core business models. But to move forward, we all have a part to play. What governments do and don't do is critical. Mission-orientated policies can create and shape markets. Incentives can attract or repel investment. Taxes can favor or suppress energy choices. And information, such as product labeling, could win or lose customers. To make uphill progress, we also need to end perverse subsidy regimes as too often seen in agriculture, fisheries and fossil fuels and flawed pricing systems that result in the relentless allocation of capital to short-term unsustainable uses. Now, as I've been trying to indicate for the past 15 years through my Accounting for Sustainability Initiative, we must integrate natural capital costs into business and financial systems backed by the regulatory power to enforce them. Without proper accounting of natural capital, market, as well as societal risks, will continue to be improperly priced. And new market opportunities will be squandered. Financial regulation and reporting, which integrate sustainability with global standards and mandatory disclosure, are equally vital. In addition, we need to move from donor and grant-based funding towards helping countries compete in the global financial market. This will mean becoming more innovative about de-risking, guarantees and blended finance in support of sustainable endeavors. Ladies and gentlemen, as consumers controlling an estimated 60% of global GDP, people around the world have the power to drive sustainable market trends. And we must not forget our young people who are desperately crying out for action and who are eager to engage in solutions. To enable them, our education systems need to be reimagined with a sustainable future and a circular economy in mind. To further these efforts, and after many years of working with the business world to try and raise awareness of these issues and of the threats to our own economy if we do not enable and enhance nature's economy, which we have been busily undermining with disastrous consequences. I have recently created a sustainable markets council with the generous support of the World Economic Forum. In the coming year, we will work with coalitions of willing actors across public, private and philanthropic sectors to demonstrate the potential for sustainable market creation. Examples include natural capital, alternatives to plastics and green public infrastructure. Our goal is not to duplicate the work of others but to convene, leverage and scale up examples of best practice around the world. From a systems perspective, we aim to support a dramatic shift in corporate business models, a reorientated and mobilized financial system and an enabling environment that incentivizes action. To drive consumer demand, we will seek to establish a global labeling system for goods and services that will allow consumers to make informed choices for people and for planet. We will also work with others towards universal sustainability metrics and global standards. At its heart, we aim to demonstrate in practical ways what we believe to be possible in terms of creating a far more balanced and sustainable future with nature and natural and social capital brought back to the center of a circle. At this critical juncture, as leaders, citizens and consumers, we must exert the power of our inference to do the right thing and to support this transition to genuinely sustainable markets. Needless to say, Mr. Gentleman, I very much hope to be able to work with you in this vital endeavor.