 Modern society is increasingly interconnected in the globalized world. The global ghost represents humanity's basic rights. We can no longer ignore our actions as they impact the lively boost of everyone in this global village. We need a collective stewardship of the entire planet if we're going to succeed with the Roman economy in the future. We have a problem with agility. We have the problem of getting innovative and diverse ideas quickly enough, knowing how to implement those ideas and above all to test them. With technology and smart partnerships, we can create innovative solutions to tackle the world's interconnected problems. I am hopeful that we are going to be able to eradicate hunger within our lives and generations. Technology is giving us for the first time in history that opportunity to be very specific about changing the way that we manufacture and distribute food. If we're serious about having lasting business in the world, then there's no such thing as success with linear and complicated. We should invest in more businesses that actually have sustainability. Whether it's in boardrooms or whether it's in a village, essentially women are being excluded from the conversation across the board. We have a lot of work to do. We can never reach social justice or any form of social development in that case by not addressing discrimination based on gender. I believe that it's critically important to bring in more diversity because if you look at the world, the conflicts that are happening are not because of nationalities, they're because of housing, have-nots. The scale is staggering. 60 million people displaced, 20 million plus refugees. It's never happened since the second wave war. When you have a country that is falling apart, this is not because you choose to have a better job and then start walking. This is because of your house and your city. You're going to be dead. What I meant is that we need technology and smart partnerships to create innovative solutions to these problems. Good ideas come less from inside people's heads and more from the scene. We have to think about things quite differently. That's why I'm so excited about what's happening right here at the World Economic Forum to build a multi-stakeholder dialogue around the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We've solved some of the hard-pressed challenges that we have today. The world has changed. If we are not innovative, if we're not creative enough, it will be very difficult to survive in this century. This is a space to encourage, support and empower innovative solutions to tackle the world's most pressing challenges. This is your blood for action. It's a pleasure and honor to invite the President of the United Nations General Assembly, Miroslav Lajek, to offer his remarks. Thank you so much for joining us on a week that is busy and you're presiding over multiple discussions among leaders, so we're very grateful to have you here. Good afternoon, everybody. Professor Schwab, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for inviting me here today. I want to speak about partnerships because I believe this is the key word if you want to succeed in implementing sustainable development goals. It seems very appropriate to discuss partnerships here in this environment. The World Economic Forum is known for bringing together a wide mix of political leaders, policymakers, academics, business people and members of the civil society. I've seen it many times myself, including, of course, in Davos. The United Nations and the World Economic Forum have their convening power in common. As a matter of fact, when it comes to convening power, Davos comes second after the United Nations, I believe. We are also both in a business of using dialogue and debate to bring about collective action. Last week I became President of the United Nations 72nd General Assembly and I'm here to give you the United Nations perspective on partnerships. I will address three main issues. First, what did the 2030 agenda mean for partnerships? Second, how far has this vision come to being realized? And third, what opportunities do we need to harness going forward? So what did the 2030 agenda mean for partnerships? We say it all the time, but I want to stress it again today. The adoption of 2030 agenda for sustainable development really was a milestone. There were at least two main reasons for that. One, it put at many issues on the United Nations agenda which had traditionally only been discussed at the national level. This was a formal acknowledgement that governments simply cannot do it alone if they want to see the change. And second, it drew a final line under the model that was created in 1945, even though the United Nations was established exclusively by states. It now works for and with many different partners. Partnerships come nicely packaged in SDG 17, but they go way beyond that one goal. They are at the core of the whole sustainable development agenda. And if we don't make partnerships a part of our work on every goal, we won't achieve any of them. So my second point, how much this vision has been realized? There has been a stronger focus on partnerships since the sustainable development goals were adopted. There is some progress, yet it's still modest. The annual UN private sector forum is an example. It has generated some innovative ideas. This year's meeting will be particularly important as it will discuss the financing for 2030 agenda. Some states and regional groups have developed new models. For example, the small island developed countries have created a partnership framework which they use to monitor and follow up on commitments which are related to cooperation. UN offices and commissions have brought together a diverse range of actors at the regional level. And we are also starting to see signs of success through financial partnerships between the UN funds or programs and financial institutions. The United Nations can here act as an investor of first resort, particularly in post-conflict settings. It can absorb some of the risks for entities such as the World Bank to come in which can build private sector's confidence and enhance stability. What are the future opportunities? As I said, we have to admit that the success has been still modest. We are still far off from seeing the kind of partnerships which are needed to achieve all 17 sustainable development goals. The United Nations is the biggest convening power in the world. It can bring actors from every corner of the world together. The big challenge facing it is moving beyond ones off events and discussions to a long term partnership. We need to create platforms that can be up kept and sustained. Platforms that result in tangible decisions and products. We need to bring in the most cutting edge technology and the brightest innovators. And of course, we must bring in young people. As we know, the world is becoming more and more interconnected. Partnerships are growing in response. We now know that they are necessary to achieve the sustainable development goals. But they are also forming in response to other global challenges. Smartphone apps are being used to connect refugees with internships in their new communities. NGOs are working with governments to identify extremist content online to bring some examples. The UN cannot be left behind. Its headquarters and field offices must act as breeding grounds for new kinds of partnerships. Meetings of diplomats only or UN officials only must become a thing of the past. It's clear we can't do it alone. So partnerships are no longer a question of if, but when. Technology, innovation, inclusion of young people will play a key role in all this. And I'm personally committed to encourage a lot more people like you to come to that big glass building along the East River throughout the next year. So thank you very much for your attention. I wish you very fruitful discussion and very much looking forward to our strength and cooperation. Thank you very much. Now we're very privileged to have with us former US Vice President, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, inspiration and really Godfather of so many policy and public-private initiatives in the climate space and others over the course of his career. And also member of the Board of Trustees of the World Economic Forum. I'd like to invite Al Gore to the stage to offer his remarks. Thank you very much, Rick. I appreciate the very generous introduction and the warm welcome. Professor Schwab and Hilda Schwab, thank you for your leadership of this amazing institution. Rick Sammons, Dominic Juarez, Cheryl Martin, all of the others who have been such an integral part of making this summit possible. I am extremely proud to be a member of the Board of Trustees. And I want to say how proud I am of the World Economic Forum under Klaus Schwab's leadership. The WEF has become one of the world's most important institutions for moving civilization forward to a meaningful solution for the climate crisis that also builds prosperity and sustainable economic progress in the world. This is the third year in a row that the World Economic Forum has identified the climate crisis as the number one threat to the global economy. Many are still absorbing the unprecedented seriousness of the threat that we face. Even as we meet in the wake of the unprecedented and historic success with the Paris Agreement. This is an unusual time. Within the last two weeks we have had two more record-breaking climate-connected storms. Hurricane Harvey crossed over areas of the Gulf of Mexico up to four degrees Celsius warmer than normal. And often in the past these storms would churn up cold water from the depths, from deeper down in the ocean, and reduce the temperatures that drive the strength of these storms. But the heat went all the way down more than 200 meters to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. So it didn't short-circuit. And it stayed because as many climate scientists are now pointing out, the melting of the Arctic is disrupting the Northern Hemisphere jet stream and storm track. You may remember the discussions last winter of the polar vortex. It's the same phenomenon except in the summer what happened was instead of being a wavy force across the North American continent, it becomes loopy and disorganized and two high-pressure areas held that storm in place over Texas. Houston got over the five-day rainfall totals were a once in 25,000-year event. Parts of Texas received five-day totals that represented a once in 500,000-year event. We are departing the familiar bounds of history as we have known it since our civilization began. And why? Because today, like all days, we will put another 110 million tons of man-made heat-trapping pollution into the atmosphere using the sky as an open sewer. The accumulated total now traps as much extra heat energy in the Earth's system every day as would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every 24 hours. It's a big planet, but that's an enormous amount of energy. And since 90% plus goes into the oceans, it heats the oceans and not only makes these storms much stronger, it also disrupts the water cycle so that much more water vapor goes into the sky, the warmer air holds more, and when the storm conditions ring the water out, the downpours are historic. Here in the U.S., there was not as much awareness that the same week Houston was suffering 10 times as many people died in South Asia because there were 70 centimeters of rain over and above what the normal monsoon brings. One-third of Bangladesh was underwater. In Nigeria, 100,000 homes were disrupted. It is a global phenomenon, and it is getting worse. We are seeing the droughts right today. 80% of Portugal is in drought. There are 70 large fires in the western part of North America. In Siberia, in the Arctic, where the largest fires rage, the results are unprecedented. And these drought conditions cause climate refugees. Long before the Civil War in Syria started, the worst drought in the 900 years of record keeping destroyed 60% of the farms in Syria, killed 80% of the livestock, drove 1.5 million climate refugees into the cities where their ministers said, we cannot handle this. They collided with another 1.5 million refugees from the Iraq war, and the WikiLeaks' disclosed conversations saw the ministers predicting chaos and social violence. And of course, there were many causes of the flows of refugees from the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East and North Africa, but they had knock-on political consequences in Europe. Even Brexit, which had many causes, and my dear friend Gordon Brown is here, the most powerful advertisement for the leave forces in Brexit, showed a huge billboard with an endless line of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa at the gates of Europe. Now scientists are predicting that some areas of the Middle East and North Africa are in danger of becoming uninhabitable. The combination of heat and humidity in cities in Iran and Kuwait within the last two years reached 74 degrees, 165 Fahrenheit. Human beings can't live for more than a few hours outdoors in those conditions. We're seeing tropical diseases move to new latitudes and the melting of the ice is raising sea levels, and there are many other consequences. And right after Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma broke the record for the strength of ocean-based storms established in the Philippines by Super Typhoon Haiyan or Yolanda, as they called it in the Philippines, which devastated the Tacloban and other parts of the Philippines, and the Caribbean nations are still recovering. Parts of my nation are as well. In the last seven years in the U.S., we've had 13 one-in-a-thousand-year events. Again, the math doesn't work out because we're leaving the bounds of history. But we are also meeting in a time of extraordinary and unprecedented hope. The Paris Agreement and the World Economic Forum behind the scenes and on the podium was very instrumental in helping to build the success of the Paris Agreement and now in helping to implement the Paris Agreement. These partnerships, the public-private partnerships that this forum facilitates and makes possible are the real keys to really putting in place the solutions that we need. And we have other assets as well. Not only did 195 nations agree to net-zero global warming pollution by mid-century or as soon thereafter as possible, regional governments, state governments, local governments, city governments, business leaders and investors have all become a part of this worldwide commitment to move forward. The United States leave aside the political noise about whether the consequences of the U.S. announcing its departure from the Paris Agreement are meaningful or not, so far not, because the rest of the world redoubled its commitment the next day, and states like California and New York and Washington and many others and cities and businesses like Apple and Google and so many others are saying we're still in. Or as the hashtag this morning has it, we got this. The U.S. is going to meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement, regardless of what the executive branch of the federal government does. I hope they'll decide to rejoin, but it doesn't. Well, we're going to meet, it does matter, but we're going to meet the commitments anyway. We have other advantages. All of us have been astonished in the last few decades by a new development in the world technology that goes by a geeky name, cost down curves, technology costs down curves. Think computer chips, think flat screen TVs, mobile phones. They get better and cheaper all the time. The astonishing and fantastic news is that those cost down curves are now operating with solar electricity and wind electricity and now battery storage and electric vehicles and hundreds if not thousands of efficiency improvements that are reducing the demand for energy and decoupling GDP and energy use. The fourth industrial revolution about which Klaus Schwab has written so eloquently is also a sustainability revolution. And this sustainability revolution has the scale of the industrial revolution but the speed of the digital revolution. Within only seven years, 95% of all lighting is going to be LED with a tiny fraction of the energy use. And we're seeing developing countries and emerging nations actually move past the industrialized nations and seize the mantle of leadership. I'd be happy if every nation in the world followed the example of India to tell you the truth. Since the Paris Agreement, India has been closing coal mines, shutting down coal-fired generating plants, vastly expanding solar. They just announced that within 13 years 100% of all the new cars and trucks in India must be electric vehicles. Denmark and Norway you might expect they have a goal of 100% electric vehicles by 2025. France and the UK 2040. China just announced last week that it too is going to require all new vehicles to be electric vehicles. They have not set the date yet. Their elections are pretty soon. I mean the party congress. Germany's elections are pretty soon. And Chancellor Merkel said this is the right direction, 100% EV. But she said we have not chosen a date yet as well. The entire world is moving quickly in this country. Last year 75% of all the new electricity generating capacity was in solar and wind. Virtually none from coal. Worldwide, since 2010, the global investments in renewable energy have begun to have crossed over and exceed by an ever larger amount the investments in new fossil energy. We still have an enormous challenge. We've had progress already. For the last three years emissions globally have stabilized. That's a success. But a word of caution. The global accumulation has continued to increase even though the emissions have stabilized. Why? The scientists are trying to figure it out. But there are two suspects. My mentor 45 years ago Roger Revelle discovered that as the oceans heat up they absorb less CO2. Maybe that's it. There's the beginning of outgassing in the Arctic tundra. Maybe that contributes. They're trying to understand it. But we understand what we have to do. We have the tools. We have the ability. We are winning this. But we must win it more quickly. And we will do so with the public-private partnerships of the kind that the World Economic Forum is facilitating. The one thing we need most of all is political will. But for those who doubt that we have the political will, just remember that political will is itself a renewable resource. Thank you. The sense of possibility hangs now even more dramatically over this hall with those great remarks by the president of the General Assembly and the former vice president. And what I'd like to do now is to transition with all of you to a conversation about this very notion about how we better mobilize and scale global progress through partnerships of various types. We're honored here to have Madam President Yu, Amina Goreb-Pakim, who is the president of the Republic of Mauritius, Franz Van Halten, who is the president and CEO of Royal Philips, Afsane Beschloss, who, among a long career in various parts of the multi-stakeholder world, is now the founder and CEO of Rock Creek, an institutional investor headquartered here in the United States. And you, Mr. First Vice President of the European Commission, Franz Timmermans, whose portfolio is better regulation, interinstitutional relations, the rule of law, and the charter of fundamental rights. I thank all of you for helping to stimulate and launch the kinds of productive conversations we expect here today. I would just note that it is a fertile environment. We have a bit of a microcosm of that wider ecosystem where one can really connect better the resources and the expertise and the ideas and innovations of public, private, research institutions, civil society, and the rest. We've got over 20 senior government leaders who will be here over the next day and a half, 60 heads of civil society organizations, and of a total population of 700 or 800 participants in the meeting. Over half of them are business, which is a very interesting dynamic during a week of the world's biggest intergovernmental discussions. So what I'd like to invite each of you to do, and you're each active in some different aspects of this very broad agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement, is maybe for the group give your sense of one or two examples of that kind of coalition, alliance nature that you think is part of the way forward for mobilizing implementation. And you, Madam President, why don't we start with you. It's fascinating. You're one of the few leaders, governmental leaders, who has a scientific background. And I wonder whether that particular background gives you a sense of how one can bring in the scientific community along with other stakeholders to advance better, to advance some progress on aspects of these goals. Thank you. Thank you very much. And it's a great pleasure to be here at the World Climate Forum. And again, thank you to Professor Schwab for putting this amazing forum to discuss. I think we just had a very sobering presentation by the ex-president Al Gore, and it gives us a lot of food for thoughts on the way forward, especially as we are talking in the realm of sustainability. And you've mentioned the issue of coalition partnership. I think this is increasingly the realm of the day in terms of the discussion, because if we don't engage on this partnership, on this discussion, this collaboration, we will not make headway. And here I kind of dig from my immediate past of academic and entrepreneur, and also bring in the woman agenda on board, and capacity building, as well as the entire issue of institution building. We've just mentioned this just before coming to this forum, that we need to bring on board very strong institutions. We need to have on board strong scientists in STEMs, women, because again, just to bring in the numbers, we can't afford to leave 52% behind. And we also need to bring a dose of accountability. And this is something that maybe is missing in our narrative, but increasingly we need to bring this notion of accountability. Now, why do we need to have strong institution? We need to have, again, good data, so this good data can be translated into good policy decisions. And again, if we just go back to what President Al Gore has said, if you look at the challenges of climate change, if you look at where I come from, it's a small island state, of course, within, of course, the African continent, we're going to be hugely impacted, be it for agriculture, be it for ocean. He just mentioned that the ocean can no longer absorb any more carbon dioxide, and already we're witnessing the warming of the ocean, we're also witnessing the acidification of the ocean, but recently I just read something, I just learned something which is even more chilling. Climate change will also impact the nutrition capacity of plants. Already we are looking at access to food, and now we will not be able to address hidden hunger by virtue of the fact that the plants will no longer be giving us the micronutrients that we need. So, water, food, security, you name it, will all be impacted by this overarching feature, which is now challenging, climate change. So this is why we need to increasingly go for more collaboration, more partnership, and having the private and the public sector working together, along with non-state actors, is going to be key. And this is the narrative and this is a discussion we need to keep on having on board very strongly. Thank you. Thanks very much. Franz Van Houten, as a business person, actively engaged in markets around the world, but also as someone who's a leader on sustainability matters, both social and environment, with your firm. I know that's been an important part of your strategy. Tell us what you're seeing out there that's having impact, whether things that you're involved in in your firm are with others. Sure. By way of background, Philips is an innovation company and we focus very much on health technology. If you look at the world of healthcare, if there's a pandemic like Ebola in Africa, then everybody scrambles and says, oh, we need to do something. But you're reacting to a problem rather than preventing it and we haven't even spoken about the arrival of non-communicable diseases in emerging markets. Do we really envisage that we want to see, let's say, 18% of GDP being spent or do we want to have a better healthcare system in emerging markets? You spoke, the premier of Sweden, about inclusiveness and not leaving anybody behind. So we said at Philips, we want to reach 3 billion people by the year 2025 with healthcare and then clearly you cannot do it alone. And you know that at the web, you like system thinking and I like system thinking as well because how does all the pieces fit together and then no company and no NGO and no government can do it on their own. The solution for providing healthcare to the 3 billion people that don't have it is actually capacity building in the local setting, which is in our own terminology, primary care. Primary care was clinics that work and if you realize that today NGOs have vaccination programs, there is actually a lot of money being spent to have these programs and everybody does it in their own silo, malaria, HIV and so on. If it would all reach, let's say, a primary care facility in the rural communities, it can have its own cold chain. You can have drones, you know, deliver the goods and so on. A little bit of fantasy technology can really help deliver this. So to answer your question, I'm very much in favor of let's say SDG 17, the goal to bring people together because together we can solve this. And since last year Phillips was the first private company to team up with the United Nations special envoy and the Canadian government to do exactly that, to build primary care in the rural communities. And it would be great if out of the commitment from this audience, you know, more people team up, pharma companies, communications technology companies, NGOs, governments in order to build primary care. It is our calculation that for 10 US dollars a person per year you can provide adequate primary care in the communities and therefore solve the 3 billion challenge. And I think as I said we need the convening power of these kind of audiences in order to bring it, but it is possible. Thanks for that very specific challenge. And so those of you in the audience who have resources or networks that are relevant to that, please take note because as I mentioned before this is not just an issue identification conference. This is really about helping to facilitate the connections. You mentioned finance, Franz, and I think Afsane Beschloss. You've seen the financial world as it relates to development and sustainability from both the public and private sector world. You were treasurer of the World Bank. You're now the founder of a private institutional investor. This I find is one of the big underlying question marks of this entire agenda. You hear it from developing countries. You hear it from many different people. So I think maybe it will be helpful for you to give your practitioner sense unfiltered, if you will, because we're an informal platform. It's not a protocol. With all due respect to the UN, give your sense of exactly where we are in helping to mobilize the resources and what kinds of better public private blending and cooperation is absolutely essential in that regard. Thank you so much. I'm very excited to be here today, especially because I think with the World Economic Forum we have the occasion not just to have a high level debate about the SDGs or about climate change, but to really talk about some practical experiences and come up with ways to move forward and implement. And I think that's a huge, huge challenge for us in the next two days in the course of the discussions. Approximately 120 trillion gets invested by investors across the globe. That's by insurance companies, pension funds, sovereign funds, individuals, etc. The numbers, you know, we can sort of debate, but that's sort of the general scale, and that increases about three to four percent a year. So that's around the three to four billion that we think the SDGs will need yearly in order to get implemented. I think while those resources are there in the private sector, what we've seen is that the resources of the public sector have been diminishing. The pressures on the public sector, as we have heard today, have been increasing while at the same time. The multilaterals, let's say, might be pushing out 100 billion a year, but that's in gross numbers and wants to net out what the countries have to repay. The number is much smaller and certainly is nowhere close to the trillions that we need. I think the topic for discussion today that we've been talking about, which is really the partnership between private sector, public sector, civic society, and academia, is really the key to success in terms of implementing the SDGs. Some specifics, I think, are also worth mentioning. Talking about health sector is an area I've been very excited about. If you think about emerging markets, that's about five trillion of the 120 that I mentioned. So approximately, if we set around five trillion, only two percent of that gets spent on the health sector, maybe less. So that's tiny. In this country, about 20 percent of our resources in the U.S. gets spent on the health sector. Now, I don't think it means that other countries have to spend 20 percent. There are all kinds of inefficiencies here that need to get improved, but certainly the two percent is going to increase. And a doubling to take us to four percent or to eight percent is something that is going to be achievable and necessary for the well-being of a very large number of people in the world. So I think what France is talking about, which is coming up with ways to do that, is very key. And there are about 2,200 funds out there today who claim they're investing in a sustainable manner. If you went back to 1995, I think the number was more like 60 who claimed they were looking at this. If you look at companies, about, I think, 20 or 30 used to do sustainability studies in 1995, that sort of go back to old World Bank days. Today, more than 10,000 companies are doing those kinds of studies. And I think that's one reason there's so many people here today and so many who couldn't come in today because of the great interest in the topic. So I think the success and the implementation is what matters. And I think what needs to get done is deal with the information gap we have. One of the biggest issues in the industry right now is that the people who do want to invest, once they decide they want to invest, have a gap in information. Let's say a Ford Foundation decided to put a billion in sustainability. And my friend Darren, I was on his board, you know, we tried to sort of see where to invest. And then you stop and say, okay, I need a database. I need a marketplace. I need some place to go in order to find the best investment possibilities that meet also my mission and have the returns. If you're a World Resources Institute, if you are the sustainability officer for Unilever, if you are really doing a lot of the things that people in this room are interested in, there is really a lack of data measurement statistics and a marketplace for impact. And that's one of the areas that I've been working on with a number of people across both foundations and impact world in companies. And I think it's an area where we also need the help of governments because where there is money, it needs direction. Thanks very much. And indeed one of the sessions, working sessions tomorrow will be a gathering of various parties that are trying to improve the consistency and rigor of the metrics for interpreting the social positive outcomes from corporate activity. So your initiative would be quite relevant to that. Mr. Vice President, would you care to offer us your thoughts? How is the European Union thinking about crowding in multiple stakeholders, particularly the private sector, to advance its own sustainable development agenda? If you look at the research that's been done recently about public opinion across the European Union, there are three issues that people are really worried about, top of their agenda. It's security, it's migration, and it's jobs. Where's my job going to be? Where are my children going to find a job? Sustainability environment is nowhere in their priorities. It's really down on the list. So if you look at the top priorities, the essential element of insecurity is the idea that we are no longer in control of our own destinies. That's why the slogan that carried the day in Brexit was take back control. Create the illusion that if you bring back things on a national level, you can regain control of your destiny. Now, I honestly believe that this momentous opportunity of the SDGs is part of the solution of what people worry about most. Not just because of what Al Gore said, how these things are interlinked with climate change, etc., but also because if you fix a number of these things manifestly, clearly in partnerships with the private sector, with NGOs, you can prove that policies, that action, can actually help people regain control of their destinies. I can take an example from Africa. If we don't succeed in educating girls in Africa, women in Africa will never ever be in control of their only productive rights. It's just what happened. So providing education, I say specifically because Gordon is here, providing education as part of the SDGs is just as important as any other element in the SDGs, because it will give people the feeling, not just a feeling, but the reality of control over their lives. And what we see in Europe, we can make a transformation to a sustainable economy relatively easily in terms of technology. The private sector is just begging us to move ahead very, very fast on this. Private sector is begging for regulation. How about that? Just to give them an indication of where we need to go. Give them some long-term security of where we need to go. Give them some perspective of how we think we can transform the economy. And in this case, the public sector is lagging behind. The public sector is still sometimes in the grips of an ideology that says, oh no, no, we shouldn't regulate, the market will take care of itself. This will not take care of itself, because this can only be fixed if all stakeholders work together. The problem here is that we need to create a nexus between private sector, public sector, NGOs and wider society to make these transformational changes. And I'm upbeat about this, because we are succeeding in several areas. But we also need to keep in mind that we should also focus on social areas, on education, not just in Africa, but also in Europe, providing our kids with the skills. You know, illiteracy in this day and age is no longer the incapacity to read or write, it's the incapacity to learn. And we need to teach people that they will have to do lifelong learning. And all these things will help show to people that there are alternatives to xenophobia, nationalism, extreme right ideology to get control of your destiny. And I think this agenda of formulating very concrete policy measures is extremely, extremely urgent. We need to move beyond the words and the rhetoric we now need to really go in the concrete elements of policies that we need to implement. Thank you very much. I'd invite the other colleagues on the panel maybe to respond to that framing, that there's a need for a much better nexus between public and private. You know, at COP21 a lot of companies signed up for the climate agreement. Phillips also, we will be carbon neutral by 2020. But a lot of my colleagues in industry would welcome a carbon pricing mechanism that works. Because then you can actually do the investments and get a return on those investments. And we have been all procrastinating and waiting for it. So go ahead, Franz. Yes. Madam President. Absolutely right. I'll just fully concur on this issue of education. And I think, again, this is an area where we have to teach, teach, for me to use the word, children and of course lifelong learning and all the adults. To learn, to unlearn and to relearn. But more importantly, to stimulate this critical thinking in young children. Because to apprehend the jobs that will not be there that needs to be created in the wake of what we experience in terms of artificial intelligence. But more importantly, then we come to the issue of regulation. When we have AI and all these new technologies, what regulations do you bring on board for a better sharing of the profits down the line? Because this is where I think we are leaving a lot behind. We are not taking them on board because they are not seeing the benefit of all these new technologies. How is disrupting their lives? So a big focus on education. And the other issue you have rightly said, and I'll be a big cliche here. You will not be able to succeed if we leave 52% of the team behind. So no soccer team can win. So bringing on board women. And again, to reiterate what we have said for in Africa. Women feed Africa. We feed the continent. And again, we need to see to it that the regulation is there to empower them with appropriate cash, access to learn, access to all these so that it can happen. And these are things which tell us all. In your country, how has the reaction been from the private sector and others, either in helping to build that skills acquisition system or indeed on the capacity building in agriculture? Are you expecting that kind of engagement or is the general expectation still that these are services that the government itself should be providing? Yes. And again, this is a narrative which has been ongoing for a long time that government is meant to be providing all the services. I mean, this is something which is ingrained. I think it goes back to our history. But I think the narrative continentally is changing. And we're seeing a lot of emphasis on bringing the right technology, bringing the information to the people and using appropriate technology to connect. But it's a big effort that needs to be done. Especially in Africa, if I take only this agricultural sector, which there's a lot of work needs to be done because to ensure the food security of 1.2 billion, going up to 2 billion people very soon, it will take a lot in terms of partnership, in terms of new technology. Because at the end of the day, if you look at the African continent, most of our agriculture is still reinfed. And yet we know all the disruption that climate change will bring on board. So these are things that, you know, again, we need to go back to the whole idea of engaging research, engaging partnership with university, engaging proper tertiary education, linking up to industry so that we get the impact that we need at the end of the day for this to happen. The risk is that the wish list of everything that we need to do becomes very long, right? And I would volunteer that we should not look at all the SDGs as independent goals. They are actually synergetic together. I spoke in the beginning about healthcare, but, you know, the centers that we build come with solar electricity, clean water, hygiene, and then safety. Because if there is light, there is safety in the evening. So in daytime, the electricity is used to run the clinic. At nighttime, it lights the village and kids are sitting there learning in the evening because now there is light. And women feel more safe. Moreover, if there is no infant mortality or maternal mortality, then the families can work on earning, let's say, their income. So you need to create that capacity in a holistic way. And I would definitely underline that private enterprise can play a big role, provided, let's say, there is just this safety net about regulation. And financing where there is a, let's say, we can make a return on this. But then together, I think we can make a big impact. I think just two different points. One is obviously, you know, we do need regulation and clarity. At the same time, I think the markets are there now. You know, 20 years ago when we all were working on solar, wind, and other sources of clean energy, those were not economic. Today, they are economic. So, you know, what the vice president said is important in the sense that even natural gas, which is cleaner fuel than coal, is plentiful, not just here, but in many emerging markets. And they can be used locally. And obviously, solar and wind and other renewables are huge and economic today. So I think the fact that they're economic versus need a subsidy or need some form of regulation to be forced into a source of energy, I think, is really important. The issue I want to raise, though, is that education is great, health is great. But one of the things that is missing right now is more than 50% of the world does not have access to the Internet. That is mainly not just women, but young children and really the poorest. So the fact that there is 50% that do not have access, and also about 50% of people do not have access to any sort of financial intermediation, whether that's in their village or even, you know, in this country if you are a migrant worker or whatever. So that is a huge issue that needs to get sorted out because a lot of the things we're talking about can continue to improve the lot of the people who do have access. And at the same time, make sure that that other 50% never makes it. So we do need to deal with that other part, too. Absolutely. But if a society is to function, if there is a social contract that functions within a nation or a society or even globally, there has to be some understanding, collective understanding and agreement on what that should do. And I think what was promised always was convergence. The whole idea of international cooperation is to bring the world closer together. The reality, sadly, over the last 10, 15 years, also as a consequence of the crisis, is divergence within societies, also European societies, but also globally. And if you don't fix that, anything we propose to people will not be believed. People won't even listen to us anymore if we come with that proposition without realistic steps to recreate conversion and opening the world for internet in an easier way, providing that access is an element of conversion. But also looking at income differences within societies and correcting that is an element of conversion. Starting to tax finally these moguls who are now controlling everything that has to do with the internet world is a form of conversion. Having people pay tax where they make profits is a form of conversion. We need to do all these things and we can only do them globally. Nations can no longer do that because then companies are footloose and go elsewhere. Europe can do it to some extent, but if we don't do it globally, it will sort of fail anyway. So just the element I want to bring in the debate is conversion. If we don't, the social contract will not be reinvigorated if there's not a concrete sense of conversion between nations but also within nations. How do we get to convergence? I think it is not all that complicated. The labour market is going to fundamentally change. We haven't even begun to understand what AI is going to do to our lives. We have even begun to understand an AI that develops itself and thinks for itself what that means for society. We need to study that. We need to make sure that we provide jobs that have meaning for people. Job satisfaction is not just a salary but also the feeling of honour and the feeling of being an important society that comes with that. We have neglected all of that. If you look at this country, if you are a college graduate and you are not a college graduate, you live in two different worlds. This is increasingly the case in many western countries. We need to fix that and that is something that government will need to do. There is something that government has neglected. We need to break away from the idea that this illusion that if everybody improves their lives, that some improve it so much better than others doesn't make a difference. It does. It has an implication. If differences within society become too great, then you can no longer have a social contract in society. That is something that risks happening in the western world, in Europe. But it can be fixed. It can be fixed through technology. It can be fixed through education. It can be fixed through looking at where the jobs will be. It can only be fixed if we give people the tools to be able to act there. The tools you get through lifelong education. But again, to get right, to get to this convergence, I think there is something, the ultimate goal. We have talked about climate change as being one of the big threat. But I think the other big challenge is inequality. If we don't tackle inequality, I don't think we will make a difference. I don't think we will make a headway. And I think the figures that were given earlier on, 10 to 15 families owning about three quarters of three-fifths of the world's wealth. I think these are really telling figures. I think eventually this is something that will need to be tackled. But again, you're right. It has to be done through government. It has to be done through regulations. It's only then that we'll bring everybody at the same table to see how to tackle inequality. Well, in fact, there are partnerships where different stakeholders are coming together to try to address key parts of this inclusion or inequality puzzle. There will be a plenary at the end of the day that Prime Minister Loven will be part of about a very important aspect of how the public and private sector can work better together through social dialogue to improve both productivity and working conditions, if you will. That's not purely a government effort. There will be an effort here showcased tomorrow as well about trying to crystallize good value chain practices that have a strong social and environmental payoff and disseminate those and give companies of various sorts the metrics to be able to evaluate themselves. First, do their own scorecard and then determine where they're benchmarking poorly against the norm. Again, that takes a public-private type of effort to pool the data. And maybe last point, because it's now time to wrap up our session, is that you, I think, sparked the most energy in the session, Mr. Vice President, by saying, look, it's time for us in government to recognize that the private sector and others are seeking a greater degree of government leadership. And indeed, in many cases, regulation. Well, here, often, regulation in a fast-moving environment comes out of a multi-stakeholder deliberation about what would work best and most agilely going forward. And here, both in this summit as well as more institutionally, this is a big focus of the forum going forward. Can I make one quick point on this? Yes, please. Because the regulation we need is going to be fundamentally different than the regulation we had in the past, because we can no longer regulate in detail because the world is changing too fast. To create legislation in Europe takes at least two years, sometimes three years. Talk to the people in the Internet industry or in the IA industry, they will laugh at you. That's an eternity. So we will have to come to an agreement with the private sector and Joe's, that you give space for the private sector within a framework of legislation to act so that we can use the opportunities that are provided by technology and by the market more than we are today. So for this new regulation to work, we need very high levels of trust between stakeholders. And we need, in the government, to allow the industry to act more freely, but we then also have to demand from industry a higher level of corporate responsibility when acting in this. This is the only way forward. And indeed, that's why we have established a Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution centered in San Francisco, but with a networked approach across the world to help to facilitate precisely these types of conversations. You'll hear more about that in the second plenary later in the day. Would you please join me in thanking our panelists for getting us underway.