 What is now clear is that the lack of political will has not allowed many of the governments in this world to not only fulfill what was promised in Paris, but to commit to this carbon neutrality in 2050. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends. It's an honor and privilege to be joined here by His Excellency Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations. The Forum has always, since many years, worked closely together with the United Nations. But under your leadership, Secretary General, we have together advanced another important milestone last year in establishing a strategic partnership framework between the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. Secretary General, I'm pleased to report that as a consequence of this framework agreement, we have inaugurated during this meeting a link, a digital platform allowing all people, particularly the young generation, and start-up companies to contribute and exchange ideas and initiatives to advance the social and sustainable development goals. I'm also pleased to report that we have made substantial progress during this meeting in making stakeholder responsibility mainstream through the development of a comprehensive ESG, Environmental, Social, Good Governance measurement system. By making stakeholder engagement measurable, we will make it credible. And finally, significant progress is being made in addressing one of the key challenges of humankind, very much discussed during this meeting, climate change, catalyzed by our Climate Action Summit, by your Climate Action Summit in September. We made during this meeting major advances on the initiatives for accelerating industry, energy, and financial transition. Also during this meeting, we launched a platform for public-private cooperation, for reforestation. In doing so, we want to make a special contribution to the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Mr. Secretary-General, I'm delighted to invite you again to share with us your views on the state of the world, and your vision for how we can work together to create a better world for future generations, despite all the challenges we, and particularly you, have to face. This will be followed by a conversation with my colleague, Berger Brandt, the President of the World Economic Forum. So now the show is yours, Secretary-General. We are very pleased to have you back here, and you made such a huge impression on everyone last year. The floor is yours, the world according to the Secretary-General. Well, thank you very much, and my first of all express my deep gratitude to Chairman Klaus Schwab and to President Berger Brandt for the fantastic operation that the World Economic Forum has been providing to the United Nations in some of the key aspects of our work. And at the same time, to congratulate you on your anniversary. I mean, 50 versus 75, we are a little bit older, but we look at our young brother with a lot of sympathy, a lot of commitment, and a lot of best wishes for the extraordinary work that World Economic Forum has been doing. Thank you. Now, if I had to use two words to describe the state of the world, it would be uncertainty and instability. In my address to the General Assembly yesterday, I mentioned the four horsemen that are around us and represent huge challenges for our common future. And the first is climate change. Climate change is indeed, for me, the defining issue of our time. For the first time in the history of humankind, there is a limit, a physical limit, to our perspectives of development. And this has led humankind to declare a war to nature, and nature is striking back and striking back in a very violent way, as we have seen in different parts of the world. Now, it is absolutely essential to recognize that climate change is an existential threat to us all, and that climate change is running faster than what we are. We are not winning this war, and we absolutely must do it. I know that for some people there is this idea, well, climate change is probably something to take into account in the future, and the planet is very resilient, and the planet will not be destroyed. I fully agree. The planet will not be destroyed. In the next few centuries and millennia, we will see the planet around the sun. What will be destroyed is our capacity to live in this planet. We will be destroyed by climate change, not the planet. And this will be for us a clear indication that we absolutely need to change course. Now, we are seeing the impacts today. We have the highest level of concentration of CO2 since 800 million ago. We had the last decade, the hottest decade. We see the temperature of the water in the oceans and the temperature inland rising at a rhythm that has no parallel in the recent past. We are always registering records in all these aspects, but especially the dramatic impact that we are seeing in relation to natural disasters and their horrible humanitarian implications and economic implications. What we are seeing in relation to the factors of insecurity, with the lack of resources caused by prolonged drought, making farmers and darters fight, and contributing to the instability in areas like the Sahel, where climate change is objectively supporting terrorist activities. When we see all the other dramatic implications that climate change is having, look at fires that occurred in the Arctic, Siberia, but also in Greenland and Canada. Now what we have seen in Australia, all this makes us think that it is indeed a climate crisis and a climate emergency now. Now, the good news is that the scientific community has told us exactly what to do. We need to make sure that temperatures do not grow above 1.5 degrees at the end of the century, and we need to make sure to reach that objective, that we have carbon neutrality 2050, and that we reduce in the decades ending in 2030 the emissions by about as an average 45 percent in relation to the levels of 2010. But if one looks at what was agreed in Paris, the commitments in Paris will still lead to increase the temperature at 3 to 4 degrees, and that is catastrophic. And if you look at the portfolio of asset management entities that are working with us and want to shift resources from the grey economy to the green economy, they still recognize that their present portfolios represent a global economy that is moving to an increase of temperature of 3 to 4 degrees, which means there must be a meaningful shift of resources from fossil fuel companies from the grey economy to what it is, the green economy, renewables and different other areas of activity that are the ones that have future in our world if we want to be able to preserve the values that we have been fighting for. What is now clear is that the lack of political will has not allowed many of the governments in this world to not only fulfill what was promised in Paris, but to commit to this carbon neutrality in 2050. We have seen many small countries doing so, small island states, 70 countries did so in the summit that we had in September. We see now the European Union, and I would like to underline that, with a very strong commitment to carbon neutrality in 2050, there is still the problem of Poland to be solved, but we all believe it will be solved on time. But the great, the big emitters have not yet committed to do so. The big emitters are absolutely essential, because if the big emitters do not rally the group of carbon neutrality in 2050, we will be doomed, because they represent a very important share. The G20 represents 80% of the emissions that country would to climate change. And so it is in the big emitters, and namely in some aspects, like the addiction to coal, particularly in Asia, that we need to act in order to make sure that we do not become doomed in all the efforts that the international community is doing. And there are many things that can be done on this. We need to put the price on carbon. It is clear that carbon has today an impact that needs to be priced, for markets to be transparent. We need to be able to shift taxation from income to carbon, which has a win-win situation. We need to cut subsidies to fossil fuels. I must say that as a taxpayer, I can't really accept the idea that my taxes are used to boost hurricanes or to bleach corals or to melt glaciers. And I think I have the right to ask that the subsidies that are paid with taxpayers' money do not go to fossil fuels. It doesn't make any sense. It distorts markets, and it gives the wrong indications to the private sector. Now the good news is that I see an enormous commitment of the private sector emerging. And I see the financial institutions more and more, with some exceptions, and we have seen all this debate is not entirely clear yet, even in what happened in the recent days here in Davos. But more and more banks, asset managers, more and more central banks are saying that these must be a priority also in their activities. And we see more and more companies recognizing that they themselves must be carbon neutral, and this is something that is very encouraging. And even more encouraging is to see cities doing the same, is to see public opinions doing the same, is to see elections. For instance, elections in Europe one year ago were disputed based on migration. Last year it was a lot on climate change. So we see electorates emerging. We see public opinions and we see the youth mobilizing in an extremely important way. So being very worried because we are still losing this war. We are not yet reversing the trend. We still increased emissions last year. I'm hopeful that it will be possible to mobilize both the private sector and the public authorities in order to take the transformational decisions in the way we produce our food, in the way we power our economy, in the way we move, in the way we support our industry, that we will be able to do the transformational, in the way we plan our cities, the transformational changes that are necessary for us to reach the objectives that the scientific community tell us it's absolutely essential to do so. The second horseman I would like to refer is to do with the level of this quiet and mistrust that we see everywhere in the world today, 66 countries last year had huge demonstrations, some of them unfortunately done in violence. And what is clear is that the reasons of these situations are different from country to country. I mean, in each the pretext is different. But there is an underlying factor, mistrust, lack of trust in political establishments and the perception that there is unfairness in globalization, that globalization is not reaching everybody in the same way and that inequality is growing in many of our societies. As a matter of fact, seven in ten people in the planet live in countries where inequality is growing at the present time. Now these has generated the kind of movement that obviously is very important but must remind us that we need to guarantee two things. First, that governments understand that they must give voice to their people, they must give ways for people to participate, they must respect the civic space that unfortunately has been put into question in so many areas around the world, they must respect the freedom of press that has been put into question in many areas of the world and they must give a voice particularly to the young people and create the conditions also for gender equality which is an absolute must in relation to the creation not only of just societies but effective societies in development and in guaranteeing the conditions for peace and stability. But the second thing we need is really to work together for a fair globalization and it's very encouraging to see the World Economic Forum in the front line of this effort to put civil societies, governments and businesses working together in order to make sure that we reap all the benefits of globalization but do it in a way in which everybody can benefit which means that the Sustainable Development Goals which means that the Agenda 2030 should become a master plan for the development plans of each country in the world and also an important reference for the way businesses plan their own activities and it's as I said very encouraging to see the enthusiasm with which so many actors at local level, at national level in the business community, in the civil society are indeed adopting the Sustainable Development Goals as their reference in their own campaigns, in their own actions and in their own activities. But let's be clear, we are lagging behind. If everything would go on as it is today until 2030 would be halfway, we need to accelerate and to accelerate we need to make a huge effort both in relation to the seriousness of our commitments but also in relation to the mobilization of resources. And the resources for climate change, it's not enough to be ambitious on mitigation, we need to be ambitious on adaptation and on finance and ambition also in relation to the financing of the Sustainable Development Goals, of the creative conditions for countries to be able to increase their capacity to raise their own resources, support them in relation to money laundering, tax evasion, illicit flows of capital that are drawing resources from them. And this is a responsibility of the international community as a whole, making sure that international financial institutions fully play their role, making sure that we have innovative forms of financing, social impact bonds, green bonds, making sure that we have also instruments to de-risk private investment, making sure that governments assume also the responsibility of good governance, of the rule of law, of fighting corruption for private investors to feel that they are ready to risk in the developing world. So there is a lot that still needs to be done to mobilize the international community for the Sustainable Development Goals to be a reality. Two brief references and we'll have time to discuss and I don't want to monopolize in this first intervention to the two other horsemen. First, the increase of tension, the increase of geopolitical tension in the world. It is a factor that we have seen dramatically in the potential conflict in the Gulf that fortunately it was possible to avoid. It is something that we see in the dysfunctionality of relations between the major powers, namely in the Security Council and the inability of the Security Council to take decisions and address the crisis that we face and allow us to solve them or prevent the emergence of new ones. This functionality also in relation to trade and in relation to technology that risks a great fracture in the world. We need a global economy. We need multilateral institutions to be in charge both of the governance at peace and security level and at the governance at the level of trade and at the level of technology. And the last is exactly related to the dark side of the technological evolution, especially the digital world, where I recognize that there has been a very important leadership of the World Economic Forum, both in relation to the preparation of member states of the United Nations and of societies to the impacts of the forced industrial revolution, but also in relation to drawing the attention to the need to put some order in what is the chaos today of the cyber space and also to make sure that artificial intelligence becomes a force for good. And in all these, we have been working together and fully appreciative of the excellent work that World Economic Forum is doing. And it is my deep belief that we need to be able to boost international cooperation and we need to be able to recognize that these global challenges can only be solved through a global response. And the global response requires international cooperation and multilateral institutions, but not the traditional multilateral institutions working in traditional ways. And when I think about UN, I see more and more UN that I want, being a UN working in network with all other international organizations. When you look at the Sahel, it's working with the African Union, with ECOWAS, with World Bank, that we can provide an answer to the Sahel. When we look into the technologies, working with the World Economic Forum, absolute must for us to be able to be effective in the way we address things after the high-level panel that I appointed has produced the conclusions. Networking is essential for multilateral organizations to be effective and inclusive multilateralism. We have traditionally a very intergovernmental approach to international organizations, and governments are very keen on keeping that as such. But the truth is that governments control less and less of the collective life of countries. More and more local authorities are relevant. Regional authorities are relevant. The civil society is relevant. The business community is relevant. And we must give voice to them also inside the multilateral organizations and make the multilateral organizations reflect the anxieties, the aspirations, and the objectives of those that build our societies and contribute to what can be an effort, a global effort, to make these four horsemen go home. Thank you so much, Mr. Secretary General. And also thank you for the well-wishes for the Forum's 50th anniversary. First, we also wish the UN happy 75th anniversary. And there is so many challenges to deal with, so there is not a lot of time for celebration. It is really rolling up the sleeves, like the Secretary General also indicated on all these really pressing issues. I think there is, Secretary General, a lot of concerns also among the participants in Davos. On the escalation we have seen lately in conflicts and also proxy wars. Earlier during the summit, our annual meeting, I said that we're moving from a cold war to hot peace, but I was corrected by one of the participants saying, no, we move from cold war to hot proxy wars. Seen from you your viewpoint, how can we together de-escalate these conflicts that we're seeing? Is there a way to stop these proxy wars and making sure that the world get more peaceful? We are trying hard. And we have made huge efforts in Yemen. We have made huge efforts in Libya. We have made huge efforts in Syria. We are trying hard. But what we now see more and more is that conflicts are no longer conflict between two countries, that are conflicts within a country. And as soon as a conflict within a country emerges, different interests of neighbors and sometimes of more far away actors start to get involved. And in the first phase, getting involved, supporting in different forms of help, the parties to the conflict. But then all of a sudden, getting directly engaged. And this is the reason why, for instance, in the case of Libya, I believe the Berlin conference was possible and that the conclusions with the Berlin conference could be positive, even if this is just the beginning and it's impossible to predict whether we will be successful or not in the end. Because what we have seen in Libya was that we moved from a war by proxy to a situation in which those that were supporting the forces, the local forces, are getting themselves involved directly in the conflict. And so to a certain extent, strangely, the concept of deterrence worked. And it was possible to gather all these countries to the same table and to say, well, better to stop this before it's too late and before you get really involved in a war among yourselves. Now, it is absolutely essential to increase our diplomatic efforts. It's absolutely essential to work very closely together with regional organizations and to push neighbors and other actors into the understanding that these conflicts in the end are terrible, not only for the countries themselves, but for the region. And many of them are supporting this new phenomenon of global terrorism, of fighters that move from one country to another. We see now fighters that came from Syria to Libya. There are many others already there. We see that Libya has been one of the feeding instruments of the conflict in the Sahel. The conflict in the Sahel and its connection to the late Shah is such that today, I cannot say that you are winning the war against terrorism in Africa. Terrorists are moving forward, are having an enlarged area of intervention, are getting closer to the countries of the coast, which is something that is very worrying. And we see similar phenomena in Eastern Congo. We see similar phenomena in Mozambique. So we see something spreading. And the capacity we have to control it is limited. The different instruments of security we have are limited. The response about root causes, about development is limited. And so to really address those conflicts, like Libya, that are not only a drama in themselves, but the kind of a cancer that spreads into other areas is absolutely essential. But it has been very difficult. And here, let's be clear. We have another problem. Power relations in the world became much more unclear. We no longer live by power world. We no longer live a unipolar world. But this is not yet a multipolar world. This is a chaotic world. And we see lots of actors of the middle dimension becoming spoilers in different conflicts. And to a certain extent, nobody is afraid of anybody. And this creates an environment in which it's very difficult to make diplomatic efforts to end the conflict succeed. We need, I think, multipolarity is a positive thing. But multipolarity in itself is not a guarantee of peace and security. Europe was multipolar before the First World War. And in the absence of multilateral institutions of governments, the result was the First World War. So we need, simultaneously, a multipolar world. But we need multilateral institutions able to provide the forms of governance that are necessary. And today, one of the dramas of this lack of clarity in relations in power relations and the fact that the relations between the biggest powers are so dysfunctional is that the Security Council is not able to implement its own decisions. I think something that is absolutely unacceptable is to see a Security Council resolution with an arms embargo in Libya. And everybody is sending publicly arms to Libya. These arms and other things. So there is something that really requires, as I said, it's not enough to say multilateralism is a solution. We need multilateralism that works. And we need to create the conditions for that to be possible. Thank you very much. In many ways, we are faced with a non-polar world for the time being, leading to some of the G0 results, as you indicated. Thank you also very much, Secretary General. As also mentioned by Professor Schwab, last summer we signed this strategic partnership between the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. And you also mentioned the new technologies, the Ford Industrial Revolution, the SDGs. And I think we easily agree that without also mobilizing the private sector and the business community, we will have big challenges meeting the targets that are set. And it's very good to see here during our Davos meeting that many companies have come out and said that we will go carbon neutral by 2050. We're coming back to the technologies. And as you know, we are also working on how we can get the better governance of these new technologies that can do a lot of positive things for humankind. But they also are challenges. And now we see the decoupling of possible two different systems of the geopolitics are also working on this. So how to make sure that these technologies work in the interest of humankind? And are you concerned about two systems? How will that influence also global economic growth? And how to avoid that? I do believe I said it last September when addressing the General Assembly that we face the risk of a great fracture. I mean, we have two biggest economies in the world that are much bigger than any other one. And these two economies have been relating each other in a way in which we had a trade conflict that has now had a kind of a lull with this first agreement. But let's be clear, this first agreement doesn't solve any of the key problems that have to be resolved. But more important than trade for me is technology. It's a divide in technology. And we see it already. And so the risk is, if things go on in a negative way, and let's hope it's not the case, that we have two poles that act as magnets attracting other countries and making the global economy divided into two with two sets of rules, with two internet separated from each other, with two completely different strategies in the way artificial intelligence is integrated in the life of societies and the life of the economy. And inevitably, when this happens, sooner or later, we have the different and opposing military and geostatistic approaches. So I think it's absolutely vital to do everything possible to preserve one global economy, to preserve one global set of rules, and to preserve the multilateral institutions responsible for it. And in relation to technology, to create new mechanisms that allow for, I would say, traditional regulation that would not be possible, in my opinion, but forms of international cooperation that allow those new technologies, namely the cyberspace, artificial intelligence, to be a force for good. My approach, and I think the UN can be a platform when people can come together. And what, to a certain extent, comes from the conclusions that I have a panel I appointed, is that what we need is not a convention that is established by all states, and then it is ratified during two or three or four years. And the moment it enters into function, the technology has evolved in such a way that the convention no longer serves any purpose. What we need is a permanent way in which governments, companies, researchers, civil society come together and establish a number of norms, protocols, define some red lines at the same time, exchange best practices, and create mechanisms of cooperation. The Internet Governance Forum is one of them, but we can have others. Mechanisms of cooperation allowing for, we will not be able to avoid everything, but at least to make sure that the mainstream moves in the right direction, and moves in the right direction with everybody on board, without this fracture that could be very, very destructive. But let's be clear. We have a number of problems that have not been solved. How does international humanitarian law and international human rights law apply to, for instance, cyber attacks? To what extent the basic concepts that are today, the legal foundations of war and peace, like the right of self-defense, how does it apply to a cyber attack? There are a number of things that need to be seriously discussed, and some of them, in my opinion, will require some capacity of states coming together and making some bands, or taking some other enforcement, creating some other enforcement mechanisms, because it would be too dangerous to let things just go in a more voluntary way. But in my opinion, the key instrument is international cooperation, multi-stakeholder cooperation, with soft and flexible mechanisms that evolve with time and adapt to the changes that technology itself will inevitably have. Thank you. Last question, Mr. Secretary-General. Last year, when we sat here, you said that it is a big paradox that the more and more the world gets integrated and globalized, the more and more fragmented our responses. I was thinking, being Secretary-General, I think you feel also the warmth from the public here. Everyone wants the United Nations and multilateralism. At least, I think many of those sitting here wants to succeed. You hear? But I was just reflecting on it has to be a very difficult job being Secretary-General in such a polarized world. It has, of course, the importance of the UN is even more so, but whole to maneuver when the world is so polarized and you see the big powers also not seeing each other in the eyes every day. Can you reflect just shortly on that and how you handle it? I am an engineer. And from an engineer point of view, the more complex situations are, the more simple the answers must be. Now, when you have such a mess, first tell the truth to everybody, because it's impossible today to tell one thing to one country, another thing to another. I mean, it doesn't work. Tell the truth to everybody. And don't ask permission if necessary, apologize. So what we have tried to do is to keep a number of initiatives on board. I mean, we launched an agenda for these armaments. We launched a reform of peacekeeping called Action for Peacekeeping. We had not everybody on board. We had 150 countries on board, but we moved onwards. We launched now an initiative of mobilizing the UN against eight speech, the same in relation to the protection of religious sites. We have counterterrorism strategy, and we are going to launch a second conference in relation to the victims of terrorism and how to better organize the international community to support victims of terrorism. We launched a very ambitious program of parity in the UN itself and the gender equality in our policy around the world. And this is not obvious. There are lots of pushback in relation to these things. But we move onwards, and we go on. And I can tell you now that we have already parity at the level of the full-time political appointees and the secretary-general and the sister secretary-general which I had promised to 2021. But we moved forward. And the same in relation to initiatives in human rights. I will be launching a new call for action in human rights in February in Geneva. We need to take into account that our difficulty is to bring together all member states and to create the conditions for effective action in the number of various to do everything we can with what we really are able to do, which is use our good offices and use our capacity to mobilize actors, be platforms where people can come together and make things move. Sometimes we manage, sometimes we fail. But one thing you can be absolutely sure, we will not sit quiet expecting a consensus of the international community to solve the problems we have been discussing. Thank you so much.