 A very cordial New York afternoon to everyone. I'm Rick Sammons, a member of the managing board of the World Economic Forum. And I'd like, on behalf of our entire institution, to welcome you to this Sustainable Development Impact Summit. Two years ago, as you know, leaders of 193 countries agreed here in New York on an ambitious universal and long-term agenda for humanity and the planet. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This framework of 17 sets of goals articulates a grand vision for the quality of life for people that this generation wishes to be queef and build for the next ones. Nearly three months before that historic meeting, the leaders also had agreed to a framework for financing for sustainable development in the Addis Ababa in Africa. And about three months after the New York General Assembly Summit in 2015, when these goals were agreed, leaders reached the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change. This extraordinary three-part global agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals in particular were developed through extensive multi-stakeholder consultations involving all walks of society in all regions. This kind of broad social engagement was absolutely critical to the agenda's design and ultimately its public legitimacy and support. I would submit to you that it will be even more important for the implementation of that agenda. Leaders understood this in 2015, and they included a 17th goal calling for a global partnership for sustainable development on such key implementation topics as finance, technology, capacity ability, and other matters. And nine heads of government and state initiated by Prime Minister Stefan Löwen of Sweden, who's with us here today, took the initiative to form an informal high-level group in support of the implementation of the 2030 agenda, very much with this notion of multi-stakeholder partnership and engagement and mobilization in mind. Friends, this is why we are gathered here today and tomorrow to work across stakeholders, intellectual disciplines, regions, and generations to add momentum to existing partnerships and coalitions and catalyze new ones that can accelerate progress on the global goals and the fight against climate change. To achieve the big objectives that our leaders have made on our behalf, international cooperation, frankly, will need to enter a new and more dynamic phase. What we call multi-dimensional cooperation, which includes multilateral interstate agreements, but goes well beyond engaging companies, civil society organizations, research institutions, and provincial, municipal, as well as national governments in partnerships that generate impact where it is most needed and it's most feasible. The World Economic Forum is the world's international organization for public-private cooperation in this broad sense. We conceive of ourselves as an enabling platform for the more systemic and distributed scaling of multi-stakeholder cooperation that is needed in many domains, including those related to climate change and the sustainable development goals. That is why we have organized our work, our substantive activities, in 14 system initiatives on various global and industry challenges. Each of these initiatives is expressly aimed at cultivating the wider ecosystem of multi-stakeholder cooperation that's relevant to those particular challenges and strengthening its collective impact. In this Sustainable Development Impact Summit, the forum is seeking to place our platform, that is to say, our multi-stakeholder leader-level communities, our convening and partnership building experience, our analytical capabilities and knowledge networks, and our major institutional effort to help humanity understand and shape the fourth industrial revolution for the maximum benefit of society at the service of the international community and its efforts to implement this 2030 agenda and the Paris Agreement. So over the next two days, we'll look together strategically at which multi-stakeholder initiatives are already having significant impact on the different goals and how. You'll see over the course of the summit over 60 different such initiatives of various shapes and sizes and configurations, less than half of which the forum itself is involved in. Most of it is mobilized by you and we thank you for your engagement in this regard. And then we'll be asking ourselves what additional partners, resources, or technological innovations could be added to those promising coalitions and what can be done to increase their impact? How can the forum and others best leverage their networks to add that next level of impact? And then finally, thinking strategically and systemically we'll be posing the question not just to solely look at what's going on now but to think together about what are the big holes or gaps in the cooperative ecosystem for this or that particular set of goals and who is best positioned to fill them and we'll be seeking to inspire in brainstorm how we use this week collectively as a community to reach out and indeed going forward to help address those issues. This in short is not a conference. It will not be a traditional series of presentation by participants of their own projects and commitments. Rather, this is intended to be an ongoing platform for galvanizing collective action and impact behind governments and other actors who would welcome such multi-stakeholder support. Think of this summit as an exercise in taking that 17th sustainable development goal on partnership seriously and applying the spirit of Davos to it. Thank you all for your engagement and this endeavor and now to get us underway. Would you please join me in welcoming the forum's founder and executive chairman, Professor Klaus Schwab to offer his opening comments. Thank you, Rick, and a cordial welcome to this very special event. Not taking place in the snow of Davos, but I should say in the traffic of New York. My task here is to thank you because certainly we will create a platform here. We will make sure that we integrate into our work the latest thinking about the new technologies and how they could be best used. But that's the end. Everything depends on you. And we are very proud that you followed so much our call to join us for this meeting. We have here the best example of a multi-stakeholder effort with a good balance of participants from governments, from business, and from civil society. So my task is above all to thank you for this great engagement because we need a general mobilization if we want really to succeed in the implementation of sustainable development goals. And in this respect, it is my great honor and pleasure to introduce to you our first speaker, whom I would call the champion of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, not only in your personal capacity, Prime Minister Löwen, but also as the head and champion of this informal group of heads of governments to pursue the efforts which were undertaken to create a more sustainable, better, and at the end, a more peaceful world. Prime Minister, may I welcome you very much at this stage. Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, Professor Schwab, thank you so much for this initiative. It is highly appreciated. It's very important that the World Economic Forum is engaged in these very important issues. It is a true honor for me to be here and to meet you all. And let me start by saying and stating a simple thing. Goals matter. And I say this because I remember, I guess you all, most of you remember the turn of the millennium and the millennium development goals. There was plenty of skepticism when they were adopted, plenty. And I guess there were many people who really didn't think they were gonna be possible to achieve at all. They were regarded as goals. That was it. Now we know better because we worked hard, we were together, and we made it almost, almost all the way. And deep down, this is about the right for everyone in the world to live a good life with hopes for the children, for a better future to be safe. It is deep down not being afraid of the future but looking forward to tomorrow. And this is, I guess, what unites us all. This is being human. Now we have a new blueprint for the global community. The 2030 agenda with its 17 global goals. And 2030 may seem a long way off but we know all the time flies and the challenges ahead are huge. We have raised the bar as we should. We have added important new aspects of development. We have brought together now economic development, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability. At the same time, the political scene has changed. We are now witnessing new conflicts arising at the same time as the old one persists. We have more than 65 million people displaced from their homes. Climate change is affecting millions and millions of people around the world and the tone of the international debate is today tougher. And even though a global middle class is emerging, inequality between the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor is growing. I remember when Oxfam, they announced that some 50, 60 people, the richest in the world, owned as much as the poorest half of the population of the world, 3.5 billion. That is not longer true. Today take some 10, 15 people, the richest people in the world that owns as much as 3.5 billion of the poorest. So this is also something that we can see wakes populism. National movements, anti-globalization, anti-trade, anti-openness, because more and more people also at the same time as we make progress, feel that they are not part of this journey, feel that they don't have a place in this journey. So there is no time for us to waste now. That is why I initiated this informal high level group of nine countries that will do our part. But let's be very clear and absolutely clear about this. The efforts of all the governments in the world will not be enough. If we are to succeed, we also need businesses, academia, the civil society, trade unions, and you have it. We have all a shared responsibility. If we share this responsibility, yes, we can make it happen. There will be no progress without public-private partnerships. For me, this is not about altruism. For me, this is a business case. It's business sense. I see new deals being made. Companies are now developing new emission-reducing innovations that the world demands, and this will create new jobs. It will create export opportunities and revenues. And at home in Sweden, I've set up a national innovation council with representatives from businesses, from research and civil society, in order to boost our innovation capacity, because we know that innovations will be crucial for the transition to a more sustainable society. If there's one truth that I have carried with me all along my adult life, my working life, it's this. If you want to improve a society, if you want to create inclusive growth, improve people's working conditions. This win-win-win scenario is the driving force behind our Global Deal Initiative, launched here in New York a year ago, as a contribution to SCG number eight on decent work and inclusive growth. So I look forward to working together with all of you. I know how strong your commitment is, and let us use this unique opportunity to stimulate mutual learning on concrete solutions and new ideas. We will need them all in order to make sure that all human beings can look forward to the future. Thank you so much.