 So, I hope we are ready to begin. My name is Martin Wolf and I have the great honour and pleasure of moderating this really important panel with very distinguished participants. And our subject is very timely and globally important, which is the North-South Schism. Before I introduce the discussion, I just very briefly wish to introduce this panelist, though I think they are sufficiently famous that you will know who they all are. Immediately to my left is Ngozi Okonjo-Iwiala, who is Director-General of the World Trade Organisation and a member of the Board of Trustees of this distinguished institution. To her left is Gustavo Petro, who is President of Colombia. To his left is Paul Calgami, who is President of Rwanda. To his left is William H. Gates, or Bill Gates, as most of us know him, who is among many other things Co-Chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And finally, to his left is Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of the Netherlands. And we are going to proceed, we won't be doing Q&A, we won't have time. We are going to discuss first the overarching problem of governance. Each of them will make a short contribution to that. And then we are going to have specific interventions on four big themes, trade, finance, health and climate. And after that, if everybody's been very good at time, we will have the opportunity to have an interchange amongst us. I just thought I'd make a minute's worth of introduction, because for me, this is a very, very interesting topic. There are many disadvantages of becoming older, but one of them is that you remember things that are relevant. When I started working at the World Bank in 1971, this was right at the beginning of the 70s. And this seems to me a period which has some similarities. Not only were there the oil shocks, the war in the Middle East, inflation and all the instability associated with these things, we also had an institution or grouping called the Group of 70. And they were arguing very, very powerfully for a new international economic order. This was a North-South schism. And one, I won't go further, but one very interesting book at that time, which was published in the middle of the 70s, was called The United States in Opposition. Of course, you know that what subsequently happened in the 80s and 90s was not a new international economic order, but the era of globalization. And we now feel at the end of that. But I think it is important to remember that we have been seeing problems like this before, and we have managed them really successfully. And it is immensely important that we do, though of course our challenges today include things like climate and health, which were less obvious then. And we also have to say that over the last 50 years, there has been staggering progress in development, which of course is now significantly troubled. So with that introduction, let me ask the panelists in order to make their brief comment on what is from their perspective the governance problem today in this context of North-South relations. And may I start with you, President Kagami? Well, thank you very much. Let me address this by starting with the two crises that here define the pessimism in the South about this international cooperation. One is when we saw when COVID happened. One is COVID. Another is what happened with inflation and interest rates, the interest rate crisis that followed. With COVID, it was clear that access to vaccines and therapeutics had a problem. And it was mainly concentrated in the North. The South was to be considered much later, even then very slowly, nearly too late, because the South did not have this capacity to produce their own vaccines or therapeutics. And then coupled with many years of fiscal stimulus by the West, we saw that they developed an inflation crisis. And the response to that was to raise interest rates, which very many in the South are still paying a very high price for. Now, we cannot address this inequality by just mitigating the crisis, but rather we need to integrate, to bring in, to involve developing countries like Africa and other developing countries from the beginning, to have the conversations around how these inequalities should not be developing later on affecting the particular parts of the world. So it has to be from the beginning. So it's not just at the time when the crisis have happened that then you start making consideration of what to do for the South, but rather they should be involved. And Africa should be given, and there are tours that are there that are available to actually work on some of these things that are needed to be addressed. And Africa will therefore stand to gain and have access to most of these things required. Thank you very much. That's very clear and very helpful in this discussion. May I turn to you, Prime Minister Rutte, for your perspective, and perhaps in response, what do you think are the really big issues in this context that we now face? Let me be slightly provocative. I think for all of us, being the President of Rwanda or Colombia, Prime Minister of the Netherlands, we have basically two tasks. One is to make sure that our countries are safe and secondly make sure that the economy is doing well and that people have a job and can take care of their own lives. In that sense, I have a bit of an issue with constantly talking about the schism, the divide between the North and the South. I hope we are moving beyond that now because we need each other. And we have seen so in Dubai at the COP28 that you can do that even successfully. And that would be my second comment. There is constantly this debate also in my country between not a nationalism. Should we stay a member of the EU and the role of WTO and UN, etc., as if that is something you can oppose to being interested in the national level? You cannot be a politician working at a national level, taking care of the national interest if you are not part of a strong multilateral system. And that means that the strong multilateral system, we have to invest in it. It has to be rules-based. We have to make sure that we have enough discussions and talks on how to progress it, like the WTO, which has had some difficulty. But under the current leadership, I am happy to say we see progress in a number of important fields. So there is not a schism between North and South. I would argue for this debate. There is not a schism between the national level and multilateralism. If we want to be strong politicians and providing the jobs, providing the collective safety and security at the national level, we need both strong countries and strong multilateral organizations. And I think in following on on this first round, Martin, I think we have many subjects and examples of where we are successfully doing that, be it fisheries in the WTO, to even getting an agreement on loss and damage at COP28 in Dubai. We have done that. Thank you very much for that. Now it is your turn, Director General. Well, thank you, Martin, and it is very nice too. I say thank you for the kind comments of Prime Minister Rote and the progress at the WTO. But I just want to build on what President Kagami and Prime Minister Rote said, to say that if we look at some numbers of what is happening in terms of shares of global output in the world, we see that lets in 1995 emerging markets and developing economies accounted for about 42 percent of global output of global GDP and developed countries for about 58 percent. And now in 2022 we see a situation where this is inverted. And so these changing shares of world output, and we see it mirrored also in some of the shares of trade, which I'll come back to later, speak to the multi-polarity of the world. That we are now in a multi-polar world. There is no one power center. And what worries me in global governance is how we manage this multi-polarity. There is no one center that can solve all the problems of the world. We are interdependent, and we need to work together. And that speaks to the issue of how do we do it, and this is where multilateral organizations need to be strengthened, of course, need to be reformed to move with the times they're in. But we absolutely need them because we have to solve some problems of the global commons like climate change, you alluded to it, the pandemic that President Kagami talked about. And that, how do we manage this to solve global problems? This multi-polarity, that's my issue. Thank you very much, and I think we're getting to a certain degree of agreement. May I now ask President Gustavo Petro to make his contribution? He will be talking in Spanish. For those who don't understand it, unfortunately, I'm one of them. You might need to use the headphones. Sorry, I'm afraid I'm not getting sound. Are you all getting sound? Number one, Marta. It's number one, yes? I'm hearing nothing. I apologize. Probably nothing I can do about it. Okay, go ahead and I will do my best. I don't know what I can do about it. Después de un año se ha grabado. Se ha grabado un término de que de la guerra pasamos al genocidio a bombardear niños y niñas. Las votaciones en naciones unidas políticamente alrededor de este problema han separado físicamente, políticamente el norte y el sur. Europa y Estados Unidos han votado a favor o en contra, depende cómo se mire, de una política para solucionar el problema de Palestina. Hay una separación política real. El tema de las vacunas separó desde el punto de vista del cuidado de la vida, el norte y el sur. Se nos impiso, puso una relación comercial para salvar la vida de los enfermos de COVID. Y entonces, lo que hoy tenemos variaría la palabra policrisis es una crisis civilizatoria. Una crisis civilizatoria que tiene una raíz, un almendrón es la crisis climática. La crisis climática, dependiendo cómo la abordemos o no la abordemos, nos puede llevar a un pacto democrático de la humanidad o a la barbarie. Yo le llamo 1933 global. 1933 fue el día que subió Hitler al poder. Fue el año de Hitler en el poder. Puede ser uno de los dos caminos. Está cambiando completamente el paradigma mundial, político y económico y por tanto social. La existencia humana está en cuestión y al cuestionarse, la existencia se cuestiona todo lo que se había edificado en los últimos 50 años para bien y para mal. Por ejemplo, el concepto de cooperación, que es uno de los temas de este panel. Cooperación se construyó con la idea de un rico muy rico, un norte muy rico, un sur pobre, muy pobre. Una idea de llevar dineros del norte al sur. Yo le llamo limosna en el sentido cristiano y creer, construir una buena conciencia mundial a partir de que el norte estaba ayudando al sur. Esa misma idea se está colocando en el centro de la solución a la crisis climática. Se piensa que la crisis climática se supera. Sí hay una limosna del norte hacia el sur y las grandes discusiones de la cove han girado alrededor de ese tema. Los famosos 100 mil millones de dólares que se prometieron en el 2015 en París. Y resulta que ese concepto, ese paradigma de la cooperación hoy no es hoy se estrella contra la realidad de la crisis civilizatoria mundial. Y no sólo porque las cifras son enormemente superiores a 100 mil millones de dólares al año para solucionar un problema de toda la humanidad, sino porque la realidad para superar la crisis climática, que es el almendrón de la crisis civilizatoria de hoy, es diferente y no pasa por la cooperación. Y me explico y trato de ser breve. Las chimeneas están en el norte. Chimeneas de CO2 están en el norte. Luego toca es apagar las chimeneas en el norte en primerísimo lugar. Si no se apagan las chimeneas en el norte, las selvas del sur que sirven despongas se queman y entremos a un punto de no retorno, es decir, de definitiva extinción de la vida en el planeta. Es un problema crucial. El norte tiene que transformarse radicalmente desde el punto de vista económico y tecnológico para poder sostener la vida en el planeta en su conjunto. El sur es el que tiene que ayudar al norte en ese propósito, es al revés. ¿Por qué? Porque África y América del Sur son las regiones con mayor potencial planetario en generación de energía limpia. Y esto cambia completamente la geopolítica mundial. Nosotros somos los que podemos generar la energía limpia con la cual las chimeneas del norte se puedan apagar. Nos toca cooperar con el norte. Y esto, digamos, ya más adelante entonces, podremos hablar un poquito de qué significa el cambio entonces de las relaciones de poder en el mundo. Thank you very much. That's a really valuable contribution. I hope somebody would talk in that way. And finally, Bill Gates, your response or points. Well, there's no doubt we find ourselves at a juncture where the demand for resources exceeds the resources available and the needs coming out of Ukraine, the Middle East, climate mitigation, climate adaptation, you know, so many things, including basic development, health care systems, education systems, all of these. The needs are are pretty incredible. And I'd say there's three things we can do to improve that situation that we have a shortage. The first is we should try and be more generous. Those who have the most, whether it's countries, companies or individuals, should be pushed to be more generous. You know, for example, in the aid category, getting up to 0.7 percent or like Sweden and Norway getting even beyond, you know, that's imperative. The second thing is to focus in on the highest impact areas where a dollar of resources is effective. I would say that there's almost a factor of 100 difference between some initiatives versus others. And we really need to study that and do well. And foremost in that is going to the countries, including in Africa and saying, what are your priorities? You know, health, nutrition, education, where would you like to have these partnerships focus? The final area is innovation. There's been far too little innovation on the needs of the global South, whether it's malaria, whether it's their crops that go way beyond the big three, rice, wheat and maize. They have unique ecosystems. And the amount we put into improving that agriculture productivity is dramatically less than it should be. I'll just finish with one example that should remind us that the system of cooperation sometimes achieves miracles. Gaby was announced here at Davos in 2001. It raised money to buy vaccines. Corsangosi was a great chairman for that. And everyone here has had some engagement with Gaby, I think, that we're all proud of. And at that time, over 10 million children died every year. And largely because of getting these vaccines, which were only available in the rich country, getting them out to all the children, and Rwanda is an exemplar with a 97% coverage rate. Those deaths have been reduced to 5 million a year. The Sustainable Development Goals, which are timed for 2030, have a goal of getting that to 2.5 million. Because of the pandemic and many other things, we won't achieve that. But the question is, do we keep going down? Do we get there during the 2030s or not? With the right prioritization, with taking innovation, including the latest AI innovation, I think despite all these challenges, we can still do that. Okay. We slightly overrun, but we'll do our best. Could we turn very, very quickly, and I think please keep these remarks to a minute each, just very pointed. On the basis of what you've heard, does this mean for the future of trade? Wow. Well, I just need, again, just a minute to illustrate what I want to talk about with some numbers. Okay. I come back to the issue in 1995, north-north trade between the developed economies accounted for about 54% of global trade. In 2022, this has come down to 39%. During the same period, that's in 1995, south-south trade was less than 10%. In 2022, it's now almost 25%. In the same period, north-south trade has been stable at about 35% or so, 39% actually. So if you look at these numbers, you will see again some of the inversion that I was talking about, that the shares in south-south trade, the south is now turning trading much more with itself, becoming a power block. The north share is diminishing. And it comes back to the issue I spoke about, about different centers of power, that there's no one center of power and that we need to cooperate. But that being said, we find that at an organization like the WTO, where the global trading system comes together, the multilateral trading system, we've managed to cooperate. 75% of world trade today is done on WTO terms. Just think about that. The bulk of world trade is still done on multilateral terms. So even though we have this multipolar world and these power blocks, we've managed to find a place where we can collaborate, cooperate, and deliver, just like Bill had said about their places where we've been able to demonstrate that we can work together. So on the trade front, we're doing that. That does not mean that we don't have issues, that we don't have emerging fragmentation, that we don't have vulnerability of supply chains, we need to build resilience. But we often forget the good parts of what's happening in trade and that cooperation in favor of the worries about protectionism and about unilateral actions. So I wanted to put a marker on that. Thank you very much. I may turn to you, President Petru. I'd like you, if you could, to just very briefly indicate, based on your radical and critical view of what's going on, how, and I know you might rather have half an hour, but unfortunately they don't give us that, but to how do you change the global financial arrangements? President Kagami has already referred to the interest rate shock and the impact that has had on developing countries. There are many issues here, debt, how the IMF works, the monetary dominance of the developed countries, just focus on what seems to you to be really important. The liberation of that power from the south, which can be a dislocation of production from the north to the south, or something more important, the liberation of the power from the south in generation of clean energy that would turn off the chimneys from the north, has to do with a change in the global financial system. For example, the OMC, the World Trade Organization, must submit its normativity, the Paris agreements, which must be linked, not just expressions of good will, if not we don't change the correlation of strength that implies the solution to the climate crisis. Or, for example, in the subject of the world financial system, the liberation of the power from the south to generate clean energy and decarbonized economy has to do with liberating its own resources, we don't need lemons. Our own resources are sub-edited, they are absorbed through the debt of the interest rate and the debt service that we pay. For example, Colombia pays a premium because it is considered risky, like Brazil, like Venezuela, like Ecuador, like all the countries of the Amazon jungle. The risky today are not the countries that we have the Amazon jungle, they are the countries from the north for several reasons. You represent more risks for the human life than we do, we have the sponge. Therefore, economically, that prime should become zero. If the prime of risk becomes zero, our debt and our service to the low debt and our resources that we release instead of paying the debt would go to the climate action. If this is done all over the planet, which is a reform of the world financial system, it simply releases the potential of the south to generate clean energy and turn off the North's chimeras. It is the path of the pact, not the path of the schism. The other is the one that is being practiced today, which is the capitalism of strength that raises walls and red bombs. There is a political schism in humanity. On the other hand, there is a democratic pact on the planet. You are the next speaker, Prime Minister Ruta, and I think as you and your chimneys are the source of the risk in the world. I think the Netherlands has fairly few chimneys now, but I might be wrong on that. So how do you respond on climate, specifically on which the President has been very challenging, and he is absolutely right, there is no doubt the Amazon mega-region is immensely important. It is always good to have the Colombian President on the panel. I am always willing to oppose his views if necessary, but I do not disagree completely, because I agree with him on the necessity to reform the multilateral banking system. He is absolutely right in that sense, but I fundamentally disagree on his chimney point and the handouts. Why is that? Because if we, for example, in the Netherlands, would close down our steel mill in Aymaude, which employs 10,000 people directly and 40,000 people indirectly, there is this risk of a huge carbon leakage to other parts of the world, because that steel is still necessary, and Tata will then produce it somewhere else. So what we need here is innovation to make ourselves less dependent on particular types of products, for example, from the chemical industries. But innovation is the key here, not closing down the chimneys altogether. And the second thing where I disagree is only handouts. It is not handouts. There is a phasing issue, because the South is developing rapidly and Africa and Latin America everywhere. But at this moment, there is still an issue to comply with the Paris Agreement to make sure that we can bridge the gap. And that is why the 100 billion dollar pledge was created. That is why we had an agreement in Dubai on loss and damage, and I think that is very good, and it will help us to really move forward. And I see him nodding, yes, so he is letting go of his previous position on agreeing with me. That is good. No, no, I am kidding you. But now to sum up, I think when we talk about not-ilateralism, and the WTO is a case in point, because it is not easy at this moment to deal with world trade. But for example, on fisheries subsidies, we have been able to come to agreements, and there are other subjects, and there are still countries joining the WTO. But I think what you need here is rules. You need trust, and you need to discuss, to talk. So RTT rules, talk and trust. And for example, the WTO, but also the Paris Climate Agreement and the COP, the COP is coming from them, and the latest one in the UAE, which went, which was very successful as a case in point, that you can get there when you are willing to have a rules-based system, when you are willing to discuss it together, like we are doing at this moment, and hammer out the issues, have our differences, and then come to an agreement. And that builds trust. That is the only way to move forward. And that is why I say, again, there is no schism between North and South, there is no schism between not-ilateralism, and the national interests, and parties like my own, the centrist parties should be much more forcefully put forward that case in point, because it is now the populace saying, oh, multilateralism is crazy, get rid of it. It is yesterday's story. No, you need both sides of the coin, multilateralism and strong nation-states. Bill Gates, finally on health in this round, I think President Kagami and President Petro both mentioned that during the COVID crisis, developing countries, many developing countries, probably most, felt they were treated as second-class citizens of the world. The developed countries got all the vaccines first. They had the technology, and vaccine rates fell far, far behind in many important parts of the world, notably in Africa. Will we do better next time? Are we really set up and determined to treat a global health problem as a global problem? I wrote a lot about this at the time, and I wonder whether we really have learned the lessons. Well, in some respects, people don't want to talk about the pandemic at this point, and how we build the capacity to do trials where we practice, OK, are we ready? What would we need to do? And then we need to build better tools. For many of these problems, where the total amount of money is going to be super limited, and some elections would make the money even more limited than it is today, we have to innovate. And a great example of that is now the factories that make mRNA vaccines, a group in Belgium funded by the Foundation, can make those very inexpensively. And for me, the issue is not having vaccine factories in magic places. It's having enough capacity in the entire world that we can get vaccines to everyone, because who you want to discriminate against? If the factories are cheap, you're going to have that capacity. In fact, more vaccines were made in India. We funded serum two months into the pandemic. They created a factory. We had a challenge that those vaccines, which were going to Africa for a period, became unavailable. But that was a South issue that challenged that. We really need to up the dialogue of given limited resources, where should the grant money go? I would claim that nutrition and vaccines will always rise to the top of that list. And so as we see, is Gavi replenished later this year? It'll show are we maintaining the very highest impact investment that was ever made. And likewise on the innovation agenda, President Kanga, I mean, I were talking about how Rwanda moving forward on these digital initiatives and making multiple places in the South, including Rwanda, India and many others, a laboratory where AI healthcare, AI education is done, not five or 10 years after it's done in the North, but done at the same time. And in fact, given their shortage of doctors, in some sense, you could say it should be even faster. And if we can find the right cooperative effort, I think we can surprise people on how quickly we provide benefits there. So we have unfortunately only five minutes left. And I know how strict they are and people want lunch. So you've got a minute each. And so what I would like you to focus on, I knew this will be a problem because there's so much to talk about. In the light of what you've heard, in the view that we have to solve these problems, it's not a day you're in actual doing things. What is the most important single thing that you want to see happen, which will make things better from where you sit? And do you have a minute? I apologize, President Kagami. An optimist as well as a realist. So I see things for what they are. There are problems and they can be addressed. The underlying importance lies in cooperation. And people can still cooperate. But we cannot deny the fact that there are differences within nations, whether in the south, but more significant south and the north. There's no question about that. And there is domination if you will sometimes. There are dictates that people bring to play into whatever is happening every day. And these debates have been there for a long time. This is not the first debate about that. But that means if such a debate has been there for a long time, it also means the problem is continuing. But we can really address all these matters through cooperation and also looking at the root cause of whatever problem we are talking about. Thank you very, very much. Your last word on the single most important thing you want to happen if you could. Well, let me start by saying that in spite of the numbers I gave of the inverting shares of trade between north and south, we have to acknowledge that there are parts of the world that haven't benefited as much. If we look at least developed countries, their share of trade has been 1% and has remained stagnant. Africa's share of trade has remained also stagnant at 3% or less. So my big wish is how can the trading system be reformed and moved in such a way that those countries that have not benefited as much, even with these changing shares, can benefit more from the trading system? And how do we do it in such a way that we cooperate and collaborate? And I just want to put a shout out for my own organization. I think Prime Minister Ruta has been doing it mostly. But to say that yes, we had difficulties at the WTO because developing countries did not see themselves benefiting. And there was this trust issue. At the same time, developed countries feel that some emerging markets are benefiting maybe too much from the system. So what I'd like to see is us coming together as we did at our last ministerial, working in an interdependent way with strategic cooperation to deliver more for those who didn't benefit from the system. Thank you very much. President Petro, really briefly, you can see the time and make one powerful, simple point about what you think can be done now. And that's the new reality. And the other point that I think I would like to see this year, hopefully, is the change in the dimension to address the climate crisis. The 100,000 million dollars in Paris are no longer the amount that is needed every year. It's 30 times higher. That implies the change of the world financial system. If we manage to establish a policy agreement of debt, of exchange, of exchange, of debt for climate action, we could reach those figures 30 times higher than what was promised in Paris, generated with the public resources of all the countries in the world and invested in a great march plan of climate action in the planet Earth, to preserve life on the planet. Obviously, gathered here in Davos, we are very worried about Ukraine and we are very worried about the Middle East. And at the same time, we are thinking of the energy transition and the need for fighting the warming of our planet, so climate change. And I would hope for two things. One is to reform the multilateral system. And it is tilting too much at this moment to the North. And it has to be incorporating and it should incorporate the fact that the world has changed, including the IMF, including the whole system of development banks. It should tilt more to the south. And secondly, we need to invest in the quality of governance at a national level wherever necessary. And we need to help each other also in that respect. Bill Gates, very last word. One sentence if possible. Well, sadly, I'd say that the resources coming from the North, there's not much upside. And so the idea of using the power of innovation, whether it's in climate or health or education, and prioritizing properly by listening to what the countries are asking for, what their priorities are, I remain optimistic and that's partly from the great successes that we can build on. Thank you very much. I'm not going to summarize except to make three points. I know I've already exceeded time, a bit better than the last session I should say. There's obviously an immense amount of frustration and anger. The system is obviously still very heavily weighted in many ways to the countries of the North. It would be very nice to think we can fix that. We've been in these discussions a lot. We can probably improve it. But I would endorse a very important point made at the end by Bill Gates, that a lot of what we're going to have to do will be being very, very clever in the way we innovate, both in the economy and in our institutions. It's going to be an immensely difficult struggle to manage these problems and we have to recognize that we have to do almost everything to do so. Thank you very much. I think it's been a wonderful panel if far too short. And I think a lot of very important points and ideas have been put forward. Please thank you.