 Hi, Derek, can you hear me? Derek, can you hear me? No, I'm still not. OK, no, I'm still not. Can you check with the IT? Because it looks like Steve is in mains position. I'm not sure what's going on. Can I start? OK, I think we can start our afternoon session. So welcome back to everybody. I hope you can hear me. I'm not quite sure who's connected now, but welcome back if you're rejoining with the UPU World Leaders Forum this afternoon. We have another packed program this afternoon. The first session will be on sustainability and I have two speakers standing by David and Siva, who are going to speak to us, but first we're going to have a pre-recorded presentation from Amri Gajal. But just before we do that, can I remind you that you have the option to participate with question and answers in the Q&A box below. Thank you for all the questions and comments that we've received. We can't answer all the questions, specifically the very specific questions. We can't answer them all directly, but we will try and refer as many to get good answers as we can. And I will save some of them up for the final panel session when we will have a chance to discuss and debate some of the issues that have been raised during the day. Already this morning, we've had a lot of the important issues raised and one of the issues that kept coming up was the issue of sustainability, which is the big issue of our time as is in the headline for this part of the forum. And we can think of it in terms of climate change and the environmental impact, but also more broadly as defined by the sustainability development goals of the UN and everything to do with looking after the planet's resources, people's health, nature, livelihoods, society's well-being, expressed in terms that it affects us all. We heard from Fiji earlier on and some of our friends in the Pacific and the Indian Oceans, for them climate warming is an existential threat. And in many cities, if you're coming from big urban areas as air pollution, deprivation, for many countries, social and economic inclusion are critical. For others, it's wildlife, forests, extreme weather, natural disasters. In one way or another, it affects us all. And as a sector, parcel, postal and logistics sector, we have a huge environmental footprint and we use a lot of energy resources and have some of the largest fleets of vehicles, but we also can have a huge impact on our suppliers and our customers, our stakeholders. So collectively, as a sector, we can make a big difference. The question is what difference will we make? What difference do we want to make? What difference can you make? Now, I'm on the older side of life. I still describe myself as being in my prime, but the real impact of what we do will be in our legacy to our children, I think, and our children's children. So it's a enormous responsibility on us to get this right. As I said, we'll be hearing in a minute from David from Ampost and from SIVA from the UPU, but before that, I'm going to introduce Anne-Marie Garchel, who's the group CEO and president of Postnord, and she has been a member of the group executive team since 2012, and she's previously held positions of e-commerce, corporate clients, chief strategy officer, and executive positions at Gambrough, and she was a management consultant at McKinsey. So, Anne-Marie Garchel is going to tell us what they've been thinking about sustainability in Postnord. Thank you. Thank you for having me, and I'm sorry I couldn't join you in real life, but I'd be very happy to talk about the sustainability agenda of Postnord. Our business strategy includes a very distinct sustainability agenda, and for us it means three things. First of all, we want to be a voice for fair conditions in the industry, but also a workplace where our employees can feel safe. And of course, we're striving towards a zero vision for fatalities and serious injuries as part of that. But also having an inclusive workplace characterized by trust and respect is very important, and of course to make sure that we bring in diversity and inclusion, and we're also striving towards a gender balance of 40-60. And finally, we would like to lead the industry into the low carbon economy. And we have taken a very scientific approach and a very ambitious approach over the past years to reduce our climate impact. And we also have been making sure that our targets are lined with the Paris Agreement, including Scope 1, 2 and 3. And in 2020, we reached a target of reducing our carbon emissions by 40% compared to 2009. And this success has encouraged us to step up our efforts even further. So now we're aiming for a fossil free business operation by 2030. And this is what I will talk more about during my presentation. As I said, we have since long been very dedicated to reducing climate impact and our investments go into building a greener infrastructure. Our fleet, our terminals, but of course also making you some new technology when that is available. And that is all key in achieving these ambitious targets. And the Nordics are also very privileged of having access to clean electricity but also sustainably produce biofuels. And all that is part of our agenda. So how did we make the 40% happen? Well, the transition to emission free vehicles is happening at scale, but also transition is also now initiated for heavy trucks. So far, some 4,000 vehicles are electrically charged in our fleet and that represent approximately a third. And then for the heavy transports we're trying to use as much biofuels that we can get hold of. And that includes biogas, biodiesel, ethanol and NRME. And we are using approximately 40 million liters of biofuels on a yearly basis. And the share of biofuels is constantly rising. And by the end of the second quarter this year we were up to 31%. But we've also been pulling levels like modality shift and hypermiling. And that means that we have trained our chafers in energy efficient driving. But also just, you know, work on practical things like wheel setting, anticipating traffic but also looking at tire pressure and things like that. And of course all the electricity we buy for our operations is green electricity from renewable sources. But we still have some 300,000 ton of carbon dioxide emissions left in our operations. And this is where we now have worked heavily over the past six months I would say to put in place an agenda for getting rid of also that. And we call that our green technology roadmap. And in brief what it means. It means that we are going to be fossil fuel free by 2030. By 2025 we are going to reduce our carbon emissions by another 40%. So what we have done in 10 years we are now going to do in 5 years. And finally we want to go for a zero emission last mile no later than 2027. So that is the agenda we are embarking upon. We don't know exactly how to get there. But we are definitely determined to find a way to reach our targets. And despite all these efforts, we are going to have to do more and that means we need to team up. We need to team up with all players in the value chain. And this is just one example that I'd be very happy to share with you. So we have been joining forces with well known companies like Scania, H&M, Ericsson, Siemens and Ion in what we call the pathway coalition. And that is a coalition of very influential industry players that work together to achieve fossil free commercial heavy vehicles or transports by no later than 2050. So innovation and cooperation is key. Not only finding future technologies but also by reducing the energy needed in our operations because I would say the most sustainable energy is the one that we don't use. So I would like to point to one specific area where there is still a lot of untapped potential to reduce climate impact but also to reduce cost. And we see the potential in the global logistic chain. We see it in our own operations, we see it inside our vehicles and we see it inside the parcels that we transport. And we have estimated that roughly some 30% of what we transport is air. So basically one third of our carbon emissions in our parcel transports is coming due to transporting air and we all know that air can travel by itself. And by turning the spotlight to reducing air in e-commerce parcels we wanted to address a very complex issue by asking ourselves a very simple question. What would it take for us in the e-commerce chain? Operators, companies, consumer packaging technology companies and so forth to substantially reduce the air in e-commerce parcels. So by launching the initiative the packaging journey our approach has been to orchestrate a discussion among the entire logistic chain to try to find an answer to this very simple question. And our initiative got an instant and also very positive response from the industry and some of the challenges holding back the industry development towards less air in e-commerce parcels were expressed in initial meetings and workshops and you can see some of them listed here on the slide. It's things like investment in packaging technology not being feasible the cost of storing multiple size parcel boxes is too expensive. It brings on some practical challenges like putting on the label on a small parcel it's difficult but it was also this whole notion of being afraid of jeopardizing the whole consumer experience when opening up the parcel. But we were lucky to have academia with us from an early stage and a two year research funding program was granted to Sharma's University of Technology in Gothenburg to get the heart of this problem and to get the heart of finding a solution and together with PostNord and the global well-known packaging we have now been on this journey for some time. And the key question we are trying to resolve is simply how can the optimized parcel help us find a solution for sustainable and efficient distribution of goods. Being half year into the research project we have been struck by the complexity but also by the potential and our eyes has already been opened up to important achievements that we've been able to realize together with our customers. And one of our customers the Nordic Telecom Operator Telia has set out the strategic target of zero emissions and zero waste by 2030. What was identified was the routers for TVs. Very often these can be easily repaired and reused but instead the user orders a new one so this means transportation of a new router and it means more waste. So Telia was asking themselves the question how can we engage the customer in our sustainability work by providing them with a simple user friendly but also sustainable return solution for the broken router. One that makes them feel good by simply doing good. So the packaging was optimized to fit different sizes of routers but also optimized to create a positive unboxing experience. So the box can simply be used two times by sending out the new router but also by returning the broken one. And the result has been an average reduction of air of approximately 19% by simply using three different sizes and with the smallest parcel reaching more than 50% reduction in air. On top of that the optimized packaging has also allowed them to reduce packaging costs by another 15%. So less air less carbon emissions and of course less waste. So I talked about how we have engaged our suppliers I've talked about how we have engaged our customers the next one that we turned towards the consumers. So how can we engage the consumers being part of this very important journey. And for credibility reasons we directed our interest to the third party verified eco label called the Nordics One. And by joining forces with them and the whole e-commerce ecosystem in a series of multi-stakeholder workshops we wanted to find a common industry approach to a consumer label for more sustainable transport services. So we were very delighted when the Nordics One recently announced that they will be going forward with developing criteria and have this in place by 2022. We are of course very proud to be part of this journey and of course be committed to continue to helping the Nordics One to put this in place. And we believe that this will be the way of involving also the consumer in this important quest and for the whole transformation of the entire industry and by that make sure that we actually make this happen for real. So these are just some examples for how we will mobilize all the actors in the industry to reach our target of being fossil free by 2030. And by that make sure that we lead the entire industry into a carbonized economy of the future. Thank you. Thank you very much Annemarie and I think you agree with me that that was a very insightful approach to collaboration and coalition that Annemarie was talking about in terms of making things happen, different partnerships to do with fossil free target and fuels for heavy goods vehicles, biofuels working together with others to make it happen. A very interesting idea about the empty packaging that we're all familiar with how to right size packages and how to minimize waste and then having the impact with suppliers, customers and consumers that you heard about at the end there. Next I would like to introduce David McGregment. He was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Ampost in October 2016 and he's been leading the company's transformation program returning to financial stability, revenue growth and profit by taking big steps to fix the company's economics and by restructuring the mails and parcels and retail business in line with the changing digital marketplace, what we've been talking about this morning. But also more than that David is personally driving Ampost sustainability charter and he's positioned climate change, decent work, economic growth, sustainable cities and communities as really important elements of what he's driving at it with Ampost and so I rather than try and tell you what he's going to talk about I'll allow him to tell us what he's been doing. So David, can I hand over to you and tell us what you've been doing in sustainability. Thank you David. Derek, thank you very much and thank you to UPU and hello to all of you who are on this webcast I'm absolutely honored to be here in this really fine industry and an industry that I think has taken up the challenge perhaps better than almost any other industry of sustainability. We start with climate action and I thought Amporee's presentation was extraordinary around what they're doing in Post-Nord and really impressed by those targets and indeed I wish we could have while it was the same target I wish we could have the same progress everywhere. Climate change is the bit that is the most pressing and obvious manifestation but I hope in the next 10 or 15 minutes to show that actually it's not something that can be addressed just as a singular item because sustainability is as Derek said at the start it's built around a holistic approach, it's an approach that looks at the sustainable development goals as a way of interweaving society communities, business together so that we can actually develop the right solutions. We completely support the target and it's going to be the target at COP26 when it's in Glasgow in November that it will be officially then signed up to the 1.5 centigrade as the ceiling target, not the two centigrade that was there previously and we completely buy into that. We also buy into the same target that Amporee has actually said for Post-Nord we too have a target to be zero to have zero emissions by 2030. We brought that forward this year from a target to be there by 2050 we brought that forward 2030 and by 2025 we expect to be 50% of the way there and we've made substantial progress so far. I mean the COP26 goals there's four goals they've set to secure global net zero by mid-century, well I think we can get there sooner and I think most of them get there sooner to adapt to protect communities and natural habitats by restoring ecosystems. To mobilize finance to unleash the trillions required to secure global net zero and then to work together through collaboration between governments, businesses and civil society. So I've said where we are and what it is you want to achieve. Let me just give you a few minutes to talk through what our sustainability strategy is but I then want to broaden it to see something that I actually think is essential and essential role for UPU and an essential role for postal. Our strategy and on PUST our purpose is very clear, our purpose is to act for the common good to improve life now and for generations to come. We also have behind me here what is our more recent sustainability which is which says living leaves a mark together let's leave one we're proud of and it is about the generations to come that we are doing this for and we build our sustainability around five of the sustainable development goals and and from them we develop really what is our what are our individual strategies and our path to net zero we're well established in that path and we will get there the remainder of carbon emissions we have 53% or from the last mile fleet 11% is from or sorry 31% is from the network fleet and 15% is from property you know on the last mile fleet we have made extraordinary progress I'm proud that we are one of the 6 postal organizations in the world in terms of percentage of electric vehicles in our fleet and particularly proud that Dublin our capital city in Ireland has become the first postal city in the world to have zero emissions from postal and that's something that was recognized last year we are now extending that right now to every city in Ireland so that by the end of 2022 every city in Ireland will have net zero carbon emissions from postal and that's that's the piece that in many ways is the easier piece because the technology is there and we know how to do it the network fleet is a much more difficult piece because we've yet to get to really proven scalable HGV our heavy goods vehicle fleets which are electric which are using hydrogen or other forms of sustainable energy but we expect to get there in terms of property all our properties are engaged in serious emission reduction we are rebuilding a lot of our properties and that work is work that is just detailed work it's embedded in our organization now and it will happen so the actions climate action are in many ways going to be common to what are happening elsewhere in the world likewise and I think a really difficult one is responsible consumption and production and I love what Armory is doing on reducing the air in packets and parcels for us around responsible consumption and production we send zero waste to landfill and we've developed a circular business model to design waste out of our systems and our planning to do is really working on those areas of packaging that Armory has already discussed on industry innovation and infrastructure it's all about collaboration it's very that slide that Armory showed about companies working together is so essential and we work on our project senator which is partnering with Dublin city council to make sure that we look after all the deliveries and we combine them for all postal organizations for all delivery companies in Ireland through one last mile in Dublin and that's that's a project that we are doing with others on sustainable cities and communities you know Covid was quite extraordinary what Covid you know the impact of the pandemic on people and society was so beyond anything we'd ever seen it's really interesting to see how postal stepped up and in Ireland we stepped up in a very big way we made sure that our postmen and post-women called in on the Elgin we gave free postage to old people's homes to care homes places where people couldn't visit we actually gave everybody in Ireland free postcards so they could connect with people who they couldn't see these are simple measures that postal can do but it comes from a culture in postal that we act for the common good that we're here for all citizens it's a very human response and our front lines whether it be our postmen and post-women or our post offices remained 99% open throughout the pandemic so that whole issue of sustainable cities we also do through literacy programs which are very important in terms of adult literacy but we also do a true some very innovative measures such as address point where we've given every homeless person the opportunity to have a home address a proxy address which they can then collect from their local post office but it means they can apply for jobs it means that they can apply for health care and not be distinguished as somebody who is homeless but as somebody who has a home address and that's been the sort of initiative that we think is absolutely essential to sustainable communities and then the final area is decent work and this is the area I really want to to give a call to action around postal you know decent work is so important I'm really proud I've only been in this industry for five years and I'm so proud of what I see in postal it's an amazing industry it's an old industry and it's an industry that has an extraordinary proud tradition of labor rights of employee rights of professional work of proper training of looking after people and those looking after our employees families and making sure that they can lead decent lives in sustainable communities that to us is a cornerstone of what we do so I would say that as an industry I think we have a real obligation here to ensure that our governments tackle the socially destructive excesses of the gig economy we have to stop the zero our contracts we have to stop the avoidance of labor law by gig economy typically by big tech combining gig economy with technology but that avoidance of labor law is something that is not just destructive to our industry it's destructive to sustainability and it's destructive to our planet and we cannot have and cannot compete with companies who do not recognize employment and thereby save 25 to 30% in the cost that we all impose to pay to make sure that our employees have pensions to make sure our employees have access to decent health care and indeed as a society the only reason that can exist that gig economy is because the state provides pensions also and health care that is stealing from the state and it is stealing from our industry and it's stealing from communities so I make a very strong call to action on that if we are investing in electric vehicles training our drivers in eco driving they're professionals who are proud of their jobs they're uniformed they're trusted by people how can they compete on price if you then have 10 year old diesel vehicles with untrained drivers being paid per parcel and there's just no comparison so it's an extremely important part of sustainability that we have that so in on PUST we're very proud to be part of this industry I'm proud of the UPU in developing this in creation this forum around sustainability the right to a decent job with good terms and conditions is fundamental to a sustainable society and we'll continue to fight for that and I think I'll finish just if I can Dirk will quote from on PUST sustainability report which is available on our website and I think it's something about bringing the humanity that postal uniquely almost uniquely brings to industry and it's this and I quote for sustainability read quality of life where you see carbon footprint think a healthy island and for climate action believe in the joy of future generations that's how we view sustainability on PUST being human is at the core of on PUST and our horizon is facing our purpose to act for the common good now and for generations to come and that's something I believe we share with great postal organisations around the world thank you Thank you very much David and stay there because we'll be coming back to have a question and answer session with the panel after we've heard Siva but thank you very much for making that point and emphasising reiterating the fact that the climate change is not the only issue it's an important issue it's a very big issue but sustainability as a topic is a much wider agenda that involves everything as you said decent work sustainable homes sustainable cities and collaboration is the only way forward it's no good for one operator for even the posts individually to be doing good things as they are in terms of meeting targets we need to influence and involve everybody working in coalition and collaboration as you said so I think there's some important messages already you've brought out so thank you for that and I'd like to hand over to Siva Somassandram who many of you will know in the UPU who's director of remind me director of policy where you can introduce yourself Siva please I just mislaid your title for the moment but it's about policy and regulation but it means you have a strong interest and responsibility for UPU's involvement in sustainability that's the essential point isn't it so Siva can I hand over to you to present and then after that both Siva and David will join in a panel session where we'll discuss what we've been talking about so over to you Siva, thank you thanks very much Tarek and you did get my title correct and my responsibility is correct as well I was just wondering whether the slides are available if IT support could have that up and ready great thanks very much for that so again thanks very much Tarek and it's a real pleasure to be here at the UPU World Leaders Forum both with yourself and David and of course the many participants have dialed in for this very important event it is certainly the case that sustainability is a defining issue of our times and it is an opportune moment to talk about sustainability given that COP26 is around the corner and many of you would also be aware that today in Yunnan China the negotiations for a new post 2020 global biodiversity framework aimed at a healthy planet has been launched under the auspices of the convention on biological diversity so we are at a right time to be able to talk about these things the focus of my comments today will be on two things I think it's very important to contextualize climate change in the broader sustainability challenges faced by the world so that we do not lose sight of this broad picture and this is the point that David was making climate action and climate change it's not a singular item it is a critical piece but a critical piece of a bigger picture and so I want to touch upon the UN's sustainable development goals or as they are more commonly referred to as the SDGs and the role that the postal sector can and actually does play in supporting those my second focus by way of comment is to talk a bit about the sustainability priorities of the UPU and its role in sustainable development given our status as an intergovernmental organization and part of the UN common system and a specialized agency within that system next slide please the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals illustrate the variety of sustainability topics that UN member states have agreed to work on and these range from poverty and climate change to gender equality now these goals are a key part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which also emphasizes the deep connections between these SDGs and so you got to see them as part of a bigger picture now the global postal network has the potential to support each of these UN SDGs either directly or indirectly and it arises from the very simple point that postal services connect people businesses and governments and in essence it fosters inclusion so we heard a lot about the examples that Ann Walt with and when I think about those ultimately it comes down to this point about connecting people, businesses and fostering inclusion and so in terms of inclusion it ranges from social inclusion financial inclusion and the inclusion of SMEs in national and international trade networks and in all of these things the post can play a role quite importantly in partnership with governments the post can be a purvey of health and safety information it can be a conduit of social security payments and importantly a touch point for the manifold interactions that governments have with citizens from identity services to food parcel deliveries now despite this broad support for sustainable development many of these social and economic benefits come at an environmental cost and I think we all understand that there are greenhouse gas emissions from operating postal vehicles and buildings and that the postal network generates a considerable level of waste materials and water through its operations as a major employer and so therefore it's beholden on us to try and find some of these solutions in relation to climate action next slide please so sustainability is indeed the big issue of our time and climate change in many respects is at its center now limiting the severity of climate change is a clear priority for sustainable global trade however it seems to me that the key challenge for the postal sector is not only to massively reduce our footprint now environmental footprint in terms of reducing emissions waste and so on but it's also about simultaneously protecting and expanding its social and economic impact and this means working on multiple fronts and this is a point Derek you were making in terms of the partnerships we developed but also ensuring that these actions are coordinated and that we achieve synergies and we exploit those synergies next slide please it goes without saying that as a specialized agency the UP is committed to supporting the UN SDGs our reach is global and our close connections with governments postal operators and civil society and the technical know-how that is in this house means that the UP is strategically well placed to act as a key platform for knowledge best practice and policy development and sharing stakeholder engagement and regulatory frameworks in particular and this is something that is sometimes seen as a burden the universal service obligations promoted by the UP's treaties allows it to help its member countries advance social, economic and political inclusion and through that we actually reach the most isolated in our societies the UP is active in a whole range of areas from raising awareness about the existing value propositions of the post for social and economic development to working closely with posts in least developed countries and developing countries and of course as many of you are aware the secretary of the UP also offers technical assistance and capacity building on topics such as measuring greenhouse gas emissions from postal operations reducing waste from e-commerce and diversifying into offering social services next slide please I now want to turn to some of the UP's sustainability priorities for the Abhijan cycle as many of you are aware as well that a congress our planning potentially meeting of member states was recently held in Abhijan in Kottivar the 27th congress and arising out of that were a number of very critical decisions which in effect sort of set and will frame our sustainability priorities for what we referred to as the Abhijan cycle which is for the next four years now climate action is clearly a sustainability priority for the UP the greenhouse gas footprint of the postal sector makes this a must focus particularly notable is the adoption at the 27th congress of a resolution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions now this resolution this resolution includes three new work proposals that aim to establish voluntary targets for reducing emissions from postal operations a second pillar around increasing knowledge sharing and assistance between member states on emissions and resilience and thirdly developing standards for carbon neutral international postage thus allowing emissions from international mail and parcels to be offset we're also looking to develop a overarching framework for and bring together these various climate related activities and again by way of pillars there are three of them emissions reduction being a key priority infrastructure resilience and finally postal climate services and this is about the sort of business side of things and the fact that focusing on climate action can actually make business sense for the post next slide please just turning to social sustainability priorities and this is that broader picture that I was talking about we have a number of things on the social sustainability front which will be a focus for us one major priority is the mandate to advance gender quality in the UPU as well as in the postal sector more generally we adopted a resolution at the 27th congress which will seek to empower the role of women and enhance the role of women in the postal sector it in fact instructs the international bureau to develop a policy on gender and to promote more broadly the role of women in the postal sector we'll of course continue to support our members to expand their range of postal social services in areas such as government services government identity services and to be a partner of government in E government education and welfare now quite notably and quite recently we launched what's referred to as the post for health facility and this is intended to support the growth in postal health services the idea being to encourage postal involvement in a whole range of health services a major focus of course is the COVID-19 response by governments and particularly around vaccination campaigns but the idea more broadly is to enable post to have a capability bill and to also advocate for role of the post in the provision of health services next slide please now turning to economic sustainability and here we've got quite a few priorities given the role that the post plays in economics and trade and I wanted to just focus on two in particular first is our work on the role of the post in financial inclusion we continue to be a knowledge center and a platform for best practice sharing in this domain through our policy research and advocacy activities we're also using what's referred to as the financial inclusion technical assistance facility working closely with both private sector and government partners which aim and this facility aims to support designated operators in leveraging technology to offer financial services to people with limited access we've also have as a major highlight of our work in economic sustainability a focus on trade facilitation and the role of the post in this now through partnerships with other trade focused international organizations such as UNTAD and the WTO we are ensuring that governments in developing and least developed countries are engaging the post in national e-commerce and trade development in essence it's about stressing the postal sectors advantage in facilitating trade both in terms of network reach community knowledge and trust as well as postal capability bill to ensure that the postal services that are on offer are exactly what citizens and businesses are demanding offers finally Derek and next slide please my key message here is that climate action is clearly vital and there is much to be done in the respect to its environmental footprint climate action not only makes business sense but it is also now becoming a moral imperative given the unprecedented climate risk the world faces however it is also important that we do not lose sight of the other sustainability challenges the world faces the climate actions we take must also support the broader contribution of the postal sector to social and economic development this will sometimes entail a hard balancing act but one that we must be prepared to undertake and succeed in thank you Derek thank you very much Siva and again very comprehensive explanation of the range of things that we as a sector can be involved with that UPU is coordinating so just to come to the panel session now and we can bring if the technicians can bring David and Siva back into the frame thank you for your presentations and we haven't got Anne Marie but she obviously gave a clear presentation beforehand and there are a couple of things I would bring out first but I'll invite also those joining online to submit questions and aren't questions and comments we've already got one or two which I'll refer to in a minute but just to start with kickoff you both mentioned in fact all three presentations mentioned the need to collaborate and the huge impact we can have as a sector potentially and I know that some sectors not the parcel the postal logistics sector are going to COP26 with a sector plan for net zero if you know what I mean a cross sector I don't know if we need a sector-wide initiative as such whether that's even feasible but that would make a lot of sense because we have as a sector we are really covering a lot of transport and infrastructure and supply chains which can influence up and down the supply chain and if we can have that influence maybe we can have as much influence if not more influence than governments and politicians so how can we leverage that influence we have in the infrastructure in the everyday life of business and people I don't know who wants to take that first perhaps David Thanks Derek I mean look I think I think it would should we have had as an industry wide a sectoral presentation COP26 possibly probably and certainly it's going to be very important COP26 I think the issue around postal is despite I mean you are right the postal have very large fleets transport fleets but overall postal is not a large emitter of carbon compared to other industries so other industries particularly obviously of course energy industries etc have a much greater need and they have more work to do there where postal is more complex and I think is a much more difficult issue for postal in relation to climate action is our indirect impact you know it's the indirect it's the circular economy it's not just packaging but it's the consumption that is driven by e-commerce now e-commerce is good for our industry because we deliver things we like delivery things and yes I think all our focus quite rightly isn't reducing our eliminating carbon in our delivery of these things but still doing so is perhaps facilitating an economy that is not sustainable so the really big question and I don't have an answer for it but I think it's important to recognize the question a really big question for the industry going forward maybe a very big question for UPU is and I see that has touched on a fair bit of this in his presentation but we don't yet have the answers as to how far how deep into the supply chains we should go to be able to drive and ensure sustainability they may not be on our balance sheets on our carbon balance sheets but they're undoubtedly part of this broader agenda so I think it's a big question that we've got to answer in the next few years thank you David and I know quite a lot of big brands are looking at decarbonizing their supply chain even if their own their own direct impact is small when you take science based targets and scope 2 and 3 and everything else it expands it out so Siva if I could put it to you then should we see the e-commerce growth and actually thinking really somehow or another we should not be party to this we should be actually thinking about how we can reduce the resource this festive increase in resources and supplies Derek maybe if I can just step back and go back to your first question which you posed to David because I think it's important to set the context of the work that we're going to be doing on this front coming out of the 27th congress in Abidjan there was a clear direction from ministers that we as an intergovernmental institution should focus on the postal sector should be looking to develop voluntary targets for the sector as a whole or at least to start talking about it with a view to developing those targets there was a clear recognition that however small the impact might be we do actually account for a level of a footprint on the environment and it was important to start that discussion in the UPU with a view to looking and defining the way forward but there was also as part of that exercise of recognition that much of this has also got to be done in the context of nationally determined contributions the lingo that's used in the Paris agreement where countries sort of voluntarily put forward what they're seeking to do by way of carbon mitigation measures and that the postal sector being at a national level or globally can actually be part of that conversation and should be part of that conversation and so the stage has been set for that discussion to take place in the UPU and it will progress and it is in that context which I think we will begin to start some of the more sort of operational discussions that David was referring to in terms of you know to what depth do we take the focus to are we going to look at things from packaging down to transportation and so on and so forth so it will be quite a an exercise but what I would say is that it's not an exercise that ends in the next two or three years it's a dialogue which hopefully will result in clear outcomes and commitments and it's going to have to be an ongoing dialogue that continues so long as we are all part of the world and part of this environment and which means that I remain optimistic that at some point perhaps by the next COP the postal sector will have something to actually bring to the table in terms of the contributions it might make to climate action. Thank you and I think when we look at the fuel electrifying vehicles and the emissions that's a given we must tackle that we have large fleets and whether it's biofuels or electrification or renewable fuels as same as our energy consumption we have to deal with that it's a given but that in itself is not enough there's a much many other things that we need to address and I was just thinking going to the other end of it and you mentioned the packaging we've heard about the transporting air and other people are talking about, I had a question here about the number of items that are redirected and unnecessary journeys that are going that we can perhaps be more efficient with or reduce mileage or reduce unnecessary work, reduce waste essentially. There are obviously quite a lot of initiatives that we could focus on and ensure carried out globally using the facilitating the UPU's framework so is there a scope do you think for a resource available where people can find out you know new on a pragmatic basis smart ideas ways of doing things more efficiently reducing waste smart things so we can share these more widely because obviously it's good that some people are doing them but everybody needs to do them and I mean it's same with David's initiative in Ireland for going to the post office and getting your green deal for your improving the heat sustainability of your home and things like that. There are lots of smart ideas we need to share them more broadly don't we? Is that something a role that UPU can play? Sure Derek and absolutely. What I would say in terms of the role that the UPU can play on this front it sort of has three dimensions to it the first dimension is exactly what you talked about in terms of knowledge sharing and creating a platform within which that knowledge is shared best practices shared and the ability for member governments and operators and the private sector we've got to really make sure that we do engage the private sector in these discussions because there is a lot to learn from the private sector as well and the UPU can play that and we will be playing that the second dimension to this is I think in some ways we've got to sort of revisit a lot of what we currently do in terms of postal operations under the treaties or in terms of the rules and ask ourselves how can we actually green these I mean does packaging have to be along the lines of the dimensions that are spelled out in the acts or do we start looking at mandating things that will actually have a clear environmental impact and so revisiting some of the things that we've always taken for granted and have always operated on is also going to have some benefits and thirdly and this is a very key point what we do need in the UPU is a real commitment by member states by way of resources and a commitment to fund these activities you know it is a struggle at both national and international level in the context of the pandemic and with the governments faced with massive budget deficits and trying to find the funds to keep things going to actually have a focus and sustainability in an intergovernmental organization and so again through partnerships through cooperation with governments as well as private sector players I think what we can do is bring a greater focus on sustainability within the UPU and again looking at both the knowledge sharing platform aspects the review of existing operations and also looking to the future in terms of what you know I was really fascinated by what Anne Marie had to bring to the table in terms of getting rid of Anne packaging I mean that's a fantastic idea because if you get it right you effectively reduce cargo space and that sort of reduces weight on planes and it has a knock on impact across the whole supply chain and ultimately in terms of carbon emissions so you know these are the sort of conversations we should have if we want to really take the postal sector to the next level Thank you, there must be huge waste across our industry one way or another even with the best of attention that we pay to it David I don't know if you want to add to any of the comments that Siva's just made Yeah look I I quite agree with what Siva says you know I think there are opportunities at a UPU level to set some of the policies re-look at them I think they have to we have to move fast though you know this is for all of us to hit our targets if anybody who is a target of net zero by 2030 that's a pretty tough target to get to so we need these initiatives to come through now I think a really interesting one is the one you mentioned Derek about you know the waste from for example returning e-commerce returning parcels and return to sender and it's also a real issue which is a very live issue right now with the implementation of the new EU customs rules and you know the EU customs rules come in they have a very serious impact they have a very serious impact on postal and and they're very important and it's right to you know from our perspective it's right to but a single market operates as a single market and within the EU that is absolutely right but the whole issue as to postal regulation and how the regulation interacts with customs is a really live issue right now and is one where the EU plays an essential role it's not one it's difficult for a national operation to do that but it is possible for the EU and certainly reducing the number of and the amount of parcel returns is a very direct 100% saving in the air around the parcel if you just don't send it you know have to send it back so I think that's very important I did see a note by the way which I should acknowledge that came up from the chat which said look e-commerce is not all negative and that's absolutely true you know e-commerce of course you know just as we talk about how far up the supply chain should we go the other issue is how far down the supply chain can we affect and take credit for that so if you're stopping people making unnecessary shopping trips or if you're reducing that then of course you have an impact one of the big areas by the way that we look at which is I think is a really key one is Pudo pick up and drop off you know and actually a good Pudo network can massively reduce the number of unnecessary trips that consumers have to make and so getting all of those pieces right also is a real opportunity and I do think the opportunity is there Siva as Derek has suggested for much more sharing of the experiences that different postal operators have the different initiatives because there is a great energy there in terms of reducing carbon and it's fabulous to see but it's great to be able to learn from it as well and you're right David just at the moment the proliferation of regulations around cross border movements it's causing great deal of unnecessary movements, returns and backwards and forwards of parcels and really an inhibitor of cross border movement which is a problem for everybody but can I just come back to build on the point you just made about Pudos and about what you made earlier on I think you referred to when you talk about cities congratulations on all your emission free cities but congestion is sometimes an issue and also duplication there's a lot of duplication so in London it's well documented 30,000 vehicles and often several vehicles of different colours going up the same street on the same day somehow or another there should be an opportunity and this might tie in with your point about decent work as well in undercutting is actually there should be an opportunity for consolidation and maybe some places I know in Europe have already tried this and others are trying it to consolidate on the outskirt of cities and just going in with fewer much more environmentally friendly vehicles and rather than having big trucks from multiple operators all going in and some of them if you like regulated in or responsible in the way that we would be responsible so is that behind what you were saying earlier on David yes and certainly that project Senators is called and Dublin I think there was a similar project in Zaragoza in Spain I think it was and you know and that's looking at the possibility of sharing the last mile so that you consolidate and then have one delivery in the last mile which is seems to make sense and can be an opportunity got to be careful about competition effects and those sorts of issues but you know as an industry I'm sure we can look at those and resolve those and that will actually have to be part of it you know we can't have our towns and cities just simply cannot take the amount of vehicles that are in them and I of course would be a great advocate for the national postal organization being that last mile but others might have different views I do think however it has to be electric vehicles, has to be trained, eco-trained drivers, has to be responsible drivers and I think it's that element of standards that I really think both the UPU should be pushing local posts should be pushing but also we should be pushing our governments to make sure that those standards are in place and one thing that is a real danger around sustainability is when the economics become unviable for a postal organization because non-postal organizations doing deliveries who do not have those standards who evade the labour regulations I should be careful who find ways to find loopholes in the labour regulations so that they're saving the 25 or 30% that is always the add-on to a salary so even if they paid the same amount but they don't have to pay that that's what's got to stop because there's no way postal organizations as committed as they are to sustainability should be forced into economic non-competitive, uncompetitive situation because of loopholes which others exploit and that's fundamentally the role for government we're huge employers as collectively as the postal industry and we have a responsibility if you like to our staff to have good, decent work as you put it David so we need, somehow see we need a sustainable business model that is going to sustain the operating model, business financially for the post to provide decent jobs and obviously the role for the regulators and the governments UPU is a government member organization isn't it so is there something that can be done there in terms of along those policy and regulation areas Thanks Derek and it's a very good point because one of the things that the UPU has traditionally recognised as being a necessary focus of course postal workers and in terms of policy settings and so on but the approach has traditionally been to work with organisations such as the international labour organisation in trying to bring forward some of the developments in the ILO and to have that play a sort of a referential role in the work that's done in the UPU as well as in terms of the way we develop postal operations as defined by the acts there isn't a mandate per se within our governing treaties for the UPU to actually develop labour standards it's not a space within which our member governments have given the institution a clear role but it has been along the lines of understanding what best practices are to promote the standards that have been developed in the ILO and at a national level to also engage with postal workers through their representatives through tripartite arrangements and so it is still very much an indirect nexus that we have and that arises mainly because of the fact that we do not have an express mandate to talk and deal with labour standards. Thank you for that and I'm just conscious that we're going to have to draw this very interesting discussion to a conclusion fairly soon but one of the things that as an observer I sort of feel concerned about is that there's a lot of ideas there's a lot of discussion a lot of talk but how quickly is anything going to be happening and is it going to happen fast enough and have significant impact enough in other words even COP26 it's important it's taking place but is it really going to really get to grips and do enough in time and I think there's a number of people who feel that it won't but I don't know how you feel looking forward and this is probably the final question if I can ask you just to think about going forward are we doing enough fast enough what more could we do what more should we do just as if you can encapsulate that in a final answer perhaps David Sure, well look I would say Derek I think firstly I think we are getting to grips certainly as an industry us ourselves we are getting to grips with it we've all brought from most post-organisations I see the most common target now is to get to net zero by 2030 as opposed to net zero by 2050 and we know the COP target is net zero by 2050 so we have pulled forward our targets and that is requiring a lot of actions to take place alongside it is innovation the speed of innovation you yourself mentioned the issue of whether we are sufficiently developing the network vehicles in other words the heavy goods vehicles that are zero emission vehicles and they are now being developed and I have no doubt we certainly will need to have them to hit our target of net zero by 2030 so I think that is a good example of how we are moving at a pace where at the moment the solutions that we plan to have in place aren't actually yet deliverable and so you can't move much faster than that I would argue and so I think I certainly think the postal by and large is doing that and the issue over all around COP26 if that's a big enough target is a question that would be beyond my competence and I think we all are seeing and scrambling to see the need to accelerate and I think that that is something which is going to obviously be debated in Glasgow in November so let's hope we see that let's maintain that commitment we don't have all the solutions none of us are all experts in this but if we actually have the right culture and the determination to get there I think we will do so and particularly if we have the sort of projects that Anne Marie was doing this earlier and some of the work that SIVA has been sharing today as well. Thank you David and one of the things I'm heartened by is just hearing this morning the experiences of so many posts in the face of the pandemic how quickly they reacted how agilely and flexibly they adapted their systems if we adopt that sort of speed of reaction and change in the face of climate change then we have some hope that we're going to be able to make a difference so SIVA a final comment from you please. Sure Derek and it your question reminded me of a comment that Greta Thunberg recently put out there in terms of her perception of policy makers we were all described as being involved in blah blah blah and it's true I think to some extent it is true and it's a tremendous it's a tremendous indictment of policy makers across the world across all sectors. As far as the postal sector is concerned I think there's two things that I would talk from the perspective of a representative of an intergovernmental organisation David is absolutely correct there are absolute examples brilliant examples out there in the marketplace of posts are doing and picking up tremendous initiatives that are going to have significant impact on the environment at least in their own national context but from where I'm sitting there are challenges because what we are seeing particularly amongst developed posts is obviously a focus on sustainability and climate action and they have the resources and they know how to be able to do this but that's not necessarily the case with posts in the developing world and as much as we talk about mitigation measures and how we reduce our climate footprint I think there needs to also be a focus on adaptation and quite importantly climate finance and how do we get all of us onto the same page because the world is only a better place if we get everyone on the same page and there is still quite a long journey for many in the developing world to get there and I think this is a major challenge for intergovernmental organisations including the UPU as far as the postal sector is concerned and the second thing is the way that we can avoid the blah blah is to make sure that our commitments and whether they are voluntary or not they are technically credible they are well resourced and I think we've got to actually map it out across time and that is to say there are things that we can do right now that can have an impact and we should do those things as quickly as possible and then there are things that are a bit more long term and which we could focus on and so those would be just the two things I put on the table as far as policy makers should be concerned as we go forward Steve you're right there's an imperative for us to do so much and we need to do both the quick wins that have a major impact but also some structural things some longer term things that need to change in our sector as well but effectively we need to just redouble our efforts and it's easily the most important agenda because without this we won't have any other agenda if we don't tackle the broader issues of sustainability so it's an all important topic for us and I'd like to thank both of you and obviously Anne Marie for her contribution to the debate and it's something that will go on and indeed here in Vienna at the Postal Post Expo we've got a COP26 session going on Wednesday morning as well when we'll be addressing it again in a different way but for the time being thank you very much for your willingness to present and to discuss questions, thank you to those who've sent in comments and questions and we'll be returning at half past the hour again with the final panel session where we'll be reflecting on all that we've been discussing during the day so for the time being thank you very much and we'll return in a few minutes, thank you thank you David, thank you Steve thank you David, thanks Derek hello Michael good to see you morning Derek that was me, Mike welcome Mike, we're just about to start welcome Brodie hello Derek hello, hello hi hi Dohilda, hi Jean-Paul I'm just about to open the session in a minute but good to see you all ready for the panel session let's get started welcome back everybody to the UPU World Leaders Forum this is the last session of what's been a very busy and fascinating day we've had a lot of interesting presentations and discussion and I'm just about to welcome our five panellists who are going to think about and reflect and discuss what we've been hearing and addressed some of the challenges and opportunities facing our sector just what I've noted down from today for example topics like the reaction and the resilience of the sector to the pandemic the accelerated transformation as a result of that many people mentioned that the catalyst of change obviously going from more physical to operating in a digital world fairly obviously letters declining and parcels growing the digital transformation that was necessary for that a lot of talk about collaboration and partnerships and how that's become extremely important and the importance of the communication to our customers and our senders but also the customer experience and the customer journey how vital it is to understand that and taking care of our people and being kind to ourselves and others as New Zealand pointed out, David pointed out and finally just now we've had the whole sustainability discussion which is the wider climate action but also the use of resources more responsible use of resources decent work, circular economy practical issues wider issues we've lot to talk about I'm just going to invite our panellists to introduce themselves in a minute because it'll be quicker than me trying to read out a long bio for each of them but we've got Thomas from Slovenia who you've already mentioned from Icelandic Post Brody Buller who's the CEO of Escher Post Jean-Paul Forseville some of you will know who's from La Postte and chairman of the POC and Mike Froman who is joining us from Mastercard who amongst other things was involved with Obama and World Trade Facilitation as well so can I just in that order just invite you very briefly to introduce yourselves to our audience so Thomas first perhaps Yes, thank you Derek I'm very honoured and grateful that I can be here with you today at the same time I'm very pleased that we were given this opportunity by the UP Group to share the good practice that the measure takes that I hope will help to improve us our businesses and performance even further let me say that I'm very fascinated by the efforts made by postal operators from around the world to continue of postal services during the pandemic and the explosion of e-commerce post has a challenge for all of us a challenge we have never faced before and if we add the aspect of sustainability to this situation where we have limited natural resources available we are suddenly confronted with a certain challenge so it is all attitude towards the nature and all failure to act to help us in this situation Thank you, thank you Thomas Let's move to Tohelda we heard from you before but perhaps you can introduce yourself in case people weren't there earlier on Hi, my name is Tohelda and I'm the CEO of Icelandic Post and I can see that Derek is frozen or pink your eyes No, you're not frozen I was very pleased to hear all the people who have given their time to speak today it was very enlightening especially the sustainability thing I think it's a very huge stack that we need to take as well so I have already been introduced so I will just give the next the word to the next Thank you Tohelda Brodie Buller, he hasn't spoken yet this afternoon Brodie, you were in Accenture last time we met you, now you're not That is correct Derek, good to be with you Today I'm the Chief Executive Escher I've been here for about 7 months now and prior to that was with Accenture for about 22 years all of that time in this sector, in the Post I will echo what's been said in the previous sessions this is a really exciting time in the industry, a really exciting time to be part of this industry and I'm excited for this discussion today so thanks for having me Thank you, so you've been around the Postal Sector for a long time and like me, we're recognizing that it's a critical time lots going on, lots of challenges but also lots of opportunities I think the same for you Jean-Paul Can't hear you Yeah, sorry Better Yeah, I joined La Post more than 42 years ago so it's been a long journey I'm happy to be with you today I'm in charge of International and European Relation for La Post Group As Post-Europe Chair I'm also happy to see two of CEO members I've not had the opportunity yet to meet probably because of COVID-19 but I hope that one day I will be able to meet them too Happy to see again also Brody because we have been exchanging for years now about the future of the Postal Sector and as you said Derek has been elected in August POC Chair for four years So that's going to involve you quite a lot of opportunities to influence the way the Global Postal Operations are going to be developing so that's a very pivotal role I think Jean-Paul I'll come to Mike now we haven't met before but I'm very pleased to see you and I understand you're working with I think your Vice-Chairman and President of Strategic Growth of MasterCard but by which you play a strategic role in business and have done in global trade so perhaps you could tell us a little bit more about your background and how we might tap into your knowledge and experience for our sector Well thank you very much Derek and it's an honor to be here I am certainly not an expert on postal unions and so I'm delighted to be able to be here and learn from all of you as well as you mentioned I've been in and out of government my life having worked on trade and now sustainability but also very much on the impact of digitization on both business and government activity and the importance of public-private partnerships in that regard and how the private sector can work with public institutions like post offices to bring tools of the digital economy together and to help them develop new ways of serving their customers so let's look forward to our discussion So very much in tune with what we've been talking about new ways to serving customers but perhaps you'll start at that point if I can and I'm going to start with Brodie because as long as I've known you've been talking about digital transformation and what needs to happen in the sector and the opportunities perhaps you can just expand on why this is such a critical moment for digital transformation Absolutely you heard from one of the previous speakers today of that transformation that's been occurring of post organizations delivering a lot more parcels in some cases the bulk of their revenue now coming from parcels and that that's a very different type of business and a very different type of customer experience required within that business and so that's where I think that's the catalyst for the transformation as you look at what's happened in the pandemic some research that we've done shows that that device your phone has really become the command center of your life and I'll just give you a simple example during the pandemic when you couldn't go out I needed to have a quick doctor's appointment I did the whole thing on my phone right I hopped on they said wait 5 minutes and the doctor will join they texted me when the doctor was ready I clicked the link did a virtual appointment she prescribed a medication and that was delivered to my home what would have been a 2 hour drive to the office be seen drive home drive to get the prescription was all done in a in a matter of about 10 minutes while I was driving somewhere I wasn't even at home when I did this virtual appointment that's the sort of change that has occurred of this mobile relevance and that device driving a different type of experience and that's where I think digitization really needs to move from a postal perspective as you think about those deliveries and the control visibility and ability to really interact on that mobile device it becomes an imperative really going forward and then there's all the digitization in the back office automation and equipment sorts of investments that need to be made from a customer experience it really starts with that device and I think if I can move to you mentioned that when you talked about your apps and you're getting really closer to your customers and what they need is that right it's quite clear we found in the pandemic where people were trying to reach out to call us so we do need to get the app straight away to get the information to the customers right away they needed the information they needed to know where their packets were where to pick it up and etc I think it's necessary to put the information to the customers right away I'm just intrigued you don't have to answer this but I'm intrigued if the pandemic hadn't happened would you have moved so fast to introduce an app like that would it have taken some years to get developed and implemented I think we would have gone this fast because we had already made the decision in 2019 to go through with the app so I think so but maybe not as fast it probably as you said accelerated things you already had in motion Thomas in post-asylvania again a smallish post but I think you've been engaged in a lot of digital transformation yes so I'm one of the younger participants here and what I can say is that my children will probably have their children around 2050 and so from my point of view 2050 it's not so far away and for me it's very closer a statement that we don't inherit the land from our ancestors we borrow it from our children because of that I see the ecological aspect with very great respect and Slovenian post owner and trust me with running a state-owned company with almost 8000 employees and we are in mind countries and this year we expect the highest volume of packages and letters and parcels and the Slovenian market is with 2 million inhabitants and it's very open economy and thus started to become very small and this year is expected to be our best year both in terms of revenue and in terms of profit okay congratulations for that and it sounds like things are progressing well we'll come back to you in a minute Thomas John Paul digital transformation in the postal sector and you'll be chair now the POC is not always noted for things happening very fast how would you see things progressing in the next cycle well I think that in the global range of post there is a huge diversity some have engaged and are really leaders on this and have made lots of efforts to develop their digital equipment and digital offer there has been some time in some posts I'm sure for instance debates should we encourage the digital register mail or should we keep our old register mail because it was a very profitable activity but now you have no choice you really have to speed up and to deliver if you want to be one of the provider on this digital world and with e-commerce even more and more true you have to digital you have to deliver information on your packets or on your parcels if you want to send them to some countries Europe or US for instance so really you have no choice anymore and I think that for some time now the UPU and the POC have developed the practice on this trying to benchmark but I think that we really have to speed up and to benefit from the experience of the most advanced to teach the others maybe also some providers like Escher can also help many posts to go digital and so it is a global move to make the one well less advanced and also a message to the government or the owners of the post it will need a little money to do so but guys be aware that the post your post your designated operator will need not much it's not the height of the telecommunication sector but at least and you liked having the post during the COVID-19 don't forget about it and be ready to help your post to migrate to the new world thank you you're right I mean there's a requirement to invest in technology and we said earlier on I mean when Pascal Tiva was on we were talking about developing countries it's not necessarily expensive it's possible to leapfrog we've had a number of comments and questions from African countries amongst others today in the Q&A and really relatively small amounts of investment can go a long way but when we also heard from some of the sharing this morning about AED for example advanced electronic data and CDS these are global systems that could improve the collaboration and the quality and the efficiency of the whole postal network if everybody's doing what they need to do and it needs everybody to play together which is obviously a role for the UBU COC to play to get everybody to raise level up everybody if I can use that expression to the same level so that they're all in the same way if I can come to Mike now perhaps and say we in the postal sector talking about a number of us have been around for years think we're moving quite fast and think we're going we're changing quite fast from where we've come from but then you know you heard on the if you saw some of the presentations Mexico was 400 and something years old and many of our organizations are hundreds of years old so it's relatively speaking we've come a long way but maybe we've got a long way to go so coming from the outside looking in and with your experience in other industries and other sectors what is your message perhaps or what is your perspective on what is needed in the postal sector in view of how things are developing now we're all living in a digital world now well I think as you suggested earlier the pandemic probably accelerated trends that were well underway before including the digitization of the postal sector it's not new to the postal sector to be focused on this but it has certainly shown a spotlight and underscored just how important it is to move and to move further more quickly one thing that the pandemic should is just how critically important digital inclusion is whether you're an individual getting assistance from your government and we found a lot of governments having difficulty being able to deliver assistance in what had been previously either cash or check based systems that required face to face interaction or whether you're a small business trying to get access to capital trying to serve your customers moving from being brick and mortar to becoming an e-commerce player going online for the first time engaging with a lot of these issues around the shipping of goods that they previously didn't have to to focus on and the digitization can make this all much more efficient it doesn't eliminate the need for brick and mortar physical presences but gives post offices the opportunity to use digital tools to better serve their customers increase their efficiencies and perhaps expand the range of services they can offer to some of the last couple of points that have been mentioned this can be facilitated very much by public-private partnership where the private sector which has really moved very quickly ahead on digitization can bring resources expertise skills and tools to the public sector in a way in a co-creation sort of mode that can benefit both the last thing I would say Derek is one thing that post offices have going for them they are a trusted network in their countries it's something that everybody can relate to and have full trust in and we MasterCard use ourselves as a trusted network in the payment space but it's a critical value to have that trust and to build on that trust in a way that you can provide services safely and securely as we enter this new age and therefore I think post offices are really well positioned to the private sector to go further into this area I think that's absolutely true and I think that was underlined during the pandemic where post in by and large were identified as an essential service, a trusted service to deliver medicines, goods food, care, all kinds of other things and I think we we often take for granted the trust that people place in us and actually it's a really valuable asset as well as the brand and the reach and the knowledge that people have as well as our people our people are a valuable asset and very often go beyond the call of duty so thank you for making that point and it's nice to hear it from the outside looking in if you know what I mean but also to your point that we're not alone in facing digital disruption I mean we sometimes think that we're the only ones who having to adjust but I think about the retail sector the finance sector and the banking sector and every other sector really grappling with similar issues aren't they really but can I just pick up on the next topic really which is to follow up on your point about partnerships and collaboration private public partnerships yes we're great public organizations to which private companies should really see an opportunity to partner and hopefully invest in to get coverage and reach as well as to get access to new technologies and we don't have to do it all ourselves we don't have to have all the money ourselves we don't have to have all the investment we can do it with others Brodie as a private company but partnering with the post in many parts of the world how do you see that developing and how can that accelerate a little bit more in terms of sharing technologies sharing risk moving the pace a bit more there's a significant potential there as I look at posts reworking the role they play within the ecosystem they some of the things that have already been mentioned around trust physical presence nobody's more local than a post and so being able to leverage those differentiated capabilities with other organizations whether it's with banks so that you're creating more banking inclusion dealing with banking deserts those sorts of things whether it's around identity and that identity proofing then being leveraged into other areas I think there's remarkable partnership opportunities as post use the assets that they have differentiated capabilities that they have in very different ways with organizations both within the logistics sector as well as outside thank you we are local but we're also global and I think that struck me this morning when I was listening to all the presentations from whether it be Fiji or New Zealand or Mexico or Iceland or Singapore a lot of the themes were quite common different experience of them but similar themes and they probably be the same if we visited all 192 postal administrations however many they are so quite similar challenges but actually can be a force to re-recon with when we're partnered together globally Torhilda in your development of digital activity in Iceland you're forging partnerships how are you approaching that we are partnering with western union in Iceland for example transferring money for people around Iceland and we are like if you saw my presentation this morning we are big country with few people living here so it's not for everybody to be everywhere but in Iceland the Icelandic post is everywhere so I think it's very good for us to partner up with local delivering companies like DHL they are moving things with us around the country not in the capital but in the country I think it's very important to work with others in that sense there are a lot of opportunities like that in different parts of the world where they're different operators different people with different expertise who can partner either in our operational challenges or as you say in finance in money services and financial services or many other things we don't have to be the experts the postal operators don't have to be we're not bankers we're not necessarily warehouse runners we're not doing all this we can partner or we can expand as you heard from Singapore where they've expanded out into different sectors by diversifying which is another approach as well Thomas perhaps have you got some partnerships in collaboration in Slovenia again it's a small country but with big ambitions I'm sure yes so I'm coming from the ICT sector and I can say that and confirm that the employees are the most important part of the service industry and we should collaborate each other and what I can prove with what Michael said before that postmen of the national post are highly respectful and most of the time highly welcome to the homes and people trust them even if sometimes brings some bad news but the most times I'm good news and packages and parcels and so on so for me it's personally that we as a manager can do and work together and we need to help to our employees and bring them a good will and communication so I talk with my employees almost every month and I inform them about the new news, new things and if need I of course share also some bad news with them and honestly to saying that is what people appreciate so I regularly visit all post offices around the country and I talk with my coworkers because I believe that we all have to do our best to create a pleasant working environment and when the all employees are satisfied it's the first face against the all citizens so if I can say we are the face of the state because we are state owned company against the citizens so it have to be all done very smoothly and with all the respect so it's really important to communicate honestly and engage with your staff to ensure they understand what's needed and to support them in their activities and in many cases I think now not just in Slovenia but elsewhere they are acting as this bridge between the physical and digital in other words quite often they are turning up at people's houses with all the services on their mobile device so they have all the services with them but they are physically able to deliver them to the customers which I think is appreciated because one of the things that's appreciated from ever for the post personal service the mailman visiting and that's still a moment we always talked about the mail moment now it's a different kind of moment but certainly there was quite a lot of checking in on people to see if they were okay during the pandemic which was a very valuable social element. Jean-Paul perhaps you could comment about either from La Post perspective or from received perspective about partnerships and collaborations I know La Post is very busy in the digital sphere and with digital developments but also in corporate social responsibility as well. You're absolutely right we came La Post first somewhere about La Post we came for a period of time where we were trying to invent or reinvent everything by ourselves we come from integration we are companies since 1990 but you know in the mind in our mind and also because of the size of the company there was nothing on the market to fulfill some of our needs and we had to try and invent everything. Now it's over and especially in the ICT we tried to partner with providers we try also to entertain a network of startups around us to benefit from their know-how and sometimes we buy some of them when the technology is very relevant for us or crucial we can have also an interest to buy it. As for globally the partnership and the UPU it is as you know the record so in the middle of the debate of the opening of the UPU which is a kind of such issue even if we have come to a consensus in Abidjan and we have a plan to make decisions in 2023. So I think nobody now at UPU is against the opening to enlarge the possibilities of partnerships etc etc but and here again there is a huge diversity of operators we are more at the level talking about the operators but globally we can say the situation is different and you know a small African or Asian operator can be a little afraid or doesn't know exactly what he can expect from a partnership with big players from outside and this has to be better explained and I think that in the coming year because 2023 will come very soon so we have to make things clearer quicker and also from what we call the private sector even if more and more most of the operators are also private now the private sector has to explain a little more about what the win-win solution could be in the partnerships and once more it can be very different from one or another operator because the situation can be very different from one to the other exactly thank you and Mike if I can come to you I'm sure it's part of MasterCard's business model to be in partnership because you do very little I don't know about your business model but my assumption is that it's very much based on partnerships pretty well every other sector for whom you provide payment services is that right? Well it's absolutely right, we partner with just about everybody, governments other private sector parties, international organizations and the like and fintechs, new start-ups it creates a very dynamic environment and I'd say when it comes to the postal sector I'll just give you three quick examples one in the UK where we partnered, our vocal partnered with local banks and the post office to provide basic banking services at 30,000 postal counters because 94% of the public live within a mile of a post office so it was not an area to do that or you mentioned non-payment services in Australia, we used our digital identity capabilities working with Australia Post to make it possible for people to prove their identity without having to hand over physical documents and that I think is a model for taking elsewhere and of course with the UPU itself we have been working with you on a tool to help postal payment ecosystems be tested for their readiness for e-commerce and what needs to be done to upgrade them so that they can fully participate in the dramatic increase of e-commerce over the last couple of years so these are just some of the examples of partnerships we are doing with the postal sector I think it's a wide open field, there's so many more ways where the private sector in the right kind of engagement with post offices can bring their technology, their expertise their networks and add to what post offices already have in a very powerful way we're working with the Escher Group of course we look forward to working with others here to try and explore that in a way everybody can work with everybody which should be the ideal you're right, when posts are looking to go up and down the e-commerce ecosystem or value chain we like to put it payment systems are part of the glue as well as transport and distribution and IT and tracking tracing and all these other things which all have to be integrated all have to be involved predicated on partnerships so really important to collaborate with everybody we must talk about sustainability it's the big issue of our time and I said earlier on in the session just before this one that it sort of supersedes all the other agendas it sort of has an impact and I just would like to get each of your take on how that should be how the our sector should be responding or what do you think is the most important thing or what is your view on what is critical and I'll go in the same order if you like so you know when to expect me to come to you so Brodie your take on sustainability and what we should be doing and what impact and difference we can make the presentations that have been done today I think have done a great job of highlighting some of the fantastic initiatives that are underway within post-organizations whether it's greener fleets or alternate out-of-home delivery methods that make those distances shorter you know as you look at how the pandemic has transformed the retail landscape one of the clear differences there's a lot more local inventory and a lot more usage of the store as a node in that e-commerce or omnichannel fulfillment capability and that's where I think post-organizations have a remarkable opportunity their ability to leverage that every house every day offering that they have and be the connector of local business and local inventory to the home or to lockers or to their retail units as a pickup drop-off location can have a remarkable impact on the carbon footprint of these organizations because you're moving at shorter distances and you're giving it to making those deliveries the way people want them as Paul Hilder talked about using the app to give people insight into where their delivery is and then giving them control of that delivery all those are initiatives that will take distance and therefore carbon out of those deliveries and that will be important investments going forward because as e-commerce has grown many have talked about it. You've got a lot more trucks doing a lot more things and there needs to be less of that in a better more efficient way. Thank you for that. I'll come to Hilder next. We often think of Scandinavia as being in the forefront of sustainable work and we saw Anne-Marie Garcio from Postnord you mentioned before that it's critical, it's important in Iceland, what in particular I think it's like 360 degrees view on this and now next year we are offering our employees we're starting at home and we are paying them extra paycheck every month to come either by bike or food or not by private car to the office or to their location so that's our first step taking it from inside out and then also the parcel I think that's a great thing adding to our business is to have parcels so people can choose their way to pick up their parcels they have the information in the app and they can go to the next parcel and we have many parcels or packets to go to one parcel, one location not to everybody's home so I think that's one big step and also like Anne-Marie said that we are transporting a lot of air I think that's our huge task for the next 2-3 years is to you know our customers need to grow grow up and stop transporting air with us so I think we need to look at the 360 degrees from the employees from our customers and how can we maybe not go home to everybody so I think it's like a 360 degrees I think that was right because she said we don't need to transport air it can move by itself so that makes renewable energy if it moves by itself so that's good but you're right the simple things like that may have a massive impact if we can reduce the wasted space wasted packaging maybe recycling packaging maybe renew fewer returns fewer wasted journeys fewer miles not just more in less emissions etc there are lots of things that we can do Thomas in Poster Slovenia what's your key sustainability initiatives yes so I have strong focus and my professional thing is that just now we are checking the possibilities of the roofs of our postal outlets and sorting centres which we will be dedicated to collecting the solar energy so right now we focus 40 roofs and during the day time we will offer also the citizens that can fill their cars with electricity and during the night we will fill with those electricity also or electric cars and other type of vehicles we need it for our day to day operation so we will put that on our roof and start collecting the electricity and what I can say that I am the first Slovenian DC DDG that use electric cars company for my use so I am driving with electric cars and I would like that also the other and we change our cars from field to electric and what also we focus with the same problem that we transport almost 50% of the air in the packages and we have the common issues around the world and we have to work together to find out the results how to package more smoothly and to deliver just the goods and with less air and so on so I think that we are all in the right way that we have strong ability to support sustainability in the world and to use the green power of the future Thank you very much Thomas and I think your example of your own personal vehicle and to some extent also to heal the talking about employees coming on foot or by bicycle or whatever we lead by example don't we and as an industry we can have a big impact by the example and whether it's solar energy or renewables I've also heard this summer talking about projects where all the post offices as well as becoming Pudo or pickup points where people can come and get their parcels in one place maybe they can come and recharge their vehicles or get biofuels at the same place it's a renewable ecological hub if you like a hyper local hub where we can play a role in the whole agenda but Jean-Paul sustainability and do you see it as a key part of your POC role and if so what we could talk hours about this because it is really a huge issue first I'd like to say that I'm a little frustrated by the fact that it is not well known that the postal sector has already done a lot I remember being in 2009 for the COP 15 in Copenhagen and major players postal operators committed under the umbrella of IPC to reduce their carbon footprint by 20% in 15 years I don't remember and they delivered even earlier than they were committed to do and for instance at La Post we are carbon neutral since 2012 2012 so and the whole group so I would like to make sure that it is better to recognize that the postal sector already at least in some parts of the world have already showed the way made really critical things and are about also to take more commitment for the coming years in front of the United Nations and we know that UPU is part of the organization and also within Europe with the European agenda of course we will have to do more and go to emission free delivery but it will of course take a little more time just one other thing you might know that during the congress three countries put forward an initiative proposal and it's unusual that the proposal put on the table at the very last minute is adopted contentually but we it was Germany, Austria and France and now all the members of the organization said that yet we should do even a little more than what is in the business plan but of course it has to be on contributions not of the not on the budget we have to contribute to do more but we have our homework to do in every country in every post but there is something we need UPU to do is to have a global approach and to make sure that when we send from one country to another we are able to measure how much carbon it uses and if it is compensated if it's not compensated to compensate it because our customers want to know and they want to be carbon free and they want to be emission free in the coming years so without the UPU I think we will not succeed so we really have to work hard on this during this cycle so we need to do more and we need to be transparent and be visible about what we do absolutely Mike sustainability I mean obviously financial inclusion is part of SEVO talked about financial inclusion but what else is MasterCards sustainability agenda I would just say two things building on what Jean Paul said a moment ago one is I think we can do a lot from the private sector to help people understand what their carbon footprint is including the footprint associated around the world and to take action accordingly we came out with a carbon calculator working with a company in Sweden called economy which measures your carbon footprint as you spend on your card and then allows you to immediately offset it not with carbon credits but by planting trees nature based solutions and increasingly that will become a more and more sophisticated effort where we can take into account whether you're buying locally or you're buying globally carbon footprint is associated with the transportation of that product to market the other thing I would say is just from the private sector perspective every other major company right now is wrestling with the issue of net zero and how to achieve net zero and a big part from our perspective a big part of our footprint is not things that we control but it's our supply chain it's our partners including I imagine many companies they're shipping and logistics and getting their product delivered to market so this is a wonderful opportunity for the postal system as you all have been discussing to think about how to reinvent itself on a sustainable basis whether it's where you deliver or how you deal with the issue of air or a number of the other issues that are built into this explosion of e-commerce and deliveries of parcels associated with that because every company is going to need to incorporate that into their plans and again another great area for public-private partnership where I imagine many of your biggest private sector shippers will have a keen interest in working with you to figure out how to reinvent delivery and logistics on a more sustainable basis Thank you for that and I think you have a unique possibility there is MasterCard to help I mean along with the payment systems to help us understand the impact of our purchases I think not all of us always understand really the ecological impact of what we're purchasing and down the line and that could be really transformative but also this decarbonising of supply chains not just the ones you're directly responsible for but the ones that are implied cascading out if you like through the logistics system which we're all familiar with how it works but that can have a little value to have the sort of multiplier effect in terms of impact so that's great thanks for that round on sustainability one more topic I want to cover before we have to wrap up actually really which is the future business direction drivers of the business we talked about in the sustainability about a sustainability business model a sustainable business model what is going to make it sustainable where is our business going to come from are we going to rely entirely on e-commerce packaging or letters going to decline inevitably Brody you've been studying this for many years now and coming out with reports about the future posts where was the principal trends and drivers of future business well the obvious is e-commerce we do a piece of research every year called the future of posts and this year when we asked where growth opportunities lie 77% of the respondents listed e-commerce financial services was the next and it was about 22% that placed emphasis there so that gives you a sense of the of the preeminence of that opportunity and the importance of getting that right there will be significant growth in that space for the next several years and post organizations are well placed to take advantage of the trends as inventory gets faster and more local as retailers look at partners that have reach and access and can connect the physical with the digital post can do that better than anyone else so that's certainly the biggest area as I look at where other opportunities lie as brick and mortar retrenches a little bit we see that happening not just in the retail sector but also in banking and some of these other areas I think posts have a remarkable opportunity to be that physical presence for other organizations and connect the physical and digital in ways that it just doesn't make sense for others and as Jean-Paul has talked about I think the UPU can play a significant role in that especially as you look at that global connection that posts and only posts really can enable so e-commerce financial services the physical presence and then a global physical presence I think are kind of the four big areas that I see for opportunity Thank you Brodie. To Helder when you're looking at your five-year strategic plan what's in the vision for that? The letters are declining as you know and we are thinking that maybe in five years time we are going to one-on-one packets and letters so it's declining rapidly and increasing the packages and we are working with Western Union in the backing system we are transferring money for people who live in Iceland and I think that's part of what we are going to do ahead so I think it's mostly the packages they're just going up and we need to invest in the parcels and continue on that Your parcel lockers consultation and apps and keeping close to your customers who knows what they're going to want next week next year you can listen to them and find out Thomas the future where do you see the future business you said earlier on you're the youngest guy I don't know if that's true but you might be you've got the future ahead of you what's it going to involve? Yeah so as the first point as you already mentioned is the e-commerce and the second point that I tried to figure out is how the postman how the post office will look like in 2050 and we were thinking with our strategy department how it looks like we should drone it you know with whom we will deliver something what we will deliver and we find out the one aspect means social service so we as a post as a postman we were each day on each address in Slovenia and for example because we don't know what we will do in 2050 we try to different things and one of that is early recognition of dementia by the old people so as President Kennedy said don't ask the state to give you something but you give to the state something and we as a post of Slovenia we try to give state also perspective of you of social services we don't know if we will do it for the government but we are now trying different things and this is one of the latest things that we already educate our postman that they are when deliver the post try to recognize the early steps of dementia because for example I see my grandmother once in two months but the postman see it almost every day you know and this can be one of the aspect of the future of the post I'm not saying it will be but it can be and it's regarding to as Jean Paul and Rodian you all the speakers sat there among the UPU it can be globalized and it can have the aspect on the old population in the world so as I for the conclusion to repeat myself we as a post are each day on each address globally and we have to go out of that and see what the possibility as chances are thank you very much for that and it's a unique position we hold and a unique responsibility and I must admit I hadn't thought of diagnosing dementia as being one of the future business areas but why not and it's part of our social dimension the social care role that we've always talked about and Jean Paul corporate social responsibility has been a big factor for La Post in the past and continues to be I'm sure but broader than that what are your future insights into the business what we're going to be preoccupied with where we're going well I will not repeat what Brody said very clearly and I fully agree with him two things I would like to add there was one word which has been already pronounced but which is in the middle of it it's proximity and in a digital world proximity means something but we do not know exactly precisely what but we have a strong feeling that it does mean something and here again there are two models of post the post who still have a heavy network physical network of post offices and the one who have totally partnered and there are some posts not having anymore a network but if you have your own network for sure it cannot leave only with parcels and mail so you have to have all the activities some offer it to the banking sector the financial activities are the most obvious part probably the most obvious goal and also because the retail banking is suffering at the moment at least in Europe but I'm sure in many other places and they are closing many retail points so there is here a clear opportunity there is another we are not alone at La Post to work on this but in our strategic plan for the second one we are working on health how can we help the state to keep people at home as long as possible in an aging population and we feel that there is something also we can do to do this thank you for that John Paul and widening it out and in a way there can be a huge remit that we can adopt as a postal network and from the proximity point which used to be the physical proximity it still is in many cases the post office is the biggest network can do all manner of services people come to that post office we can provide all sorts of services but equally now we are on digital platforms we can provide sort of amalgamate services on digital platforms for all kinds of people all kinds of services make things possible sort of facilitate trade as we have been talking about facilitate small businesses facilitate all kinds of interactions and as Brody mentioned earlier on in his example digital is very the ultimate proximity the ultimate immediacy and if we can be in on that we can be enabling a lot of it to happen as an enabler which is several people this morning talked about connecting everybody which is what we do Mike last time coming to you on the crystal ball where do you see our industry looking in from outside well I'm in full agreement with everything that's been said I think you really put your finger on it which is on one hand post offices quickly upgrading to be digital players and being able to provide from a digital platform perspective a wide range of services to their customers and on the other hand taking advantage of the fact that they have this physical proximity and this physical network that may become even more valuable as Jean Paul said others pull back and so how can the postal systems use their physical presences to offer more services whether it's banking or health or any number of other services as others sort of pull back their physical presence and really thinking in a blue sky way about what the value of that proximity is and it could be very valuable for postal unions as a whole. Thank you very much Mike and I'm conscious that we've more or less run out of time so can I just take the opportunity to thank all five of you for your really interesting and insightful contributions and sharing your experience so thank you Brodie Tohilde, Thomas, Jean Paul and Mike and thank you for your contribution to our discussion this afternoon and I'm sure our audience have found it interesting as well so I hope to meet you in due course and I'll allow you to leave the panel room if you like while I just make a few final summing up remarks from the world leaders forum so thanks once again thank you. Thank you so much. Bye bye. So as we come to conclude the day, the YPU World Leaders Forum let me make a few final remarks it's been a very interesting day. I hope you've enjoyed hearing the insights starting this morning with the opening remarks from Pascal Cleaver reflecting on the last two cycles and talking about where we were going and we started that way and then went into hearing from five different parts of the world what their postal leaders experiences were what they'd learned from the pandemic, how they were refocusing there in their businesses and the many things they were doing we had some common themes but we also had some unique things that were happening in different places so very interesting this morning and then we had a detailed discussion with Pascal with Siva and with David and with the input from Anne Marie on sustainability and such an important topic such a wide ranging topic and of course now we've had the rich experience of hearing from five industry experts with different perspectives so let's round it off the day so let me just tell you about a couple of other things we're in Vienna at the moment for the World Parcel and Post Expo and if you happen to be in Vienna that's great you can join the conference and if I tell you that as well as tomorrow with the opening there's more lessons from the pandemic there's more of these themes coming on on Wednesday we'll have a COP26 session we'll also have a session about digital innovation and then exploring the digital landscape on Thursday we'll also have a session on e-commerce and you'll be able to also go along to the UPU stand if you're here and see about the latest postal technology updates that are going to be given by David Assek from UPU who's going to talk about CDS and DPS big data and innovation and partnerships so the latest technology that's being developed from UPU will be given out in short presentations from the UPU stand and if you're not able to be in Vienna don't worry because you can go on to the Parcel and Post Expo website and you can follow most of the conference sessions which are going to be live broadcast I understand and if you miss all of that or if indeed you miss some of today you can come afterwards and downstream and stream down download rather stream these events afterwards and follow them afterwards so hopefully nobody misses out on anything so just to wrap up then I'd just like to make some final thanks to people who've made this world leaders forum possible and in particular the speakers who recorded their presentations for this morning I thought they were fabulous and thank you for the people who helped them with their recordings and of course the panellists who appeared in person which were really informative and instructive just now thank you to all of you around the world I know we had hundreds of people who were registered and joining us from time to time and probably still more will be looking at the presentations later on and streaming what we've talked about so thank you for your questions and comments I've been able to follow up all the questions and comments unfortunately but it's quite hard in this format to do that I hope that in future events we'll be able to meet in person maybe this time next year the past and post-expo will be in Frankfurt I understand so maybe we'll be able to have an in person event where we'll all be able to meet face to face and have lots of side conversations and detailed discussions as well so thank you for everybody participating for your attention and then of course I'd like to thank the communications team communication and events team from UPU who have enabled this to happen David Daj Giselle Caron and nothing of this would be possible at all without Katerina Sitnikova who's sitting next to me who's been helping me all the way make it happen so thank you to all three of you and of course to Helio and Olivia the technical people who've been on the platform and I think that's thanking most people who've been directly involved but the only thing remains to say is thank you again and we'll see you again hopefully in person soon if you're around in Vienna say hello and thank you for attention today and if I can remember that you're all on a different time zone say good morning, good day good afternoon, good night and see you next time, thank you very much