 Okay, well, good afternoon everyone and welcome to those of you who are watching online. My name is Dominic Waray, I'm a Managing Director of the World Economic Forum and we're here in New York at the World Economic Forum Sustainable Development Impact Summit. We have a very special moment for the next 25 minutes or so where we are delighted to announce a new affiliate center in our network of centers for the fourth industrial revolution. And this particular center is the first of its kind of a thematic dimension, particularly around harnessing innovation to save the oceans, ocean and biodiversity. As you know, the ocean is under immense pressure, notably due to climate change, but also other challenges that it faces from resource depletion, overuse, shipping pollution and many other activities. We've seen here in New York a lot of attention on climate and biodiversity and land use, yet sometimes we forget that over 90% of the Earth's surface is ocean. And the ocean is a vital part of the Earth's systems for regulating climate, for absorbing carbon and for many, many other things. For that reason, it's ripe for a look at how the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution can be harnessed to minimize the risks and maximize the opportunities for our economy and our society in terms of safeguarding the oceans for the future in line with the ocean SDG. So delighted with the panel here who will talk a little bit about the center and about our network of four IR centers and about the engagement, particularly of ACA Group, who are one of the key sponsors and champions of the center in Norway. So may I introduce Borge Brender, who is the president of the World Economic Forum to my immediate left. Annie Brett, who is an Andre Hoffman fellow for the fourth industrial revolution and linked to the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions, welcome Annie. Oiven Ericsson, who is the president and CEO of ACA, and with impeccable timing. See, that is a mark of a true ambassador and special envoy for the ocean. Vida Helgeson, who's special envoy to the high-level panel on building a sustainable ocean economy. So welcome all, and if I can, I'd introduce and turn to Borge Brender first. Just to introduce the concept of the Centers for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network and to outline the role of the forum in terms of public-private partnerships and the centers. Borge. Thank you, Dominic, and thank you to the rest of the panel also for joining us and also to the audience for something that I think is quite historic. As many of you know, the World Economic Forum has taken leadership when it comes to the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the new technologies that we know that will also be shaping this century. I think when we're now witnessing this trade conflict between the two largest economies in the world, the US and China, together more than 40% of the global GDP, I think it's not only about trade. I think an underlying factor here is even who is going to be in control of the new technologies and there is correlation between being in control of the technologies and also global influence and also economic growth to move forward. What we have tried when we have taken leadership in the area of the Fourth Industrial Revolution as the World Economic Forum, as the international organization for then public-private cooperation, is that we feel that these technologies should also work in the interest of humankind. These technologies are very consequential but we lack traffic rules in many of these areas but we also think that these technologies can also support the Sustainable Development Goals. We will not reach the Sustainable Development Goals without also mobilizing these new technologies and I think in the area of the environment, sustainability and oceans, the new technologies can have huge impact and potentially positive impact. If you can use robotics, internet of things, artificial intelligence to also address climate change, biodiversity, cleaning up rivers, cleaning up oceans, it has a huge potential. What we have done is that our main center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution is in San Francisco in Presidio but we also have then sister centers and affiliated centers over the world. We have one in Beijing, one in Tokyo, one in Mumbai and we also have opened up the first affiliated center in UAE and in Colombia. The first one in Europe will be in Oslo. I'm very pleased by that. Of course, it's also very happy that it's about nature and oceans. It's a thematic focus on this as Dominic, so Eloquent, who also underlined the oceans, are so important for all over the planet and we are not on a sustainable track when it comes to oceans. This perspective is an illustration that there can be more plastic in the ocean than there are fish, but 2050 is totally unacceptable and like a scary, very scary scenario that has to be avoided. I think the center in Oslo, with all the competence that is also in Norway, on oceans and clean oceans and the blue economy is a huge opportunity. Thank you to Akbar but also to my former colleague Vidar for being so passionate about this. I think it's incredible that it's not really happening and it's taking place and it couldn't be a better timing because it's also in the run-up to the Big Oceans conference that Norway will be hosting I think it's in October. So this is a particularly happy moment also for the World Economic Forum. Thank you, Borger. Perhaps we can turn to Oivind Ericsson, the CEO of ACA. And I guess there's a couple of questions that people might be interested in. Not least, what will the Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Affiliate Center on Oceans and Biodiversity do? And also, why are you particularly personally and through ACA Group involved? Perhaps you can help provide some thoughts to those sorts of questions. Yes, I would be happy to do so. But first I would like to thank the World Economic Forum for this opportunity to deepen the collaboration by establishing a Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in Norway. And I would also like to thank the Norwegian government for the strong support to this initiative. And as Borger briefly explained, Norway is a country which to a very large extent is based on the natural resources in the ocean. And the ACA Group has operated for almost 180 years in a wide range of ocean-related industries. As a consequence, we have built up a significant experience, competency and technology base, which today is used primarily for commercial reasons. As business enterprises, we also have to change. And I sincerely hope that this Center will facilitate a dialogue and execute project which will make a difference, but will also help business enterprises like the ACA Group to make the right decisions going forward. So Norway is, from my perspective, an ideal location for a global mandate for ocean and environment. ACA has taken these initiatives due to our history, due to our competency, due to our wish to make a difference going forward. But it's important also to highlight that our main role is to facilitate a collaboration with over stakeholders. So, going forward, the Center will invite governments, business enterprises, international organizations and other stakeholders to define and execute specific use cases of projects. What inspired me in particular to work for this initiative was what I learned when I visited the main center in San Francisco. Because there's a lot of resources, a lot of processes, a lot of talk about the need for change in order to save the environment going forward. But what I learned in San Francisco was how impatient the center is to deliver tangible results. And that resonates well with a business leader like myself, that we need to demonstrate not only results for the environment, but results for the environment which combines commercial interests. So, this center will prioritize, hopefully, projects which will improve ocean economy, just as much as help ocean industries to operate in a more sustainable way going forward. So, then to your question about how will the center operate and what will we focus on. It's fair to say that this is early days, we have the main theme, ocean and environment. But the method of work will, as I said, be to invite business partners and others to execute use cases and projects jointly with us. From an archiprospective, I believe that the main priorities should be to focus on technologies which will help ocean related industries to operate in a more sustainable way. A second focus area should be to apply big data to the monitoring and managing of natural resources. And a third headline for use cases should be how technology can help us to protect marine biodiversity. Just to mention three headlines for hopefully a number of use cases and engagement going forward. But to round off, what's equally important is the invitation for collaboration. Because today, my experience is that there is a lot of engagement, but we're discussing how to save the ocean in silos. So, if companies like Acura can join forces with governments, international organizations and others to deliver tangible results, hopefully we can inspire others to follow. Thank you so much, Mr. Erickson. And I can absolutely guarantee that having a leading business like Ovan Erickson driving this project forward, the focus on deliverables is 100% at the heart of this. It's been a fabulous experience. That's the element of the public and private that is the essence of the World Economic Forum's collaborative platform. It's so exciting to have a thematic center for the global good around oceans and biodiversity. I can't think of a better place in Norway given the history and engagement in ocean activity. And as you rightly mentioned, both on the industry side and in terms of some of these global challenges facing the SDG for oceans, there's an idea of big data, this idea of tackling some of the problems like illegal fishing and some of the industrial challenges that the ocean faces to make them more sustainable, drawing in the latest technologies for the benefit of society and minimizing risks. All of these, Vidar Helgesen, are things I think you're grappling with as the special envoy for Norway to the high-level panel for ocean and the sustainable economy. It'd be fascinating, I think, for those listening and watching as to how you see the use and creation of a center for ocean and climate, ocean and biodiversity and these latest fourth industrial revolution technologies. What kind of role can it play to further the agenda that you're so deeply involved in with governments and the international community about the ocean? Well, first of all, it's very clear that we need innovations. We need innovations in technology, we need innovations in finance, we need innovations in governance and as things are changing faster both in terms of technology and in terms of the ocean itself, we need new knowledge and we need ever updated knowledge and we need to make that available, we need to learn from it, we need to accelerate these solutions and I think this center can play a very important role in that. I'd like to, apart from congratulating the World Economic Forum and Akir on this center, I'd like to say that the role that the forum has taken in promoting knowledge, reflection and responsible application of fourth industrial revolution technologies is really, really important. These are technologies with a potential to change so much in fundamental ways and we don't have the predictions yet. We don't really know in which ways but we know they can really be fundamental and that means of course that they can be accelerator technologies for good or for bad. If they're accelerating business as usual, that's going to be bad and there's a lot of bad in the ocean and for the ocean these days. What we need to do is really to apply new technologies for the necessary innovations and the necessary solutions and I have high hopes that fourth industrial revolution technologies designed well and applied well can be of really high importance because there's a lot of innovations required in terms of technologies but also for governance. As oceans are changing we need updated information and knowledge. It's more important than ever that we base ocean policies on the best available knowledge and analysis and as the oceans are changing faster having that updated is more important and not least we will not be able to manage the oceans better unless we collaborate across borders and having data available, shared and in a format that will enable governments as well to communicate and act in concert between neighbours regionally and globally. That's going to be very important. I certainly see that this is a centre that can be very important for business and provide solutions relevant for business and boosting sustainable ocean business but I think it can also be very important for improving ocean governance and ocean policy. Thank you so much and for those who might not be quite so familiar perhaps just a small sketch of what the high level panel is about and how there might be some ability to help drive forward some of the recommendations or thoughts that the panel is coming up with through this centre. The high level panel for a sustainable ocean economy is a panel of 14 heads of state and government convened by the Norwegian Prime Minister and what they seek to do again based on knowledge based on a group of really world leading scientists doing a lot of research work right now. Coming up with a to-do list for the ocean, an action list, action item list on what the world needs to do to ensure that we can harvest the benefits of the ocean. We need to produce more from the ocean if we are to achieve the SDGs but that's exactly why we need to take better care of it because today the ocean might be nearing very critical tipping points that will be undermining life in the ocean, life on the planet and undermining business opportunities. Yesterday we presented the first report from the panel and a call to action from the panel pointing to the ocean as a solution to climate change. We all know it's a victim of climate change but yesterday we put forward a very good scientific paper quantifying how much ocean industries can contribute towards the 1.5 degree target and ocean industries in energy, shipping, seafood, carbon capture and storage and nature-based solutions can deliver up to 20% of what we need to achieve the 1.5 degree target. That will again require scaling up and speeding up and new technologies will definitely be helpful in achieving just that. Thank you so much and thank you for your leadership and work as a special envoy for the Prime Minister of Norway on the high level panel. It's an extraordinary report and I'd commend you to read it and particularly with such an important year ahead in June in 2020 there's a very important United Nations meeting the second global summit for the ocean in Lisbon where this high level panel will be producing very important recommendations for the ocean SDG so thank you for that. Now Annie, Annie Brett, Doctor, Annie Brett, no pressure but you are the kind of face of the work from the research community between oceans and new technologies. You are a Hoffman Fellow for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Earth and you have been working in our San Francisco office for the Fourth Industrial Revolution that Mr. Erickson referred to on challenges the ocean faces and the need for Fourth Industrial Revolution innovation. So without letting us all down and saying it's all terribly difficult and knowing that we need a sprint and we've got all of these pressures it would be fabulous if you could just provide some thoughts for a non-technical audience from some of the research that you've been involved with to inspire the brain cells to start thinking how this curious combination of oceans and technology might link itself up together. Annie. Absolutely, thank you Dominic. So I'm a marine scientist, I'm also a lawyer and before that I was one of the youngest commercial vessel captains in the world and so in all of these different areas of the ocean that I've worked in our relationship with the ocean is kind of fundamentally defined by really our lack of information about it. So commercially as a sailor I was using charts that were based on surveys done in the early 1900s by sextant and they have not been updated to this day despite wild inaccuracies that remain. Scientifically less than 20% of the ocean has even been observed by a human let alone researched and fully understood and this is obviously a huge hurdle to our fundamental ability to effectively manage ocean ecosystems. So the Fourth Industrial Revolution really presents an opportunity to begin to change this relationship and fill these pervasive knowledge gaps. And so as an Andre Huffman Fellow I worked jointly with the Stanford and the San Francisco Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution to begin to bring emerging technologies to bear on these previously intractable problems. And so we've been focused on a number of different issue areas from illegal fishing to marine management to kind of questions about data more broadly. And so for instance in the illegal fishing space illegal fishing is a huge economic problem with estimates that it costs the world about $23 billion a year in losses annually plus the associated human rights abuses and other associated crime issues. So it's a huge problem that the ocean community has been unable to solve because illegal fishing happens very far away from where we can actually see it. But we're finding that if we bring to bear a number of advanced sensing technologies from satellites to drones to underwater robots to GPS and camera devices on vessels to blockchain to trace fish throughout the supply chain when you can bring all these technologies together and then couple them with advanced artificial intelligence analytics we're able not only to understand ecosystems better but really to for the first time identify illegal behavior even in the most distant reaches of the ocean that we could never see before. So the potential for these fourth industrial revolution technologies is enormous and in San Francisco we're working closely with the Friends of Ocean Action and other world economic forum platforms to really elevate this work throughout the global policy dialogue. But it's also not a silver bullet. And as we go forward we really need appropriate governance solutions that support these innovative technologies but also allow governments to overcome the barriers to implementation and adoption of technologies and that mitigate the potential consequences which are real. And so centers like this Norway Center are really exciting because they are a critical part of the landscape of figuring out what this governance infrastructure looks like and how we can really maximize the potential of the fourth industrial revolution. So it's a critical time for the oceans in terms of ocean health it's also a critical time for emerging technologies I don't think there's a better time that you could be launching the center and we really look forward to working closely with the Norwegian Center to tackle these issues and ensure that we have a sustainable ocean in the future. Annie, Dr. Annie Brett, thank you very much. How old were you when you were the youngest shipping captain? I was 22. Amazing. Far too young. Amazing. So that gives us an introduction of feel for the center. We've got time for one or two questions. If there's any questions from the audience, yes please and just remind us who you are and then ask your question. There is, you've got 10 seconds to think more deeply about your question as the microphone approaches. Oh, I know. We've even done it at those times. Right. So Katharine Cunningham with Eurovision and also Thrive Global and I am so thrilled about this center. It's just a beautiful representation of what the rough can really do to convene public and private partners in a way that really has a tangible impact on our natural world which I care so deeply about and obviously you do too. So my question is, you know, with the center you have this opportunity to use all these different technologies to track behavior. I'm thinking of illegal fishing. Do you have also resonance and enthusiasm from the fishing community from these businesses to engage this convergence of technologies for sensing on the ships and, you know, essentially being a watchdog for illegal fishing operations? Does the industry itself as a whole see this as a very healthy move and how can you inspire then this trans-border sort of engagement because it seems if you've got this opportunity to track illegal fishing operations and inform then policy leaders about this at the ports where these ships then stop you have an opportunity for local leaders to say, you know, your fish has been fished illegally and, you know, we're not going to allow you to stop these ports but that only works if you have this trans-boundary, you know, sort of infrastructure in place. I welcome anyone in the panel to really address that how you sort of inspire the fishing community themselves to see it as not just a watchdog but actually a real opportunity for inspiring healthy oceans. Thank you for that question. I'll just check if anybody else have any questions. Can we take yours and perhaps package them together? Thank you. Thank you. And now I will just close my hands to the audience who are working in post and other media outlets. Congratulations. It's a massive initiative. So it was that all life came from the oceans and as Mr. Herzen just said it might end and we are in deep trouble. And since people's behavior is not changing, the only chance is when governments and scientists So what are the most important action steps you're planning to do in the next couple of years? And my question goes to our now tick lady, Ms. Brett, while you were actually diving down in the oceans or... So we'll be learning about new species in the oceans with your work. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, so perhaps Mr. Erickson and Special Envoy Helgeson, you could pick up the first of those questions on industry engagement, if you like, in some of these, and then perhaps some of the other policy recommendations, and then, Annie, you can close us out with your experiences of the dive. Well let me kick off and answer your first question. I'm pretty sure that the answer is yes, that the fishing industry will see the opportunity to engage and contribute. But it's early days, we have not yet invited the industry in general to this dialogue. But I can answer the question more specifically, on behalf of our own fishery business, Aki by Marine, a company harvesting krill in the Antarctic Ocean and processing krill into different products, including omega-3 nutraceutical. And that company has already committed to play a leading role in projects and use cases applicable to the fishing industry. Rita? I think the illegal fishing issue really is an extremely good example of how technological innovation and good old traditional governance can work in tandem. On illegal fishing, one of the most important international agreements in recent years is the Port State Measures Agreement, which is an agreement for port states to take action against the landing of illegal fishing. Now since a lot of that takes place in countries with fairly weak governance, you need monitoring and control, where new technologies can be immensely important, global fishing watch being one example already. You need enforcement, where new technologies can be immensely helpful. You also need capacity building in these countries, where new technologies can also be helpful. So for reinforcing what governments have already done and are doing to try to get illegal fishing under control, this center I think can play a very important role in taking forward technological solutions that can underpin governance. And to the other part of the question, yes, it's early, but I have no doubt that fishing communities around the world would definitely be interested in making use of the best available technologies. My favorite is Fishface, the facial recognition for fish, which is actually a great tool for sustainability in fisheries from your iPhone up to installations on bigger fishing vessels. Fantastic, special number. There'll be people who've been watching this now, they'll all be going back and looking for Fishface on their apps. So well done, Fishface, for that call-out. Thank you. So we'll ask our president of the World Economic Forum to close us out with a final thank you. But Annie, just briefly, some impression, some of those maybe have never had the experience of the open ocean as a sea captain or a dive. A reflection or a thought from you about the wonderful ecosystem that we're trying to protect and sustainably utilize? Yeah, absolutely. I think the most salient thing to say is just how vast the ocean is and how little we know about it. I remember night sailing when a strange creature would kind of rise up above the surface, glowing with bioluminescence, and we would take pictures of it, send it to researchers, and no one had ever seen it before. And this is something that happens relatively frequently, and discovering new species is incredibly common. Anytime anyone goes on a deep dive, they discover new species. Anytime you take a water sample in the remote ocean, you discover new species. So there's a huge amount still to be discovered and a lot of potential, but it also means that it's really critical that we begin to fill these scientific gaps before we move forward with a lot of the extractive uses and other kind of potential uses of the ocean that may impair those ecosystems. Fabulous. Thank you, Special Envoy. Thank you, Ivan Erickson, the CEO of ARCA Group, and congratulations again on the leadership role. Allow our president of the World Economic Forum, Borger Brenda, perhaps you can offer some closing thoughts. So just to follow up on what you just said about discovering, you know, just how much there is still to discover in our oceans, and the new technologies also give us the right tools to do so. At the same time as there are species that we maybe have not yet discovered, as you were alluding to, we have this panel on biodiversity that was just presented saying that this year we can then see that a million species can go distinct because of human behavior. A million species. And if you lose one's species, it's not coming back. It's what kind of legacy to live for coming generations. And we know in some of these species also the future of medicine, future of new discoveries can be in these species. So I think this is also telling us about how important it is to know also keep our oceans clean, to save our oceans. But as also we've underlined, I think we can harvest more from the oceans in the future in the blue economy because we need more food, there are more people, but it then has to be done in a strategic way so we can harvest it sustainable. And this is one of the things that I hope the center also can add knowledge into the whole blue economy. So for me, this started a year ago when this idea came up. And what I've also learned is if you want to get things done, sometimes you also have to turn to the private sector, to their business models and their speed because they're working very fast. So thank you to Evin and Acre for that. And this is also what, of course I'm not objective, but what I like with the World Economic Forum, as an international organization for public-private cooperation, we can also move very fast when we get the support from governments and also from business. And I'm really proud that we know have signed this center and I think it's going to be adding to the cluster of the four-hour centers that we are building. So thank you and congratulations.