 It's a real pleasure to have Mr. Candet Yamkela here from UNIDO. He's also chairing a new special group at the request of the High-Level Commission at the request of the Secretary General on Energy. And so I think this is going to be a very interesting conversation. For those of you who don't know, Candet Yamkela is a former minister in the government of Sierra Leone and then has had a distinguished career in the UN system. And I think my UN watchers has perceived as a more than a rising star and arrived star in the UN system. And I think we're very fortunate to have them here with us here at CSIS. And I want to recognize our friends at the UN Foundation who are sponsoring, help with us today this event in honor of UN Day, which was on Monday. So we're calling this sort of UN week. And so we have a little small reception afterwards. So I hope you'll stick around for it. But I think you're going to find this to be a very interesting discussion about energy access in light of the context of Rio Plus 20 and also in light of some of the challenges that are going on in the world in terms of what's going to happen with foreign assistance and also the rise of globalization of foreign direct investment and the role of the private sector in helping to solve the challenges that we're going to be talking about today. So without further ado, I'm going to hand the floor over to Candet Yamkela. And on behalf of Sara Ladislon myself here at CSIS, we're so pleased to have you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me to share some ideas with the audience and participants during this energy week. It's been a very busy 48 hours for me here, jumping from one discussion on energy to then discussing food security, spending the day-to-day discussing climate change and sustainable development, so moving back and forth on these issues. I was asked to talk about the role of the UN in promoting prosperity and development. And I was saying to myself, it's very difficult to define these things these days, prosperity and development at a time when the world is still dealing with the debt crisis. And in those of us who live in Europe, you see every day this debt crisis unfolding in more countries being threatened to go under. So what will prosperity mean in that context? Let me try to spend the first 10 minutes of my discussion with you on some of the mega-trends we see and challenges we see the UN will face, the world will face and issues the UN has to address. And I'll spend more time on energy, because central to some of these big challenges we have is the whole issue of how we produce, transmit and use energy and why we see this. And the Secretary General sees this as the issue for the century that we must address. But here are four or five key issues that we will all be challenged with if we're talking about prosperity and development. The first one is still the unfolding debt and financial crisis. This is still causing a lot of volatility, still causing a lot of challenges for advanced countries, but also for poor countries. The context here is, I can tell you, in 2007-2008, I was in meetings in New York where this crisis had just started. It's a financial crisis. And I watched us from month to month, seeing how fast the crisis was moving from a financial crisis on Wall Street to countries where there were not, in fact, any streets that I paid. So it became a global crisis. And we were all in shock and the speed with which it was moving. There was a time in 2008, I was in Cambodia, we were looking at factories in the garment sector and the Cambodian said, it's not here yet. It's mainly in Bangladesh, because the Walmart and others are not buying, because the consumers are not buying. Two months later, it was a different question. It was already in Cambodia. They were looking at laying off people. So this is still unfolding. And we saw how fast it transmitted. So one of the lessons we learned immediately that in the new context, with this interconnection, these things, the contagion effect is fast and wide and goes immediately to affect poor countries. So how do we plan in the context of volatility? How does a poor small country plan its deal with its fiscal and monetary policy when interest rates are changing, exchange rates are changing, where that country has no control? How do you plan even budget support for those countries? And those are issues in 2008 and even now. The World Bank and IMF are looking at it. At that time, we used to talk about the food, fuel and financial crisis, all connected, because energy became an issue immediately as well, high prices of oil. And we had 22 countries on the watch list. And at that time, we used to discuss volatility, vulnerability and viability. Some countries already were having riots, so security issues already kicked in. So that's still unfolding. Second issue, demographics. We see the demographic challenge as being very serious in Africa, the projections. I mean, before I even talk about Africa, next week we will be celebrating or commemorating the birth of the seventh billionth child, we will be seven billion. That child will not be born in America, according to the scientists who were born in an emerging economy. Talk a little bit about demographics later. But in Africa, we're looking at 1.4 billion Africans, 2030, maybe 2 billion or 2.2 billion by 2050. Most of them young, most of them below 25. They need jobs. Remember, the Arab Spring started in North Africa, could spread if there is no economic opportunity. But I'll come back to demographics a little bit later. The third one, resource scarcity. This one I picked out of the World Economic Forum. I serve on the Global Agenda Council on Climate Change. And when we meet as a global council of 701,000 experts, we are asked to mingle in design groups and different groups. The issue of resource scarcity is real, CEOs are looking at this. All kinds of natural resources. Some of you know the literature about approaching planetary boundaries. That's a challenge. It's a serious challenge, increasing population, but limits to the availability of natural resources. And of course, the fourth big one, climate change, the biggest risk multiplier of all that will affect, indeed, food security, water security, and many other developmental issues. The poor will pay the biggest price if we continue business as usual. The fifth I will give you is the illicit economy. We see as states are becoming more vulnerable, particularly the so-called failing states or failed states. They become victims of the underworld. It's easier to go into a country where there is no rule of law and set up shop. So it is of vested interest that we reduce those. If they are at risk because of the financial crisis, you will have more failed states. So you begin to see the connections. And if they are impacted heavily by climate change and they don't have resilience and adaptation capabilities, they become failed states. These are big issues. The UN has to deal with all of those at the same time as we deal with the usual menu of security, stability, improving relationships amongst countries. Go back to demographics. The IMF did a presentation for us, Secretary General and ourselves in March, projecting some of you may have heard me mention this because it's a real issue, that again they were looking at 20 years from now, 25 years from now, what will be the shifts in production systems and consumption patterns and demand centers. And we're looking at this, they see that about two and a half to three billion people will move to the middle class in emerging economies, mainly in Asia, accounting for probably 40% of consumer expenditure. But you know those two, three billion people, they're going to demand more food. They're going to demand more energy and more of everything because they're moving up. Income is going up. And so one key conclusion they have is the days of cheap food are gone. And it's not just any food, they would want protein, that's the normal trend. Your income goes up, you go for more proteins away from starch and others. Now what would be the implication for the poor countries? Can they afford food? Would the food be available? At a time when we're talking about resource constraints or land, water and then climate change would be a risk multiplier and of course energy. There will be a huge demand for energy, which means there could be, not saying there will be, there could be. No emissions, hence more problems with climate change. So you begin to see the interconnections. But a lot of these people will also move into cities, urbanization. So new urban settlements, new additional waste management issues for municipalities. You need new mass transit systems. If they continue the same consumption patterns as you and I have done, we don't have enough space. We don't have enough materials. So we talk in that context about sustainable production consumption. We need a lot of changes given these demographic projections and where the purchasing power would be and what will happen going forward. So we talk a lot within the UN these days about sustainable production and consumption systems and sharing best practices, how we will cope with this. This is not just about climate change. This is the reality of demographics and some of these structural changes we cannot stop. With that, let me transition a little bit to energy. So you ask the key questions, okay, with all of these issues, what kind of global governance systems would we have? What will be the role of the UN? Where do you transact these issues as they now converge? Because they're not isolated anymore. You look at a case of energy when the United States and other OECD countries were industrializing. People have looked at this from the beginning of the industrial revolution to now and they've just tried to average out in the new energy, world energy outlook. Let's say energy price roughly on average for all that period $25 a barrel for you. The developing countries and emerging economies will do their own transformation when oil is $100 a barrel. So the days of cheap oil, what does that mean for them? What does it mean for poor countries when energy hits that level? I put this map up, I don't have my pointer. So as we're going to talk about global governance and what can be done, we chose, and that's part of my leadership within the UN, on behalf of the Secretary General to say fine, let's take one of these issues. And we are convinced that central to the issues we're going to be dealing with on sustainable development is energy. 64 to 70% of emissions come from energy systems, energy production, transmission, and use. So you can't solve climate change without dealing with energy. It will just be a dream. If you look again also at poverty, countries need energy to propel growth in their economies. Should they use the old fossil technologies? If you and I say, they should be holier than thou, then what technologies do they use? Is it affordable? Who finances? There's always an incremental cost when you go to the cleaner technologies. Who pays that incremental cost? So again, growth, poverty, the energy linkage, but more importantly, some argue, Jeremy Rifkin recently in his new book, The Third Industrial Revolution, he argues the real trigger of the financial crisis and the debt crisis is energy. When energy hit $147 a barrel, all of you paid attention in the US. He believes on some other side, that was the real trigger. To show how vulnerable our economy is. And he's predicting that it's a five-year cycle. There is a crisis, demand goes down, prices drop of oil and energy. Suddenly it picks up again, demand picks up, it goes up. And they believe this cycle will repeat each time and it will go back to over $100 a barrel. And then we'll have problems again. So we picked energy. So let's take energy and see how we take action on this as the UN and the global community. How can we rally the world around energy issues? Looking at availability and equity issues within energy. Looking at climate change and then shared responsibility. I'll show you this map. This is a satellite map from NASA at night. That's Africa, very dark, everywhere else, right? But you see a little bit also. Darkness in Asia, some again in Brazil. That's how it is today. Somebody's gonna flip this for me or there's a, okay, right here. Energy poverty. This is the data, current data from the International Energy Agency. The open circles, the level of energy poverty in different continents, as it stands, Africa, with about 587 million people without access to electricity. Asia, India about 600 million, some say 400 million. And then the field in circles, that's their projection by 2030. Bottom line, their projection, this is 2011, all energy outlook. There will still be 1.3 billion people not connected. Business as usual scenario. In addition, we know today about 2.73 billion. Use biomass for cooking and their primary energy needs. Projection, that number will still be 2.8 billion by that time. Energy poverty, they also happen to be the poorest of the poor. So I said India 400 million in India. Question is, are there new approaches to solve this problem? Because it's also a social problem. We estimate 1.5 to 2 million people die every year. Premature deaths from indoor air pollution, most of them women and children, so it's a social problem. It's more than malaria. The projection for 2030 is that other diseases might drop. But the deaths from indoor air pollution will be more than HIV, and malaria combined. So it is a health and social problem. You can look at some of the work on this indoor air pollution from Kirk Smith, University of Berkeley, he's done a lot of this work with WHO. How do we make energy access a priority in the development discourse? It's not been an issue in the UN. We don't talk much about energy. Typically we attach energy to other issues, sustainable development, climate change. The reason is, each time energy comes up, there is a fight. It's about the geopolitics of energy. Who will control the supply? We change the narrative. Let's talk about energy for development. And that's the narrative we're using here. How do we mobilize action? How can the UN lead action and get countries to rally around it? How do we finance? And then how would we have accountability? And so this is an area where we're going to be, the Secretary-General has made it clear for his second time, sustainable development is the issue. And for sure, energy within that. This again is from the International Energy Agency. Projections of global energy mix, as they said. Natural gas, playing a big role. I think Fukushima has helped. You can see this period. Fukushima has helped a lot. There's a lot of shifts. Some people are calling this the golden age of gas, as a transition fuel. But this is where we want to go. We want to increase the share of renewables, very small. So to improve this mix, to decarbonize energy systems. How can we promote access? And at the same time, introduce these new technologies. So that more people have access, but at the same time, we solve climate change as well. How do you do all of this and transact and get buy-in? When you have a political system now where they're still made everywhere. Even in the US, you can have an easy discussion on climate change or energy policy here. Again, balancing energy security, energy access, and then dealing with climate change. Secretary-General therefore decided to launch. It's the only new initiative he's introduced at the General Assembly this year. An initiative on sustainable energy for all. He's asked me and also Chad Holiday, Chairman Bank of America, to lead this group. We've set up a very high-powered group, 35 people, most of them from the private sector. Only three of us from the UN. Because the capital we need for this, $48 billion a year, it's not from aid. So again, you have a big debate now. Where do you get the money? Where do you get that $48 billion? It's not from aid money. Aid money is a share, but it's mainly leveraging from the private sector. Hence, this group is heavily dominated by companies that are technology providers, by bankers and others. How do we leverage that cash? And then the R&D support we need to drive down the cost of renewables. Our remit is to develop an action agenda. How do we, can we set some political goals and then develop a strategy and action agenda to achieve those goals and have an accountability framework and then launch that agenda in Rio Plus 20? That's our remit in that group. Already we have defined three goals to achieve universal access to energy by 2030. We wanna double the share of renewable energy in the energy mix. In fact, some of us have a number. We say make it 30% renewables. Now that's easier said than done. And it's very political. And then we say double the rate of improvement of energy efficiency per year. That translates to about 40% improvement in energy efficiency by 2030. That's tough. Our argument is you gotta do all of this. You gotta make poor people have access. That's about equity and growth and their own access to prosperity. But you gotta do these two things if we want to lower emissions. We want to be sustainable. So how do you combine all of this and get the world to rally around? So first of all, we've defined political goals. These are not binding because that's the problem in the negotiations. In climate negotiations, nobody wants binding targets. We're saying fine, let's have aspirational goals. Can we set some key norms and principles as a global community that we should do this? It covers equity. It also covers climate change and sustainability issues. So we have established this and the question is now, how do we achieve them? And that's the job this high level group is gonna do to develop an action agenda. Some people have said to me, well, if you're advocating for more access, you're advocating for more power generation. And you're pushing for coal-fired plants and the world is gonna go to hell if all these people have electricity. Well, again, we went to IEA, we say you do the heavy lifting, do the analysis for us. Without these connecting these 1.4 billion people who have zero access, this will still be your demand globally because these developing countries need energy. Now, what if we were to connect those? Just increases demand by 1.1%. It's negligible, yeah? But what happens to emissions? Without these folks, you still have high emissions because it'll be business as you will. People will build those coal-fired plants. You can't tell them not to have it. If some of us have enjoyed it two, 300 years, others need it too. So you can't stop them. They may use nuclear, they may use something else, but they'll do it anyway. So we say, well, what if we were to say we give these 1.4 billion people existing fossil technologies? By how much will it increase emissions? Negligible. So the whole issue of climate change is not an excuse not to have that equity, not to have these people access energy so they can have prosperity. But we don't want them to use the old technologies if we can avoid it. We want to help them leapfrog. We want them to use those renewable sources, but they're expensive. Who pays the incremental cost? Is the technology available? How do you deploy it to scale, not pilot projects? How do you deploy to scale? Not easy. This is not government aid. This is about business models that will convince private sector to really bring that cash, that 48 billion, but use sustainable sources rather than the traditional sources of energy. Can they leapfrog? Well, if the US cannot easily increase the share of renewables in their own mix, how can we preach that to poor countries? They don't have the technology yet. So what capacity building, what kind of public policies will make that happen? So you saw the three goals. In our action agenda, we already know identifying that in access, finance is gonna be a key issue there. How do we bring in private sector to provide that finance? So we have a group looking at finance and for sure we have Chad Holliday, he's a big banker in this country. And so he will be helping us in that group with some other people from around the world. We wanna do these other, climate related if you will, our goals, the kind of R&D you need, the same issues arise here, the public policy that will incentivize using more energy sources that are less carbon intensive. Some people say the promising one could be a bridging fuel, can be natural gas. We have an aspiration, more renewables, but we need a pathway to go there. Energy systems take several years to design. They take several years to put on the ground to finance. How do we bridge that gap? Some people say natural gas. So I picked one of the simple ones and again I picked these numbers from IEA. So well what about if we say, let's look at clean cooking solutions for that 2.7 billion because we know those technologies. Unfortunately, Mrs. Clinton in fact is leading that crusade in the clean cookstove alliance. And I'll talk about that a little bit. You see how much the world is ready to tackle some of these things. The kind of partnerships we're talking about building. If we take providing modern cooking energy solutions to the poor, we need about 74 to 100 billion. Part of that money can go into LPG. Yeah, liquid-fired petroleum gas. We can easily quickly connect 220 million and why that's small? Because we're saying it's more the people in the urban centers that can use this quickly. You can do the distribution systems, but by the time you extend to rural areas, you can have many more. This is not rocket science, it's not. This is done in many countries now, but it's still not available to most other people. And so you can also reduce 2 million premature deaths, possibly because now they have modern cooking facilities. You save women and children 20 hours per week in some countries from collecting firewood. Again, financing. How do you leverage that? What are the business models? Because these are household solutions. How do you incentivize that, that you have the systems in the countries to make it available? So this was my advertisement of the oil and gas group. I say, can you help us? So it's good for your business. It's good for the MDGs, it's good for the climate. But this is where I spend a lot of time. This is where you begin to look at social justice, security, and so on. This is from Foreign Policy Magazine, March 2010. That's a picture they had looking at the Niger Delta. How many of you see young faces here? How many young people have had a Niger Delta in Nigeria? For me, this article in Foreign Policy Magazine begins to connect social justice, energy justice, climate justice. I walked in Nigeria. This is the Niger Delta. See the darkness all around? That's gas flaring. That's about three, four billion dollars a year. Burnt, because it's easier to do it. The kids don't have electricity, so they're playing soccer around the gas flaring. That's been going on for 45 years in that region. When I arrived in Nigeria in 2000 to work there as a UNIDO rep, they were having some rebellion there already. Kids agitating. And I remember sitting with some Nigerian ministers and generals. I say, you know something? This little, they call it little rebellion. This little rebellion can lead to a civil war. They say, nah, we are not like you Sierra Leoneans and Liberians. That will never happen. We have a strong army. We'll crush them. Say, really? Fast forward. 10 years later, it's a full blown rebellion. It's about natural resources. But it's more than that. The air is polluted. The water is polluted. The soil is polluted. They don't have electricity. This is being flared, 45 years. In the North Sea, you don't flare gas unless it's technically necessary. In Algeria, you don't flare gas unless it is technically necessary. Or LPG is everywhere, even in the rural communities. But yeah, Sub-Saharan Africa. It's burnt. Not piped to the homes. Not used for power generation. Flared, 45 years. But worst of all, UNEP had a report now this year about the level of pollution. Some of us knew that. Greenpeace, everybody's accounted. The pollution in that area is equal to or more than Exxon Valdez when I was a student here. Rebellion, bad corporate practices, socially injustice, instability. You fast forward. I mentioned this the last time I was visiting here. This year, my representative in Nigeria is sitting here. Well, terrorists bombed the UN office. Remember I told the Nigerians, this thing could spill over? We don't know who did it. Some people say it's the Islamists. Well, just think about it. The poor Islamists in the North combining forces with the poor. This same franchise, those in the South, you have chaos. So again, we begin to link. And yesterday I talked about this with a group. What do you call it? The Future Energy Coalition, right? John Podesta and all of these people were there. There was an admiral in the room. He said, I have better pictures for you. See, because I'm using it with some generals now to talk about development and security. And he has different pictures from mine showing the settlements and so on and where the rebels are in the same region. He said, thank you for raising it. It's an admiral from the US Navy. So again, you begin to see the linkage, energy, poverty, climate change, security, and so on. So what we've tried to do in conclusion, we've picked this. This is risk-taking now. As I tell you, energy is a sensitive subject. We're going to lead it. But Chad Holiday is a good businessman. We have CEOs from Vestas, from Vestas, largest wind power company, Sontek, largest solar PV producer in the world. We have Munich Re, going to have somebody from the Department of Energy here, State Department. These are real issues. These are not trivial. If you're talking about food security, you need an energy source to add value. Yesterday, that was the subject of our presentation at the International Food Policy Research Institute. Ah, gender empowerment. It is the women and children who suffer the most when you have lack of energy. It is the women who collect that firewood, who go down to the water to bring the water to the side, to bring the water to the house, to cook. And guess what? Pollute themselves in the process, and many of them die. So you look at the centrality and what we're trying to do now, with the leadership of the secretary general, to lead this, take it to Rio, put the partnerships together, like the clean cookstove alliance. Mrs. Clinton backed it, but you have a number of companies. When they started, I think, what, 20 entities today? It's over 100 pledges. Dow, Corning, you name all these companies. They see it as a social issue. But it's not a gift. We're looking at business. What kind of R&D to make these stoves available? University of Colorado, all of these guys are involved. The best technologies, just to make that simple technology available to women and children, quick in communities. How do you build a market for that? Maintenance, supply, so that it's not charity. People make money in the supply chain. Here again, it's a clever use of aid, combined with private capital and knowledge to create a market for a simple solution that has both social and economic implications. We're going to use the same kind of model. For me, in conclusion, that's the kind of new leadership we're looking for in the United Nations. The problems are too complex. They're converging too fast. You don't have the luxury anymore of saying, I deal with only the rebellion in Darfur. In the same Darfur, you have to take care of the women who are raped when they go to fetch firewood. In the same Darfur, you have to deal with the deforestation that is taking place when refugees move, or if they move over to neighboring countries. These issues are converging. They are not separate. And in a poor country, they don't have that luxury anymore. To choose between climate and poverty? No, it's all at the same time, because climate is affecting poverty at the same time. And the governments have limited budgets. But ODA is shrinking in this debt crisis. How do you leverage private finance? I didn't give you much solutions, but I gave you some ideas of, at least in one case, how we deal with it. There's another group looking at water. There's another group looking at food security. The key is, how do we combine those efforts, because they're all interconnected? But we have groups looking at them. My job is to lead this one, which is perhaps even more difficult and more political difficult to transact. Thank you very much. Candy, thank you very much. That was just tremendous. And I think what I'm taking away from this is about new models of combining development resources, along with leveraging private sector resources to solve these problems. It's not about charity, and it's not about handouts, and that we have to bring the private sector in. But we have to bring the private sector in, not as a charitable player, but as in a way in which they're making money. And we talk a lot about sustainability. We talk a lot about scale in the development business, where if we want to achieve scale, we want to achieve sustainability. It's going to have to look in like models as the way you are depicting them in your presentation. So thank you very much. I'm going to ask my colleague, Sarah Ladislaw, from the Energy Program to respond. And then we're going to open it up for some questions. Sarah. Absolutely. Thank you so much for such wonderful and compelling comments. I think you've touched on what not only a lot of the things that we focus on in the energy program here at CSIS, but what a lot of our colleagues focus on is we were talking before your remarks. We've got groups that focus on food security and water issues and global health issues and demographic issues. And indeed, it's getting more and more complex for us to be able to sort of deal with them as a package. But the thing I wanted to sort of take the opportunity to ask you a question on is, you are in Washington, DC, and we do have sort of a self-absorbed kind of quality to a lot of the discussions we look at even on a global basis. And I thought you did a very good job of couching for a DC audience the idea that even though there's a global economic crisis going on, even though we've got sort of a fiscal austerity and budget discussions going on here, that there is a broader global community that is looking at some of these challenges and that they're looking forward to major events like Rio plus 20 next year, like the Secretary General's Initiative Energy for All of next year. And one of the things that I wanted to ask you to talk a little bit more about, if you could before we open up to questions from the audience, is this idea that we've got prevailing here is that without some sort of globally binding treaty with the failure of global climate change talks and those types of things, that these types of conversations that reducing emissions, that private sector activity to make waves both on the energy poverty side but also on the emissions reductions or the energy efficiency side are really doomed and that we don't necessarily have a path forward for that. How do you see in very concrete terms the outcomes that may or may not come from the end of the climate change negotiations before the end of the Kyoto Protocol at the end of this year and sort of the relationship between what you're trying to tee up from Rio and both in the political sense but also in the practical sense. How do we get folks that feel like we've gotten a one, two punch on being able to deal with these issues effectively over that hurdle and thinking about them in new ways and new ways that help us feel like those goals are achievable? We must support the formal negotiating processes. These processes we are created by member states, not by the UN. Member states defined how they want the UNFCCC to conduct its negotiations in a very inclusive way. So it was their prescription to have 190 something countries around the table. It is up to them to change the format. So my first comment would be, we have to respect and support those processes. And if they're done inclusively, transparently, you get a level playing field and you get commitments from everybody and trust is built. It's not easy to do, but that was the intention. And so we continue to support that and hope that we do get the grand deal that we expect. Meanwhile, some of us are convinced that on energy we don't need to wait. If we say we wait for a grand deal, then it is basically saying to poor people, you perish, we continue to pollute and wait till we get a grand deal. That's not equity. That's not fairness. Because those who are the worst affected, now particularly in Africa, they will pay in all the projections we see, they will pay probably the highest price if we have business as usual. So by not having a deal and telling people to wait till you bring these kinds of solutions, I talk about does not augur well for a secure and safe world. I think that it is in our collective interest to see that these solutions are spread. And that's what we are trying to do, to say fine. As we negotiate, we know there are things we can do now and today. We know the solutions are there. What we wanna do is what new financing models, business models we can do to deploy these solutions to scale. I always say we want to avoid just shining a light on poverty. You know, you put a few solar panels and you come home and say, hey, give a light to Candice Village. That's not enough. We want energy that changes their lives. Their productive capacities. Expands economic prosperity for them. Otherwise, we are all not safe. What do you do with all these people? We're waiting for the negotiations to finish. Meanwhile, the populations are growing, moving into cities. You will have instability. And that was the connection with failed states. When you have failed states, nobody's safe. So our message is negotiate, respect the processes, but you know something, let that not be the excuse of not taking action. But the question is, what action? Can we show some? We are trying to show that in the energy space. You can show that in the food security space. Because part of that demographic figure suggests that we need to increase food production by 50% by 2030. I think 70% by 2050. We gotta feed those people. So yesterday we spent time on agribusiness. Again, there are solutions in the United States that we've used in other places that can help answer that question as well. If you look at agribusiness, food security, job creation, value addition, and wealth creation in an economy. As you have done here, success. We have some microphones here. I'm gonna collect questions world bank style. And so we'll gather a couple of questions and I'll ask people to identify themselves. And if you can frame your question in the form of a short question, that would be ideal. So I'm gonna start with my friend Tony Carroll up front here. If there are others, if they'd raised their hand so I can see if you have other questions. I didn't know what to expect when I came here and congratulations on a terrific presentation. My name is Tony Carroll and I am a partner in Manchester trade but I also teach at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. And I've been reading with great interest in the last year or two the work of Michelle Severino. And he talks about, articulates quite a bit on this urban migration issue in Africa. And some of his conclusions are different than yours. He thinks that urban migration will allow for more efficient delivery of services including energy. That depopulating rural areas will allow for the first time increase in scale of agricultural production. That in effect there will be a green revolution but it will part because of greater ability of being able to produce scale agriculture. And thirdly, he thinks that there will be social upliftment because of the more concentration of service delivery mechanisms apart from just energy. And lastly, if you go back to Professor Lewis and the idea of surplus labor, that Africa's moment has come. That this is Africa's time because nowhere else has it achieved such a surplus of labor. And that will endure to the benefit of Africa's potential as an industrialization and other productive economy. So slightly different than your thesis here but there are elements there that touch upon your predictions. And I just sort of like to get your comment upon those. Yes, my comment is I am sure he gives some provisals because I fully agree with him. It could be a demographic dividend. That's what they call it in Vietnam and in India. They're looking at those demographic transitions as a dividend. Conditions are the following. Provided they are skilled. Then it's a benefit. Provided you have the infrastructure in place. Ah, provided you have an area, a sector that will have some. The problem with Africa that rural urban migration and those demographics are preceding structural change. That's the crisis point and lack of skills. Unskilled, poor, illiterate people packed in the city, not enough water, not enough light. Ah, but you don't also have the supply structure to supply the food. I was a minister before. Trade and industry dealing with rice, petroleum, flour and all the essential products. Let me tell you, when you know the riots will begin tomorrow morning, you import food immediately. You don't wait. But that kills local production. So this, for Africa, the challenge is that this is happening too fast, too soon, before you have the structural change in the economy and the infrastructure and skills base to absorb that label. In Vietnam, in India, they're looking at it. In fact, the former trade and industry minister of India was a friend of mine. He wrote a book. He said, India's time. And he's counting on that demographic transition that we will have the skilled labor force to be the powerhouse of industry. So let's educate those Africans with the right skills. Zen, I agree with Sivirino, he's a good friend of mine. Gentlemen back there. Hi, thank you for your talk. My name is Andrew Gisselquist. I do a little bit of electricity consulting here in town for a firm called Boston Pacific Company. And I also do some consulting for a firm, Ian Coe, who's done for about the last 20 years investing in small-scale entrepreneurs around the world and helping, investing in them and then training them for business skills so they can then promote clean energy in their communities. And so I was very interested to hear you talk about financing these initiatives. And I'd just like to get a little more detail from you about what sorts of energy projects you're looking to finance or focusing on finance. And are you talking more about grid-scale, larger projects, whether they be fossil-fueled or renewable energy? You mentioned Vestis as a partner, the big wind turbine developer. Or are you talking more maybe smaller-scale, small-medium enterprises, local entrepreneurs, just if you could give some sort of direction there. Thanks. It's good to know that you work for Christine Epsinger. She's in the group. She's supposed to help us with some of those bottom-up solutions. In fact, I was just grilled heavily at State Department about those models. Is it just top-down grid-based or will we look at decentralized bottom-up solutions as well? It's both. Countries need both. And so Christine, we're working very closely with Christine to look at these bottom-up solutions that you guys have worked on. Congratulations. We know some of your models. She'll be in however. Again, when you're looking at scale. For you to get the kind of, I mean in Africa, we have a target adopted two months ago in South Africa by the African Ministers of Energy to add another 40 gigawatts in the next five to six years. If you're looking at that level of scale, you need a clear top-down solution. You need a plan that gives confidence the companies to come in for independent power production. They need confidence that you have a reform of your power distribution systems. Some of those utilities are money wasters or money draining institution. So you need a whole sector reform to get that confidence to come in. But what we are advocating in the group, and that's why we have Christine and others in the group, to have an integrated solution top-down bottom-up because the challenge is, if you say you wait till you have the plan ready, sometimes it takes three, four years. Meanwhile, there are these models we know that you can do some things now with bottom-up solutions, mini grid, one megawatt in a community. They can pump water. They have solar panels. And so we're saying we don't wait till the plan is finished and we find the 300 million. We have solutions now that are worth only three million and we can do it. So bottom-up top-down. And so I was challenged at state now, so Candia, when will you have a template ready? I don't know. So I'm putting the experts together and integrating these because the communities are also separate. The big utility guys want the grid-based solutions. But you have others saying, hey, there are other ways to do this. So my job is to bring them together and say, okay, give us an integrated plan that does not leave people out while they wait. Because even to do those plans based on what we know from the World Bank, to design some of those systems, you need five, 20 million dollars. Just to get the plan done and do the environmental impact assessments and then the financial package, three, four years minimum, before you even begin. Should people wait? I've been the front here. Thank you very much. I've been senior advisor to four different parts of the UN over my career, so I won't ask you the question in my heart, which is how can we get this kind of dynamism throughout the system. But the question I will ask you with this, you pointed to the need for more complex approaches like the Peace Building Commission for areas like Darfur and so forth. So I wonder if you could spell out a little bit what you'd like to see happen in the more political and development nexus in the way of more complex and more systemic solutions guided by the UN. Thank you. Wow, that's the soft and difficult part of the UN. I was looking today, somebody says the purpose of the UN is to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations amongst nations, promote social progress, better living standards and human rights. Holy cow, all of that. Tough, easier said than done. And then I saw somebody else describing it to say, well, the UN was not created to take us to heaven. It was created to save ourselves from going to hell because all of the violations of human rights is like hell. Climate pollution and if the catastrophic scenarios are true, that's climate hell. How can the UN save you and me from doing wrong things because we do have a proclivity to do the easy and the wrong ones? My dear friend, I dodged that part of the UN, I like the technology side of it. How many economists? So I spend time with these engineers now, electrical guys like this and they say, you economists, you create all the problems. With technology, it's cause and effect. So I spend more time there, however, however. That is perhaps the most important part of the UN, keeping the peace. So keep this, you need trust, you need confidence building, you need dialogue. When people feel left out of any system and they lose hope and dignity, you get chaos. How you maintain that? In the context I described before, with financial crisis, money not flowing anymore. With other grievances that I imagine, it's very tough in this context. We have to finance a number of activities. How do you create the dialogue in an atmosphere where the world has disappointed poor countries by not finishing Doha? Remember we had a slogan, trade your way out of poverty. For six years, we cannot even agree on a trade deal. And in the middle of that, now we've come with a climate deal. Well, my dear friends, if you have been polluting for so long and you cannot even help me trade my way out of poverty, how can I trust you now to help us save ourselves from climate health? Very tough. We know you need more dialogue. We know excluding people from dialogue is not the answer. Churchill used to say, let's draw, draw, let's not war, war. Tough to do, takes time to transact, 192. But again, we do believe that we begin to see mechanisms evolving. When the financial crisis hit, G20. Let's face it, it worked. They stopped the crisis. Ah, but it's for that period. But you don't just solve the problem for two years. As we see now, it continues to unravel. How do you institutionalize and begin to implement some of the principles? You should see some of the key principles in the Pittsburgh meeting of the G20, enunciated by these countries of what the responsibility we all have. The role of the UN is to bring those kinds of principles back into the system. To say, can we as an international community, a community of nations, can we agree on certain norms? You need it in peace, you need it in human rights, but you know you also need it in natural resource exploitation. We cannot afford for part of the world to say, we continue to consume as we do. We continue to pollute as we do. You solve your own problem, but we're not changing lifestyle. If you slow yours down, then it's okay. You need a place to transact that. I don't know anywhere else. You can have other mechanisms to implement faster. You can have other mechanisms to find the solutions quick, but it's good you bring it back to the community of nations. We all need to take them up as solutions. Some people prefer to say, well, let's do bilateral. In the case of pollution, it's transboundary. Carbon has no passport or nationality. It's carbon. Same with other pollutants. So I guess I dodged your question. It's difficult, but that's one of the key important work of the UN. We're looking at it. We have the Human Rights Commission. We're building these kinds of institutions, but we all have to agree to the same norms and standards. That's where it begins from, defining those values that we all hold dear and will promote around the world. So equity, fairness, human rights, and transparency, and no double standards. Ended there because we have a reception in the back, and so I'd like you all to join me in thanking