 discuss planetary boundaries, and then we're going to have this panel discussion, which I'm very much looking forward to because we have some great panelists. So to take the broadest possible overview, we, those of us who are alive in this day and time, are living in a moment of the most profound transformation in the history of human civilization. We have quadrupled the numbers of human beings in less than a century, and I'm not going to get into a discussion of population dynamics, except to say briefly that, believe it or not, it is a success story unfolding in slow motion. Population dynamics are stabilizing in the main, but there are continuing areas of rapid population growth, especially a dozen countries or so in Sub-Saharan Africa. And by mid-century, Africa will have more people than China or India, and by the end of this century, Africa will have more people than China and India combined. So we have a continuing challenge to educate girls and empower women and reduce child mortality and make fertility management ubiquitously available. And when those four policies are implemented successfully, simultaneously, then the population dynamics are likely to stabilize in those areas of continued high growth. But the rapid expansion of human population sets the stage as only one of three factors that have fundamentally altered the relationship between humanity and the ecological systems of the earth upon which our flourishing and even our survival depend. The second factor is the development of technologies far more powerful than any of our grandparents or great-grandparents could have possibly imagined. And some of these technologies have led to miraculous improvements in the quality of life, but some have an aggregate power that is now enabling us to press against the limits of what the ecological system can absorb, can sustain itself in the force of these new technologies, especially energy because for 150 years now when oil was first drilled in Pennsylvania and joined up with coal and then later gas, fossil fuels still to this day account for 80% of all the energy that we use in the global economy and in our lives on this planet. So population growth plus technological power plus the third element, the most important, our way of thinking and more specifically decide a few examples are continued unhealthy obsession with short term measurements of whether we are making progress or not doing the right thing or not and our unwillingness all too often to take a longer term view. The ecological systems really require us to shift our way of thinking. But in any case when you take those three factors and combine them what has resulted is a collision between us and the ecological system of the earth and some parts of that system are now buckling from the impact. And we see this collision manifested in the destruction of forests around the world at a very rapid rate last year was the second worst year for forest loss in history. Generally speaking we lose about one football field per second, the destruction of wet lands and mangrove forests, the loss of the web of life that we depend on and of which we are a part, the development of freshwater scarcity, the depletion of top soils and underground water aquifers, the threats, the growing threats to ocean productivity. But the most vulnerable part of the earth's ecological system by far is the climate system and there's a very simple reason why that sometimes is obscured from our view. When we walk out of this building and look up at the sky it seems like a vast and limitless expanse but as most are aware in reality it's an incredibly thin shell surrounding the planet with a total volume of molecules that is only a tiny fraction of what exists in our imagination of the sky. And the power of 7.6 billion people with these powerful technologies that use fossil fuels for 80% of our energy means that we are spewing 110 million tons of man-made heat trapping global warming pollution into that thin shell of atmosphere every day. We are treating it as an open sewer for the gaseous waste of our global civilization. We are trapped inside that spherical atmosphere that surrounds us, that little shell. And the accumulated amount of man-made global warming pollution that we have dumped there now traps as much extra heat energy compared to the entire existence of humanity prior to now as much extra heat energy as would be released by 500,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every day. It's a big planet but that is an enormous amount of energy. And there are certain aspects of the climate system, ocean currents, wind currents, indeed most parts of the Earth's ecological system that are finally tuned to the conditions present when human civilization first built our first cities 10,000 years ago. This extra heat energy goes predominantly into the oceans. And the Earth's system as a whole tends to even out the heat distribution all such open systems do. And in the case of our planet, the primary engine driving the climate system is the redistribution of heat from the tropics on either side of the equator to the poles. Because of course the sun hits a direct, at a more direct angle in the tropics year around and only a glancing blow six months of each year at the poles respectively. So how is this heat redistributed? Through the ocean currents and through the wind currents and complex phenomena like El Nino and others that are less known in popular culture. The temperature differential between the North Pole, which is more significant because of the land mass that is in bulk in the Northern Hemisphere and crucial in the Southern Hemisphere but Antarctica is isolated by the Southern Ocean. But the temperature differential between the temperature at the North Pole and the temperature at the equator is a kind of formula X over Y. It helps define the pattern of all of these ocean and wind currents and we're changing it because even when the sun hits a glancing blow at the North Pole, it encounters ice and snow and the ice and snow melts and the Arctic Ocean is melting. And when it melts, the sun's rays don't bounce off anymore. They're absorbed by the dark ocean and the dark land. And so the temperature increases two to four times more rapidly in the Arctic as it does in the tropics. So all of these patterns are struggling to maintain the equilibrium that has existed for the entirety of our civilization's history and they're now changing. The Northern Hemisphere jet stream which has served among other purposes the movement of storms and weather systems across the North American continent and Eurasia is now becoming a bit chaotic with large loops and episodic periods of disorganization. Why does that matter? Well, two weeks ago, Hurricane Florence hit North and South Carolina. And instead of moving off, it just stayed there. The same thing happened one year ago with Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Texas which dropped as much water as 500 days of the full flow of Niagara Falls, five feet of water. And Hurricane Florence three weeks ago was the fifth once in a thousand year rainfall event in the previous 12 months in the United States. And I'm not even mentioning Super Typhoon Manghut which was even stronger and even bigger and devastated parts of Luzon and the Philippines and then Hong Kong. And the range of consequences that we're seeing are apocalyptic. And the scientists predicted them and the scientists were exactly right. And because they were right, we should pay more careful attention to what they're predicting now will occur if we continue to put another 110 million tons every single day up there. Do we want to lose 50% of the living species on this earth, on our watch? Do we want to see a long list of great cities like Cape Town struggling with the possibility of running out of water completely? Do we want more giant fires like the ones in California last month and across many parts of the world? Mongolia, above and in Johan's home, country six big fires of north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden. The consequences should capture our attention and we should conclude that we really have to change and business has a role, investors have a role, governments have a role. Now the good news is we have relief available to us, heaven sent with solar energy and wind energy and batteries and electric vehicles and sustainable agriculture and sustainable forestry. For the 40 years I've worked on this, the essential problem has been and is now that the maximum which seems politically feasible still falls well short of the minimum necessary to satisfy the laws of physics. So what do we do in a situation like that? The answer is very simple, we expand the limits of what is politically feasible. And there too businesses and investors and regional and local governments along with nation states can play a role. In conclusion we can solve this and the remaining question is will we solve it? Last week California which if a nation would be the fifth largest national economy in the world just passed and signed a new law. By 2045 100% renewable energy will be required by law, 100% carbon neutral for the entire economy of the entire state of California. This is in the spirit of the Paris Agreement and the Paris Agreement is not yet producing the results we need but we are approaching the five year mark when according to the treaty every nation must take stock and increase ambition. So I hope that this meeting along with the others that have been organized here will help to add to that momentum. And as I often say I will close with a reminder that for anyone who thinks we do not as human beings have the political will to bring about the necessary changes please remember that political will is itself a renewable resource. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. Now you set the stage brilliantly because you actually teed up our next speaker Professor Johann Rockstrom who actually by the way many of you know from his fantastic work on Planetary Boundaries and you probably think the Stockholm Resilience Institute but actually recently announced as the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Assessment which is the world's leading school of study on these topics so congratulations to you Johann and perhaps you can take us forward in this discussion of your thinking of how these things are connected and what you think we should do next Johann. Thank you so much Dominic and let me just start by making a minor correction to President Gore's presentation. Scientists were actually not entirely right. If there's a red thread of the last 20 years is that science has undressed the pace of change. There's reason to be quite critical actually and today we're seeing that things are changing faster than science predicted it should. Based on the evidence presented by Al Gore the scientific conclusion is as you know that we've entered a whole new geological epoch the Anthropocene where we as humanity are the driving force of change on earth. The only reason in fact that the temperature on earth has not exceeded one degree Celsius which is the warmest temperature on earth since the last ice age 12,000 years ago is thanks to exactly what President Gore presented to us the absorption capacity in the biosphere. The resilience of the planet has been and actually continues to be extraordinarily high but we're starting to see the buckles the cracks in that capacity. Earth resilience is starting to go down and the latest scientific evidence shows that we today have so much empirical observations of an earth system that is regulated by the capacity of carbon sinks regulating energy fluxes in oceans and that we have tipping elements in the earth system illustrated here which are mapped and published increasingly in the previous scientific literature. We have the permafrost thawing risks we have the albedo changes when the planet gets darker due to melting ice. We have the rising evidence that the three big rainforest systems in the Amazon and the Congo and Indonesia have tipping points that could irreversibly push them into a savanna state. We have rising evidence that what keeps us in an equilibrium state that we've had since the last ice age depends on these tipping elements that we need to become stewards of. In fact we know so much from the paleoclimatic science today that over the last 1.2 million years we've been harmoniously cycling between glacial and interglacial periods roughly six to eight times. The so-called Milankovic cycles with 100,000 years of ice age roughly four degrees Celsius lower temperature than pre-industrial. And then we exit these 100,000 cycles into the 15 to 30,000 year long interglacials shown here between zero and two degrees Celsius average warming very narrow bands. We've had six to eight such cycles and the hollow scene is the nice little cycle in the middle the most stable the most harmonious the precondition for our human economy. 1950 we go into the great acceleration and we're pushing ourselves to the edge point of the interglacials since the last 1.2 million year period and the latest science shows that we may be at a risk at two degrees Celsius of crossing a tipping point that would irreversibly push ourselves into a hot house future that would take us not to two three but potentially four or five six degrees Celsius due to self reinforcing warming in the biosphere. We know today already from the intergovernmental panel on climate change for example that at two degrees Celsius we would have already a bump up to probably two point five degrees Celsius just because of the loss of this resilience in the earth system. This gives tremendous scientific support to the Paris Climate Agreement. It gives tremendous scientific support to stay below two and aim for one point five. Now what's the journey we have to take? Well we have to start just as Christiana Figueres would have eminently with her stubborn optimism shared with us here bend the curve of emissions no later than 2020 and rush in a decarbonization path we're shown here in gray equal to a global carbon law of cutting emissions by half every decade to essentially a fossil fuel free world economy by mid-century but that's not enough we need to transform the food system from the single largest emitter shown here in brown to become the single largest carbon sink we have the solutions for this but this is an agricultural revolution but not that is enough we today have actually caused as Al Gore showed so much climate forcing loaded so much in the oceans that we need to whether we like or not invest in carbon capture and storage and different forms of biological capture and storage to be able to keep climate forcing under two degrees but not even that is enough we have to maintain the negative carbon sinks and ecosystems so that we have a minimum level of resilience in oceans core reef systems all the ocean systems and terrestrial ecosystems on land if we do all this we have a 66% chance of staying under two this is the scientific conclusion it is nothing less than a systemic global sustainability transition that requires the stewardship of all the planetary boundaries it's not enough to just decarbonize the energy system we need to take care of biodiversity land water nitrogen phosphorus air the whole paradigm shift into whole new logic for the future as Al Gore also referred to a few weeks back we met in San Francisco at the global climate action summit we presented their Christiana figures on myself the exponential climate action roadmap which is laying this diagnostic on the table but at the same time looking at where are we heading what is the pace of change we're seeing in the world today we mapped out based on the empirical trend lines we're seeing on investment in renewable energies technology advancements across different sectors in society showing working together with for example the drawdown project that we have evidence today that we can cut emissions by half over the next decade between 2018 and 2030 across essentially all sectors in society particularly important is the food consumption and agricultural sector where we today through all the forms of practices from conservation tillage to value chain investments to reduction in food waste can actually reduce half emissions by 2030 now this is based on the trend lines we're seeing and the most encouraging one is on this graph if you look at the last 15 years the pace of increase of solar and wind in the world is doubling every fourth year now that pace shows very little indent if you look at an exponential curve starting from zero between 2000 2015 it goes from roughly 1% to 2.8% but if you prolong that curve in the orange line here we end up in a situation that by 2030 50% of the electricity in the world would originate from solar and wind if we continue doubling every fourth year that's the nature and power of exponentials now any economist will say well but you hit ceilings along the way well isn't that our task to avoid hitting those ceilings on the left hand here you have the number of countries that actually have decoupled emissions from economic growth today we have 49 countries in that level these are not any countries these are countries representing 38% of global co2 emissions the projected to 2020 is over 50 countries we see real trends of potentially reaching a tipping point because 50 countries is 25 25% of the countries in the world when do we reach a point where the benefits of decarbonization become so obvious that it is a point where the minority may be able to tip over the majority so to conclude I think there is a very strong scientific message here that we can only succeed with our endeavors on human prosperity of social inclusion of meeting the SDGs if we have them confined within the planetary boundaries we now need to become planet Earth's doers to be able to have any chance on these social and aspirational targets that we've been setting and that requires that the fourth industrial revolution that the innovation investments that we're making are today confined within science-based targets of the earth system and there's so much discussion and enthusiasm and engagement around this not only from science but within business and policy around the world so I think there's a real reason to meet here and chart the pathway not only to adopt a new mind shift in terms of the logic around prosperity on earth but also how do we ramp up action and amplify thank you very much Professor Roxton thank you so much so it is an interesting segue so going to move from just such a powerful kind of set of openings here and the scale of the challenge the systemic nature of what we face the time constraint in which we face it but a level of optimism whether it's political or indeed in terms of some of these trend lines that this can be done and turn to this side of the stage and actually so I'm going to come to you Ambassador Lewis Al Fons de Alba now for some of us we might think we have a difficult job but Ambassador you've just been appointed special envoy for United Nations Secretary General's 2019 climate summit to corral the nations of the world into these levels of ambition that we've just heard about so we are all with you on this journey and we're very very excited to hear because it's only very recently that you were appointed this very very important role to hear from you as to your vision your hopes for the summit and compared to what we just heard in terms of the challenge ahead some of the approaches that you think we're going to need to meet and raise on this political ambition ambassador well thank you thank you very much Dominic and thank you very much for the help that you offered to me because it's indeed it's going to be a big challenge let me tell you that it is precisely as Vice President Gore was highlighting that we rise the level of political will the level of ambition and that's the main objective of the summit next year that's the reason the Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez has called for a summit meeting with head of state but I would start by highlighting some particularities to the for that summit and let me go back a little bit because I have participated in the Copenhagen meeting the cancun meeting I was the lead negotiator and I was in Paris and I see a few differences that need to be introduced in order to be successful and to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and the first one has to do with the inclusion I think the summit next year should not call only on leaders to come to New York and and make speeches or even just to tell us what they have done we need the leaders to to feel the pressure and to commit to additional measures to increase the level of ambition that was set up because even if we attain the levels of the Paris Agreement we will still be behind Secretary General has been very clear climate change is advancing much faster than we are but in order to do that as I mentioned leaders need to be pressured and they need to be pressured positively and that's why the meeting the summit should be a very inclusive one one on which private sector on which the scientific community the civil society in general will show up that dealing with climate change is not only an urgent responsibility as it was clearly highlighted here but it also makes sense it met it makes sense economically it makes sense politically it sense it makes sense morally and by inviting a number of factors by highlighting what the opportunities are for a transformational approach to the way we have been dealing with climate change I think we can make the difference and we can reach some goals for 2020 if you follow the discussion during the last years we were not only following the scientific assessment which is has been relatively worse than expected but on the other hand there is a number of governments and authorities that have changed their mind and they have undertaken new initiatives and let me highlight that this is not only national governments we are talking about a number of local authorities that have taken serious steps vice president was mentioned in the case of California and other state but it's not only in the US worldwide there are a number of businesses that have taken the lead so there are there is some positive elements of the developments we have had until now so the big question for the summit if I can go back is first of all to recognize that there is an intergovernmental process of negotiation which has going quite slowly compared to the gravity of the problem that we need to step up and we need a successful cop not only this year but particularly next year when we will be approaching the 2020 target that we set up in Paris that we need to increase the level of ambition from that that would be important and that we will be dealing with that with a different setting in terms of stakeholders but let me have a final word on how do we increase the pressure on governments and I think it is quite important and especially talking about these issues in the developed countries we tend to focus on mitigation we tend to focus on reducing emissions and we forget that the majority of countries are victims of climate change so we need a greater emphasis on resilience on adaptation to get those countries more engaged more supporting supportive and to pressure even more those major emitters so that would be also one of the objectives of the summit next year inclusion better balance between mitigation and adaptation and finally and it will come to the next presentation a flow of financial resources that would be absolutely necessary and that will come not only from international institutions you can be reassured it will have to come from business the hundred billion dollars that we envisage since Copenhagen are far from being reached at this point and I would say are very low compared to what is needed thank you ambassador thank you so much and is very interesting what what you're saying that in terms of your vision for the summit about this time next year I think in general assembly week probably here in here in New York that there's this there's this tone here of yes raising ambition but being having a positive agenda for governments and engaging as you say business investors non-state actors to create the momentum I suppose in terms of the narrative that you're you're looking for but at the same time and being realistic that there's a resilience agenda as well as a mitigation agenda so that sounds like a package of pretty interesting and some might argue an evolution in thinking in some of these processes that we've seen before and a very interesting message I think for the audience in terms of the inclusion element we're seeking from the summit next year you mentioned the money so let's turn to the global environment facility the CEO and chairperson of the global environmental facility Nike or is she now you've just had a very very successful replenishment round congratulations over four billion dollars in the GF's coffers now but interestingly perhaps for the audience here you didn't necessarily take a traditional approach in terms of mobilizing excitement about the next replenishment round for the GF and it builds on some of the points Ambassador made a little bit about the inclusion and different ways of thinking to solve the problem. Thank you Dominic and very good evening to everyone. It's really amazing how the global environmental agenda has evolved for the last few years. I took office actually six years ago and around that time often I felt lonely, powerless as if we were fighting against stone wall. Situation has changed dramatically for the last few years and look at this now that another environmental agenda has made it to this and now very prominent stage the main stage of this and a permanent event so that then it is a sea change from my point of view and what is behind the sea change what happened what changed I think there are three reasons for behind this change. Number one actually science that then the science message delivered by Yohan and actually emphasized by vice president we were in the collision course with nature and we really don't have time that message is getting much better communicated beyond the scientist cycle a cycle and definitely it has started to capture that the imagination and action of the scientist definitely Yohan you got me. Second thing second factor behind this change is actually the narrative that by now we come to know that in order for us to stay within the horizon we need a transformational change the way we eat and the food and the cities and the energy system but that kind of transformation sometimes cause the fear on us that it may be very costly it may be very difficult and that kind of you know drug us and going forward but no more that is not the case anymore by now it is widely recognized that this kind of transformation if managed well presents a huge potential in terms of innovation I'm pretty sure we are hearing from other presenters that it creates the opportunity business opportunity the job creation and the maybe liveable cities and the much healthier food so that kind of you know notion the narrative actually help us move forward so that's the second factor behind this journey of the global environmental agenda but the last one third one seems to be most important at least an institution like us that is the power of multi-stakeholder coalition as a very powerful mechanism to govern global environmental commons because the transformation we need that the global commons we need isn't it's not just an a government government system it really goes beyond the government state actors and beyond state actors it really needs that than everybody beyond national government is sub-national the cities but also business definitely and the CSO the scientists it really requires that everybody to come on board to flip the key economic system so that then the all the model that then we have seen is so quite mainly as relies on the government government and then that then it also that relies on kind of international treaties and also that the institution like us to channel money from north to south and it turned out to be simply not enough so that that this new era the new movement of this flourishing multi-stakeholder coalition proven to be a very effective way to govern this global commons and it is really a good way to catalyze the system change unfortunately like or not GF the institution I'm leading belongs to the old model and it's very clear by now you know let's say that the GF has created the 27 years ago with the purpose of to govern or safeguard the global commons and it turned out to be we have not been able to deliver that expectation and that is why we have made a significant dramatic change to the way we deliver the resources so that the native seven we have just concluded in June is our testimony that our determination how we want to change even the international institution like us and very much kind of all the traditional model can do something useful to govern the global commons for this and the replenishment the next four years we put the system approach at the center of our probe of our strategy and we take on we try to see where in that way we can catalyze the system change on the food system and the energy system in the city system and how we can help move on to the circular economy so this is our approach and all of them needs a multi-stakeholder stakeholder coalition to move on the largest program in this and the next four years is actually the food and land use coalition and I see many of the allies that are not partners in this room but this is coming based on the notion that unless we transform the food system there is no way for us to govern the global commons and that's why that the system takes that this program takes the system initiative based on the science-based land use planning and the take on that the broader integrated landscape approach and make sure that the no we actually that then are to to articulate to help the supply chain approach so that the each stage of the business supply chain actually can deliver what they are supposed to deliver so that is a good part now we are entering into the implementation for the last three weeks together with many of you we were in Africa we are in India we are in Indonesia so that's the time actually the reality also comes in I see that quite interest from that the parties are the actors but the most interest is expressed by local business not necessarily national government because local business particularly the ones who are interested in moving on to the sustainable practice actually a bit of the isolated and they feel it really makes sense for them to move on to the sustainable practice or is this the last why is this pay off or should we just go back to that traditional way of doing business so they see those people see this and a new approach as an instrument to move forward to instrument to change that than the market structure but that's why that I think that this program has a potential but we can only deliver together with the national government and local government the business CSO's and the science together my conclusion based on this and a journey is we can only deliver this by working together thank you so much thank you so this is quite interesting something is sort of going on if we'd had this conversation maybe five or six years ago we probably wouldn't have had that from the CEO of the global environment facility multi-stakeholder new business models systems transformation focusing on key areas like food as articulated by our opening speakers kind of new not new but you know not necessarily the sectors that people were focusing on several years ago but certainly opening up opportunities and ambassador echoing that and thinking that let's get a new kind of geometry into the summit which kind of harnesses some of this innovation provides a positive direction and confidence for for governments NICO if only there were more kind of leaders of international organizations in the way that you just articulated that it would be a very very interesting kind of time that we would live in you mentioned very much about local business which is very interesting indeed you would expect a panel like this to now have a multinational to have the business voice and for you what we thought we'd do is actually would take that local business and perspective because a lot of the theory of change is around kind of innovation new business models purpose-driven models disruptors things that are going to actually do what you're hoping to happen when you put this seed money in and delighted to have with us right down the end of the panel David Yong who is the founder of Green Monday coming out of Hong Kong and then Greater China who is one of the winners of the 2018 social entrepreneur awards but in the for-profit business model he's got a very very interesting kind of transformational approach which is changing the kind of landscape of what's going on in Hong Kong in relation to the food system that NICO mentioned David welcome and perhaps you can kind of tell us more about what you're up to and link it to some of these larger transformational kind of challenges have been set out in front of you well thank you for having me and the next few minutes I want to share with you the huge transformation of consumer behavior particularly when it comes to diet choice that happened in Hong Kong and now spreading all over Asia or even globally exactly six years ago that was when we started Green Monday I learned about climate change and the correlation between the food industry particularly the lifestyle industry about 12 years ago from United Nations reports and at that time I thought to myself that what besides energy besides transportation that's one thing that we can all do that can mitigate climate change and reduce our footprints and not just carbon but as I study more about it it is also about water consumption land use efficiency and of course coupled with the exploding global population it is about food security as well so food is actually at the nexus of many crisis with climate change of course being big part of that so I thought everyone at any given time they don't have to turn vegan they don't have to go completely plant-based but simply by shifting the racial of what we consume between meats and plant-based reducing meats and more plant-based that would be a huge step towards changing our contribution or our impact to the environment now Hong Kong happens to be a very unique case Hong Kong 7.3 million population clearly not the largest city in the world but it is substantial but what is very unique about Hong Kong is because of the affluence of the city Hong Kong is number one in the world in meat consumption per capita I mean that is a figure that when I was digging up numbers from from USDA and I saw that in 2008 2009 Hong Kong actually surpassed the United States again on a per capita basis as number one meat consumption capital in the world that was shocking now in from 2006 since watching the documentary from vice president Al Gore to 2012 every single meal I was using that as an opportunity to try to tell people that your choice of food even if we're doing family style let's say five dishes if you simply choose three out of five to be plant-based you are helping the environment and in those six years from 2006 to 2012 I almost have never had one person who talked back to me and say you know what that's right simply by cutting meats consumption we can save the planet I have not had one person who talked back and that include not just in Hong Kong but also during my travel to Shanghai Beijing Singapore many places within Asia or even in North America so in 2012 we started this social venture called Green Monday it's multi dimensional is a very integrated cross multi stakeholder approach first of all we create the movement which is to suggest everyone simply by changing the ratio of what you consume suggesting one day a week Monday is a symbolic beginning but of course you can always go Green Wednesday Green Sunday any day the more the better that's number one we engage schools corporations definitely restaurants and say increase your plant-based choices this is something that you are you can fulfill your corporate ESG and tell the world that you are doing something good that's number one number two we work on the food innovation side we cannot just tell people to take something off their plates we have to give them something new or alternative which now we call alternative protein but six years ago it was do a very novel concept so we partner with companies many Silicon Valley startups such as beyond meats that we say hey you know what Hong Kong happens to be the best place if you want to shift behavior come to Hong Kong we can make a difference so we start working with them bringing their products to Asia to Hong Kong in particular and we also through our own food innovation on create a plant based pork pork alternative basically now in China and globally the most consumed meat is actually pork it's not chicken it's not beef and pork not only just contribute to carbon footprints but it is also one of the biggest source of pollution for water and it consume a huge amount of water as well China there are 1.3 billion people in China but there are also 700 million pigs the ratio of human beings to pigs is two to one now think of the energy think of the resources and think of the pollution that just the hawk industry creates so our food lab based in North America but production done in Asia create a plant-based pork product that we just launched earlier this year and because these products taste coax and the whole experience is just like meats but with my nutrition profile is actually better no cholesterol much lower fat much lower calorie so it fit very much the lifestyle of you know the millennials and also just people who are into wellness so with our food innovation arm and also our dining retail outlet of green common plus the movement these are working seamlessly together to now basically when we go to a corporation or suit to a school or restaurant we say these are the new ingredients that you can bring into your culinary practice and with all the global attention and more and more media talking about this you can gain a whole new group of customers that you would never have before and this become a domino effect from standard charter bank HSBC Google to more recently Sands Macau or MGM tens of thousands of employees with their company they just say we will implement Green Monday without 30,000 employees 50,000 employees and at the same time they are not just serving salad or tofu but they have all these new exciting ingredients and products that are creating buzz and trend within the company so that is how we create the movement now very quickly is to the results before we started six years ago there were only less than 5% of Hong Kong that had any sort of plant-based diet habits whether it's one day two days or seven days less than 5% today 22% of Hong Kong are practicing some form of Green Monday meaning they are actively reducing meat consumption and adopting plant-based diet to improve their own health and also the health of the planet and we see that as a model that can be highly scalable to various regions not just in Asia but also around the world. Brilliant. So if you thought this trend was coming out of California alone they're kind of taking on the pork issue if you like in Hong Kong and into China this is pretty interesting now David you also have these quite incredible corporate partnerships you touched on a few there with MGM casinos in Macau and HSBC and Google but also some retailers as well you are making some quite inroads in that space too. Absolutely so in order to scale fast we must work with existing stakeholders we are not going to build open shops fast enough open restaurants fast enough so we are now working with some of the biggest supermarket chains such as Park and Shop in Hong Kong which is the equivalent of a Safeway or Kroger in the United States and they are now putting our green common corner or shop in shop inside the supermarket so everyone can when they walk into their supermarket they can see that there's a green common section that represents plant-based food but also wholesome and healthy products that and by doing that we're shifting consumer habits. And just to kind of close what it's interesting is this is not necessarily the same phenomenon you might get in Europe or the West Coast of the United States it's not necessarily just more affluent middle-class people there was something very interesting about the quality of the food or the food safety which is also attractive to people who might even have less money but different needs. This is particularly very true to China which is people are not thinking about diet change necessarily because of climate change but they're actively thinking about picking safe products because food scandals happen in China and in certain Asian countries on such a regular basis that a three year old or an 83 year old would know that you know they crave for places or destinations that they know they can truly trust the food so we are trying to build that system as well which is this is not just about plant-based this is not just about health but also about integrity and food safety. Fantastic so in terms of things that are changing out there Niko and Ambassador these are the sorts of sort of transformations rippling through not only the West but also key markets and key growth areas like China. Now our final speaker on the panel this is very interesting indeed because I hope Leanne as you've been hearing this conversation kind of I know what you're like these synapses will be going. Leanne Kemp is the CEO of and founder of Everledger which is one of kind of technology pioneer companies here at the World Economic Forum but much more besides pioneer in the use of blockchain and all sorts of interesting areas. I don't want to steal your thunder but I will say that if anybody followed the Kimberley process to try and deal with blood diamonds it was Leanne's blockchain approach that helped to kind of track what was a good and what was a bad diamond. The potential of unlocking the new technologies and sciences that you mentioned Vice President into this space could be enormous. Leanne what's your kind of reflections we're sort of getting into this sort of transformative approach to meet the ambitions that Ambassador needs for the summit your reflections. Well as we talk about sprinting to 2020 I sort of wind my mind back to 1989 you know it was an incredible time for the year something happened this guy called Tim Berners-Lee created this thing called HTTP it was a hypertext protocol it enabled the sharing of information and a connection of two computers to talk to each other and this incredible innovation came out of that time and it's called the WWW World Wide Web the Internet and as we know it today there's not a person on the planet and a government and a company that doesn't rely upon it to trade or communicate across the world and we've seen many innovations in the space of technology over time but most of those innovations have been you know kept and guarded within some proprietary control whether it be Apple or Google devices that are in your hand and yet we're facing fourth industrial revolution technologies we talk about the global commons and we understand what they are whether it's the soil and the air and the water but let's think about it we have this expanding mind you know I have a very young niece who every time I walk in to the house she's showing me something that she's built she built herself out of her own mind she visioned it and she has the tooling in front of her to be able to create something that might be a simple game or she can actually start to ping information between her friends and talk about what's important to them straws they don't want to see plastic anymore we talk about the global commons but what if we had a digital global commons what if we had a people's technology and what if we could enable that to be the tooling of every one of our children our parents and enabled a thinking mechanism to create the innovations that we need to not only survive commercially but within our planet and when we think about the exploding population in countries like Africa that are willed under survival to solve for problems for themselves yet half of the technologies are only regarded for the one percent of the one percent the tier one countries the large corporates so what I compelled in terms of technology is let's think about the digital global commons and if we think as human beings that we might be able to solve for these exponential problems that are in front of us then let's combine exponential technologies together whether it be AI and robotics and combine all of that at a cognitive layer that can actually solve for these issues together but do it at a people technology level so that's where I'm thinking in terms of how we can take this to the next level. Fascinating I mean I expect that when you were listening to what Johann was saying and also Vice President Gore the ability to apply some of that AI or machine intelligence not only to models that are kind of backtracking but to look forward I mean that kind of potential of joining some of these things up I guess in the scientific community this is probably quite a exciting and compelling time as the cost of engaging with these technologies gets lower and lower and probably in a very different space than what we've experienced in some of the processes of negotiation shall we say in perhaps a rather more analog international system. Do you sort of see that this exponential growth will really take off or what we're going to have to do we're going to have to work hard to make it happen? I think we have to think about moving beyond resilience and let's build anti fragility you know the strength in our muscling and the strength in our technology to become smarter over time and to be able to apply that to real problems in the world and so we are absolutely at a point of exponential exponential crisis, exponential technologies so let's combine them together and purposely put them into into the one into the one view. Fabulous. I can't resist just turning back to you sir for the last word. From what you've heard on this panel are we are we offering any kind of seeds of hope? Definitely and just to pick up on the last point conflict diamonds for example I'm on the board of Apple and just earlier today I met with the chairman of Mars who said made a point that resonates with me in the context of Apple. He said the age of commodities is coming to an end and what he meant by commodities is fungible goods that just are anonymous in where they come from and they're you just go into the market and there it is but now companies are being asked by their customers and their employees to be careful about where they buy what is it being produced by child labor? We don't want it. Are the proceeds being used for terrorism or the drug trade? We don't want it and technologies like blockchain make that much easier to do but to extend that line of thought briefly these new digital tools the internet and worldwide web yes but now the internet of things and machine learning and artificial intelligence and genomic and microbiomic sequencing are giving many executive teams the ability to manage electrons and atoms and molecules and genes with the same precision that the IT companies have demonstrated in managing bits of information. Together they make up a sustainability revolution that has the magnitude of the industrial revolution but the speed of the digital revolution and this new sustainability revolution is empowering the rising generation to believe that the new world they want is within their reach. They want to invest their money with managers who respect those values. They want to patronize businesses that respect those values. We have the emergence of earth incorporated a global interconnected economy. We also have the emergence of a kind of global mind. If there is a fire and a shirt factory in Bangladesh consumers in North America say wait a minute what about those working conditions and the connectivity means that change is demanded. That's being applied to greenhouse gases. It's being applied to unsustainable approaches to agriculture and forestry and those plastic straws and other plastics in the ocean. So I'm filled with hope and optimism but my optimism is based on the kind of projections that Johann so brilliantly presented here. We have an exponential path to progress if it is matched to an exponential increase in political will. If you're an investor one small point Europe is now on the verge within weeks of passing a law requiring all asset managers in Europe to fully integrate ESG factors in the way they manage assets and report regularly on how they are performing those duties. This movement is also spreading. So the future of business the future of investing the future of human civilization really depends on getting out in front of this sustainability revolution and giving this rising generation of the hopes in their hearts that we can get past this collision that we can come back into harmony with the natural limits within which humanity can continue to flourish. Thank you so much. So there you have it. You thought you were going to come to a kind of climate panel but actually the threads here about kind of systems transformation looking at these new forms of coalition new forms of purpose driven business model and the ability to harness the opportunities of this new technological revolution ambassador. I hope we've given you some food for thought for the summit and we're all I'm sure across this panel in the room here to help you as you move towards the next day sir. If I may just one last word. To go beyond the rhetoric we need ideas how to integrate actors into the summit so I want to use the opportunity to invite you to brainstorm a lot. We don't want civil society business in parallel meetings. We want to integrate that into the summit and have a scene at the table. So it's a challenge that I want to leave in the room. Ambassador that was more profound than you probably think. Maybe we can all help you on the panel to integrate properly for the first time into a global climate summit this range of solutions so we can all drive forward to meet the exponential outcomes that we deserve. Ladies and gentlemen if you can join me in a round of applause for a wonderful panel with that we'll close the plenary and wish you all an excellent evening of I'm sure Ernest conversation and no glasses of wine.