Okay. It's a little tight, so. But thank you all for being here. I'm Dan Rondi. I hold the Shriar Chair here at CSIS. I'm the co-director of the U.S. Leadership and Development Program at CSIS. And this is a Chevron forum on development, and we're really pleased that you all are here to be with us today. And the conversation we're going to have is about the business role in the post-2015 development agenda. I'm really quite pleased that my friend John Podesta is here today. He's the White House counselor and a member of the U.N. Secretary General's high-level panel of eminent persons on the post-2015 development. That's a long title. But he was really a driving force in the high-level panel of eminent persons report that came out on June 1 of last year. If you haven't read it, I really recommend that you actually go and read it. It is not one of those documents that if you have trouble sleeping at night, you know, it helps you fall asleep. This is actually a fabulous document. It's an excellent, very well done. And I know that John Podesta, along with folks on his team like John Norris, among others, spent a lot of time drilling down line by line and putting a lot of time into that document. So I commend it to you very, very much. It's an excellent document. I think it really frames up the challenges of the next round of the Millennium Development Goals. So I think we're talking about the Millennium Development Goals that came out in 2000, and then we're looking at the next round that are coming out in 2015. And that's why this report was written and why John Podesta was a part of that process. So I don't think you need a long introduction from me about John Podesta, but just to say that he is a very gifted public servant. The country is very fortunate to have him back at the White House. And without further ado, I'm going to ask John Podesta to come on up. John. Thanks, Dan. Is that working? Okay. I'm a little gimpy, sorry. So first, I want to thank Dan for inviting me here. And I've had the pleasure of traveling to Africa with Dan and collaborating with him on a number of initiatives. And I think he brings really a useful, grounded understanding of how the public and private sectors can work together in ways that make a contribution to development. So it's a pleasure to be here. And I'm delighted that CSIS has made such a big commitment. I saw my friend John Hamery here earlier. And I want to thank Chevron for their support of this effort. As Dan noted, I served on the UN High-Level Panel. And we were charged by the Secretary General with spelling out some of the initial contours of a post-2015 agenda and to surface some of the key concerns that should be addressed in what is now an intergovernmental negotiation that will finalize in an agreement to the successor to the Millennium Development Goals by the end of 2015. So that's a lot of process. And I was new to the UN. So the amount of process that goes on there was really breathtaking. But I think we had a successful conclusion of the panel. 27 very diverse people. People led by Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, by David Cameron, by President Yudhoyono of Indonesia. And we were really supported by a very able secretariat led by Homie Carras and Molly Elgin Cosart. And I want to thank them. I think at the outset of our deliberations, we recognize that we see very different challenges over the next 15 years than we saw over the past 15. We've got a growing population of young people across the globe. Many of them are increasingly well educated, but they're restless and often not able to find meaningful employment, commensurate with their abilities. Cities are growing at a rapid rate, becoming almost many states and to themselves. The locus of extreme poverty is shifting and has shifted over a couple of generations from stable low-income countries to conflict affected in fragile states. Rising powers like India and Brazil, who both had representatives on the panel are eager to make their voice and influence heard on the global stage as emerging economic and diplomatic players, even as they wrestle with considerable residual pockets of extreme poverty in their countries. And we're trying to achieve an ambitious new set of shared goals and realize a new global partnership against what will be the very difficult impact of climate change and increasing extreme patterns of global weather as we were discussing amongst ourselves on the panel. Perhaps the greatest philosophical shift from the original MDGs was a recognition that to end extreme poverty, which was the ultimate goal that we put before the UN and the Secretary-General, to actually end extreme poverty, we must transform economies and put sustainable development at the core of our economic theory. We now know that sustainable economic growth is not simply about increasing the size of the national economies, but about shaping enduring systems and institutions that respect the rights of individuals and give them the tools they need to lift themselves out of poverty. We're having that debate in our own country. Sustainable economic growth requires ensuring the poor have what I call connectivity, and I'll come back to that, but connectivity broadly encompasses issues like access to health care, education, and job opportunities, connections to physical, financial, and energy infrastructure, and the opportunity to actively participate in the civic and economic lives of their countries and to be recognized legally by their governments. That's why I think the role of the private sector played such an important role in the high panel discussions, and I think everyone involved approached the business community as an integral part of what we were trying to achieve and why this panel is in this effort is so welcome. I must say we had excellent private sector voices on the panel, including Paul Pullman, the CEO of Unilever, who many of you know, and Betty Mina, the Chief Executive of Kenya's Association of Manufacturers. Everyone from day one of our deliberations acknowledged that development is increasingly dominated by private flows rather than traditional development assistance, although ODA still plays a very important role both in meeting basic human needs and in helping to create the right enabling environment to ensure private investment, particularly in some of the least developed countries. With ODA making up now only 13 percent of total flows for development, we recognized that creating a favorable environment for private capital to be directed toward alleviating extreme poverty was essential if we were going to meet those goals. So how do we better harness the energy and power of the private sector to a goal framework like the MDGs? I think that the answer to that really rests on two pillars. First, we need to do a much better job, as I noted, of connecting the poorest of the poor to the economic and social lives of their countries. We cannot expect the poor to raise themselves up if they can't open a bank account, if they can't hold or inherit land, if they have no legal identity, or if they're cut off from the crucial infrastructure like schools, roads, electricity, access to primary care. No amount of aid or private sector investment will end extreme poverty if we don't deliberately address the factors that leave millions of people around the world economically isolated and vulnerable. That's why the panel embraced a leave no person behind ethos to our work, and that is why we pushed hard for things like universal legal identity, land tenure rights, access to financial services as key targets within the report. In addition, there was quite a strong focus on the importance of infrastructure, and that focus on infrastructure came mostly from the global south, certainly as much as it did from the global north. Indeed, the panel members from the global south had a very sophisticated understanding of the importance of things like building better infrastructure, mobilizing domestic resources, if they help to attract sufficient external investment to give the drive against extreme poverty increased velocity. So, if connecting the individual is the first part of the challenge, creating, I think, a favorable landscape at the national and international level is its logical counterpart. We have a good idea of what goes into creating that landscape, but we also have to be cognizant that some of these ideas are a bit tricky to negotiate, particularly within a UN context. Both civil society and the private sector in the developing world and here in the U.S. have made the case that things like transparency, rule of law, good governance are absolutely essential. But here, I think it's critical that we make it clear that this is not about the north lecturing the south as it were. We need to talk about a new global partnership. For example, when the panel report pushed for government transparency as an important target, we made clear that like all the targets, it should be applied universally. Similarly, when we look at issues like corruption, I think the best approach is recognize that corruption often cuts across borders and across developed and developing nations alike. Measures to reduce the volume of illicit financial transaction necessitates actions across the global system, not just amongst a handful of developing country government officials. If we want to see improved governance in developing countries, we also need to make sure that multinationals are duly meeting their responsibilities. They have strong codes for their supply chains. They pay fair taxes and that we see the taxes that are paid, the revenue from those fair taxes can flow toward broad development efforts and other national priorities. The last point I would like to touch on is the importance of sustainability. And the report's emphasis on changing patterns of production and consumption. Changing patterns of production and consumption, that's kind of a fancy development jargon. But for those of you who are in the private sector, you might think of it first as increasing productivity and concentrating on efficiency. Can we produce enough to meet the needs of an expanding population without doing irreparable harm to the planet in the process? Can we produce the same level of goods and services while bringing the energy involved and the water involved in producing those units of goods or services down? Can we find market mechanisms to account for and reduce pollution? I would argue that the answer to that is yes, and I would argue there is a very good business case for doing so. First, we know that leaving climate change unchecked will bring almost unbearable costs to the global economy, including obviously to the private sector. Just ask the reinsurance industry if it believes whether patterns are changing or if costs of natural disasters are rising. Last year, we had $41 billion weather events in the world. Second, we know that lifting people out of extreme poverty means more opportunity for everyone. Healthier, better educated and more prosperous families help drive trade and growth for all involved. Third, there is enormous economic opportunity in producing more efficiently. We leave billions of dollars on the table every year because we waste lots of food throughout the production chain in both the developed and developing world. If we tighten up our systems, we can feed literally hundreds of millions more people, increase profits and grow earnings for everyone from American farmers to small African stakeholders. Why wouldn't we want to do that? The world is already moving toward more efficient production and our challenge is to see if we can bend that curve a little further and a lot faster for the benefit of all. And I think that brings me to the last note on why I think the private sector has been such an important part of the conversation. I mentioned Paul Pullman. I always really enjoyed his interventions because they were very refreshing change from the most diplomatic and political discourse. Paul Pullman's a businessman. He's an optimist. He's convinced that with new technology, new partnership, new ideas, and yes, a lot of hard work, we can realize a fundamentally different and more positive future. The private sector believes in getting things done and it's good at getting things done. And that's just one of the many reasons why we absolutely need the private sector in partnership with civil society and government involved in the post-2015 agenda and why they can make enormous contributions to this shared agenda. We can, I believe, end extreme poverty in a generation and the business community can not only help make that happen, it's absolutely essential to meet the ambitious post-2015 development goals that the panel embraced. So thank you for letting me lead this off and Dan, I'm happy to answer a question or two. Thank you very much. John, I have. Have I said enough? You have said enough. Thank you. No, but thank you. This is really great and really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to be here. I had a couple of pointed questions for you. Could you talk? The UK government in particular has been a real great leader on this issue of governance, the golden thread of governance. David Cameron has said quite a lot, a lot of thoughtful things about this. I think it was an incredible achievement in the report that governance was a part of it. I know folks like Ngozi from Nigeria, the president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson, I know we're also supporters of governance. Could you just talk to about what you think the chances are of getting a governance goal? I mean, that was the hope, that was the reports that we'd really like to see a governance goal. There's a political process that this is going to, these wishes are going to go through over the next 18 months. What do you think the possibilities are that it's going to happen and what are some of the landmines that we're going to encounter and try to get that done? Because I do think it's very important that we get a governance goal. And you talked about some of the sub-components in terms of certain sorts of rights or certain sorts of access to certain sorts of things like an identity, among other things, that sort of get at pieces of this. And you talked about rule of law and transparency. So if you could speak to that. Well, I would come back and say that one of the things that that has been different between this post-2015 process and the original development, the Millennium Development Goals, is the inclusion of many voices from civil society, from the business community. We tried to listen. We traveled extensively. We held lots of meetings. We talked to the poorest of the poor, as well as development experts and people at the UN. I think that the Millennium Development Goals, which were a success in large measure, some of them weren't met. Many of them, we made a lot of progress as a result of the concentration, was a more professionalized approach. This time, I think we listened to people. And I think in that process, if you listen to people, particularly the poorest people in the world, what you hear is the absolute need to reduce corruption and have better governance. They get the direct linkage between the ability of leading better lives and the need and desirability of producing better governance in their own countries. So I think the intergovernmental process is always tricky on these kind of issues. And I think we've seen that already in the open working group. But I think that if we're going to listen to the people whose lives are trying to affect, if we listen to young people, if we listen to poor people, they're demanding a strong response to this. And I hope that international community can hear that and produce that strong response. Let me just push a little bit further on that. Take us into the high level panel process, in particular, what surprise you've talked a little bit about some of that in terms of your perspective of listening to some of the private sector voices. I'd be particularly interested if you could speak to if the words democracy or if the words human rights came up and in what contexts. Well, I think that the of course human rights came up. And I think that the different people had different perspectives on whether that should be the sole framework through which to see the post 2015 agenda or one that was really balanced and blended with the other kinds of building successful societies, what should also be included. The question of democracy is, you know, the original millennium declaration included a aspirational push towards more democracy. I would say that if you look at our report, what we tried to embrace was the an approach that embraced democratic principle and avoided the political fight about whether we were trying to lecture countries that had more or less of it. So you see a push towards rule of law, access to justice, voice in decision making, voice in national target setting, and open political choice at every level. So I think we we embrace the principles of democracy, but I think if you do a word search, you will you will find that the word in the report comes up once or twice, but it's not a central feature of the report. And I think that was really, you know, I think in the end of the day, you'd have to pull the panelist as to why that, why that was true. But I think we thought that the embrace of these conceptual pieces, when you had representatives from Cuba and China and other places, was going to be, was a more, was a way to build consensus. And we ended up with a unanimous report. Just one last question. There's a lot of energy around the role of civil society and philanthropy in in the US context. And you've talked in your remarks about various places where I could see civil society having a role or participation in this. And you talked about the role of government civil society and the private sector working together. Could you just talk a little bit more about the roles of civil society, how they came up in the high level panel or how you see them? And also, could you speak a little bit to the role of philanthropy? I know there's particular energy in the US philanthropic community about we didn't have a seat at this table and how do we get a seat or how do we get a bigger seat at this table because we have something to contribute? Well, that's that's an interesting perspective. I don't know. I think that that philanthropy and civil society largely played an absolutely crucial role in organizing input and voice all the way from surveys to producing to producing events really all around the world. And I think that you know, we tried to be open to those concerns. We you know, you mentioned John Norris is who's standing in the back. John and I and our colleagues met with very extensively with representatives of civil society, representatives of philanthropy in order to guide our thinking and in and my contributions. I have to say that that I had a kind of somewhat I don't know, unusual role in that I was a member. I was a representative of civil society, but I had a lot of support from the US government. And Dan yellow blue errors is here who provided tremendous input into our process. But I wasn't an official representative of the US government, which probably gave me a little bit extra room to stretch as well. Now I don't have that. But I think I just I one of the ideas embraced in the high level panel report was that we needed universal goals, but we needed national targets and national embrace and that and that in order to be effective, there needed to be national strategies in an attempt to meet those universal goals in a certain selection process of what the priorities were. And one of the things I think we're trying to drive for was that itself had to be an inclusive process, not just the global process should be listening, but those national those attempts to drive those universal goals down into national strategies and national targets had to be inclusive, had to leave no one out. And they had to have the voices of civil society, particularly the poor at the table, as those national plans were being developed. So hopefully, we'll be convincing both at in the international in the governmental process, but I think also when it gets down to trying to drive, you know, real national strategies that same spirit of openness will prevail. John, thank you for coming. Thanks for the time of your schedule. And please join me in thanking John Podesta. It's really a great way to kick off our conversation. We really appreciate John Podesta doing that. The we're going to be we're going to have the panel discussion on this on the business role in the post 2015 business development agenda.  So I'm not going to go through a long drawn out introduction of each each person. But I'm going to ask your Cal to go to start first. If you can just keep put the microphone. I have a I have, you know, if you could use the microphone just closer to you because it's there may be issues of acoustics. Georg is the executive director of the United Nations Global Compact, which is 8000 companies that have signed on to a series of 10 principles that was started under Kofi Annan. I think it's been an amazing way to engage the private sector in the work of the UN and in development across a whole series of issues, including challenges such as corruption and sustainable development. And Georg, you came from India to be with us. So I really appreciate you taking the taking the time in adjusting your schedule to be with us today. So Georg, the floor is yours. Thank you so much. Really great to be here. It's wonderful and following John Podesta. So opening I what I could probably add here is share with you what has been keeping me awake for the last 15 years, I must say, trying to find effective ways to engage the private sector more to support public good priorities overall and doing so with the head of the UN on the UN global compact is now 14 years old, 8000 companies engaged embracing universal principles derived from soft law, universal creation of human rights, decent workplace conditions, environmental stewardship and anti-corruption. And by doing so, the CEOs who make that commitment, they say two things really. First, we want to adhere to these principles within our own organizations, making them part of our own ethical approach to doing business anywhere. And secondly, taking action, collaborating, partnering with others to tackle some of the problems. And that is the mission of the global compact, which has remained unchanged and is still, I believe, today as important, if not more than it was 14 years ago. So what I can share with you is some highlights of what really has changed and how business I dare say has really adopted and also changed all over the world. And I want to run quickly through the main features of that. First, I think the phrase that business has gone global while governments remain local is still very true. Businesses in so many ways ahead because they're globally exposed to so many challenges and opportunities and they have to find a way through, often in very adverse circumstances, violence, systemic corruption and so forth. In such situations, companies can make a choice, obviously. They can aspire to higher performance within their own operations where they have influence or just try to muddle through. And the growing number of companies has recognized that muddling through is not really a recipe for long term financial success. Sooner or later, things do go wrong. And therefore, more and more companies recognize the value of proactive engagement. I think that's fundamentally true across the board and that trend has increased as global interdependence has increased. Secondly, transparency is irreversible. It's on the rise. More and more companies also recognize that you can no longer really just outsource the costs and insource the benefits or hide deep downside in your supply chain anything. So more and more companies recognize it makes sense to be proactive, be it on capacity building also forth and be proactive rather than waiting for things to go wrong. Thirdly, I think the most fundamental shift is actually that foreign direct investment itself has changed its nature. It used to be largely about getting access to the cheapest input into your own value chain, which then you resold within your own domestic market. As economic growth has migrated to the east and to the south and companies have followed, they're investing increasingly to grow with the market. Now, if you invest to grow with the market and you bet on the next generation of middle income consumers, then obviously you're much more stakeholder of the economy. It matters to you whether the market is stable, predictable or force apart. It matters to you whether there is a level playing field where you can compete on fair terms or whether it's just an outdated form of capitalism that no longer rewards good performance. And fourthly, I think the natural resource issue has also greatly enhanced sensitivity on how to deal with inputs of all sorts. Water was mentioned. It's becoming abundantly clear that for companies to be long term successful, these natural resource issues are vital interests. They can both be a threat, but also an opportunity, open up new markets. And this kind of big macro trends has really underpinned the corporate change in embracing responsibility and sustainability as a new way of strategic operations. No doubt many companies have genuinely evolved and changed along these lines. And at the broadest level, I would say that more and more companies recognize that public good interests and private interests are increasingly intertwined. You cannot succeed in markets that fail. You cannot grow if you don't have the skill base you need in order to grow your business. And you cannot really be successful if the basic natural resource inputs you need are at risk at large. So this convergence of public and private interests has prompted more and more companies to collaborate. I think the other big trend is that more and more companies realize it's great what they do within their own domain. And this is hugely important and has a huge impact and gives them a measure of security and safety in terms of risk and opportunities. But companies also now realize that some of the systemic challenges Mr. Budesta has talked about are just so big that only through collaboration and partnerships can they be solved. This is why there has been an outburst of what we call issue platforms. We are running eight of them from women empowerment to anti-corruption where dozens if not hundreds of companies like-minded companies collaborate and co-invest. And that gives them the opportunity to team up with others. And they do this either by issue or they do it at country level. Hundred and two country networks now up and running and the chamber has great networks around the world. These are hubs of innovation and collaboration increasingly where this public good interest of the corporate side finds its expression in a whole new wave of partnerships. I think this is the way to go for for business to strategically align more closely with the solution finding because every problem has also a solution and where there is a political will there is a solution. And most of the challenges even climate change open up the biggest opportunities for companies which are ahead of the curve and which are willing to be ahead of the game. And therefore I do believe that business has a vital vital role in in the post 2015. And the good news is that already companies are gearing up. They want simple goals. They want measurable goals. They want that the strength of business in getting it done is that the forefront rightly so. And they increasingly we observe at least are willing to collaborate. And here comes the really good news. Entrepreneurship is genuinely a universal concept. You find entrepreneurs all over the world in Pakistan, Iraq, Indonesia, anywhere. Business wants to succeed and become better and become competitive. Increasingly we see companies from emerging markets who are unsatisfied with their own enabling environment because they feel it holds them back. They cannot become competitive if public institutions are failing. So companies are increasingly taking the initiative, whether it's in Brazil, Nigeria or India. And I think these are the positive trends we should build on, especially on the collaborative side where leading multinationals who obviously have invested much more in this agenda can also give a helping hand in new partnerships global, local by issue and by country. So I'm actually totally optimistic that the post 2015 will open up a new opportunity for private sector engagement on a level never seen before, that this will unlock growth and opportunities, while at the same time tackling many of the basic challenges. Because technology is available, solutions are there, what is lacking is often the political will to get the best practices diffused widely. And therefore working on some of these systemic blockages will go a long, long way to unlock more opportunities. I could go into details, but Daniela, these are some of the high points I wanted to share with you just one add on point just so you know, the global compact has one leg in the UN, but it has also a very big leg outside the UN in the form of not for profit foundation in New York. So we have the privilege of working with business more directly, rather than through the bureaucracy alone. And this is the only reason why we're still going strong. Thank you, Daniela. Thanks a lot, Karen. Tam Nien, thank you for being on the panel. You're the global head of sustainability for the Bechtel Corporation. You're also the co-chair of the Corporate Responsibility Committee for the US Council for International Business. You are also happened to be a really important part of the reason why CSIS is partnering with Chevron. You had a past life at Chevron and thank you for being on this panel. So, Tam, the floor is yours. Thanks. Thanks, Dan. I really admire Horg's energy levels, especially coming after a flight from India. So it's quite amazing. So I just wanted to talk about the business case for the Sustainable Development Goals. And I wanted to start. There's there's there's two narratives about the business case, particularly for US multinational corporations pre pre millennium development goals. The first narrative is really companies were indifferent or they're indifferent to the outcomes of development. You know, it's it doesn't impact their business. It doesn't impact their drivers. The second narrative is that the business development or that the conduct of doing business, it's only effective as the conditions that they operate in. There really was no goal for or nothing much for the company could do is really for to a large extent, it was really up to the government. I think what you heard from Podesta and what you hear from this panel times have have really changed. Really unlike the millennium development goals about a decade ago, the US multinational corporations, they're really they're much more informed. They're much more engaged. They're they've really shifted from just mere sort of observers to this whole process to much more of an active participant, really promoting sustainable development. And there's a few few drivers that I wanted to to touch on. Many of these multinational that, you know, they really live through a lot of dramatic changes in the political economy. You've got a proliferation of multi stakeholder initiatives on human rights, proliferation of standards, industry self regulations, a lot of the oil and gas where I used to work, a lot of self regulation there, including the mining sector and a lot of media attention. As as Horig mentioned, a lot of transparency, you know, you really just can't be hide behind a lot of the things that you're doing. There's also these big global challenges that, frankly, the companies had to deal with. You know, you've got nine billion population by 2030. You've got one trillion in needs and infrastructure, massive urbanization that will happen in Africa and Asia. In part and parcel to that, you see a big issue is the really the companies expanded into emerging markets where really they saw that the development outcomes actually really matter. So you saw a lot of companies investing in these pro-poor initiatives. You saw them, you know, investing in these really smart initiatives to remove sort of constraints to their value chains, partnering with NGOs and government agencies. All this had a lot to do with really just their foray into these frontier markets. Development was a part of them actually conducting business in these places.  You really see an explosion of these good practice notes, guidance and toolkits all to help the companies figure out how to integrate sustainability into their business processes. And so finally, you know, the business case is really about reorienting the goals, which my colleague from GE will talk about. It's really reorienting the goals around some core systemic issues, kind of like what John Podesta was talking about, that would optimize the conditions for the companies to do business, but at the same time, the spillover to promote local development. And then you'll hear from the business community, governance, infrastructure, securities are big, big issues that really were missed in the decade ago in the Millennium Development Goals. And what's behind the business case, it's about the positive development, enables the companies to access the resources they need to do business in these countries, water, agriculture, people, energy, services, all these are part of this big macro issues that Horig was talking about. And finally, it's also about these positive legacies, more and more companies in these frontier markets, they want to leave a positive legacy and transfer these positive legacies to the communities and countries, because frankly, that is the way for them to get, you know, to stay in the country, to get repeat and new business and to have society actually embrace and the government embrace them being there. Before I ask Ann to speak, there are several seats up front for those, there are about four or five seats, so people should take advantage of that and come sit up front. Ann Condon is the Director of Resource and Environmental Strategies at GE Corporate Environmental Programs and is also the Chair of the Environment Committee of the U.S. Council for International Business. Ann, thanks for coming down from Connecticut to be with us today. You're very welcome. So first of all, I followed the Millennium Development Goals with a lot of interest because I think they have a great concept of taking very simple, humane goals. I need to come back. All right. Move closer. All right, I will get close. Usually people can hear me really far away, so hopefully that's the case today. Yeah, so my sense is that really simple humane goals that we're going to provide people with clean water, that we're going to get the poorest of the poor out of poor where things that people could rally around. But I think what we've learned over the time period we've been doing them is that this is all really linked, that you can't look at individual goals and silos and not have them work if you don't fix some of the underlying infrastructure. And for business, you've heard John Podesta say, you've heard George Kel say it, there's a couple of things that are really important for us because we have made progress, but we haven't made enough progress. The World Bank reports that we've taken something like 50 percent of the people out of the most extreme poverty, but we still have some three billion in pretty bad poverty. And I have to say the difference between a dollar twenty five a day and two dollars a day doesn't seem particularly great to me, but I'm American, right? So that's a big difference. And so what we need to do is we need to grow the overall economic pie. We need to make we need to make it possible for us to all rise at the same time. And we need to figure out a way to do that without trashing our environment to really link it to decoupling. Different words are used to say you can grow the economy, but you don't impact the natural resource base as much as possible. And I think business has a big role to play. I think we all agree about that. We are the people who get things done a lot of times on the ground. And the things that we think will help promote that are promoting, encouraging transparency, a solid business framework and good governance. It's really amazing when I go and I talk to groups in the human rights area. We are asking for the same things. We're asking for clarity of the rules. We're asking for contracts that will be enforced for asking for transparency in the procurement process. And we're asking for a fair arbitrator at the end of the day if we have a dispute. And though it's amazing how aligned the business community is with the human rights community on that, we need the same things to survive. And procurement, I think, was one of the issues that was highlighted by Mr. Podesta, you know, if any of you have ever had to go through the US FARs to do a contract, you will know how painful it can be. But you know something the US government, for the most part, gets its money's worth because it has an open, transparent process for acquiring goods and services. And in a lot of countries, that's not the case. And that actually does hurt business because at the end of the day, if we don't think we're going to get our money back from an investment that we're making, we probably won't make the investment. And that is a big factor in a lot of the countries where we have some of the worst poverty situations. And you also talked about war as a major factor. That's not a place that's a great business environment. So the other piece is creating the right environment for innovation. There's lots of short term solutions. There's lots of people who have great ideas. If you look at what cell funds have done in Sub-Saharan Africa in terms of revolutionizing how farmers interact with the marketplace. If you think about technology that we have now developed because of lack of availability of certain things that we take for granted here in the United States, you know, we have now developed portable ultrasounds that just go attached to a laptop and can be used pretty much any in the world. That was because our customers in the developing world were asking for that. It's actually now coming back into the United States. And so virtually every business that I work with has examples of these efforts that they've had to do to innovate, primarily for what's called the bottom of the pyramid. So obviously we sell a lot to governments. We are essentially an infrastructure company. But being able to serve that lowest of the economics sectors is actually really important to us. And I think actually those that's one of the biggest things that we need to do is figure out how to encourage that innovation for that community. Mr. Podesta mentioned infrastructure. GE is essentially an infrastructure company. We build power turbines, aircraft engines, locomotives and all of that stuff that goes along with modern modern energy systems in particular. We view that as a really critical enabler for development. If you're not spending your whole day going around looking for charcoal briquettes to make your dinner, you have freed up a lot of time and energy for productive capacity. It gives you time and availability to be educated, which is a huge enabler and a huge empowering factor. And a lot of that expertise resides in places like General Electric Company and other big infrastructure companies like Bechtel, who have the ability to go out and do this and work with local partners. And in the process we usually then are working with and expanding the capacity base. We if we go in and help somebody electrify their country along with it, we're going in and creating a whole service network because the way you keep the electricity on is having service. We're not going to fly people in from all over the world to do that. So we create a local infrastructure to support the activities we do. And that seems to me to be something that the business and the governments are really motivated to do together. We didn't talk a lot, but creative financing is probably one of the issues that maybe we can have more discussion about across the panel. I don't have any great answers there, but figuring out how to finance some of this infrastructure is going to be one of the key factors going forward. Another area that John Podesta talked about was empowerment of different groups. I personally, I'm a woman, I've been in business for 30 years. I love the idea of empowering women. It makes a huge difference in families' lives when women are educated, when they have a source of income, when they have the ability to actually make decisions for their families. And that personally we think that the bringing women into the employment base and providing skills training for women in particular is certainly something we see as a top priority. And then the last thing I would say, the other thing is advancing open markets, having the ability to get the best technology, the best solutions into different environments, making it possible for countries who have maybe commodities as their base of their economy to be able to export those freely around the world without barriers. Those things are really important in terms of enabling us to do that. What I talked about at the beginning, we all rise. We got to figure out how to make it possible for us all to rise. And so on that front, I'm pretty pleased to hear that the environmental goods and services negotiations are going to proceed. That's a big enabler again for being able to move technology that will help solve some of these infrastructure problems around the world pretty quickly. So with that, I would guess I would say we see it as a shared priority. Thanks very much. Noreen Kennedy, thanks for being with us. You're the vice president for strategic international engagement in international engagement, energy and environment for the U.S. Council for International Business. You all just came out with this two-pager, this three-pager on recommendations on the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals that came out in January 31st. I suspect you had something to do with this. Tell us about USCIB and how USCIB sees this in your member company. See the Millennium Development Goals. Thanks, thanks, Dan. And thanks for including us in this important event. I'd like to pick up where some of the other speakers have left off and talking about governance and involving the business community in the U.N. I reflect and my organization reflects a perspective of many, many years walking the U.N. halls and working with the United Nations and working with governments including our own to inform the policy debate on all kinds of important questions that are now before us as part of the post-2015 Millennium Development, excuse me, the Sustainable Development Goals and the post-2015 Development Agenda. And I think the public perception still in spite of very important efforts that have been made both by business and the U.N., whether it's the global compact, whether it's the important partnerships that are underway now through the Secretary General's office is still that there are two bubbles. There's the U.N. bubble and then there's the business bubble and the folks in the U.N. bubble are looking over at business and telling business how to behave. I mean, we're doing better than we were and there has been some very good progress made thanks to people like Georg and it has taken some time. But I think that with the Sustainable Development Goals and the post-2015 Development Agenda, many in the business community and certainly in my organization are looking back at the U.N. and saying if the SDGs are really going to work, we have to bring these two communities together in a more meaningful relationship and dialogue. And we've made some very positive first steps in that direction, as John Podesta said, wonderful consultations through the high level panel's efforts, excellent leadership by Betty Mayena of the Kenyan Employers Organization and by Paul Pullman. And it's very important to have leaders, but now we need followers. We need to bring the rest of the business community into this discussion and our assertion is that this U.N. wide effort to reinvent itself around sustainability and development is a wonderful opportunity to do that. And we've been talking about governance and the importance of governance at the national level and totally agree with that. We're going to take it as a given. But I also want to assert that we need good governance and institutional frameworks to involve the business community at the U.N. So just as Georg has emphasized how important it is for business to be entrepreneurial and to actually harness those entrepreneurial instincts that are part and parcel of business, we also have to encourage the U.N. to be more entrepreneurial and to involve business in more creative ways than have been the case so far. And again, I think the SDGs give us a wonderful opportunity to do that. So I think our first challenge is how do we bring business to the table because business with the capital B is a vast, vast group. I'm going to say a few words about something called the Global Business Alliance for post 2015, which is an effort by a number of major international business groups and sectoral organizations to pull ourselves together and to bring whether it's small and medium size entities, whether it's large multinational companies name the sector, name the country together to weigh in to provide our perspectives, to provide our experiences, to help in this dialogue that has to occur if we're going to get a successful set of SDGs that are practical that can be put into action. So we have been doing this. The Global Business Alliance was set up last year. It brings together the large international business players, whether it's the International Chamber of Commerce, the Organization of Employers, the Global Compact, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a very long string of acronyms, a kind of a who's who of the business community. And we're setting up this organization in a slightly different way than is normal, not a top down kind of effort. We're breaking that mold. We're trying to work more from the bottom up to bring forward some of the voices that you don't normally hear that Mr. Podesta mentioned from developing countries, from business communities that haven't normally been at the fore. And we're looking both at sectoral perspectives as well as economy wide value chain connections that are going to be critically important with regard to the SDGs. And we're trying to think across the entire range of topics. How can we inform the discussion not just theme by theme by theme? And there are dozens of themes in front of us, but also the connections across the themes, the so-called cross cutting issues. Now, having set ourselves up, this huge coalition of business organizations, the next question is, how do we connect to the UN? Who do we call? How do we get our messages across? I think for some of you who are in the room and are familiar with the way of the United Nations work, the quality interaction that we can expect comes in two shapes, either. Two minutes at the microphone and I've gotten very used to myself sensing when my two minutes are nearly up, which is clearly not enough time to get into the detail or range of expertise and input that you need. Or it's kinds of side ventures, important side ventures, but non-mainstream efforts. And so, again, from our standpoint, what we really need to see, I think, and we're going to continue to advocate for this. And we've been very fortunate in talking with the administration and talking with Daniela and other colleagues in the administration to find ways to provide more meaningful opportunities for business to weigh in, channels for business to actually bring forward what this process needs. If it's really going to deliver what all of the speakers have been talking about. And this is not rocket science. We know how to do this. We are active in other UN bodies or intergovernmental deliberations where business does have a seat at the table, where it is recognized, where its inputs are acknowledged across the entire life cycle of a discussion in terms of setting the agenda in terms of discussing policy options and in terms of implementation. And we're hopeful that in talking about what this new post-2015 development agenda will look like. And of course, in the process of framing the SDGs that we can find ways to have a more than two minute discussion as these meetings go forward and to bring forward all of the perspectives already diverse in the United States business community, but to bring together all of the global business community into this process. So my conclusion is that without question, there has to be not just a partnership between the UN and business in the post-2015 development framework, but a catalytic relationship and a mutual stake that each sees in the other. Of course, the enabling conditions for governance matter. They matter profoundly, but as important are the institutional arrangements and opportunities for business to engage in this discussion and in what follows once the goals are set. And I'm not saying that this is unique to business. There are other important constituencies that have been recognized for the last 20 years in the sustainability debate of the UN and continue to be very important and probably those numbers are going to grow. But still, we need to have business at the table. We have to better involve and empower small and medium sized companies. We have to spend much more time on capacity building. We need to bring everybody up the learning curve on this. So as I said before, our leaders are important. We also need followers. And so I think the third point that we need to keep working on in the business community and USCIB will be doing that is to make the business case to the UN about why we need to be at the table, what we bring, what is the value that we add and we do add a lot of value because we're convinced that it's only with business involved that the SDGs can meet the broad vision that John Podesta and other members of the high level panel set out and which I know the US government is working to promote as our many US companies. So thank you and I'll stop there. Thanks, Noreen. Thanks very much. Daniela Balu Ayres is the senior advisor for development to the US Secretary of State. Thank you for being here. And why don't you share the the State Department of the USG perspective on this? Obviously, we've heard from John Podesta. He's sort of wearing his civil society hat but also his USG hat. But you're firmly wearing your official US government hat. So please, please. Sure. Happy to. Thanks, Dan and CSIS for hosting this. And thanks to my co-panelists for the leadership they're shown on this agenda and on the MDGs before them. You know, John Podesta spoke about the potential of the post-2015 agenda. I'll focus a little bit more than on the role that we see for business and how we can engage them going forward and with people like those who are sitting at this table. I don't think we have to ask. We will get great input on what the role for business can be. But I would like we also want to broaden that. So just to start, I think we have a really excellent starting point for the discussion on a post-2015 development agenda in the high level panel report that John spoke to and that he served on the high level panel. And what that panel put forward was an agenda that really reinforced the original MDGs but also looked at a broader set of shifts that were going on in the world and how the international community could come together to address them in an integrated way. So looking at climate change and sustainability, accountable institutions, peace and security issues and gender amongst those issues that really needed to be addressed together with issues of health, education, food security and otherwise. So it's an ambitious agenda that was set forward and it was also only a starting point as now a series of intergovernmental negotiations and discussions are underway in New York through the open working group on the sustainable development goals which we are participating actively in and will culminate this September with the Secretary General putting together and putting forward an initial document laying out a path forward for the goals. So there's very active engagement intergovernmentally on this and there's been a reasonably high degree of engagement with civil society, with business, et cetera. But I think we see the real need to ramp up that engagement with all actors, including business who will be critical to achieving the goals. And particularly essential is that is the facts that John Podesta spoke to as well. The reality is that the majority of resources now, more than 80%, that flow to developing countries are from the private sector. Now this is, of course, nuanced. There are some countries who are still significantly more reliant on assistance, particularly the poorest and most fragile. But nonetheless, private investment, whether it's foreign direct investment, remittances, and remittances, and certainly also trade and other flows are just essential. And without really harnessing the private sector, the goals will never be met. And one other, I think, huge transformation that we've seen in this dialogue from the Millennium Development Goals is that it's shifted and you've heard it in my previous panelists from a discussion on corporate social responsibility, which still has a role to play. But to one, really, about core business investment. That's investment in energy, in water, in agricultural markets. It's around the practices of companies in their supply chains and otherwise, and the standards that they uphold in their business practices. That's a very significant change. And it means that the dialogue with business has to be that much broader to be relevant and effective. And I think that's something we're very cognizant of and that that dialogue is certainly underway. But I don't think this is on, yet, on the agenda of the set of CEOs that need it to be. You certainly have some amazing leadership in some companies, Unilever G and others at this table, but it needs to be broader. From a U.S. government perspective, I think we've had a long history of supporting various types of private investment that's for development as well as public-private partnership. So you see the work of OPIC in supporting private investment in developing countries, USA's Global Development Alliance at State Department, our Global Partnership Initiative and the work of MCC and others have long recognized that private sector was critical to development. But we are also evolving. And I think the post-2015 agenda demands that we look at how we think about the role of private investment in our own work and how we can be catalytic of getting the right type of resources to support the goals that are going to be adopted. So I'll just lay out a couple of questions that we see that we need to answer with the private sector and with businesses as we move forward in this agenda. The first-order question is really what will it take for business to see post-2015 as not only relevant but critical to the success of their core business going forward? We have some believers here, but that needs to be broadened significantly. And if we really want business at the table in implementing and making these goals a success. The second is really making the case. What is the case for business investment in the core sectors that are critical to the achievement of the goals? So when we look at water energy, healthcare, agricultural markets, how can business along with us, business, the UN working together with us really make that investment case, identify what's needed. We always talk about a trillion in infrastructure, but there's a more significant and nuanced business cases to be made to bring business to the table. Third is around what really is the enabling environment that business needs to succeed? We've certainly heard a lot of talk about governance. What are, when we think about getting more specific to goals and targets, what does that really look like? And then a final question is how would we think about measuring development, let's say call it development friendly private investment? If we're really looking at the whole universe here of private investment in developing countries, how would we make some distinction amongst dollars that are supporting an agenda like this and dollars that might not be? Could it be done based on sectors, our particular sectors based on standards that are adopted or otherwise? So just in some, our future agenda must be relevant to the changing world that we're in that's already changed and will change dramatically in the next 15 years as economies get more integrated than ever before, the geography of poverty changing with more wealth in developing countries but also persistent pockets of poverty. And we do have huge opportunities as well as risks ahead of us where new technologies will give us the opportunity to solve common challenges and empowered individuals are demanding a great deal more from their governments in response. Ultimately a successful post-2015 agenda will be one where all actors, governments, civil society, faith-based organizations and of course business can see the relevance of the agenda and their role in its success. These perspectives will be critical in informing our own perspectives and positions going forward and making sure we can move forward with energy and commitment to pursuing the goals once they are agreed. Thank you. Thanks a lot, Daniela. My flip and answer to one of your questions which is about, okay, the enabling environment is it simple, it's just take the doing business indicators at the World Bank and put it on steroids. I mean, my view is that it's wonderful that the U.S. has been such a supporter and this administration's been an active supporter of the doing business indicators, but my view is we need to put that on steroids and the investment climate work that the World Bank does also on steroids. But I think I'm gonna give everybody... Well, thank you, Jan. I think we're, you know... Yeah, we've got an answer, exactly. But I'm gonna ask each of you, you're each gonna get a minute, instead of two minutes, Noreen, as opposed to the two-minute answer, you get a one-minute answer. And that way I'll give a chance to some of the audience to also ask a couple of questions. You can either take one of the questions that Daniela posed or, and let me just underline a couple of the points that I think are interesting. One is this business case for investment in certain sectors. And I think that links to the comment that Ann made about creative financing and Daniela referenced the OPIC. We have folks in the audience here from the International Finance Corporation. Our view at CSIS is that development finance is gonna have a much bigger role in the development future. And we did a report on development finance a couple of years ago here at CSIS on that. And so we've got, I think there's a, that's a conversation to be had. And then I also think, I think some of what Noreen was talking about is, okay, well, how do we, how do these folks get a seat at the table? Would be perhaps another one, I think is in line with what you were asking Daniela as well. We could talk about perhaps those two and assume that I've flippantly answered the question about what the enabling environment is. Let's assume that, let's ignore that one for the moment. And let me just also just reference one other thing that I think is very interesting from the conversation we've just been having. So I've been in this business over 10 years and Gary as well. I do think it's quite interesting that we haven't, the word philanthropy other than when I raised it myself or corporate social responsibility only kind of came up very, very rarely, if at all. And this was about business practices. This was about investment. This was about the business case. This was about the future of businesses and ongoing enterprises being in emerging economies. And so that the success of multinational companies, whether they are American or Brazilian or African or South Asian are very much tied to the success of the developing world. And I think that's a very different conversation than 10 years ago. So whereas 10 years ago, you'd have had a conversation about, we're very interested in philanthropy and companies being engaged because it's a good thing to do. They're now being engaged because if they don't, they're in big trouble. So I think it's a very different conversation. I think this panel and I think the high level panel and the remarks from John Podesta I think reflect that very, very changed environment. So each of you gets a minute. We're just gonna go down this way and if you could just speak loudly into the microphone I've been told that we have to do that. It's not a problem for me but it may just use your big room voices if you would. So go ahead. Then I make two quick points. One is the business case and Daniela is spot on. How do we make the business case around goals and issues stronger so that more companies really scale up their good practices? The reality today is that there is a significant and growing number of leading companies who understand that long-term financial success depends on their environmental stewardship, social responsibility and good governance. And they understand this but the great majority of companies is still, I dare say, not yet quite there all over the world. Therefore scaling up the corporate sustainability responsibility movement is one way to get there. And we have our own goal from 8,000 to 20,000 to get critical mass and much of that is at country level. Secondly, I think there is the good news and I'm totally convinced that by issue the business case is getting so much stronger. Energy, water management, transparency, anti-corruption. There's now for the first time coming out from Harvard Business School and then anywhere, analytical evidence that indeed high sustainability corporations are also financially over time more successful over time. And this brings me to the last point I want to make here. One of the underlying big constraints in all of this also in finance is short-termism versus long-term. And I think it's really a big systemic barrier that also holds back a lot of investment that also holds back a lot of corporate investments that otherwise would be willing to make a long-term bet. But if capital is very impatient and wants a quarterly or daily return figure, then such kind of investments are constrained and that's certainly true for infrastructure too. My final point is all politics is still local and you may be surprised for me seeing that having worked with the U.N. so long. But I'm also convinced that unless we win over developing countries and emerging markets for this agenda bottom up so they have ownership at country level, it will just stay a talk shop at the global level. So I'm all for bottom up country level approaches because politics still is local. Okay, Tam. I'll address the question about how to get the companies to see the value of the importance 2015 goals. I think you start by, you know, you stop talking to the companies that it's about the mean that's not CSR, it's not philanthropy, it's not partnerships. It's got to be couched in a different language where it's about the risk and the opportunities that the companies face. And I think, you know, more and more of them see it because again, they're part of these big challenges because of their foray into these emerging markets. They're dealing with the constraints of doing business in these countries. And you know, it's not always CS, you know, it's hard to put a name or a title or a language to it, but they're functioning in a way to try to overcome those constraints and they're seeing sustainable development as a solution rather than always just a one-off activity. Ann. Yeah, I think that I'll try to link two points. For us anyway, the business case for investment is obvious when you're an infrastructure company, a lot of the places where the infrastructure are going in is the developing world. And so you have to learn how to work there and be part of the community. I think that may be a little bit of the difference in terms of how companies are thinking about their investments. It's much less about we're going from the U.S. and we're gonna fly in and do something. It's much more we are becoming part of those societies. And I think that changes your attitude, both in terms of things like capacity building. Capacity building becomes not a philanthropic effort, but a core effort to build the teams locally who can run the businesses in the future. And that enables you to, I think over time, solve problems that are custom to that area and not necessarily, you know, the old hat thing, if you have a hammer, use a hammer. Well, this is sort of saying, well, we have to have solutions that fit that environment. It's not just bringing in what we have. And so it's a real shift in evolution in how people like us are doing business. Noreen. Well, I would just like to play a little bit with the word investment and how we measure investment because in our view, investment is gonna take a lot of different forms. It's not going to be, strictly speaking, just the financial investments. It's also going to be investment of time, sharing of expertise, passing on good management systems. There are a lot of different ways that we can approach investment and how to motivate that, how to mobilize that and how to reflect that in the UN system. And I think that's the bigger question. It's not just about writing a check. And I think it also speaks to Gayork's point about short-termism and long-termism. I think if we approach investment in that broader sense, and it's very, very relevant to the post-2015 development agenda, then we can really start to ask the right kinds of questions. Because then the second challenge we have in the UN and working between these two bubbles is speaking a common language. I mean, there are five UN languages. There probably needs to be a sixth one that business can understand. And it's not currently out there, but looking for ways that we can approach the SDGs and the challenges that we're meeting in ways that business people can understand. That's what we tried to do in the USCIB paper that Dan mentioned, to try to frame these in ways that business understands how it's meaningful to them and what it can contribute to making the situations better. Daniela. I think I'm just gonna pick up on the short-term versus long-term point, which is, I think that's a challenge for businesses, it's also a challenge for governments to be able to keep the focus on the long-term potential. And I think that's something that all of us sitting in governments in this, I think, will face, but it's the potential to also really set some markers for the future that we want that goes far beyond a single political cycle. And interestingly, the National Intelligence Council puts out a public report on global trends. It has a Global Trends 2030 report, which is kind of timely for a post-2015 agenda. And that report speaks to what are scenarios for the world in 2030. And when you look at the risks and opportunities that they lay out for that future, it's actually closely related to some that you see in post-2015. The risk factors are things like very high inequalities, weak governance, conflict, et cetera. And in some ways, all of those risks are things that this agenda seeks to try to address and can help us get to the kind of positive outcomes that if we don't invest in now, we'll get all the kind of short-term things that we worry about will quickly just increase. Just one other small point on this question of the term investment and what do we mean? I think it is really important in the, the dialogue that's happening right now around development finance and what kind of finance is needed for the post-2015 agenda is becoming, is a much broader dialogue in the past. And it's talking about aid, of course, and assistance as one component, but the much bigger set of public and private investments that are needed. And here, these aren't just invest, these are really core business investments that are made in these sectors. So that reframing is really starting to happen across the board, but it's not there yet. We've got time for three questions from the audience. So let's see here. The, this gentleman back here, woman on this, right on the aisle right there and this gentleman here. So we'll get those three, sorry about that, but let's take those three. If you name, identify yourself and form a short question or comment. Thank you. Ed Barber from Good Works International. I apologize for being late, particularly if what I am about to ask was discussed earlier, but I would very much like to see a future set of Millennium Development Goals include a specific objective on strengthening the administration of justice and rule of law. All of us who have worked in developing countries know that the police are usually corrupt, the courts are usually weak, the resources, the others have few resources. I think this is one that would serve a multiple of objectives, thanks. Thank you. Pam Dawkins, I'm at Voice of America. I have a two-part question for George Kell. First of all, with your focus being on corporate sustainability initiatives, can you give a couple of specific examples of initiatives that are underway or in the planning stage?  What do you see as the biggest challenge? And then let's capture this gentleman over here. Thank you. Manny Nunez from the Inter-American Foundation. My question involves shareholders. The concepts we've been talking about are somewhat advanced, shared value. They go beyond the idea of shareholder value plus doing it well or making me feel good about my quarterly dividend. So what has been your experience with regard to shareholders understanding the value of what we've been talking about here today and what needs to be done in order to get shareholders to further understand and perhaps not lag behind and still believing that what we're talking about is corporate social responsibility 1.0. Okay, we're just gonna go down this way. Greg, we're starting with you. Thanks for this very kind question. And I have to really be short. I would love to talk for two hours about what you're planning to do, but obviously I can't do this. The biggest issue platforms are woman empowerment, caring for climate and CO water mandate. There are several hundred companies involved worldwide with many leading American companies behind it. Anti-corruption, usually upcoming. Food and agriculture will be launched in September as a missing piece. Education is still weak, but has a huge potential, I think, to grow. And business for peace was launched only in September, but already 20 country networks have declared ownership. It's amazing how the peace desire is linked also with the good governance. We often forget this, but what John Podesta said about the people having a natural sense for justice and fairness, the same is true for the absence of violence. It's really the worst thing that can happen to families, to mothers, to live in fear. Living in fear is really the worst thing. So we are amazed that so many country networks embrace the notion of business for peace, what they mean is interfaith, what they mean is dealing with the marginalized groups and so forth. So this is new and upcoming. I fully agree with the rule of law and justice. My own personal observation, having traveled now for so many times in so many countries, I see actually the governance, the key issue, as the biggest barrier of all. And that has to do with short-term, long-term, but basically it's the fundamentals you need in place for markets to grow. Everything we talked about. This is the big catalytic thing. If you don't, if you miss out on this one, I think we miss out on the historic opportunity we have. Tam. Yeah, I'll take the question on the shareholders. Well, first of all, Bechtel is a private corporation, so it doesn't have shareholders. But in my prior life, I would say the shareholders have gotten much more sophisticated because they're part of networks where their learning curve has gone up. And a lot of the inquiries from shareholders at the board level down, it really is around the company's risk management process. What are you doing? What do you have inside your company to look at these potential risks to your access to resources or the stability of your operation? So, and all of these risk management processes were connected to these sort of big macro issues that we're talking about, water security, energy security, et cetera. Anne. Yeah, well, GE is a public company, and we're one of the most widely held stocks in the world, so we have a lot of shareholders. I almost find the premise of the question is not consistent, and certainly with my experience. Our shareholders want us to fight corruption. Our shareholders want us to do ethical business. Quite honestly, over the last few years, our shareholders have benefited dramatically from the globalization of the company. So, all of these things are part of our core business. So, I think if a shareholder came in and said, we want you to be corrupt and do what, we would be what? So, I mean, it just doesn't compute. I mean, I realize that there's short-term market forces that want us to generate profit quickly. But again, when you're in long-term business, and most of our equipment lasts 30 or more years, then you really have to think about the long-term every day, which is part of how we work. Yeah, just a couple of quick comments on the governance question and the rule of law. Well, I think there are two points there. One is we certainly fully support rule of law, and we even think a little bit more broadly about it in terms of the kinds of laws and procedures in countries that allow people to start a business, to grow a business. I mean, starting with addressing informality, having legal citizenship, having the right to title the property. Those kinds of things sometimes come kind of late in the long list of aspects of good governance. And for us in the business community and representing as we do in the broader international grouping, a lot of SMEs, those are sometimes the things that kind of work their way up the top 10 list. So I hope we don't lose sight of that as well, and I think Dan was alluding to that. So I think that's one critical aspect. And then a second part of the governance, and it's not so much a shareholder issue for business, but it's a stakeholder issue. I mean, we're all doing business and working in a very open community. We have not just the shareholders that we need to answer to, but other important audiences and other parts of society that have expectations that really matter. And I mean, this is important to us as business working in the UN and just in doing our day-to-day business.  And if anything, as some have alluded to, we're gonna see even more voices being heard and taken very seriously in the post-2015 development framework. So we have to bear that in mind at all times. Okay, Daniel. Yeah, just to be brief, I mean, I think overall, the US government has long been supportive of a strong enabling environment to operate and going back to what even in the Monterey consensus, which lays out kind of the overall financing and framework for development. But I think we're in a couple, I think there is a question or an opportunity to look at that from a couple of different angles, whether you take it from kind of an open government partnership and EITI type extractive industries, transparency initiative. So from a standards perspective, from an institutions perspective, et cetera. So I think that's where there's kind of opportunities and questions about how exactly the agenda will evolve. But it's definitely an area of great interest and engagement for us. Okay, folks, please join me in thanking the panel.


Well, thank you. It's very pretty. I like it a lot. Boom! Today's sponsor is LG. Do not hail your products like this. When you buy them, I did it for dramatic effect.  It's a little bit emotional. I've been staying up till 2 a.m. getting in my feelings. Sad boy hours does some weird stuff to your brain. Anyways, if you guys are good girls and good boys, you stay through this ad, you stay through to the end of the video. You will see a dope $3,000 streaming setup. I promise you, this is the coolest thing I've built on the channel. This is a 34-inch WQ HD monitor by LG and it's actually the monitor we're gonna be using in this setup. It's an ultra-wide monitor which I personally love for streaming as well as gaming. The extra length and curve is incredibly immersive. This monitor has a 144 Hertz refresh rate, which is actually the standard for competitive e-sports. So if you're a gamer, this is definitely a good option. On top of that, this monitor has compatibility with FreeSync and is in the process of being certified as G-Sync compatible. But users on Reddit and Amazon are confirming that the compatibility works. On top of that, I've done my own testing to make sure this was the case and it is. The monitor is very simple to assemble and once it's put together, it's even easier to adjust it to your preferred height and tilt. I love it. If you're looking for a higher-end monitor to choose from, this is a great choice. Okay, we're in. First thing I notice, with the widescreen monitor, while this looks beautiful for shooters, maybe it's... How is that not headshot? Oh, you know, I never mind. Okay, um, it might not be the easiest thing to check my corners, but this is really, really pretty. So that's one good thing off the bat. That's not the monitor's fault. I'm just... That's the power of this monitor. That is the power of this monitor. You buy this... You buy this? Triple kills all day. Okay, so second. Not bad. That's actually the highest I've ever placed. Um, 144 Hertz, I could feel it easily and it feels really good when you're playing a shooter. It's pretty. It's very pretty. If you're a streamer, you like being productive, something like this, highly recommend it. Dear Kimmy, the last year of my life has been one of the worst experiences of all time.  I wasn't ready for it, but I guess that other people in our situation rarely ever are. I had to leave my last job, which I was actually somewhat happy to do, but I didn't realize that also meant leaving all my friends as well. I became really alone really quickly and since then had a massive responsibility that requires me to be positive, hardworking, acutely aware, and extremely selfless all at the same time. The problem is I'm none of those things. I'm selfish, I don't play well with others, and I'm incredibly jaded. So shoving all that into a tiny box and becoming a new person has been difficult, but incredibly necessary because you and I both know it's at stake. It was about four months ago into this process when something amazing happened. A video I posted to YouTube did extremely well, and I realized that maybe I can have a job and still be there for the family. It started becoming more and more of a reality and it seemed almost scripted because the money could not have come in a better time. I was still lonely, but then I started to realize something. I had a platform. I could communicate to other people. So I started getting more involved with other creators here on YouTube and then also was introduced to some beautiful souls on Twitch. From there on out, I actually started to make friends and now here a year later, while we're still in that same situation, I'm able to have meaningful connections with other people and support the family as needed. So, since you're here at home helping the family now, too, I wanted to give you that same opportunity. I know you had other plans and wanted to live your life and that our current situation doesn't allow for that. So I figured that maybe what I do can help you in the same way it helped me. Also consider this your graduation present. Okay, so sorry. Normally I don't read from paper, but I wanted to get all these thoughts out. What we're doing today is we're actually going to be building an entire gaming streaming PC setup and it's going to be, I believe, $3,000 in total. Everything that's on the table is not even all that we're going to be showing today. There's a lot of stuff behind me. This is for my sister. She just graduated college from Stanford. Wow. Smart. And this is going to be going to her. And this goes without saying she's getting a nicer computer than I am. So let's get to it. For the processor, because Ryzen 3rd generation is Al Valhalla, a lot of the second generation stuff is actually quite a bit cheaper and it's actually still really powerful. So for her computer, we're going to be using a Ryzen 7 2700x. This is an absolute beast of a processor. Eight cores, 16 threads. This can do just about anything, especially streaming. For the motherboard, this thing is going inside the Asus Prime X470. This is a very nice motherboard. It actually matches the aesthetic that you will see we're going for here in a second. Comes with a lot of different features. I'm not going to go for all of them, but it is incredibly nice board. For our RAM, we are going with Corsair Vengeance RGB Pros. This is 16 gigabytes at, I believe, 3,000. Yes, 3,000 megahertz speed. I've said it before, but Ryzen processors need faster RAM in order to get the most of their performance and this should be good enough. For the power supply, we are going with an EVGA 650G3. This is a gold-rated power supply. It is plenty of power, especially for what we're going to be doing here. And, and not much else. It is just a really nice power supply. It's really expensive too. For the cooler, yes, I do know the Ryzen 2700X does come with a stock cooler and it does look pretty nice, the Prism. However, I, like I said, wanted to keep going with our aesthetic. So here we have the H100i RGB Platinum SE cooler for the processor. As for our storage, we're actually using a WD Blue M.2 SSD from Western Digital. This has 500 gigabytes of SSD space, which should be enough for starting, especially if you're just streaming. I'm not sure if she's going to be wanting to use videos or photos, but if she does, obviously I'm going to upgrade that later. Here we have some Corsair LL120 fans. These are RGB and a lot of this stuff is actually Corsair. And I wanted to make sure that all of the RGB lights that are going to be going inside this thing are going to be staying consistent and can all have their own patterns going or work in sync. And lastly, for our case... Okay, we are going to be using a Crystal 680X. This is a giant case. Oh, God, it's so good. Oh, but wait, Chris, where's the graphics card? You can't have a gaming streaming PC set up without a graphics card. Well... Oh, and by the way, this build is being live streamed on Twitch. By the time you're watching this, it was already done. However, if you want to see any of the stuff that we do on the Twitch streams, it's a lot of joking around, a lot of funny, some gaming. There is a lot of PC tech. Just come check out the live stream so you guys will enjoy it, and I promise.  Well, it's almost done. I may have misordered her mixer, so the correct one will be here in two days. Thank you Amazon Prime. Anyways, so she's got her beautiful audio-technica cardio condenser microphone. I think that's what it's called. She's got her pop filter, her mic arm, the XLR cable, the beautiful LG white screen monitor. She's got a stream deck accompanied with the Elgato Key Lite, because this is actually going to be able to control that, which I think is really, really cool. We also have white peripherals. I really, really, really wanted to keep it white, obviously. She's got a white desk. This is the desk she picked out. She recently repainted her room. She likes lighter, white colors, so that's what I wanted to stick with. We also have a white mat.  And then obviously, of course, the freshly built 2700X system. Everything here together. Oh man, I feel like it's so sick. Would you use this system? Rate me 110. What do you think? Now that it's all done, my sister's actually about to leave town for a flight. So she was sleeping somewhere else, which was perfect while we were setting all this up. So while she's here back in the house for a little bit before she goes, we're going to go surprise her. Kimmy! Come on. I don't know.  I know you're tired.  Come check it out. Come in. What do you think? Press the power button. Okay, so here's the one thing. The mixer, I ordered the wrong one, but it's going to be here in two days. So everything works. Press the power button and then take a look. Yeah. What do you think? I put your name on it. Okay. The microphone doesn't really light up, but that's okay. This is really cool. I like the microphone. You like the mic? Okay. Don't jiggle it too much. But just have to put like a camera up here or something? Yep. Oh yeah. I didn't think that through. I forgot. You need a camera to stream. Well, I'll get you one. So, I mean, here's the thing. The reason I wanted to surprise you with this is because for me personally, Twitch and YouTube kind of, I feel like saved my life a little bit in a way. And whether or not you choose to do it is completely up to you. But I just feel like at the very least you have like a little office space you can do work from here at home. It's a lot prettier than a regular office space. But if you choose to do it, you know, maybe because we're kind of homebodies and we're stuck at home, this will be like a window to starting with it you want to do. Very cool. Well, thank you. It's very pretty. I like it a lot. You know you have a nicer computer than me now, right? Oh, it's super pretty. I appreciate it. Okay, that is the end of the video. Thank you guys so much for watching. I already know you guys are going to make comments. Oh, your sister not grateful. I can't believe her reaction. Why wasn't it bigger? React harder. Here's the thing. I was not a good brother. And to be honest, I wasn't a good brother even up until the last six months. So it's very hard for my sister to be the way she is with her friends around me. And that's on me. I didn't do a good enough job. I like to think that part of this, you know, not that material things will fix a relationship, but part of this, you know, will make a step in the right direction. Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you found this creative, entertaining or informative in any way, shape or form. And as always, have a great day.


This study found that two population-based cohort studies with different response rates and designs produced similar results when it came to estimating exposure outcome relationships. This suggests that the differences in response rates do not necessarily affect the accuracy of the estimated risks. This article was offered by John Luisa R. Banks-Emily, Mealing, Nicolle M., and others.