I think we're a good color combination. Excellent. So you will let me know when. Good afternoon, everyone. And greetings to those of you who are tuning in for our live stream. Welcome to this panel discussion on Better Living Zero Waste, co-hosted by the World Economic Forum and Fortune Magazine. As we all know, Asia is the world's biggest producer of food and manufactured goods with a massive consumer base. But this growth comes with a cost as this region's greenhouse gas emissions and the waste that will produce continue to rise. That is why concerted efforts to design more sustainable production model and to shift consumer behavior are underway. So in today's discussion, we will explore how government and business leaders can work together to build an ecosystem, to invest in innovative technologies, and to promote responsible consumption. So a very brief self-introduction. My name is Fang Wang. I am the executive Shanghai duty editor at Fortune. I'm thrilled to be moderating this conversation. We have an excellent and incredibly diverse panel here today with us featuring voices from across the public and private sectors and from a wide range of industries. Before we dive in, I just want to remind our audience here and online that if you want to post any content and thoughts on social media, please use the hashtag AMNC23, which stands for annual meeting of new champions 23. Now let me briefly introduce our distinguished panelists. To my immediate left is Ms. Pullman Lowe, vice chairman and managing director Regal Hotels International, which is one of the largest hotel brands in greater China. To her left is Gilly Wong, chief executive Hong Kong consumer council. The Hong Kong government body charged with consumer rights protection. To her left is Stuart Oda, founder and chief executive officer, Alaska Life and agriculture technology company. To his left is Mr. Martin Weiss, chief executive officer, Hubert Berdermedia, one of Germany's largest media and technology companies. To his left is Mr. Tilmin Chang, chief executive officer, Sino-Singapore Tianjin Ecosystem Investment and Development Company, which I think is an intergovernment partnership between Singapore and China. A warm welcome to all of you. I want to turn to you first, Gilly, because we all know companies and the government of course play a crucial role in sustainable growth, which will cover a lot afterwards. But I want to come to you first because consumers are at the centre of this big cause. When we say better living, it's better living for them. And without their participation, without their awareness, nothing can be done. So you work for the Hong Kong Consumer Council. So how do you design a program that raises consumers awareness as part of your mission to give them to protect their rights? Is awareness part of their rights? Oh, definitely. You know, for any consumption, when you talk about what is sustainable or not sustainable, there is more of a marketplace. In a marketplace, there are two big players. On one side, obviously, is the trader. The other side is the consumer. And of course, surrounding it requires regulations and other stakeholders. But any imbalance of it, you know, will create problems or maybe disruptions, no matter if it's good or bad, to the whole marketplace. So one of the very important things to safeguard consumers is maintaining this balance. And going back to consumer rights, we are talking about very fundamental rights. They are talking about, you know, the safety of the products. We are talking about affordability. We are talking about whether there are sustainable means around material friendliness. Their rights to have information access. And also, in case of any problem, the right to redress. So these are, you know, very important right to consumers. So when we, no matter it's at the international level or maybe at the local level, to design a program to maintain this balance, one aspect of it is consumer education. Apart from advocating for the right regulations to protect, to regulate the market. Advocating for the right behaviour, for the trade. Consumer education pay a very big part because they have to empower themselves to be rational, logical and sensible in their decision making and in every purchase. So no matter you're talking about clothings, food, green products or maybe electrical items, whatever you think of, you know, in a household, if they have that education, if they have that knowledge, that will be far more easier in protecting them. Because if they can protect themselves, the dispute will sell them comes. But if they don't, you know, the dispute will come easily. So in terms of approach, there are many ways, you know, to do it. Using Hong Kong Consumer Council as an example, we put a lot of emphasis on information dissemination. So in our work, we have a very famous Choice magazine every month that we release product tests, results of many different kinds of products, giving all the tips, you know, to consumers when they make the purchase. Apart from that, you know, we put forward very big education programs, from the primary school, all the way to secondary school, the wrong-knowable ones, including the Mentally Handicap, together with the elderly, these are more wrong-knowable groups to help them, you know, to educate themselves. Furthermore, just in case, you know, any dispute to happen, we have a very big team in the market to conciliate different disputes. So every year, in terms of numbers, we're handling around 70,000 inquiries and 30,000 complaints every year, just trying to, you know, help to resolve all the disputes. Our resolution rate is about 70%, which is not bad already, but this is the last thing, you know, we want to do because we want happy transaction. We want to have a very sustainable and balanced economy, but things will not be that ideal, so that's why, you know, we need to have that very strong dispute resolution mechanism. And at the higher level globally, we are working on many evocacies to international bodies as well as governments. If you're talking about food, we are working closely with UN, the United Nations, at Consumers International, which is the World Federation of 200 members from 100 countries. That's actually what I'm going to dive into. Can you share with us a little bit about the sustainable food program that you were initiating?  I'm sure we rely on food to survive. If you don't have good food or healthy food, probably you'll decorate a lot of problems to our healthcare system as well as the productivity of any economy, so food is very important. But unfortunately, it is not that ideal as well because we are facing the cost of living crisis and also the imbalance, the broken system of food. So at the international level, Consumers International are working with many major bodies like the UN. We are part of the UN food system dialogue. We are also in the crisis committee as well to look into the Ukraine war, how it impacts the food supply worldwide. And we are advocating for the balancing of the trade as well as the innovation of technology so that the consumers can have more affordable, safe system for that. And at the market level, Consumers International are also working closely with different agencies on consumer education about healthy diet. So going back to Hong Kong, one example that I quote before I close is, in the past three years, we doubled the resources on food tests. So we have probably around 35 tests conducted covering 1,300 samples. That creates a lot of noise. Whatever you can think of from coffee, infant formula, all the way to candied foods or even superfood, goji berries, which is very popular right now, we test everything. So that we offer informed information to consumers. That creates lots of interest in the market because the fine thing is what's striking. No one has the idea about coffee can be casino genic because of the cremates.  It's associated with the livelihood of people. They were concerned, they would be interested. That's how we empower them to behave better in their healthy diet. So at the end of the day, we generate a lot of media attention, not only in Hong Kong, but also in China as well. We're talking about 6,000 meter coverage and inside that is about 60 headline news. So by going through something that is highly relevant to consumers about their daily living, apart from the policy level, that will help to drive better empowerment to consumers. Well, I want to bring in an innovator in the food industry. Stuart, Alaska Life is pioneering some of the cutting edge agriculture technologies. When we talked last time in the preparation of this panel, I heard some fascinating data, statistics, how vertical farming can increase the efficiency and also the nutrition of food. Can you share with us a bit more? Yeah, sure, thank you so much. Maybe I'll build on what Gilly said, but I guess overall in order to build a more sustainable, resilient and inclusive food system, the agriculture industry and our company's focus is how can the industry make things more both affordable but also accessible. And so local sustainable food production needs to do a lot of work in order to make it easy for the consumer to make a decision. So food that is safer, healthier, and hopefully just as affordable. And so our company is focused kind of in two key areas. First, we build a turnkey vertical farm for customers that are looking to localize food production. So if it makes both economic and environmental sense, we want to help customers localize the food production. And then on kind of the smart side of things, we develop farm management software and AI enabled IoT devices to take conventional farms and really maximize their productivity and efficiency. And kind of the result of that on the vertical farming side because we're able to control so many aspects of production, we're able to reduce the water, the land and fertilizer use by up to 99%. We don't require any chemical pesticides and we don't need any GMOs. We've also vertical farming is very bright. You see a lot of LEDs. And so the conventional kind of thought is that it's very energy intensive but we've completed a very simple environmental impact study and we found that we can reduce carbon emissions per kg by up to 24% compared to imported fresh produce products. And so agricultural logistics is a huge emitter of carbon. And by localizing food production, by giving consumers the option, the access and the affordability to be able to purchase things that are local and more sustainable, we can also have a meaningful impact in reducing carbon emissions. And kind of the last thing is really to scale up the technology and really to democratize it. We have to take a lot of this specialized know-how out of the equation. And to that end, we're building one of the largest image data sets so that our AI models can understand plant health at a very kind of molecular photosynthetic level. And the goal here is that if we can make food production not only accessible from a product perspective but from a profession. So if anybody can enter the space just like you might work at a McDonald's or a fast food restaurant that anybody could be a successful commercial farmer that we can really meaningful, meaningfully scale up sustainable food production. And we can make it possible for more communities around the world to be in charge of their own food and nutritional security. So we're putting a lot of these efforts into these tool sets that we can deploy. A lot of our focus is actually in developing markets. So we're in China, we're in the Middle East. The kind of first developed market that we're entering is Japan. But trying to make these tools available and affordable and accessible for individuals and businesses that are operating in developing countries. Can you give us an example? Like you go to a building, right? It's the vertical farming like you work with a hotel, for example. How do you do it? Yeah, so we're our kind of maybe unique contribution to the industry is that our installations are incredibly flexible and they're modular. So if you have an open space and underutilized parking structure, we've converted it into a vertical farm before. We've integrated our indoor farms into restaurant corners and cafes. And so really any space that where food is consumed, we can produce it locally as well. And so we really wanna empower not just kind of this debate around consumer versus producer, but to be able to think about food being integrated into the cityscape in ways that hasn't existed in the past. And so right now we're doing a lot of discussions around integrating into residential communities, co-locating with supermarkets, integrating into hotels and other operations. And also kind of now more and more having food be kind of something that can co-locate with both educational facilities of schools as well as rehabilitation centers. So as part of somebody's mental and physical therapy that they might be able to use indoor farming as a way to not only produce food for their local community, but to get from their well-being's perspective as well. So if I were a restaurant owner and I want to use your technology, does it require a lot of capital? Yeah, so from that perspective, we have multiple models that we can work with. So if a customer doesn't have kind of the upfront capital, there's ways for us to finance the technology so that they can just integrate it into their operations. If they don't want a farm, we can provide the operational kind of support as well. You know, right now, what's really exciting is last year, we matched the capital and operational, we matched the operational and capital prosperity to glass houses. And this year, we're confident with a small variety of vegetables that will match the efficiency of a greenhouse. And next year, in developed markets, we'll match the efficiency of a field farm. And so what's really exciting about the technology is it's very exponential. And we're very confident that if you're purchasing imported fresh produce, that by localizing the production, we can reduce our costs. Right, so can you tell us a bit more about the nutrition increase with vertical farming? Yeah, I mean, nutrition is really kind of a direct function of freshness. So if something is fresh, most often, that's going to have much more nutritional value. One of the ways in which we are also kind of increasing nutritional value is because we can control all aspects of production, we can apply stress to the plants in a way that really maximizes nutritional value as well. So we can simulate drought conditions, flood conditions, extreme darkness, and high winds. And all these different stress, kind of both mechanical stress and these kinds of environmental stress that we can provide, can get the plant to react in ways that can become more nutritious. We can also change everything from the taste and texture as well, so customers that want something that's sweeter or spicier or softer, these are all things that we can do as well. And this is kind of also a way in which we can tailor our solutions to restaurants and hotels, but also a way for us to also contribute to things like reducing food waste. Sounds fascinating. So we do have a representative from the hotel industry. Paul, man, so the hotel industry is going to have a boom time after the post-pandemic era. So I'm sure you're ready for that. But at Regal Hotel, you put sustainability at the core of your operation. So could you share with us a little bit details of how you do to save water, energy, reduce food waste? What you do? Sure. As you say, we actually do embrace sustainability at the core because we feel that it's not just time to talk about it, but actually translate it into action. So we actually launched the first carbon neutral hotel called iClub 13 years ago. That's before I guess everyone started talking about ESG. And the way we did it was to really start with measuring the baseline. Because first, you have to be aware of the impact that you are causing to this earth. So we did that by engaging professional consultants and also building our in-house team to really look at exactly how we are affecting the world with our operations. And then we offset the remaining emissions. And I have to say that through these years, we have found that technology can really play a huge role. So in terms of energy management solutions, there have been more and more very advanced AI-powered systems that we can leverage on to really drive energy efficiency. And in fact, the more we can embrace big data and AI, the more we are able to predict energy consumption. And actually, a lot of people are under the misconception that you have to sacrifice your bottom line. But in fact, when you're willing to invest up front, there are very clear savings. Easily, you can save up to 20%. Above that, perhaps there's some diminishing returns. But still, we have to make sure that we are on this path to net zero. And in terms of water management, also there are very efficient systems that can help conserve water by predicting again consumption. And also, some faucets can actually deliver the same type of flow without using as much water. And in terms of waste management, globally, the hotel industry actually throws away a hundred billion worth of food. This is actually an alarming statistic in that, in fact, nine million people are still dying of hunger every year. A child dies of hunger every 10 seconds. And yet, we as in the more developed countries are throwing away all this wasted food because, again, I think we can do a better job in predicting food consumption. For example, there are some IoT technologies that we can use to install in the kitchens or even in restaurants to measure the amount of food that is thrown away. And in that way, we can better manage our inventory and also optimize our purchasing systems and also optimize the portion that we serve to our customers and also better plan our menu offerings. So also for waste management, there's a lot of very innovative technologies out there. This year, we entered into a partnership with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to develop a revolutionary BRICS technology that actually uses a combination of food waste and construction waste to produce eco-friendly BRICS that are actually 12 times harder than the original BRICS. And one ton can actually absorb two tons of carbon. So again, there are many ways that we can reduce the impact of our operations. And this year, we are also working with some international organizations to define the standards for net zero hotel operation. I think there are a number of green building standards out there, but instead of just focusing on the hardware, actually consumer behavior can make a huge difference. And that's where we can actually help with operation management. For example, at the university, there's a sustainable living solution that actually simply installs smart meters in the dormitories. So actually sometimes it doesn't involve rocket science. All it takes is awareness and the determination to actually minimize our impact. So by simply installing the meters, the students are able to reduce their energy consumption by over 60%. So again, I think as long as we are aware that we are obviously the source of the problem, but we can also be the solution. On that note, can I come back to Gili just very briefly? So we all know Hong Kong is the paradise for cuisine, right? But how do you design a program to educate the consumers about the food waste in particular, to reduce food waste? Is there any specific measures that you take? Yes, we do. In natural fact, that requires very collaborative efforts with the civil society, with the government, and also education to educated people about how much you need. Sometimes you're just too greedy to eat more, but in reality you don't need that much. So no matter it's the restaurants industries, in the past we have a course manual, we are advocating for only six crores, and also around mentally unfriendly food, we get rid of that, trying to make people understand what is healthy for them. I do believe that COVID did make a difference to people. Sometimes this kind of global crisis make people self-reflect again, their behaviour, whether it is right for the environment and right for their wellness. So it's getting more and more healthy, and when you talk about healthy, if you offer them the right information and also make it affordable to them, the behaviour will come. But of course they're still not the most ideal situation right now because people are still half educated and also affordability is one thing as well. Plus sometimes greenwashing is another issue that globally we have to address. No matter it's greenwashing or green ESG washing, those are the issues that we have to work with. So there are many, many things that we have to do, but fundamentally the education of the right, impartial, accurate and precise information to them and easy to understand to the public is very crucial for them to gradually change their behaviour. And according to our sustainable consumption behaviour study, making it accessible is very, very important and have the choices in the market is very important. The green labelling right now is an issue as well, so that's why we are also working very hard to look at the accuracy and the comprehensiveness of label, pinpointing different traders on how they could improve because sometimes it's just because of cost saving, they sell them, they review their nutrition label and also the information on the label which is undesirable, so we are also pinpointing that by matching that, you know, offering the right to the information to consumers, they will gradually change. Right, and I think on that note it's a good timing to bring on the representative from the media industry. Martin, you work for this German media company called Berda, which I think publishes a lot of titles in food, on food, is that right? That is absolutely right with the world's largest publisher of food magazines, yes. Right, so Gili just talked about how we should convey the message in an accurate way, right? And I think media plays a key role in this. So can you share with us your insights in some of the new trends in food industry, technologies, innovations and perhaps consumers' behaviour around food? Yeah, I mean, look, there's two different perspectives I'd like to draw upon after hearing about sort of regulation and production, now we come to the fun part, the cooking and actually eating. So we're very close to the meal now, everyone. So that's one perspective. The other is maybe a distinctly European perspective, which might be different to the Asian perspective that we're seeing. So, look, 30, 40 years ago, it was all about diversity in food, right? So the Brits had their shepherd pie and the Germans were eating their sausage and suddenly everybody was getting interested in food and suddenly it was about international cuisine, it was about discovering the world. And then eventually the topic of health started to matter. So the question is, what is it that you eat? We all remember, supersize me, we all remember debates about healthy nutrition and this is sort of the early 2000s when that was the big trend. And then I guess it was sort of from the 20 teens when the whole question of your carbon footprint really started to matter and it was all about getting food that is very locally produced, it's fresh locally produced food. And I guess that is where we currently are, it now sort of develops into new topic, which is longevity, where people are saying, I can really use food to lengthen my life and lead a healthy, happy life hopefully ever after. Now food alone isn't gonna get you there. But that is sort of the trend in which we're going. I think what you said is absolutely right, the consumer matters massively because yes, we need industrial solutions to the problems that we see to be able to react but at the end of the day we have consumer decisions and if the consumers accept plastic wrapping, low nutrition, nutritional value, stuff being shipped around half the world and really, really cheap food and all of that in combination we will never get the problem solved. So there will need to be some sort of education and you can do it from a public policy perspective as I guess you guys do but I think you can also do it from a narrative from the storytelling because it's actually quite something positive and people love to engage with it so there's already a lot of consumer awareness and food magazines for example, like other magazines, unlike other magazines, are actually not decreasing in print run, they're actually increasing in print run, food has become an ever more central part to our lives and around food waste. I mean, let me just give you one example. We are a media and tech company, we also invest in internet ventures and one of a very successful venture that we have is in the UK, a company called Oddbox. What they do is they fight food waste right at the start. So they basically take produce that will never make it to the supermarket just for optical reasons. They package that into a box and send it on a weekly basis to consumers so food waste is actually reduced at the source before it actually hits the cycle. So those I think are two interesting consumer trends that we're saying. I'm going to share with us with some cooking skills. We'll do that later, absolutely, very, very happy. My favorite lasagna recipe after the show. All right, okay. So let's broaden our discussions a little bit.  So Tianjin EcoCity is a partnership between Singapore and China. So I think you bring a very unique perspective you sort of cross the public and the private sectors. So could you tell us a bit more? I think Tianjin EcoCity is about 50 kilometres from 30 kilometres. So it's in the coastal area. Essentially you turned a piece of wasteland into a very liveable area for living, I mean for Tianjin residents. So tell us how did you, I mean, how you did it? What's it like now? First, some background as the G2G government project. This is quite unique. Singapore and China has got a few G2G projects over the last few decades. Tianjin EcoCity was started in 2008. If you recall, those were the times when China was a bit concerned about air pollution, water pollution, food security and so on. It started in 2009. 2008. That was when we were all the discussions about air pollution. And when they look at Singapore, Singapore is economically vibrant. It's a very small place. But at the same time, it has a lot of respect for the environment. It has done a lot for environmental protection, preservation and so on. And therefore the idea between the leaders of the two countries at the time was why not find a place, develop a city to show that we can grow economically while protecting and preserving the environment. And to make it even more challenging, we chose a place in the eastern corner of Tianjin that is essentially waste land and polluted waters at the time with only just some fishermen. So we took the place... So a lot of things were done in the last 15 years. You rehabilitated the land. We cleaned up the waters. We took the urban planning lessons from various parts of the world, including Singapore, and planned the city so that it is a very livable, very green, very sustainable city. For instance, one of the KPS that we have is that every resident in EcoCity should be within five minutes of walking distance to a park. And there are many park connectors connecting the various parks. We make sure they are greenery. We make good use of the rivers and the lakes. And we have planted a lot of trees. So today, the Tianjin EcoCity is, I would say, very successful. One of the more livable cities in China. We have many young families and also older folks because of the environment and the air and the water. So I think the demonstration here was that you can grow economically, you can make it into a nice living environment while also taking care of the greenery and the nature. And I think that was done. So in the last 15 years, we have... As a company, we have three roles. First, we are the platform between the two governments. So there are many things in the development of the city that depends on the government and not just the company. So we have drawing resources from the Chinese government, from the Singapore government. So for instance, in the early planning, we draw in experts who have dealt with pollution issues in Singapore and in China to do the rehabilitation. We brought in the urban planning experts to do the planning of the city. We brought in the people who are concerned about sustainability to set up a series of KPIs on how to have a sustainable city and so on. So that's the first role, being a platform to bring resources from both governments to make the city a livable place. The second role is to develop some of the buildings in the city. So we are a developer of residential properties. We are a developer of industrial properties, of commercial properties. And we are halfway through this project, we have got more land to develop. The third role is really to operate some of these facilities. So we're an operator of some industrial facilities and some commercial facilities. Right, so we will come to the expansion plan afterwards, but I'm just wondering whether you bring in private capital into this project and how does the private sector, I mean, collaborate with the government because we all know, I mean, the ecosystem where everybody is involved is really important in the sustainable growth. And also because only when you have like private sector participating in, you probably can have a more sustainable business model, right? If you want to scale it, I mean, in the context of urbanization, which I mean, a lot of Asian countries are still going through. So how does, I mean, the private and public sectors work together? So for the G2G projects between Singapore and China, I think one of the unique thing that Singapore government always insists on is that the project should be supported by the government with a vision that was set up by the government, but it should be implemented and executed by the private sector. So in the case of Tianjin, a joint venture was set up between a Singapore consortium and a Chinese consortium. On the Singapore side, it is led by Capital Corporation, which is one of the listed companies in Singapore. So it is purely private sector driven in that sense in terms of the capital injection, in terms of the implementation. And to join other resources, we will have joint ventures with other companies. So we have drawn in investors from Korea, from Japan, from the Philippines and so on, to do the development. So that's how we make use of private sector funding, investment, acumen, and maybe private sector expertise, while at the same time drawing upon the government's experience in terms of larger picture issues, urban planning, and so on and so forth. Right. So very quickly, has it been a commercially successful story? Yes, it has been. Good to know.   So share with us a little bit about, I mean, how do you reduce plastic waste in Hong Kong? Wow, this is probably at your top. Start from the global picture first instead of swimming into Hong Kong. Plastic, to start with, the cost has been passing on to consumers unfairly, frankly speaking, because in the first place, if we think through the damage of plastic to the whole environment, if we get rid of it or maybe have the right ingredients, probably the cost will not be translated to all of us in this room or all the consumers. So it is quite unfair right now, but the whole world right now is chasing after time to mitigate the problem. So this is something very important we have to deal with, because no matter it's the physical plastic that we are touchable or maybe the micro plastic that we are absorbing in our body, in our blood, those are harming us every day. So at a global level, consumers international actually is working, actually is lobbying and negotiating with the UN about a plastic treaty for plastic waste reduction. It is a huge pollution, so... But the details, the devils is in the details, because I'm not sure every one of you have the experience of recycling plastic every day, but there are lots of frustration. Whether there's a label to help you to understand whether it's recyclable or not, secondly is how can you get rid of the labels on the bottle to ensure that it is recyclable? Even after you clean it, how you can put it into the right place to ensure your effort will not be wasted, it will be properly treated. Stuff like that, if it's not transparent, not properly done, it will frustrate consumers a lot. And at the end, what will happen is they either do less or just give up. For many surveys in the world, saying that many consumers are very frustrated, so at the global level in the negotiation of the global treaty, there are a few very important things that have to be harmonized across the world. The first thing is about the information provision on the label by itself, making sure that it's standardized that everyone can have an easy understanding on how to follow the instruction and make sure it is right. Second thing is about the definition of green and innovation, because one country, your definition of green versus the other is very different. So that requires a huge harmonization around the world to ensure this consistency. And thirdly, it's about the trade practices as well, because the replaceable products have to exist. In actual fact, even when we are talking about many replaceable products, in reality, after testing, they are also containing harmful substances to the world. So it's not 100% green in reality. So how we can continuously improve that to make it total green to consumers, that is very important and that has to be done at the international level. But the local level, of course, every government is tracing out the time right now. So one thing is to consistently, persistently and actively involve in all the government consultations about the policies, advising them what makes sense to consumers, what are the unclear points and also about the incentive to support consumer behavior, to follow, to manage the plastic waste. So this is one area, and another area is consumer education. If every one of us pledged not to touch plastic in your takeaway, in your everyday life, that will make a difference as well. Even taking me, for example, I just stopped using plastic for my takeaway. I just choose shops or restaurants that allow me to bring my glass container and then you put food into my container, then I would patronize that shop. So this is simple behavior that everyone can behave, but that requires a huge amount of effort and education for everyone to follow. And finally, according to the survey we did in Hong Kong, the sharing of success to the public is very important. I don't want to waste my effort. I want to know my effort got rewarded for the better benefit of the whole community and best with financial incentive. So if I can get rewarded with certain gifts, redemption of green products, green coupons or credits, that I can continuously motivate my behavior, that will be better. So I think these are the things that has to be done, no matter it's global and locally, to drive plastic reduction. Hopefully one day we don't have to use it at all. Yeah, on that note, I can particularly relate to because in China we do have this phenomenon of eating a lot of takeaways, especially during the pandemic. It's becoming a phenomenon. I think it produces a lot of food waste and plastic waste. So we've had to create that sense of guilt. Yes, exactly, but there is guilt. But when you said you decided to keep away from them, I think that's very challenging. That takes a lot of determination, right? Because you're basically sacrificing your convenience. So on the note of rewards, financial rewards, I want to bring in Pullman. I heard about this meta-green project you're doing in Metaverse. I think in Sandbox, is that right? So that offers a metaverse version of green hotel, net-zero hotel, and you give online-to-offline rewards. How does it work? Can you share with us? So the reason I launched MetaGreen is because I truly believe in collaboration for change and impact. We live in a very complex world with very urgent challenges to be met. So to go far, we have to go together. That's why I launched this meta-green, which is the first Web3 green communities, the first green metropolis on Sandbox. And in this green utopian world, we don't just have a green hotel. Rather, we actually have like-minded partners join this ecosystem. Together, we want to foster eco-friendly behavior and reward, as Jillian mentioned, green choices. So what we do is we provide immersive entertainment experiences on the Sandbox. And we have partners such as leading banks, also leading supermarkets, shopping malls, all types of players, so that we together can drive online-to-offline behavior and also vice versa. It's a decarbonized and earned model that is quite different from just playing and earning. Just elaborate a little bit more. If I'm a player in Sandbox and I enter your virtual hotel, how do I behave to get reward? So one way is in the virtual hotel that you will experience the latest PropTech invention so you will see what a net-zero hotel will be like. And then you will go through the hotel and you will learn to minimize your carbon footprint. And then after you go through those experiences, you can redeem an NFT that can allow you to enjoy physical rewards at one of our outlets and hotels. And actually, it's vice versa because in our upcoming app, we actually let consumers choose certain behaviors such as foregoing towel usage or daily housekeeping. And they will be rewarded points that can be stored also in the metaverse. Just to follow up on that, because we know a lot of consumers already have intention to be more energy and water saving. But sometimes it's a little bit difficult for them to translate their intention into real action. So in the real world, what do you do to make the translation to give them enough motivation to put real action into real behavior? For example, by the end of this year, we'll go completely plastic-free. And the way to do that is also to get the consumers to support this movement. So when they say, okay, I'm not gonna use any of the disposable shampoos and body wash and all those amenities, then we give them points. So it's actually very instant. And it's stored in the loyalty program so that they can be rewarded for each and every choice so that they can be more mindful of the impact of their consumption. That's great. So we will, in your hotel, have shampoo-only bottles. In dispensers. But of course they can still request, but that would be only upon special requests. Stuart, I want to come back to you because I think the capital plays an important role. And in our previous discussion, you said something about only 1% of investment goes into the agriculture or food industry. That seems a very small number. Tell us why this is the case. Yeah, I mean, actually I have no data to back up the 1%. But I think right now there's a lot of exponential technologies that are really captivating people's imagination. So like chat, GPT and generative AI is kind of the hot topic right now. And so there's kind of a disproportionate amount of capital going into these other sectors. I think with agriculture and technology surrounding agriculture, it really requires patient capital. The change happens over a long period of time, but once the change happens, it's a huge paradigm shift. So the efficiencies aren't just an increase of a couple of percentages. We're talking about a 10x, 100x improvement in how things are being done. And so right now kind of the way in which maybe some of these investors are incentivized to be able to deploy their capital isn't very conducive to being very patient. But what's really exciting is that there's a huge shift that's happening. If you look at the capital that's being deployed in the space industry and other industries that also require enormously patient capital, they're attracting huge numbers of credible investors. Sovereign wealth funds are investing. Family offices are investing. And so the general pool of investors that are looking into AgTech as a way for them to not only just do good, but also do well, this is actually really picking up a lot of steam. And so in particularly in Asia, we see a lot of support from family offices, sovereign wealth from the Middle East. And what's, food is one of those things just like water, but it has 100% penetration. Wherever humans exist, there's food. And internet and housing may not exist everywhere, but food definitely does. And so the impact that you can make if you're investing in technology that is really kind of focused on these efficiencies and affordability and accessibility can make a huge impact globally. And these things are becoming much easier now with IoT and software and AI to become measurable. So before it was kind of this very nebulous I'm doing good for the planet. It wasn't really, I'm not really sure how big my impact is. And now it's becoming translatable into not only kind of how many liters of water I'm saving, but also how many dollars I'm also saving the supply chain as well. And so a lot of technology across the entire supply chain from addressing food waste all the way down to kind of the circular economy.  So it's very exciting to see. So is it fair to say technology has enabled us to perhaps be, I mean being green while being profitable as well. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because so far I mean green, green is some, I mean means a lot of expenditure, but as Apoma just said, it already generates a lot of savings, right? So eventually green, green can be profitable. Yeah, now that it's easy to measure it's really easy to make decisions. So if you can, if you have these AI platforms that can measure your food waste and they can understand what's being thrown away, how much of it's being thrown away, how much that costs to produce, then it's translatable into oh, if we make, adjust portion sizes, adjust these things. And so on the production side, now that it's becoming much easier to measure resource consumption, labor efficiency, it's become, it's directly translating into savings for producers and making the entire, entire sector more efficient. And so. I would actually add to that, sorry for interrupt. The, there is a, there is an industry perspective from the cost side on this. There's also consumer benefit side to it. And consumers are willing to pay. So you shouldn't completely outpriced yourself. But at the end of the day, you have a very large group of consumers who are willing to pay for good, sustainable food. And I really like what you say with the app, um, um, around, um, around gamification. We bought a company last year called Nutrachek based out of Nottingham. What they do is calorie counting in a very gamified way of actually, of actually tracking what you eat and of tracking the ingredients of what you eat. And suddenly people become very conscious about their daily lives. And I think we need to get that part of the equation. And yeah, it can be quite scary. But what you do is you become much more conscious and people actually pay for an app like that, a monthly subscription fee. And yes, that is a hugely profitable business because people really care about what they eat, how they feed themselves. And I think we should, we should have that in mind. It's not only about cost and getting very efficient at feeding the masses. It's also creating an awareness that it makes a ton of difference to your personal life, how you feed yourself. And it can actually be a lot of fun tracking that. But I think there's an angle we should not forget. We should start tracking about the waste, that plastic waste that we throw away with all our takeaways. That's, I think, becoming urgent before. We can do that as well, absolutely. Before I ask my last round of questions, I just want to remind our audience here and online. In a few minutes, we will open the floor to questions. So we encourage everyone to participate in our discussion. So, Tia, I want to come back to you because we were talking about investors and their willingness to invest in this. I'm sure your story is encouraging because you're expanding, meaning a lot of capital is still coming into the EcoCity. So tell us a bit more about your plan to expand. What's the next phase? You want to become a hub for innovation. Is that right? The EcoCity is 30 square kilometres. We have developed half of it. And in terms of the vision that we set out in the early days to build a harmonious, livable environment where people can live, work and play, I think we have achieved that quite well. So I'm thinking of expanding the role of the EcoCity to beyond that. We started as the Green Sustainable City but I think we can do more in view of the fact that both Singapore and China have got decarbonisation goals. In China, we have the 30-60 goals that were carbon goals and in Singapore, we also have carbon neutrality goals by the middle of the century. And I think given that there will be a lot of new technologies, new startups, companies that are developing new solutions for the new low-carbon economy, be it technology in terms of new types of renewable energy or new ways of producing renewable energy or energy storage systems or carbon capture technologies and so on and so forth, we thought that it would be a good extension for the EcoCity to become a place whereby you can do more research and even manufacturing of new products and solutions that will lead to a low-carbon world. And that requires building the ecosystem, meaning you need to have an ecosystem to attract talent, to attract the necessary manpower, to have the VCs as investors, to have the right regulatory environment, to have the test-building facilities and places and so on. So I'm hoping a discussion with the various government authorities to build up this ecosystem so that in time, companies will find that it is natural to set up their first operations in the EcoCity and contribute to the decarbonisation efforts of both countries and impact the work. That's very encouraging. I think, Stuart, we've just found you a potential investor. And perhaps a potential customer at Regal Hotels. So we'll open the floor to questions. Okay, this gentleman here. You probably serve a lot of Fortune 500, like with a measuring of the occupancy in their commercial buildings. So the result is super shocking. A lot of great commercial buildings are single-digit occupancy rate. And then to that, really driven me to this thing. Like, frankly, we talk about plastic, which is a poll-search out for waste. But sadly, the concrete is actually 10x bigger waste of plastic. So today's theme is about better living, no waste. So it's probably easier for plastic container product to have a super hard, super hard for building as a product. So just similar to what Ms. Lowe said, like probably more virtual hotels. That's right. But my question here is that regarding that, how we potentially reduce, like, building as a product with these waste, this is a question for Ms. Lowe and also to you. Okay. I think that's a great question, because in Asia, buildings actually account for up to 60%. Of carbon emissions compared to 30% in the West. Mainly because of weather conditions. For example, in Hong Kong, it's very hot and humid. We experience winter indoors, when it's actually sweltering hot outside. So I think obviously it has to do with behavioral choice as well, we don't necessarily need this kind of air conditioning for optimum functioning. But of course, I think it boils down to firstly, commitment from the real estate developers to pledge to transition. So for that there are lots of technology inventions out there that can make a huge difference in terms of energy, management, smart building systems can help a lot. Digital twins can help us spot potential problems and see real time the carbon emissions and where the problems are, so that we can actually fix them before actually, a lot of wastage, a lot of harm has already been done. And then secondly, I think it has to do with, we have to get everyone to work together so that we can provide fertile ground for green buildings. For that to happen, I think we definitely need to foster collaboration and partnerships between the real estate, private sector, academia as well as government. So I think for that to happen, we have to also establish the right standards, invest in research, into the disciplinary research to set the right standards and measurements so that we know exactly what we're striving to achieve, then we can actually measure along the way our progress. The government obviously needs to play a stronger role in providing very solid incentives, especially in an era of volatile market conditions when everyone is struggling with the surge in interest rates. When it's a matter of survival, it's hard to prioritize sustainability. So the government definitely needs to provide more tax incentives. For example, if you adopt PropTech or if you use green building materials, could you perhaps provide a bit of incentives in terms of the plot ratio? Or could you facilitate the approval process so that developers can actually be incentivized to act quickly? And then the banks, we have to work together to actually define exactly what a green bond should entail. I think going forward, all building loans should be green. So we shouldn't have a category for green loans because that ought to be a requirement. At academia, I think we also have to work to support them because professors, scientists, they ought to focus on R&D. So we have to, as a private sector, come in as their commercial partner to help them pilot commercializing scale. Do you want to take a look? Two perspectives. First is as a consumer of products like concrete. As a developer, we use a lot of concrete, obviously. So all the buildings in the EcoCity are green. 100% green buildings. So in our buildings, we have to think of passive design, design to make better use of light and keep the heat in and so on, or insulation and so on. So we do all of that, and solar panel and so on, so forth. Maybe geothermal power and so on. So we do that as much as we can to reduce carbon emission, and that's as a consumer. The second perspective will be as the creator of this environment. And we hope to create an environment whereby companies can start to develop new building materials, new types of concrete, and so on, so forth, so that in the future, there will be a concrete that is low carbon emitting, and so on, so forth. So that's what we can do as a consumer and as a creator of the overall environment. Can I ask you one thing? Sure. Briefly. I recently saw a statistic in Japan that 9,000 elementary schools are abandoned now. They're shut down because there aren't kids to fill them. Ageing population. And so what we're trying to work with on the government is to try to create community centers out of these unused real estate projects where we can integrate both food production and education in an environment where instead of destroying the building we're just leaving it abandoned that we can repurpose it. So I think kind of this recycling of building is not maybe kind of a very big topic, but trying to find alternative uses for these things is something that we're also looking into from a food perspective as well. That's an excellent point. Thank you for raising that question. I think it's a good contribution to our overall discussion. Unfortunately, we're running out of time. So I'm just going to wrap up really quickly. Thank you, everyone, for your insights, for your sharing with your successes and challenges, making real progress in sustainable growth. So I'm now going to pass the floor to Kim Hui-Neel, who's the Managing Director Center for Nature and Climate World Economic Forum to share the commitment and program of your branch of the web. Web, thank you. Thanks, Ong Pham. I'll keep my comments very brief because I know we are out of time. And thank you for facilitating a very interesting conversation. I thought I'll just share some reflections hearing from the panelists. One is that I think waste is a long overdue subject or opportunity, right? And it's, in fact, a low-hanging fruit, right? And there was a lot of talk around food, right? If you look at food systems, it accounts for one-third of global emissions, one-third. That's a lot, right? And about 50% of these emissions is due to wastage, right? And if you have heard from the panelists and they come from different sectors and with different expertise, it is actually one where everyone can actually play a part. You can actually act on food waste at an individual level, at an entity level, right? But also through partnerships, right? Public-private partnership, or even collaboration with local communities, harnessing technology, right? At a forum, what we thrive on is really helping to build this multi-stakeholder dialogue. So we've got work around food, water, resource use, right? And to the last comments earlier, it's not just about usage, it's also about how to better utilise, right, and steward the resources that we have. We know we're using close to two-planned earths today. We're borrowing from our children and their children. And if we can actually just think about waste and how we can actually cut to zero waste, even just have it, right? We will be closer to where we need to be in terms of net-zero-nation-positive, better-living futures. So on that note, thank you all for being here. Thank you. Just a big round of applause to all of you. Thank you. Thank you.


Good morning. My name is Jeremy Juergens, I'm managing director at the World Economic Forum and I'd like to thank all the journalists that are joining us here for this session this morning. With us today, we have Julie Sweet from the CEO and Chair at Accenture, Juergens Stock, Secretary General, Interpol, Nikesh Arora, Chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks, and Eddie Rahma, Prime Minister of Albania. Thank you. So we're here today to share the findings of the World Economic Forum's Global Security Outlook Report 2023. This is a result of research and collaboration with the Forum's communities and our partner Accenture, which we've interviewed and sought input from over 300 executives globally. There's a few headlines that are sharing and pointing out that emerge from this research. First is around geopolitics. The most striking finding that we found is that 93% of cyber leaders and 86% of business leaders believe that the geopolitical instability makes a catastrophic cyber event likely in the next two years. This far exceeds anything that we've seen in previous surveys. Now, the concern goes beyond politically motivated cyber attacks. And I'm sure Prime Minister Rahma will be able to give us more information on that later on and how these can be dealt with. And we see with the increasing digitalization in the world, this as well increases the interconnections that we have across various services. It also makes it more difficult to find the experts that we need to address the cyber challenges that are in front of us. As well, cyber attacks can spread unpredictably. We saw this in the case of the VESAT attack that was done on Ukraine, which was initially intended to shut down communication services for the Ukrainian military, but as well closed off parts of electricity production across Europe. So the unintended consequences there. And the geopolitical fragmentation that we're seeing globally makes collaboration across borders and responses much more difficult in the case of a cyber event. Now there is well some positive developments. And I'd like to highlight two specifically. First is around investment. Business leaders increasingly see cybersecurity as part of their strategic investment plan with 49% of business executives saying that cybersecurity fed into decisions on the countries that they would invest in. Again, this is something that we haven't seen before making investment decisions based on the cybersecurity footprint. Second, there's increased interactions. Business leaders are increasingly bringing their cyber professionals into boardroom discussions and meeting them with them on a regular basis. 56% of security leaders now meet monthly or more frequently with their board. And this will help narrow the gap of the understanding between the business leaders and the cyber professionals. Now we do see a few challenges in front of us. One, how do we assess the practical impact of cyber risk? While boards have prioritized cybersecurity, we see that still a challenge for boards to assess the value that they get from cyber investments and how to actually take the recommendations and translate that into actual business operations and business strategy. Second, there's a significant cyber skills shortage. We're a long way from having the cybersecurity professionals that we need. 34% of respondents shared that they have skills gaps in their teams and 14% said they lack specific critical skills needed to protect their organizations. We've seen in other work that the forum does that there's opportunities here for reskilling and bringing in people who haven't necessarily studied cybersecurity or computer science before and also bringing in underrepresented communities as the organizational skills needed in cybersecurity are as important as the technical ones. Now with this, I'd like to actually go over to Julie for our first question and Julie, how should business leaders think about cybersecurity and what actionable next steps would you recommend? Great. Well, I think it's important for business leaders to focus on three numbers. 86, 43, 27. 86% of business leaders, as Jeremy mentioned, believe there will be a catastrophic cyber event in the next two years. 43% of them believe it will have a material impact on their own business, a very significant number. And only 27% of business leaders believe there's cyber resilience. And so the gap between cyber resilient companies and the likelihood of a material catastrophic event is significant. This is a burning platform and we do see that both with the level of investment and also the shifting questions of how you move to more actionable steps. And so we suggest three. First, secure the core. What does that mean? You actually have to in a world where the world has moved online and all strategies lead to technology, the security aspect of technology needs to be built in. It's not easy because technology is not simply running the corporate. It's not about email. It's now in the core of the business, whether it's how you're doing exploration in oil and gas, how you're communicating between providers and payers and health, and the list goes on. And so using clear assessments about whether all technology is secure is absolutely vital, along with consistency. These are not debates about whether or not you should empower leaders to decide which security tools. Unfortunately, that's not how it's been working. So secure the core. The second is address the talent challenge. That needs to be done in two ways. The first way is actually more technology, much of what's done by security professionals today with proper technology can actually be automated with better outcomes so that humans can focus on more of the intel, the human behavioral changes, and learning about the actual business risks and what's needed. That leads to the aspect of training. And the talent is needs to have training. There are not enough people in the world with cyber skills. There's, according to our research, over two million people of the gap. And so training is absolutely critical. The good news, you do not have to create this training on your own. And there's lots of ways you can collaborate with other organizations. The third actual step is a shift in mindset and culture at the C-suite where cyber resilience equals business resilience. What does that mean? Well, very practical step. Every month, when I review with my top leaders our business results, we review whether or not we had any cyber incidents. It's a concrete change that we made to be clear that cyber is the same as financial performance. And so thinking about your own culture, your own processes, what has to change so that your entire C-suite understands cyber resilience equals business resilience. Those are the three actionable steps that every company can take tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you, Julie. You're going to move in over to you. The outlook suggests that the nature of cyber threats is changing. For more of what you see, what does this mean for cooperation to fight cyber crime? Yeah, thank you. And good morning, everyone. Indeed, the impact of cyber threats and cyber crime on international security is increasingly severe because it is increasingly complex. So one of the key terms here is cyber crime as a service where everyone in the underground economy is able to purchase or rent the necessary tools to conduct a cyber attack. And as we know, there is not a single country, not a single region, not a single company that can tackle the threat on its own. It really requires cooperation. And that is exactly what the World Economic Forum is about. This is a global threat, not a surprise. It calls for a global response and it calls for enhanced and coordinated action. We are in law enforcement in ourselves. We are dealing with a problem of fragmentation because there are so many actors, which on the one hand is positive. On the other hand, it not only leads to duplication, but it also risks that relevant information in connecting the dots and identifying criminal networks who are exploiting IT systems are not being dismantled and we are not able to provide as Interpol investigative leads to our member countries police service. A recent survey conducted by Interpol last year has shown that cyber crime remains a top priority all around the world in all Interpol regions. And we are bringing 195 member countries together. And it's definitely also a top priority for Interpol. The complexity of cyber crime is compounded and just to illustrate one or two of the problems by the silence of victims. So we know too often victims remain silent for a number of reasons, including a reluctance to reveal a vulnerability and negatively perhaps affect the reputation. For instance, of a company. So either your private citizens or your company, you are considering various elements, whether you should report to the police or not. There is perhaps a lack of a clear anonymized reporting mechanism for victims to alert their service providers or law enforcement. And we can only take action if we are provided with the necessary information, which in today's world, of course, regularly sits within the private sector. We also know that data on attacks can remain in silos in national law enforcement agencies and industry incident response teams, either because there is a lack of an kind of exchange channel across sectors or because they are on to the next crisis. And we are discussing here in Davos the phenomena of poli crisis. So the C C Swedes are dealing currently with a lot of crisis in parallel. And we know that industry experts may not be aware of who to contact in law enforcement, for instance, to safely provide sensitive information that can be the beginning of a successful police operation to get the cyber criminals behind bars. There's also a sense that cyber crime and cyber and able crime is too complex and that the chance of getting any investigative results is too low. Hence sharing data is sometimes seen as pointless. I think a lot of success story we are having also based on the cooperation here with the Center for Cyber Security, our close collaboration with the private sector has been indicating we are, we can be successful if we are provided with the necessary information. So a case in point was the recent Interpol Coordinated Operation which mobilized law enforcement in 14 countries which illustrates the dimension of cyber operations across four continents in a targeted strike against a group that is called Black X and related West African organized crime groups currently here in the media also in Switzerland. The operation resulted in 75 arrests, a further 70 suspects identified and more than one million euros intercepted in bank accounts through our anti-money laundering rapid response protocol and that illustrates the link between cyber crime and financial crime and money laundering. In fact, in 2022 alone Interpol helped our member countries intercept nearly 200 million euros in criminal proceeds. That's on the one hand a success. On the other hand, if we see the huge profits that cyber criminals are making it still, it must be an encouragement for all of us including the private sector politicians law enforcement to do much more. The key to winning the battle against cyber crime, if I may phrase it like this, is of course to work together to make it a priority across the geopolitical fault lines and with stronger platforms that encourage public private sector cooperation like the platform that the World Economic is providing and connecting with Interpol that represents global law enforcement. The cyber crime atlas initiative is a step absolutely into the right direction, absolutely necessary, encouraging also private industry to do more to anticipate and mitigate the threats because it's a very dynamic situation. The criminals are investing their huge profits into new tools, into their sophisticated tools and we have to make sure that we keep pace but also that we are further developing the global architecture of security because I repeat myself it's a global threat like other global threats that are currently discussed here and only if we are building the bridges between the silos that still exist specifically between law enforcement and the private sector, moderated also by the World Economic Forum, we can be more successful. Thank you. Thank you, Jürgen. Mikesh, we saw in the report the rise and awareness of the risks here and also the comments from Jurgen the financial implications of this and there's this tendency for CISOs to always ask for more investment so how should how should leaders think about assessing their investments and getting the most return from the cyber investments they make? Well thank you Jeremy and thank you for having me everyone. Look the report is encouraging, it's encouraging because we have accumulated a lot of cyber debt over the last few decades where we have under-invested in cyber security because we honestly never expected all of our technology and systems to be interconnected around the work. As Julie highlighted everything is connected pretty much it is the technology of the core of the business and we have not invested in cyber because the returns to your point have not been understandable and the threat has not been as visible as it has been recently. So it's encouraging to see in the report that C-level executives, board members, senior leaders are aware that there's a problem. That's the sort of part we have to work on collectively is nobody seems comfortable that they have it under control and I don't think this cyber debt that has been created goes away in a short period of time. I don't think the reliance on technology is going to go down anytime soon. I expect more business will spend more time, effort, energy and make technology core of the enterprise. I think towards that end it's important to both understand the business risks and treat it in a way like you treat every other risk is what is my ability to recover from that risk and how secure do I feel? Which highlights some of the things with Julie again which says go back and invest in your core technology, make sure that you understand that every part of your business is secure, make sure that you are leveraging the industry as well as public-private partnerships to understand that when you end up in a scenario where you need to go create some remediation that you have all the eyes dotted and teeth crossed and you're sharing your data early so when it comes down to remediate you are in a position to go and remedy the problem as quickly as possible. Which brings us to the topic of cyber resilience. I think as Jurgen highlighted most organizations are reluctant to highlight when something has happened because of possibly you know more business interruption threat because there are more bad actors will come flock to you if you highlight too early that you have vulnerability there is obviously the reputation risk that is associated with any cyber activity but I will tell you the activity is rampant there are thousands of organizations that get attacked and end up in some cyber scenario every year and that's a large number and I think the only way to get around it is both a long-term plan to re-architect your cyber security architecture to make sure you're getting more for less and that requires you to think about automation it requires you to think about consolidating traditional strategies of using multiple vendors using best-to-be solutions from a lot of people and stitching it together is no longer working and I think the report is a bit sort of bifurcated on the idea of should we rely on in-house resources or go partner with third parties I recommend work with specialists because this is what they do for a living so in that context I think it's encouraging we have a lot of work to do and I think we all need to aspire to make our organizations more cyber resilient thank you thank you Nikesh Prime Minister Rama we see this expectation for a catastrophic cyber event from over 90 percent of leaders in the cyber sector Albania was directly at the center of a cyber storm if we may what lessons can we take away from that experience particularly for political leaders thank you for for having me here and I'll try to be helpful first of all because of the event you mentioned we're obliged to start and learn more about it and one of the facts I learned is that if cyber crime would be a state would be the third global economy after US and China in 2015 the overall measure of its potential its power was 3 trillion in 2025 this is forecasted to 10.5 trillion so if we think back in terms of one virus COVID-19 that created such a disruption and needed so much interaction and so much common efforts let's let imagine an exponential multitude of viruses that mutate every day exponentially while not threatening our body but the bodies we live in our organizations our countries our systems then you know it could be just apocalypse and it's about it's about viruses that can not only block our way of living but can control it and can deviate it so can use our systems like God forbid our air transfer systems to hit us back and imagine if there is a cyber attack on our air transport systems that turn huge number of airplanes that are flying in bombs so what we learned is that this is something that it's absolutely naive to think that every country being poor being powerful or being not being rich or being not can take it in its own because what we are seeing in our daily struggle we are under attack since last summer from Iran and it's it would be complicated for the audience to explain why but we are under attack and would and we have coalized with few other friends friendly countries that have the same you know the same threat coming from the same source and that are more developed than us in terms of cyber defense that weapons if I can use this word but because they are real weapons at the end so logs and codes that are used to attack us represent for our allies novelties so it's also a way to learn what new weapons are being used in daily basis and to prepare against them and I can't imagine how the world I mean the the institutional world organized world being in public sector or in private sector can survive it without a large large large coalition so what we learned from the traditional crime in Europe is that traditional crime has created a much more functioning EU than the States because they are they are very much interconnected they don't have never ending summits and and meetings and they don't have vetoes to stop them from doing anything in the meantime that the EU itself has to struggle to create convergences and to create cohesion in common action we saw it during pandemic so at the end there is also another thing for the public sector this is really challenging on one end because it's a matter of resources so imagine Albania with its GDP with its development that has made an exponential step to turn from a country that was very much based on paper and on bureaucracies and on bribes in a country that is today 95 percent of service online which is the bless of technology for for not developed countries to make jumps that otherwise you would need decades but at the same time is the curse of technology because you are totally exposed and now we are exposed vis-à-vis a power like Iran that come on it's not it's not something we can match in terms of finance in terms of ruthlessness in terms of anti-democratic behavior and so on to now have to invest much more so for the governments to invest in what will happen is one thing but to invest in what should not happen is another thing because at the end we have to get to get elected okay so china maybe has a much much more comfortable position because they can think quietly about the next hundred years but if you have midterms in Albania we don't but if you have midterms you have to think about the next two years and you know and all the all the you know chaotic politics that is superposed to what is happening in the cyber crime world is very very worrying so the question is how much the the the world will come together how much the countries will come together how much big and small rich and not so rich will realize the need for each other because if not for everything else Albania now is a very important laboratory to realize what's next thank you prime minister i realized we started a few minutes late so if the panelists will give a few extra minutes i know we probably some questions from the journalists in the room if you can identify your organization your question and also you'd like to direct the question to thank you i'm fabrizio goria from the italian daily last time and i have a question for mr stock as you know um one of the most wanted mafia mobster matia mesina denaro was caught and now is in custody and as you know the mafia was updating itself to the cyber crime the can we consider this capture as a success or as a win for the eurozone and europe thank you yeah very briefly it's definitely a great success after having been for i think 30 years on the run and we get insights now on how intensive investigations have been definitely a success we are very grateful to the italian government they are supporting a project within interpol that is called i can that is targeting that i get up primarily and we know this is an example for a very dynamic group that is using every risk that we are discussing here in the context of risk as an opportunity for criminal activity to become richer thanks to that work an interval providing a platform for all those countries that have identified tangeta as a problem we are able to provide analysis that leads to investigative leads that have also led to a significant number of other arrests and even um providing some countries with the information we have not yet been aware that they are having a problem with organized crime italian organized crime or other organized crime so definitely a success and a role model for the need to provide a global platform like interpol that helps collecting all the intelligence that is available and translating that into investigative leads that lead to arrests and the seizure of the illicit procedure of crime we know the optimists are saying around two to three percent of all the i think the two trillion that are every year laundered through the uh through the legitimate economy the financial system are being seized by law enforcement prosecutors police and and courts at the end of the day the pessimists are saying less than one percent so we know we have to do a lot more to get behind the money that they are making and as the prime minister said these groups that are developing hacking tools are incredibly rich we have no idea how much hundreds of millions or even billions they have made during the last couple of years with these ransomware attacks and with ransoms that have been paid it's a huge challenge for us and that perhaps requires a reconsideration also of political priorities to put more resources you mentioned um Jeremy cybersecurity shortage that is a big problem for for a lot of interpol member countries right thank you uh question here in the corner good morning to all i'm fabrice nodel angla from the french newspaper the figure oh my question is for eddy rama you know bonjour eddy um can you share with us for those who have not followed too closely the the attacks some of the very uh concrete uh impact that your your country um uh experienced and what were the your quickest response what were you able to do i avoided in the introduction introduction because it would be uh complicated uh for for for the time we have in our disposal in davos you can be late in starting but you cannot be late in ending because others have to get the room uh so i'll try to be uh as synthetic as possible so what what we have done uh it's that we have uh um considered the technology as our safe uh saving both to get from level of uh administration that was very much contaminated by uh by endemic corruption in terms of bribery to a level where the direct contact between citizens and public servants and offices was eliminated through uh through online interaction so we succeeded to become from a country that was uh was really in in the ditch in these terms in a country that sees today uh eighth in europe and uh somewhere between 16 and 17 worldwide based on the un chart in terms of uh digital public services and it's exactly where uh where the attackers aimed to to to hurt us by uh practically uh uh aiming to wipe out completely our digital infrastructure and to completely uh erase our data in terms of uh public uh services it was very very disturbing because for for several weeks we had to it was like an incredible war happening uh in the in the web uh 24 seven many people engaged in the trenches to push back and we succeeded practically to survive this attack uh by not letting letting them do what they were supposed to do and then through a very very thorough forensic that we did together with microsoft threat intelligence team and uh red team of fbi and several others we arrived in a conclusion that uh it was absolutely clear that behind this attack was was a state and namely iran so we attributed it to iran based on facts not just on uh on and uh what is uh what is the other side of uh of the scary uh you know scary uh uh presence in our lives of cyber crime is that it's not like uh entering uh in your house it's not like breaking your house that you have the door broken or you have the window broken and they enter they can be in your house and you don't know they are in your house so it's uh it's penetrations uh and uh in the same time is like ticking bombs you know programming the day and the moment that the bomb will blow until then you may not be aware at all that you are you are sleeping uh on a bomb and uh what we are doing today as I said with our two other friendly countries uh is exactly that uh and we are detecting thanks to also their uh much higher expertise we are detecting exactly what are the movements in the dark that otherwise no one would be aware of and uh we are very much uh very much preoccupied or to to raise the the the awareness on the private sector about the danger and to make the private sector enter in cooperation and in interaction with the government also in terms of contributions so uh it's not it's not at all an easy exercise but uh it's the new world so uh uh I hope uh the prophetic uh the prophetic uh sentence of Michelle Ocar will not prove uh itself to be to be true in the in the in the long run when he before dying he said I'm very very uh I feel blessed that I was uh I lived in the time internet was born and I feel blessed that I'm living this world before before internet will destroy it good thank you prime minister I'm going to actually uh also the prime minister mentioned the need to stay on a schedule here uh we are in switzerland after all uh if you have questions uh further questions or recommend to see if any of the panelists are available following the session here I'd like to thank our collaborators for their support uh both Accenture for the work directly on the report at Palo Alto Networks for the broader support of the Center for Cybersecurity the World Economic Forum our partnership with Interpol and also the prime minister for his participation and sharing the experience here today I welcome everyone to go more depth the report it will now be available online and thank you for joining us here today


Well, good morning. Welcome to the prayer room this morning, Monday morning, first day of Passion Week, Holy Week. So if you're here in the room, I want to invite you to stand to your feet in the presence of the Lord with me. Those of you who are online, we want to invite you today also to bring your heart before the Lord. Bringing our heart before the Lord is more important than the geographical location where we stand. So we're here gathered. There's power in the corporate prayer room. It's an altar that we built, but we can build an altar at home. So if you're at home, this is your altar before the Lord.  And he speaks and he summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting out of Zion, the perfection of beauty. God shines forth. So today, a heart needs to be reminded that God is the mighty God. He is the mighty one, the strong one, the one who when he speaks, the nations tremble when he speaks. He calls forth everything into being. He's not just the God who loves and draws near to us with compassion and mercy, but he is the almighty Creator. He is the judge of all the earth. He is righteous. He is holy, and nothing is too difficult for him. And for us to get this vantage point that we're coming before a God who's powerful, that he's almighty, he's beyond time. There is no limitation in him. He's bigger than the universe can contain, but yet he has set his sights on the place where his name is spoken. He's set his sights on the place where his people, that he's redeemed by his own name, gather together and exalt him and pray and praise him. And so as we do that this morning, as we lift up our songs of worship today from wherever we're at, it's good for our hearts to be reminded of who it is that we're worshiping. It's not an idea. It's not a force. This is the Creator God, almighty, strong one in that out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God's power in his presence shines forth. And so today we're making an altar before our God as we approach this week. In just a few days, we're going to be following in the footsteps of Jesus, the Son of God, that went all the way to the cross. He went all the way through betrayal, all the way through the suffering, being the spotless, perfect lamb, the servant, the servant Messiah, the one who Isaiah speaks of. He was like a lamb who went to the slaughter without uttering a word. He did that on our behalf. While the world saw that as weakness, we now realize that that is great strength, that he suffered for us, died, was buried, and yet victoriously rose again. This is the God that shines forth. This is the God that draws near. This is the God who is mighty to save. This is the God whose wisdom overthrew the powers and the authorities and the spiritual hosts of wickedness in this age that thought they had killed him, but yet he restored life through him. So let our hearts today be filled with gratitude and thanksgiving. In fact, all over this room wherever you're at, let's just lift up holy hands before this great God, the mighty one, the God of Israel. Lord, we come before you with hands lifted high, insulting your name. Lord, you are God and we are not. You are strong when we are not. Let the wisdom of man be viewed as foolishness before you, for you are magnificent and wise and powerful in all of your ways. Strong and mighty one of Israel, the Lord God Almighty, the beautiful one, the radiant one, the glorious one, the one who comes with thunder, the one who comes with lightning, the one that the heavens roll up like a scroll at your presence, the one who speaks in the ocean separated from the mountains and the streams hide in the depths, the one when you speak, stars rotate into place beyond our comprehension or our ability to even measure. It's just a breath of yours. Oh God, who is like the Lord? Who is like you in strength? Who is like you in power? And Lord, who is like you in mercy and compassion? No one is like you, God. Who is like you? We only see through as a glass dimly, but Lord, you are splendid, beautiful, majestic. Who draws near to the downtrod and the fatherless and the widow? Who draws near to the one left on the margins that feels overlooked and unseeing? It's you, oh God. You see, you are El Rahe, the God who sees.      And Lord, today we feather ourselves. We thinker ourselves to you. God of mercy, the God of grace, the God of compassion. Come, come to us and receive glory out of Zion. Praise awaits for you in Zion today. Praise awaits for you. Lord, come and receive the glory that's due to your name. Come and receive the glory that casts their crowds. Lord, we lay those things that we look to as an authority, as a source, and we throw them down at your feet because there's no source, there's no power, there's no rival, there's no contest. Lamb of God, our victories. John chapter one, it says John the Baptist looked up and he saw Jesus and he said, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Lord, today at the beginning of this holy week, we look at you no longer in the flesh, but now resurrected and exalted. We no longer look at you as one going to the cross, but we look at one who has overcome the cross. We look at one who is now enthroned high above at all. Spotless Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. We're praying today that this week would be a revelation in our hearts, Lord, that we would see what John saw, that we would, like John the Baptist, be able to see, have eyes opened up to see. This is who you are, the one that the Spirit of God descends upon, the anointed one, the Messiah, the Lamb of God, who is worthy. Jesus, you are worthy. Lord, that our eyes would be open to see what John the Revelator saw, the enthroned one, the exalted one, the spotless Lamb of God who is still worthy to receive glory and honor, power and blessing. Jesus, this is who you are forever and ever and exalted. Lord, that those who are lost and far from you, Lord, that their eyes would be open this week through the working of your Holy Spirit as Jesus, the righteous Lamb of God is exalted and lifted up, that eyes would be open, that words would be spoken that said worthy are you, Jesus. You really are worthy. You really are glorious. You really are resurrected. You really are the one who was slain for my sins, spotless Lamb of God and that, Lord, this week, crowns would be thrown before your feet. As we lay aside every other authority, every other power, every other thing that we look to as a source of salvation, God, we throw our crowns, we bow down, we lay our crowns at the feet of Jesus, the greatness of your mercy and love at the feet of Jesus and we cry, Holy, Holy, you know the tribe of Judah, roar from Zion, a deliverer will come out of Zion. Jesus, the root of David, the Lamb of God has overcome. Lord, today we weep no more because victory is yours because Jesus, you have prevailed. You have been found worthy to break the seals. Lord, today we look to you, our victorious conquering Lamb.  You came in meek and mild, but you're coming back strong and wild.  The root of David do have prevailed. Lord, I'm praying for a revelation of the victory of Jesus, that it's not just the tears that lead up to the cross, but it's the war that comes out of the tomb on Easter, on Resurrection Sunday that has prevailed. Lord, break open the seals of salvation. Release the seals of revelation in this hour that we might see you high and lifted up in this hour. One who came, the one who's coming again. Jesus, Lamb of God, Lion of David, Lion of Judah, come. The one who has conquered, come. Open the seals and open our eyes. It's an apostolic prayer for the church, for us. And it's still breathing. Chapter one, verse 17, his prayer was that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he's called you and what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us who believe according to the working of his great mind. Lord, today we stand in your presence with your word in our mouth and in our heart. Breathing again back to you the prayer that Paul prayed, that we're still praying to this day and that we still need to see fulfilled in our lifetime and in our hour and personally in each and every one of us. Lord, we're saying to you, the Lord of glory, Jesus, the Lamb of God, Lord, the Father of glory that you today would release to us spirit, wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of Jesus. Lord, this is what we need more than anything else that as we live in a world that's under the dominion of a spirit of error, a spirit of deception and delusion that shapes and forms the heart and the paradigms and the mindsets that Father we as your people would come under the greater influence of the spirit of truth, that we would come under by submission to your Holy Spirit and that you would open the eyes of our heart by giving us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus. We need to know you, Jesus, but we can only know you by revelation. We know you by revelation. We want to know you, Jesus, but it requires a greater wisdom. Lord, open our eyes, give us the capacity to see and understand. Lord, would you slam the door to deception and delusion and error.  We refuse the philosophies of men and those things that are wrongly called wisdom, we reject them in the name of Jesus and we come under the leadership of the Holy Spirit that lives within us, the greater glory of God. And we say, Holy Spirit, open our eyes, open our eyes in a greater measure today. And Lord, today, even as we're making this our prayer, there's so many worthless things demanding our focus, so many temporal and even demonic things that are demanding our focus.  Lord, those things that corrupt us from the inside out, those things that we behold that shape us. And just like righteous Lot it says that his righteous soul was vexed by the things he saw day by day. Lord, would you give us courage and fortitude to deny those things that corrupt our hearts and to flood our eyes with those things that shape and conform us to the image of Christ? Your word is truth, though, God. Lord, it's like light that floods our soul. Your word says in Psalm 119 that it is good, it is perfect even to the converting of the soul. Revive us again by your word. Revive us again by your word that our eye would be focused on you, that just as John beheld your glory, we would behold your glory, that just as our hearts have been formed to meditate, Lord, we would meditate on your word and that our hearts would become enlightened so that our knowledge would grow. Lord, that our understanding of hope would expand no longer hopeless, no longer in this world without God and without hope. But Lord, we would see that our heart would come to life with a revelation that we are the sons and the daughters of the living God because of what if Jesus has done, flood us with light today, my friend. Boreous inheritance in the saints, says Lord, you have so much more for us. So much more for us today. God, open our hearts, stir up hunger to pursue you. Stir up a hunger to know you. But we're not just going to know you because it's available. We're going to know you when we seek you. You said, if we seek you with all of our hearts, we will find you and we're praying Holy Spirit by the immeasurable greatness of your power. Lord, would you stir in us hunger for Jesus? Would you stir in us a desire to seek out our inheritance? Jesus said no man has anything unless it has been granted to him by heaven. Lord, we want to know what's been granted to us. We want to know our inheritance. Holy Spirit, you alone can lead your greatness and your power. It's not by might. It's not by power, but it's by my spirit, says the Lord. So Holy Spirit, we submit to your Lordship this morning. Glorify Jesus to us. Glorify Jesus and open up the heart of every man and woman, especially as we draw near. Do you give us revelation? Let us see the beauty of every facet, every aspect of what Jesus did for us on the cross. Lord, I'm praying that we would see something brand new this year, that we would see the beauty, the wonder, the sacrifice of the cross and that Lord, the power of your resurrection will come alive in us even as we know you in the fellowship of suffering. I pray for those, even as we close today, those who this week is painful that they're suffering today.  We pray this today in Jesus' name. Joining us online, thank you so much for joining us. Invite you to come all this week, morning, noon and night, be a part of this as we approach Good Friday. We're going to be shifting into a devotional set here and so as we do that we're just going to ask that you quietly leave unless you would like to stay. You're welcome to stay. Otherwise, have a great afternoon.