Hello, I’m Jefferey Sachs, University Professor of Columbia University. I’m tremendously honored to be part of the Shanghai Forum 2021. And I would like to also thank so much one of the key hosts and organizers of the Shanghai Forum--Ambassador Park, who is a wonderful leading diplomat of Korea and a wonderful friend. Because Ambassador Park was a great diplomat at the United Nations. We had such a tremendous opportunity to work together during his period of ambassador in New York. So thank you so much for including me.

We are meeting at a very important moment and a very complicated time in the world. We are meeting just before the crucial G20 meeting of the Italian presidency. The G20 will meet in Rome in the coming days. And then immediately after that will be COP26, the 26th meeting of the signatories of the UN framework convention on climate change. That meetingwill be in Glasgow, Scotland. And it's crucial that the world agree on a climate strategy at that point. So these next days are days of very high diplomacy. Now it's also true that this is a period of tremendous complexity. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to create major social, political, health, economic challenges around the world. We have hundreds of millions of people who have entered poverty, are facing increased hunger and many other humanitarian threats as the result of COVID-19. We are also in a period of tremendous disruption of our lives through digital change, geopolitical change and environmental crisis. So there is a lot on the agenda of the Shanghai Forum 2021. I wanted to present briefly in my opening remarks my ideas about how the world should move forward to address these multiple challenges. My main theme, which I like to emphasize, always is global cooperation. This is no time for geopolitical conflict. This is no time for divisions between the major powers. This is the time for global cooperation. I have eight major items on my agenda for global cooperation. So if you'll permit me, I will summarize them very succinctly.

The first is ending the COVID-19 pandemic. To do that, we need two major steps that are not fulfilled. One is universal access to vaccine protection. But still today in the poorest countries, especially in Africa, vaccine coverage remains under five per cents of the population in Africa. And in other parts of the developing world, it’s also quite low. In order to ensure universal access to vaccines, we need China, the United States, Europe, India, Russia, to be cooperating in a systematic plan to get the vaccines to where they are needed. We also need to learn from China's success in stopping the transmission of the virus, through very extensive testing, through contact tracing, through quarantine when necessary, through face mask wearing, social distancing and other precautionary measures, sometimes called non-pharmaceutical interventions. Because it's the combination of vaccine coverage and the non-pharmaceutical interventions that stops the deaths and stops the transmission of the disease. Until COVID-19 is properly controlled all over the world, we will continue to be a big risk of new variance and of a big disruption in the world economy, and a major humanitarian crisis. COVID-19 cannot be ended one country at a time. It requires global cooperation.

The second step that we need is to stop the unilateral trade actions and unilateral financial sanctions mainly coming from the United States. This is disrupting global trade. It is disrupting all of the economies. It is creating unnecessary uncertainties in business, in production decisions, supply chains, foreign investment, and it is against WTO principles. So I really urge my own country, the United States, to drop the unilateral trade and financial sanctions, regimes. And this is only harming the international system now, making it much harder for us to have a recovery that is broad-based from the COVID pandemic.

The third area that is absolutely essential is cooperation on a green and digital recovery for all the world. We need to move to climate safety because even aside from the COVID, of course, we were in an extremely serious and rapidly worsening crisis of human induced climate change because of the 50 billion tons of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases emitted around the world. All countries need to commit to get to net zero emissions by mid-century. Now the European Union has done so. President Xi and China have committed to net zero by 2060. But my recommendation is to accelerate to 2050 for climate safety for the world, for climate safety for China. And because China is so good at the green technologies in every sphere, on zero carbon power, on electric vehicles and on other technologies, smart grids, long-distancing interconnection. China will be able to do it by 2050. I'm quite confident. We need all of the world to commit to net zero by 2050. This should be the aim of the G20 outcome and it should be the aim of COP26.Now digital coverage universally is also crucial. We've learned in the COVID pandemic, how essential digital access is, but it's also essential for smart grids and decarbonizing energy system. China is a lead producer of 5G technology. This should be encouraged all over the world. Again, the US attacks on Huawei and China's 5G capacity are completely misguided, in my view. We need cooperation on a global 5G universal access, because even until today, only half of the world is on the Internet. All of the world could be on the Internet if we have the right financial models and the right policy framework for that. So net zero by 2050 and universal digital access.

The fourth point that I want to emphasize is that in all of these high technology areas, whether it's the move to zero carbon, whether it is the development of the hydrogen economy, whether it is the development of artificial intelligence systems, or whether it is the development of advanced transport, we need cooperation. Of course, competition will come from the private sector, but we also need cooperation on international standards and on markets for technology and for enabling developing countries to be part of this technological innovation era of ours. And this is especially true among neighbors. So I really strongly encourage Korea, Japan, China, ASEAN, Australia, New Zealand, these are the 15 countries of the regional, comprehensive economic partnership (RCEP), to work together on the green and digital future and to help harmonize standards. We should not have a cold war in these technologies. We should not be decoupling our system. The United States should not be imposing these unilateral sanctions or unilateral barriers on the flows of technology which hurt everybody and hurt the entire world.

Now this relates to my fifth point, which is we need to avoid a new arms race. Whether in nuclear technology (heaven forbid) or in artificial intelligence or in the militarization of digital technologies, more generally. We are at serious risk of such an arms race right now. The recent decision of the United States to provide nuclear submarines to Australia is my idea of a very bad approach because it will lead to an accelerated arms race in Asia. What a waste of resources and how dangerous it is for the world, especially these major countries, to embark on a new arms race when we urgently need investments in peaceful technologies, for decarbonization, for universal digital access, for protecting nature, for improving the quality of life. So we need strategies for disarmament. We need strategies for bringing artificial intelligence and other digital technologies under an agreement of non-militarization.

The sixth area of global cooperation that I’d like to emphasize is far more financing for the developing countries. During COVID, the major economies borrowed very heavily from the capital markets, for instance, the US government borrowing trillions of dollars in order to finance, social protection, economic stimulus and post-COVID recovery. But developing countries don't have that kind of market access. They need official financing, especially through the multilateral development banks In Asia, that would be the New Development Bank; it would be the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank; it would be the Asian Development Bank. Globally, it would include the African Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank and others. These institutions today are extremely important, but they operate actually at a quite small scale compared to the needs of the financing of developing countries .So we should be looking in the G20 process for a massive new capitalization of the multilateral development banks to enable them to expand their lending capacity, their balance sheets many times, maybe 5 to10 times more official financing. In that way, developing countries will be able to invest in zero carbon energy systems, in digital technology and in the other steps that they need to achieve the sustainable development goals and the Paris Climate Agreement.

The seventh area that I would emphasize is more global tax reform. Now there is some progresses recently to insist on minimum corporate tax rates to allocate the taxes across countries of multinational enterprises. This is a real progress, but we need even more global tax reform. We need to close the tax havens. We need to stop the tax evasion that is massive globally. And we need to tax mega wealth for common prosperity and that should be globally coordinated. The 3,000 or so billionaires in the world now have $15 trillion of personal wealth. Just 3,000 people, they should be paying more in wealth taxation to help finance a fair global economy. We also should have a coordinated collection of taxes on carbon emissions so that the revenues from that can be directed to the developing countries to help them cope with losses and damages, and adaptation costs and mitigation costs. So carbon taxation should then be recycled to help the developing countries face the climate challenge.

Finally, the eighth area that I would emphasize is global cooperation on fin-tech and on the new digital era for money. I believe we are moving to a digital central bank currencies. I applaud China for closing down the crypto currency process. This is a smart move. We don't need these crypto currencies which are unstable, very costly and provide vehicles for illicit transactions. But we should take advantage of the digital revolution to enable near zero cost transactions. And China is moving in the direction of a digital central bank Renminbi and I think this can be done worldwide. But again, it should be done in a coordinated manner.

Let me conclude by saying that in all of the areas that I’ve mentioned. In stopping the pandemic, in the economic recovery, in facilitating a more fair world economy, in implementing the path to net zero emissions, in assuring universal access to digital currencies and digital technologies, more generally, in providing all people in the world with the benefits of 5G, now if later 6G, but the benefits of all of these scientific breakthroughs, we need global cooperation. We need it within regions like the East Asian region and we need it globally among the major regions, meaning the United States, European Union, East Asia, ASEAN, African Union, Latin American, and the Caribbean. And we should be aiming for peaceful cooperation and common problems solving among the major regions of the world. The G20, starting in the next days, is an extremely important forum for that cooperation. Indeed, I’m urging that Africa, the African Union be admitted as the 21st member of the G20, so it would become the G21, adding 1.4 billion people to the table by representation through the African Union as a member. That kind of forum of regional cooperation is extremely important. I really underscore we don't need cold wars; we don't need blocks; we don't need alliances; we don't need these tensions. What we need is cooperation for solving the major challenges that all of humanity faces.

Thank you so much for letting me be part of the Shanghai Forum 2021 and all best wishes to all the participants for a highly successful forum. Thank you very much.