Good morning. The term ‘social networks’ just came up; that is a perfect segue to what
we want to talk about. Before the recession hit and long after the recession passes we
face an amazing opportunity and challenge; how do we deliver truly global prosperity,
really for the first time in human history, and do so within the limits of what the planet
has to offer – Bud’s cruise was a great opportunity to explain all of that. Our concept
really takes pluri-lateralism to its ultimate end; we are not talking about the G8, we are
not talking about the G20, we are not talking about 193 nations in Copenhagen or Mexico
City, we are talking about the G7 billion, G7b, the opportunity to engage, to inspire,
and ultimately to mobilise consumers to build a consumer movement that enables increased
prosperity, increased wellbeing and stimulates demand for sustainable products and services.
Now, how do we want to do that? We want to build a global social network; we want to
build an online available and mobile platform that enables people all over the world to
do a few things. First of all, build a social network that creates a seven billion strong
network of people who are looking for ways that they can achieve their economic goals
and do so in the most sustainable way. We want to provide good information that people
can use from trusted sources, cross checked by lots of different organisations and also
create some symbols that we think can help create a universal language that all of us
can use to make different kinds of choices. We think this opportunity is huge. The social
network piece is essential, so we have someone like Harish Hande who is here talking about
his solar business in India; there are a lot of people who don’t know about that who
could know about that, and who could seek solutions like that and others in order to
improve their lives and build more sustainable business that can get to scale. Because all
of the solutions that we have talked about so far don’t work if we don’t have market
demand for these kinds of things.
So, who do we need at the table? Well, this web I think is important and the model here
is that there are lots of inputs to this from companies, from governments, from NGOs, the
Global Agenda Councils with which we are working, all come together. No one owns this, we are
going to need an entity that can launch this – and I will come to that when you ask
me what we need – but no one owns this. This is a wiki model, in essence, where we
build information through a single global platform that is going to be relevant globally
and it is going to draw on knowledge and connections that we can enable through this model. So,
up here you see examples of how this has happened before; we have done this before, we know
we can do it, there are all sorts of social movement that we have seen over the last 50
years where citizens all around the world have come to understand various issues like
HIV and AIDS, smoking, basic protection of rivers and the air. We have managed to mobilise
people and change perceptions in a relatively short period of time, less than within a generation,
to help people make different choices in their personal lives that helps to reorient the
way the economy works, helps to reorient public policy and helps to drive different behaviour.
So we know we can do this and we want to do this again in order to build a truly global
movement that is going to be relevant round the world.
What is this all about? A very important thing: this is not about living with less and this
is not about stopping economic development. This is not about ‘less versus more,’
but better. This is about a different kind of abundance; this is about enabling economic
development. The middle class is going to triple over the next 10 years, we have got
opportunities to build prosperity from Indian villages to the city of Zurich, this is about
people making different choices that help them lead healthier lives, more connected
lives and ultimately more prosperous lives, and we think that there is a lot of creativity
that we can unleash in order to make connections that will help build a different kind of economy
that will be on a path that we can actually sustain. I will stop there.