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Irwin Mendelssohn: My name is Irwin Mendelssohn, I work for the World Economic Forum
out of our New York offices and I'm part of Global Leadership Fellows Program.
Ramya Krishnaswamy: I'm Ramya Krishnaswamy.
I'm a Project Manager of the Environmental Initiatives of the World Economic Forum.
Busba Wongnapapisan: I am Busba Wongnapapisan.
I'm heading the Renewability Industry Sector at the Forum.
Arthur Wasunna: My name is Arthur Wasunna. I live in Geneva, Switzerland.
I'm with the World Economic Forum Global Leadership Program.
I just arrived at the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
I'm looking forward to an intense week.
Kenneth Prewitt: You are having an experiences week, which is non-duplicable.
It just can't normally happen that a major research university in some of its
most important components is going to turn itself out for you and try to get as much
of what it is about into your heads before you leave Saturday.
Louise Rosen: We are putting on a program for the World Economic Forum Fellows
that is training them to address issues of complexity and sustainable development.
Kenneth Prewitt: I think one of the reasons that we collect this is really important
is we are really very good at a University at creating knowledge.
We are less good about making sure that it is used in the places where it has to
be used to make a difference and so I think that if we pull that off if we can
get a group of really talented young people from all over the world to say,
"Ah-huh, I get it. I see what the issues are"
and then may go off and implement that and put it into practice then we will have
realized our purpose. Gilbert Probst: Global Leadership Fellows
are young academics with some years of experience that come to the World Economic Forum
in important positions, responsible as community managers or as heads of
important global initiatives and what we do is we train them in parallel to their
job as future global leaders. Louise Rosen: Well the fellows may have
many advance to graze this intensive week is really requiring them to take a very
quick dive and some very complex issues and it is really challenging them.
It is challenging them and as much as they may have economics backgrounds,
they may have law backgrounds, but when you are requiring learn about the hydrological
system and the complexities of the climate cycle we are using a different part of their brain.
Kristine Billmyer: Good Morning everyone. Irwin Mendelssohn: So we started the week
with a lecture about cross disciplinary cooperation, which really have to set the tone.
Kristine Billmyer: Are you familiar with the term "wicked problems"?
A wicked problem is a problem for which there is no formulation
or definitive unambiguous solution.
Ramya Krishnaswamy: All the problems that we started looking at this week.
They were all wicked problems because they were highly interconnected
and complex in nature. Irwin Mendelssohn: To solve one issue you
have to look at it in a context, the number of other issues.
Ramya Krishnaswamy: Wicked problems can only be solved when we bring together
people of various disciplines and various stakeholders.
Irwin Mendelssohn: Fundamental to the approach the World Economic Forum
is thinking about things in a multi stakeholder and a multidisciplinary way
so to be here at the Earth Institute where part of the approach is inherently
to think about things and across disciplinary way and to marry the science with the policy
and engage in the right stakeholders to help to implement some of the recommendations.
I think there is a certain harmony between the two.
We went up to the Lamont or the Earth Observatory which is north in the city.
I had the chance to see first hand some of the research facilities.
Ramya Krishnaswamy: Essentially it is like a collection of laboratories all
interested in earth systems in some way. We were at the Tree Ring Lab where
a scientist actually dug to the core of a tree using a tool and help us extract
a little section of the tree and he explained to us how an aging of the tree
could hold great clues to how climate patterns that have evolved and we continue
to talk about how by collecting samples from around the world, we could find major
clues to climate variability and climate patterns over the past 100 of years.
So it is extremely interesting being able to visualize the importance of the
scientific information with something as practical as that exercise.
There is a harmony around learning about the earth and being in a forest space
such as this and the greenest of it and what happens here
that allows the contextualization of what it is that we are trying to do.
The health exercise was one of the highlights of the program.
We split into four groups in multidisciplinary teams to explore what
our response would be to the outbreak of malaria on that link of that to climate change.
We got to be in the shoes of people who we created and it worked for most of the
time, the constituents we serve have that feeling of, "Oh this is how we make
policy, oh this is how we bring together experts to come to a better answer."
Irwin Mendelssohn: The faculty who were leading took on the role of the funders
and evaluated at the end the different proposals and awarded the winning
one million $50,000 of hypothetical money.
I think we are able to really learn from how they made their decision, how funders
actually look at projects and makes things effective.
Female: My favorite activity is to go to the labs.
Male: We are trying to design materials that can absorb CO2.
Busba Wongnapapisan: One of our professors showed us a technique to
capture carbon PCD's experiment. We see the technology itself.
It is a brush that actually absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere and then once it gets
wet it actually releases CO2.
Ramya Krishnaswamy: And to demonstrate it to us how levels of carbon dioxide went
down when this absorptive material captured atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.
Busba Wongnapapisan: And it was really cool and exciting for me coming from the
business sector to realize what could be the indications of this technology I think
if the technology can be scaled up commercially it will be a huge benefit
in solving the CO2 issue. Ramya Krishnaswamy: At the forum we work
a lot to actually create awareness on the technology that he talked about which
is Carbon Capture and Sequestration so I'm really glad to have met Professor Lackner
and I would love to find a way to involve him the work that we do and to see what --
we can help him leverage our network to bring awareness to this challenge into
this technology.
Jeffrey Sachs: The success of the spread of the economic development which is the
great positive that we all worked for over the past 30 years is showing up so
powerfully right now on environmental climate, water, energy and other physical
dimensions that, that is the other place where we could have our success carry us
right over the cliff.
Irwin Mendelssohn: It was great to hear Jeffrey Sachs talk first hand as to hear
some of his ideas and really get a better sense of his vision for the Earth Institute.
Busba Wongnapapisan: One of the key learning that I learned from him
is that I think the business sector has a very important role
to play in solving the world's problem.
Arthur Wasunna: For me one of the particular interests was listening to
Professor Sachs talk about the role of the World Economic Forum can play and should
play in being the connector or Nexus between policy makers and the business community.
Jeffrey Sachs: So this is called tangible earth, the world's first interactive digital globe.
Ramya Krishnaswamy: The tangible earth representation was one of the most
inspiring activities for me.
Irwin Mendelssohn: First he was able to point to a certain part of the globe and from there,
on the screen, we could see visually what was going on there and how that changed
over time as well as across geographies to different parts of the world.
Ramya Krishnaswamy: Someone has developed a powerful way to allow us to visualize
very concrete things like climate variations or bird migrations or population densities
and the reason why visualization is so powerful is that everything that was a climate model
before suddenly became a live animation and our ability to comprehend the nature of the
problem has completely changed so the fact that the professor who developed this
simplified a very complex problem inspired me very, very much.
Irwin Mendelssohn: When discussing our medium-term strategy there is a couple of
things we want to focus on. So our final activity was a project around
the redevelopment of a certain part of Haiti and doing that through the lens of
practical problem where it is not only economic development and social
development, but climate especially and environmental landscape.
Busba Wongnapapisan: The Haiti case has multiple challenges that need to be
tackled from multiple angles so if I have to form a team I need to look at different
expertise, different experience and I have to use different approaches.
Irwin Mendelssohn: We form groups of 4 with each individual having a different
background and expertise to bring to the discussion and what we try to do is look
at some of the short term medium term and then the long term goals that we want to
think about if we were advising on the implementation of the program.
For us it was interesting because it gave us the opportunity not only to apply
through the domain expertise environment but to do it in a way that synthesize this
what we have had a chance to learn throughout the week.
Arthur Wasunna: My week re-exceeded my expectations.
Irwin Mendelssohn: To hear from experts with a cutting edge of applying the
science around each of these different disciplines to practical policy issues
is both fascinating as well as extremely relevant.
One of the biggest things I got at this week is having a chance to get
a foundational academic ground in, a number of different topics that I have been working with
but have never really been exposed to from the science perspective
so I feel my understanding of the different policy issues is much deeper
because of my understanding of the science and also feel my sophistication
in being able to make connections between one discipline at another
is that much deeper as a result of having to do this.
Ramya Krishnaswamy: There are a lot of experts and practitioners I met during this week
who I really hope to continue to stay in touch with
and bring them to be a part of the work that I do at the World Economic Forum.
Arthur Wasunna: It has been an intense but also very inspirational week
and a week of many, many takeaways for each one of us
and definitely a week that we want to continue to take into our careers going forward.