Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues from many corners of the world:
It is a good thing for concerned and learned minds to focus on the issue of our day-sustainability-water, air, soil, livelihood, and health. As Madame Labelle has just said, this process of discussion of the environment has been a unique one, focused on soliciting high quality and collaborative research and discussion.
I have just returned from the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt. That meeting was population and development. This one is environment and development. I would hope they could build on one another because they are parallel attempts to accomplish related goals, mutually dependent goal s. In my estimation, all focus on health-environmental health, economic health, community health, and cultural hearty-indeed, human health.
Honorable Qian Qichen and Professor Qu Geping have confirmed that China is a nation with a huge population, growing resource demands, and many challenges posed by the fast pace of change. But China has many talented people and many good friends from around the world, as this meeting and this important process demonstrate. Problems such as those we are discussing are best solved in collaboration, for what one nation does affects us all.
Let me say on behalf of the Ford Foundation, with greetings from Peter Harris who has left the Beijing office and moved to New Zealand, and on behalf of Anthony Saich who has recently joined us as Representative, that we are honored to have played a small role in the efforts of the China Council through the years.
And let me thank Dr. Song Jian for sharing Montesqieu with us. I very much enjoyed the quote "Come with your whole heart and depart without taking a single leaf of grass." But it is my hope, in deed all of our hopes I should think, that we would leave with something. We will leave this beautiful meeting hall with strategies and commitments to action.
Thank you for your patience.