[9:00 am – 9:30 am]

Plenary Session 3
[9:30 am – 10:45 am]

Transformation of energy systems and handling increasingly destabilised water cycles are the top of the agenda for many societies around the world. But countries are in distinctly different positions, some overwhelmed by challenges, others benefitting. While multiple new solutions are at hand, some goals are conflicting, and competition is fierce. In many cases, the roll-out of new solutions is out of sync with infrastructure development. Climate and other sustainability policies appear at odds with industrial policies. At the same time, the interdependency of water and energy is set to intensify, with significant implications for both.

Issues to be addressed:

• Smart energy and smart water solutions
• Unlocking the water-energy nexus
• The role of hydrogen in energy transition (examples from Oman, Germany, …)
• Climate change and water shortage
• Towards a low carbon society and economy
• AI in water management and energy transition
• Smart contracts in water management and energy transition
• Green investment related to the energy and water sectors (examples from the Gulf region and Asia, example of Oman’s Vision 2040, powering water desalination in GCC States/ case of Kuwait, Saudia Ariba’s Neom)
• Water and coastal management (example of ASEAN’s Blue Economy – fresh and ocean water supply resource management)

Plenary Session 4
[10:30 am – 12:30 am]

Education belongs among the most important sectors of the world, subjected to sweeping challenges to stay on track with a rapidly changing world, Children receive stimulus from so many other directions. Parents and families are getting busier elsewhere. Many teachers, meanwhile, are short of training and resources. At the same time, education is becoming a life-long priority and interconnector with technology and changeable formats of working and living. Specific challenges include the huge impact COVID and the associated shut-downs exerted on education with fallout on yet growing generations. Now, AI is here along with a shifting interface between humans and machine. How must and can education reform?

Issues to be addressed:

• AI-enhanced education/ the use of AI in education
• Global citizenship as a part of education/ 21st century skills/ capacity building
• Global education: the gap between the Global South and North
• Education innovation in the Global South (Kenia, India, China, …)
• World Class Scholars
• Cites as a classroom
• Green education

Parallel Session 3A
[2:00 pm – 3:15 pm]

The world has never been bestowed with better tools, neither with a greater need, to realise constructive mutually beneficial collaborate agendas, spanning science, health, education, water, energy, management of waste, and so forth. Yet, tensions abound. Oman is one of the few countries in the world which consistently refuse to fuel or join international conflicts, while actively engaging in silent diplomacy to facilitate peace between others. How can technology serve in sync with culture and societal values in realising fulfilment of the potential for collaboration and counter the forces of conflict polarisation?  

• The architecture of engagement and dealmaking
• Identifying and aligning joint interests
• Best-practices and emerging trends
• International cooperation (extensive border regions, remote and rural regions, populations, and Migrants, …)
• The need for new partnerships/ multistakeholder approaches

Parallel Session 3B
[2:00 pm – 3:15 pm]

Health is a global condition for the wellbeing of people. While disease management and the average life span have improved dramatically, new issues are evolving. Lifestyle unhealthy and chronic problems keep rising, as do mental disorders. With the natural world coming under pressure and uncontrolled advances in bioscience, the risk of pandemics spreading appears to be on the increase. Digital health, in its different forms, offers a range of new applications and means of improved health management and reaching out to cure many issues at much lower cost. It can help to reduce health disparities and significantly promote healthcare delivery by enhancing access and outreach.

Issues to be addressed:

• Global (new and reemerging) health challenges / One Health
• New diseases and reemerging diseases, health issues driven by environmental change, health issues linked to governance – faulty governance leading to poor infrastructure, the lack of funding for serious health issues
• Mental health and the concept of well-being
• Some of the major shifts coming forward on health that could have a big impact on society the society as a whole (GLP-1 drugs, obesity, shift toward more activity, demand for nutritious foods, etc.)
• eHealth & data: values, benefits, ownership, how to get the data?
• Health as a fundamental right (access to services/ treatments/ public goods, social determinants of health, egality/ equity, potential gaps between countries, …)
• Advances in the provision of care (services at home, telemedicine/ telehealth, smart hospitals, robotisation, AI, VR, AR, …)
  Best-practice country cases

Parallel Session 3C
[2:00 pm – 3:15 pm]

A spurt in new requirements for financers and the corporate sector to report on all aspects of sustainability arising along their entire supply chains, and also to present credible plans for how to address them, are being followed by requirements to deliver. Yet, conditions for fulfilment of sustainability may be lacking. The Draghi report has pointed to the lack of industrial policy accompanying sustainability policy. Greenwashing is at the same time abundant and reduces the credibility and rewards for frontrunners in sustainability. Impact investment is developing slowly. The financial sector has been shown to be “clogging user demand for development finance” The insurance industry mainly proceed with business as usual.

• Risk analysis and ESG investment (mitigation risk analysis, adaptation risk analysis, classification and clustering of investments, …)
• Public vs. private, investment/subsidies
• The extent and consequences of Greenwashing
• Blended funding, PPP, how maximise support for sustainability (additionality)
• Corporate Governance, CSR, NBEs, Driving forces for “green finance”
• Private sector issues (transaction costs, aggregation, time horizons)
• Insurance industry function hampered
• Financial intermediaries clogging demand for impact investment
• Examples of global climate change investment strategies and ethical finance

Parallel Session 4A
[3:45 pm – 5:00 pm]

There is a significant shift towards advanced governance for responsible AI. New legislative, regulatory and other AI governance models are emerging at international, regional, national, and industry levels.

Issues to be addressed:

• AI as new “normal”
• AI as a catalyst for future innovations
• Interrelating regulatory frameworks at national, international, multilateral, city and sector specific levels (different conceptual approaches, flexibility vs. uncertainty, overlap between AI regulation and other legal/regulatory rules…)
• Standardization of AI management systems
• Human-AI collaboration
• Large Language Models – LLMs
• Ethics is changing AI and AI is changing ethics
• AI, responsibility and accountability
• New ethical concerns (AI in military systems and warfighting applications, …)
• Global ethics framework(s) towards delivering trustworthy AI
• The ethics of using AI in data protection and the reverse side of it in helping fraud

Parallel Session 4B
[3:45 pm – 5:00 pm]

Culture shapes our values, defines our sense of identity, and supports social bonding. Cultures differ and they can clash, or they can evolve peacefully. The arrival of digitalisation had an enormous impact on how we engage with the world. Privacy, data protection, and security are deeply interconnected with rights, freedom, and responsibility. At the same time, a changing media landscape is becoming subject to disinformation, fragmentation, and the creation of ‘bubbles’, giving rise to populism and polarizing political discourse. We need to rethink our relationships with each other and our cultural heritage in ways that foster resilient, secure, and sustainable societies, aiming to heal rather than derail our digital society.

Parallel Session 4C
[3:45 pm – 5:00 pm]

Session description coming soon.

Plenary 5
[5:00 pm – 6:00 pm]

– Wrap Up Session –