Clinton-Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative Press Conference

June 21, 2007
New York, NY

Thanks to two of the most generous and most modest philanthropists in the world, our Foundation is growing. We’re here to announce the Clinton-Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative, a new project which they have made possible with their remarkable commitments.

I want to introduce the people who are standing here with me, and then I will talk a little bit about what we intend to do together, and I’ll give them a chance to say a few words.

Frank Giustra is the former Chairman of Endeavour Financial and a very successful Canadian businessman. Many of you know about our efforts to bring down the cost of antiretroviral drugs to adults and to children around the world. Frank has supported that work for years now in a very generous way. He deserves a fair share of the credit for the lives that are being saved. We have now three quarters of a million people getting medicine from our initiative.

The project we announce today grew out of Frank’s longtime support of our Foundation and out of our personal friendship. We’ve been talking for a long time now about the need for an ambitious program to create sustainable growth in developing countries, and in coordination with the mining industries, which Frank knows better that anyone I’ve ever met.

He has a deep understanding of the social challenges in the developing world because the mining industry is active there, and because he studied these issues both as a businessperson and a philanthropist. As a result, he’s gathered a coalition of some 20 companies in the natural resources sector who are going to partner with our initiative on a massive development level.

To begin our work, Frank has pledged $100 million, as well as half of all of his future profits from mining for the rest of his life. I am very humbled by his gift and grateful for his support. I am also excited by his vision of making a better future for people in emerging economies in Latin America and across the globe.

Carlos Slim is also with us today. He is the most important philanthropist in the world most people have never heard of; that is, as a philanthropist. He has a stake in more than 200 businesses employing more than 200,000 people throughout Latin America and beyond. He has quietly used his resources to help build communities in the countries that his businesses serve. In his native Mexico, he has personally sent a staggering 165,000 young people to college, paid for numerous operations, supported the equipping of rural schools, and bailed over 50,000 people out of prison who couldn’t afford to make bail for themselves. He recently created the Carso Institute for Health, which is designed to reinvent health care delivery in Mexico. He has already invested $4 billion to tackle education and health and other major challenges, and recently announced an additional investment of $6 billion in several programs including his Telmex Foundation.

I am honored to have him with us today, grateful for his friendship of many years now, and especially for his matching commitment of $100 million to our new initiative, which will begin its work in Latin America.

Also with us today is my good friend Luis Moreno, the President of the Inter-American Development Bank. We plan to work with him closely in developing, launching, and implementing this project. Luis has shown visionary leadership to the IADB, and he is working hard to make the institution more flexible, more relevant, and more effective. I am grateful for his partnership as we move forward. His talents are going to be a real asset, as well as the fact that he’s got a bank.

Now I want to say a few words about the substance of the work we plan to do together, and then I will turn it over to Frank, Carlos, and Luis. We have confidence, but cautious confidence, in our ability to make a difference in the developing world. But we know about the difficulties in the work ahead, the many well-respected NGOs who are already currently engaged in such work, and the vast amount yet to be done.

Ultimately, I hope this initiative will have a presence in many developing nations across the globe. We plan to start our work in Colombia and eventually expand to other Latin American countries such as Peru and Mexico. This is a part of the world that has potential for tremendous growth, but has been in a persistent state of poverty, increasing economic inequality and polarization, and inequality for far too long.

While many Latin American countries have made economic progress in recent years, the income gap between rich and poor has changed little since the 1990s. Today, this gap is the largest in the world. The richest 10 percent of the people in Latin America earn 48 percent of the total income, while the poorest 10 percent earn only 1.6 percent of total income. The World Bank estimates that one-quarter of Latin Americans earn less than $2 a day. Over 200 million people live in poverty. Education varies dramatically depending on income, and since the early 1990s, the poverty rate has only declined by 1.2 percent.

The disparity between the rich and poor is startling and unacceptable. It must be closed. Our initiative will focus on improving health, education, economic opportunity, and general living conditions in Latin American countries and other nations in partnership with the mining industry and other sectors.

We will also focus hard on sustainable development. We believe there is money to be made for these people with a responsible environmental policy that marries growth to the kind of energy and environmental future we are all going to have to pursue together.

Two things give me hope: first, the initiative begins with an entire industry behind it, ready and eager to make a difference. In the past, the natural resources industry has done its work, but done so piecemeal, and on a smaller scale. Many companies have actually set aside substantial amounts of money to try to help where they have done the mining, to repair the land and give people a sustainable living when the mines play out or even while they’re going on. But there have been all kinds of local complications in places prohibiting the full impact of their willingness to help.

Thanks to Frank, our initiative starts with an unprecedented level of both participation and coordination, and thanks to both Frank and Carlos, we're starting with significant resources as well.

The second thing that gives me hope is that the model that our Foundation has employed elsewhere has so far always succeeded in producing measurable results. If you look at the Clinton-Hunter Development Initiative in Africa, for example, we have increased crop yields for farmers dramatically and created a model rural health care infrastructure that is replicable in other places. The HIV/AIDS Initiative, as I mentioned, has negotiated lower prices for drugs and successfully disseminated them. Our Climate Change Initiative convened 16 cities and nine multinational corporations to work together on a program to reduce energy consumption on five continents by a building retrofit program. And we were able to get five banks to commit a billion dollars each to more than double the money going to building retrofits all across the globe.

What makes this initiative different is that we are working on a specific problem, with a specific industry, and with other partners, like Carlos Slim. Mining happens in almost every country in the world. Everything that is not grown is mined in some way. You can either have good mining or bad mining. We think we can build on some of the progressive programs that have already been put in place and create new ones that address the long-term needs of local communities and their environment.

Once we demonstrate that an entire industry can rally behind an initiative like this, we hope to engage other sectors and other businesses in development initiatives that are similarly focused, streamlined, coordinated, well-financed, and measured in their results.

Of course, nothing could happen if it hadn’t been for the willingness of Frank and Carlos to enable us to begin. I know these two men well. If you met them on the street or had dinner with them, you’d think they could be your next-door neighbor. They happen to be really rich, but they’re down to earth, straightforward, and I am proud to have them as my friends.

Before I conclude and turn the program over to them, I want to recognize several of our partners from the mining industry who are with us today, and if I leave anybody out, Frank, you can help me. Paul Conibear with Lundin for Africa, David Parker with Teckcominco, Paul Reynolds and Scott Davidson with Canaccord, Mike Wekerly with Griffiths McBurney, Frank Holmes with US Global, Pat Dillon with the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, and Stephen Gottesfeld with Newmont Mining Corporation.