Yanis Ben Amor: It’s a good logo.

Audrey Tang: Yes, thank you.

Audrey Tang: How is it going?

Belay Begashaw: Good.

Yanis Ben Amor: It’s been amazing four days. First time in Taiwan, not last for sure. Incredible island, very nice people. Super food, very interesting topics. We’re working like every second of our trip here.

Audrey Tang: What are some highlights that I may be of help to...?

Yanis Ben Amor: We had a discussion with the Young Innovators organized by Legislature Jason Hsu on Saturday. That was very interesting. Obviously, today, we had a close session with EPA. We were all discussing our various SDGs.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, the Secretary for the National Sustainability Council.

Yanis Ben Amor: Exactly, yes, yes. They are masters of the SDGs there. Well, we went to Hualien for two days to visit the Tzu Chi Foundation.

Audrey Tang: Oh, OK. I’m going to Hualien early tomorrow too.

Yanis Ben Amor: Oh, so you will not be coming to the EPA conference.

Audrey Tang: No.

Yanis Ben Amor: OK.

Yanis Ben Amor: I guess you can’t be everywhere.

Audrey Tang: That’s right. That’s right. What’s your impression so far?

Belay Begashaw: Well, it was wonderful particularly this meeting this morning with the conversation and having the four committee members say that’s right working with environmental SDGs. I think we...I personally got an impression that Taiwan could offer a lot to the world.

Audrey Tang: OK. That’s great.

Belay Begashaw: We need to know how to get to the world basically because of all the challenges. Other than that, I think a lot of...There are some peculiar stories around cases that we could also share.

Audrey Tang: OK.

Belay Begashaw: Particularly when it comes to the ecosystem, the mountain ecosystem, how...

Audrey Tang: Yeah, definitely.

Belay Begashaw: ...30 percent of the land is being occupied by the mountain. The mountain is 2,300 to 3,000 millimeters of rain falling in days’ time, very torrential and subtropical. I think that’s a unique case.

Audrey Tang: It is.

Belay Begashaw: And the fact that this mountain will cover now and coming from a human and livestock touch gives me an impression that on that side of the country, actually you...I mean the mountain is consuming more carbon than releasing carbon.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Belay Begashaw: So how would this we tell to the world? Also, my whole idea is, there is no better thing than the SDG as a platform to break actually the impediments that you have in order to be able to share your experience to the world.

Belay Begashaw: This platform is an apolitical platform. This is supposed to be a platform that...

Audrey Tang: It transcends the political issues.

Belay Begashaw: ...politics, human rights, and human experience, everything. I think the sky is the limit when it comes to this platform.

Audrey Tang: Very much so.

Belay Begashaw: My impression is, don’t hit the rock. Look for the soft land areas, and work on the soft areas. Build that confidence and more align more friends around that. Then move to the rock, but there are still soft areas that you can explore.

Audrey Tang: Very much so.

Belay Begashaw: SDG is one of that. Climate change is a global citizens’ issue. It’s not a big or small country. It’s not a poor or rich country.

Audrey Tang: You can’t politicize it out. [laughs]

Belay Begashaw: Exactly. You couldn’t get more opportunity than this one, actually, to see how you can move out of the quagmire situation that is there right now. Otherwise, you will suffer from the stereotype, and also suffer from the chicken and egg stuff.

Audrey Tang: Very much so.

Belay Begashaw: If you don’t build that confidence, you do not have moral right. If you stay away and just talk about the rhetoric as a single song all the time, then you will not help yourself, and you will not break from the shell.

Belay Begashaw: That’s my observation, and a lot of Taiwan seems like working very hard now on Taiwan SDGs, but there is nothing like Taiwan SDGs practically. 54 percent of SDGs are national, but 46 percent are global.

Audrey Tang: Are global, yes.

Belay Begashaw: You need to go to the world out there. You need to be part of the dialogue. They need to be part of the discourse, to contribute the successful stories like this one, and also maybe challenges as well. That’s what we say, and HLPF is one platform.

Belay Begashaw: As you know, people are going there and reporting, but HLPF is reporting somewhere. This is the story that you are telling. It’s one thing to tell the story, but it’s another thing to bring people at it.

Belay Begashaw: Can you do it? That’s what I talked to the vice president this afternoon.

Audrey Tang: That’s right. Have you talked with the people who are doing the voluntary local reviews for the municipalities of Taipei and Taoyuan? They’re following the example of New York and doing local reviews also.

Audrey Tang: We have our national reviews, of course, but I think in the local review, they can highlight the diversity around the municipalities. For example, there is like 10 percent of the world’s marine species, the biodiversity, in our seas.

Audrey Tang: If you are an inland municipality, maybe you don’t care that much about sea life. The diversity represented by municipality, also very important.

Belay Begashaw: I think the peculiarity of the ecosystem is extremely important. Look, the coastal issues of science around the coast, you can have, in many countries, this kind of thing. If you go to New Jersey in the US...

Audrey Tang: Exactly. Those coasts are the same, in a sense.

Belay Begashaw: Right. This one is completely different. This is completely different. This is the one place where you have the big ocean and the mountain together.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Belay Begashaw: Also, you can tell that, this is not a subtropical environment character. A lot of countries will have this kind of thing. Their water challenge is completely different. This one’s very peculiar. If I were you, I would clearly start building cases around this.

Audrey Tang: We’re actually coding our existing cases where there are collaboratives around particular issues. Like the one that we shared last time, around using machine learning to detect water leakage, and that we partner with Wellington, with New Zealand.

Audrey Tang: SDG is a very convenient language that we are working on 6.4. Everybody said, "Oh, you solved 6.4." That become a common language. This year, we actually engaged the population to vote the 100 or so cases that become the cohort that is 20.

Audrey Tang: At the end of it, of course, we’ll select five to be merged back into the policy. They will win the trophy from the president signifying that their solution will become part of the public service by the end of year.

Audrey Tang: The important thing is that they all have their flags in their teams, cohort, public communication materials. It’s just concrete goals, concrete targets. This is like 20 out of 169 right there. It really increased the reach.

Yanis Ben Amor: This is the national?

Audrey Tang: This is national. This is the presidential hackathon.

Yanis Ben Amor: One thing that I will probably suggest tomorrow is to replicate that, but at an international level. You see, when I came to listen to you at SIPA -- great speech -- one thing that I walked away with is this, "Taiwan can help."

Yanis Ben Amor: Which I found really interesting, and so out of this world, in a way. What does that mean, Taiwan can help? When has it ever happened that a country is asking to go out and be supportive of others? Shouldn’t it be the other way, where a country is asking somebody else’s help?

Yanis Ben Amor: The geopolitical situation, obviously, is a fascinating one, but that’s the one thing that really touched me. I’ve been thinking ever since about how to try to get out of that and break the barriers of geopolitical BS, and actually use the talents that you have.

Yanis Ben Amor: Not just the resources, not just the money, but also, the intellect. You’re doing it on a national level. Why not expand it on an international level?

Audrey Tang: This year, we are choosing this as our Presidential Hackathon’s international tracks theme, "Enabling sustainable infrastructure." It is explicitly coded so that we can get not just 20 domestic teams, but 6 international teams as well.

Audrey Tang: We get application from 15 countries. We selected six. That’s Australia, Netherlands, Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and New Zealand. These are the principal contact. They may be international crew members also.

Audrey Tang: They are focusing on things that are, broadly speaking, sustainable infrastructure, like climate change mitigation, like looking at sea waste and how it flows with the seas, so that you can estimate the area from the beach using just machine vision and things like that.

Audrey Tang: Using Open Contracting to make sure that it’s fully accountable, that how the procurement counts toward making environmental impact without taking away from other parts of the environment so that it’s a net positive and things like that.

Audrey Tang: We are expanding it to international level but maybe not as fast and certainly not as loud as we can be. That is what we need help...

Yanis Ben Amor: That seems to be an amazing first step. My question would be what was the process for the selection of those six countries? Why was it done?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, so basically, we partner with sponsoring organizations. This time, we partnered with the Open Contracting Partnership or the OCP. OCP uses procurement data and so on to track infrastructures to make sure that they agree with the SDGs without pulling away from it.

Audrey Tang: It’s basically an accountability initiative internationally. They send to other members saying, "OK, Taiwan is releasing for the first time their procurement data for other people to analyze and also donating our talent to analyze other countries’ procurement data. What kind of infrastructure focused on SDGs can you propose?"

Audrey Tang: We got a lot of applications from 15 countries. That is the process. I’ll be very happy to work with more broader sponsoring organizations, not just the Open Contracting. Open Contracting is maybe focusing a little bit too much on SDG 16 and some 17, but that is...

Yanis Ben Amor: That would be 17. That’s the whole central...

Audrey Tang: Sure, sure, sure. That’s the main thing.

Yanis Ben Amor: That’s the main thing.

Audrey Tang: We’d be happy to partner with more environmental or more equality or gender or some other sponsoring organizations.

Yanis Ben Amor: Let me share with you since you’re not coming tomorrow an example of something that I have contributed to. Two years ago, Denmark did that. Just at the very beginning of the SDGs, Denmark said, "You know what? We are a small country, but we want to try to help internationally. We are a developed country. We think we’re doing great on some indicators."

Audrey Tang: Yeah, Denmark can help.

Yanis Ben Amor: They sponsored. They used a lot of their private sector, so Carlsberg and Novo Nordisk. They were all partners. They said, "Look, this is a way for Denmark to be relevant on the international scene." They actually sponsored almost a representative from every country, youth but youth defined as over 25, people who had expertise in four SDGs.

Yanis Ben Amor: It was education. It was health. It was infrastructure and then there was a fourth one. It was a one-week event where you first arrived in Copenhagen, and they gave you broad instructions of what was going to happen. Then, you were split by SDG. I was a judge on SDG 3 for health.

Yanis Ben Amor: Then, the teams decided what they wanted to solve as a problem.

Audrey Tang: OK.

Yanis Ben Amor: They were split into 20 teams. Each of them worked for one week on trying to come up with a solution of the SDGs, and the judges were saying, "This is not going to work," or, "You are on the right path." At the end, there was...Every team came back to Copenhagen.

Yanis Ben Amor: Oh, there was water. It was water, education, health, and infrastructure. Then, they presented in front of consultants and experts. In each SDG, one team won. The prize was funding for proof of concept and then scale-up. For instance, in health, it was a Blockchain initiative that won for Nigeria to try to prevent counterfeit drugs to circulate in the country.

Yanis Ben Amor: Something similar where you actually work on more than one SDG and you are...You give the opportunity for Taiwanese talents to comingle with international talents, people who...

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I think this is an excellent design.

Yanis Ben Amor: I thought it was really good. One week seems to be a good amount of time. If you do it one day, you’re not...You’re just at that process where the juice starts to flow and...

Audrey Tang: Yeah. In the presidential hackathon, we’re doing five days.

Yanis Ben Amor: Perfect. That seems adequate, and it’s very...People get to know each other. The other thing that I really appreciated with Denmark was the fact that every country was together. They had to actually have multiple continents represented in each group. That’s something to...

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I think that will certainly require more than public sector funding. For the public sector, the most we can get is the winning team gets to demo to our president and be selected as part of our public service.

Yanis Ben Amor: OK.

Audrey Tang: That’s something that maximizes impact, but it is not the same as securing, as you said, the impact finance that makes the prototype happen. Maybe we should talk to our social finance sector and see what we can get out of it.

Audrey Tang: I think there’s also a related thing that I encountered a couple of months ago called Unreasonable Goals. It is basically a similar idea, just getting to 16 because not the 17s world-changing entrepreneurs and just making a cohort and with mentorship and things like that.

Audrey Tang: They select one team from each of the 16 SDGs to showcase what kind of drastic impact they can do, and they have this kind of notebook that says just Unreasonable Goals. I think this is a similar design.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I think for the next year’s presidential hackathon, we really should broaden the international partnership. This year is really just a pilot.

Belay Begashaw: I mean what really concerns me is like having all these kind of great ideas. How do we really see off these things, spot them and measure that and all these ideas becomes products and products becomes something...

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Belay Begashaw: I think if we continue to do this, for sure I mean it will have some effects for one or the other. But at the same time, we want to see how we can use what we have in hand...

Audrey Tang: Exactly, exactly.

Belay Begashaw: I think really like take stock of what we have done so far and make it a case, make it a product, make it something so that on the platform that we are talking, these kind of ideas can be marked as a case and then with some kind of theories on the back and forth, people take it as something that Taiwan contributed to the world.

Audrey Tang: Yeah. We’re building such an index at the moment so that you can see that each municipalities and counties focus on, of course, different goals. They are asked to choose top two or three priorities, and then you can see exactly which they are and why they are focusing on this and what are the local initiatives that solves one of those priorities.

Audrey Tang: You can also see nationally what other top stories are there to further these issues. This icon is what we are spreading the idea of the products or services that also deliver one or more of the SDGs values. We are basically making social environmental procurement, supply chain integration, and basically just making the case by featuring those products and services as the SDG-based social innovators.

Audrey Tang: I think mostly, we just need a couple years more to make it more known internationally because there’s a lot of, I think, pretty good design, but at the moment, we see limited penetration, and mostly just in Asia, because mostly, we have Indo-Pacific links. I think there is a new thing that we just did that may interest you and may be replicable.

Audrey Tang: It’s called the Social Innovation Partnership Award. This is the first award of its kind that we’re aware of, that gives out SDG-based award not to any single organization or individual. It gives to partnerships, so at least two organizations must enter together.

Audrey Tang: Basically, the idea is that we recommend people to suggest unlikely partnerships, like the winner is actually from Indonesia, the Cigondewah Fashion Village Lab. It’s from Bandung. It’s basically a fashion production with a lot of waste.

Audrey Tang: Then they partnered with people from the Netherlands to introduce a way to make those waste back into upcycling products, form a local co-op, and make those damaged village regrow itself, and build an international brand out of it.

Audrey Tang: It’s a really good story to tell, but the key thing is that there’s like five different players here. They can’t really get this model working without the UN creative city supervising its work and things like that. What we’re trying to highlight is the unlikely collaboration between three sectors to make SDGs work.

Yanis Ben Amor: They applied for a future project together, or this is a reward for a partnership that’s already occurred?

Audrey Tang: It’s a reward for a promising partnership. They have to show that some work has been done.

Yanis Ben Amor: They have to get together and say, "We will be working together."

Audrey Tang: They have to sign that they are already working together in a formal way. It includes some really interesting cases that it may be CSR, but it is actually, for example, Carrefour.

Yanis Ben Amor: Carrefour Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, CareFor Taiwan works with the animal protection group to just get out a publicity campaign about free range chickens, about getting consumers to prefer eggs that are produced in a way that are...

Yanis Ben Amor: Cruelty-free.

Audrey Tang: That are cruelty-free, and then they are also moving onto other projects that focus on, for example, carbon neutrality and things like that. They do it in a way that basically, with the consumer’s taste, by essentially providing free design service for the advocacy.

Audrey Tang: Being CareFor, it is unlikely partnership, to say the least. They are actually piloting in Taiwan. I think it’s the first in Asia. That’s why they get the award, and so on. I think that’s an interesting, this is small scale.

Audrey Tang: We just chose 10 partnerships this year, but we are trying to expand next year. Maybe not just as Asia-Pacific. They may be interesting project to replicate.

Belay Begashaw: It’s good to go through this Asia-Pacific, because before you go to the global, it’s good also to say, you have something that relate the region. This thing is national, the regional...

Audrey Tang: Right, and the juries are all from Asia-Pacific. Judges, there’s no Taiwan judges that vote. We can say that we’re neutral. We’re just providing a platform. Therefore, being even non-political, then we are already non-political. There is common vocabulary from Asia-Pacific.

Belay Begashaw: It’ll also help you to focus on common issues. Also, when the jury do the evaluation, they have common values that they take into consideration.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, we have a judge from Hong Kong, and they have no problem at all with this arrangement. I do agree that maybe we just expand the Asia-Pacific reach a little bit more before replicating on that.

Belay Begashaw: Your strategy should be how to build online.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Belay Begashaw: Before you go into the peer thing, if you just start engulfing something around you, then expand, and then expand, and looking for soft targets, as I told. Then using the soft platforms...

Audrey Tang: That’s apply the lesson just from our meeting last time.

Belay Begashaw: Then what will happen is, when you go to make a case, you’re not longer talking about the bilateral cases. You are talking about, this is a citizen’s right. This is citizen’s project, citizen’s right. How can three million people do not have that right to contribute?

Belay Begashaw: This is something that any citizen anywhere, whether in the moon or...

Audrey Tang: We’re showing that they’re already collaborating.

Belay Begashaw: Right, exactly. That is how this thing is strong. Your narrative should be changing around the issues. That would help a lot, as far as we’re concerned.

Audrey Tang: We’ll do that. We’ll totally do that.

Yanis Ben Amor: What would you say are your gaps? What are some of the things that you wish you could have through collaborations?

Audrey Tang: What Taiwan needs from...?

Yanis Ben Amor: Your particular ministry, in terms of digital and...

Audrey Tang: I don’t think in Taiwan, we’re that much in need of technology. What we need is essentially a transformation of thinking about not just ICT, but digital. This is the same as everywhere, but particular so in Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: Taiwan traditionally has a very hardware-oriented culture that is focusing on, for example, supply chain management, the semiconductor, and things that are very large volume. Now, we are moving toward the people, the planet more.

Audrey Tang: It requires a different thinking that is not linear about just making a profit, reducing cost, and things like that. Rather, a longer-term thinking about the total value capture. Of course, we have great friends in KPMG, PWC, and so on that helps us to get this new ESG, like total value, accountability, whatever.

Audrey Tang: The publicly-listed the companies in Taiwan do actually provide the most SDG-indexed CSR reports by percentage. I think it’s over 500 reports every year, which is a really large number. The fact is that publicly-listed companies is just a tiny fraction of the Taiwan economy.

Audrey Tang: Most of Taiwan economy, 80 percent or more, is MSME. Many medium and small enterprises are still in the more, do one thing and do it well, profit-oriented...

Yanis Ben Amor: The antiquated, the antiquated.

Audrey Tang: Right, and like business as usual. Maybe they do do a lot of charity in their spare time when they earn a profit, but they don’t yet turn their head around the idea of the total value that they can actually make a planet and people aware, supply chain, and things like that. That is seen as luxury of the more larger enterprises.

Yanis Ben Amor: Circular economy is like the next generation for the people.

Audrey Tang: I think upcycling is something Tzu Chi really understands. If you talk to Tzu Chi, they have actually a profitable company just doing two-time, three-time upcycling.

Yanis Ben Amor: They should be studied by every business school and every management...

Audrey Tang: Exactly. There is a similar one, the Chun-chi, the Spring Pool for glasses. Glasses upcycling, there is also a great story to tell here. Chun-chi and Tzu Chi are like the two upcycling stars of the Taiwan economy.

Audrey Tang: They’re all 20 more years focusing on this. They’re all really large. For the MSMEs, they’re like, "Ah, that’s for the large players." They don’t quite see, until, of course, when the next generation takes over the leadership, see the total values.

Audrey Tang: That’s what we’re trying to get by getting people attending the Social Enterprise Summit, the APSIPA, the partnership award, the Taiwan Can Help badge, the social innovation mark. All of it is just to get people to declare their true total value.

Audrey Tang: For the medium and small enterprises, it is an uphill battle. I think what we can rely on is that at the time, just two years ago, only one in five people have heard of social entrepreneurship, and almost nobody has heard of SDGs.

Audrey Tang: Today, almost one in three knows about social entrepreneurship and one in five knows about SDGs. We’ve made a large progress just getting the message out. Whether they actually convert to triple bottom line is another issue altogether. I think that’s our main challenge.

Belay Begashaw: Your work on capturing the values, you said, the tripple bottom line. Have you ever thought of actually capturing the real cost or cost of production?

Audrey Tang: That’s right!

Belay Begashaw: I was trying to read a report shared by the EPA. They’re talking about carbon custody and this kind of thing. This seems like, as a new design for airline industries and this, but in real sense, every cost of production now.

Belay Begashaw: The one that we use is just the production cost. We are not costing all the eco services. This is a model that I believe it might work for you, very simply. You have already some sort of foundation on these kind of tasks.

Audrey Tang: Indeed. We do have the basic...

Belay Begashaw: Every production has to be costed now. Every production has to start costing the eco services. The models have not...

Audrey Tang: The thing is twofold. First is to factor out the external costs. The second thing is to actually make it fashionable to just buy upcycled products, to just choose recyclable or glass straws over plastic straws.

Audrey Tang: The EPA has done great work on that and so on. Of course, we fight one battle at a time. The thing is just to make it a kind of trend for the consumers.

Belay Begashaw: Minister, look. Our way of actually production will never change. We still think like increasing production is...

Audrey Tang: Is an end in itself.

Belay Begashaw: Right. Until such a time that we start really costing what increasing production really costs you...

Audrey Tang: Yeah, to the environment and to the society...

Belay Begashaw: You can look up on something like bringing the service, rather than the product. People need the service, so you don’t have to bring the product, if you will be able to bring the service.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I understand that.

Belay Begashaw: When you cost that, then nothing will be profitable. Then everybody will be sharpened and start looking on how to deliver the service, rather than the product, because this part is the big part of the cost.

Audrey Tang: I see. Making ownership more like a liability.

Belay Begashaw: That side is like the heaviest example. Ownership is a liability, absolutely. That’s what I mean. Why do you have to own when you need a service? You need a ride. You don’t need a car. You don’t need a car.

Belay Begashaw: You have a car because you need a ride. If you provide the ride, then why do you have to need a car? If the ride is available as the simplest service ever, then everybody will stop, because now, we don’t have confidence. That’s why we need to have our own car.

Belay Begashaw: If we get out of that thing and build a system that actually guarantee the service is available, then the ownership will be the liability.

Audrey Tang: That will be the actual turning point to shift toward a post-GDP assessment.

Belay Begashaw: Exactly, that’s what I’m saying. The gross thing will be completely different.

Audrey Tang: It will be measuring something else.

Belay Begashaw: Exactly. Until such a time where we get to that stage, we will not stop exploiting the eco services. This theory of achieving SDGs within the planetary boundaries is not going to work, because the planetary boundaries are already being violated.

Belay Begashaw: Look, our history in the last hundred years is about increasing population, aging societies, lifetime, average lifespan. Everything is increasing, because there is no limit on the resource for eco service.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I just did an online calculation that was my lifestyle. I used 1.5 spheres per year. [laughs] I really should cut down on my air travel, because I’m... [laughs]

Yanis Ben Amor: Wishful thinking for all of us.

Belay Begashaw: That’s actually one thing that, based on your experience and what you have done so far, I think if you build that, that would be super, super novel contribution to the world. Nobody’s capturing this thing now.

Audrey Tang: OK.

Yanis Ben Amor: At Columbia, we have a mentorship program which I don’t know whether you participated in. Basically, as a student, you can mentor somebody in community of Harlem or downtown. Then once a week, you go and you have this one-on-one time with somebody maybe less lucky than you.

Yanis Ben Amor: You choose a field like mathematics or whatever. What about having these Fortune 500 Taiwanese company mentor the smaller ones? It may not be in the same field, so that there is no competition, that it isn’t seen as we’re trying to figure out what you’re doing.

Audrey Tang: And acquire you. [laughs]

Yanis Ben Amor: And acquire you, exactly. More like, we’re already on the path for reaching the SDGs. We are completely compliant for climate change and things like that, and we actually think it’s good. It’s good business. It’s good business practice.

Yanis Ben Amor: We want to share that with the next generation, the smaller ones. Do you think that that’s something that...

Audrey Tang: The thing is that we really need to create a powerful incentive for them to do so, because the CSR officers, the BD strategy officers, we see some of the mentorship coming from, for example, the DBS bank.

Audrey Tang: The DBS bank provides that, because they select social entrepreneurship as their differentiator in their bank. They offer a lower interest rate for business that are making a good ecological or social impact. They personally do the mentor.

Audrey Tang: That is because, of course, as financial service, they want to be seen as a reputable financial service for those companies, because they will never compete each other, you see?

Yanis Ben Amor: Yes.

Audrey Tang: It’s harder if you don’t have a financial sector that is clearly separate from the ordinary businesses. We are seeing that from the old bank, also, from other banks. The financial sector are providing some part of that service.

Yanis Ben Amor: Sometimes, they need a little bit of a nudge. Maybe there are companies that are very advanced. This morning, TECO came to present. They seem to be involved a lot in trying to reach the SDGs with Taiwan.

Yanis Ben Amor: Maybe nobody has thought about this idea of a mentorship with smaller companies. If this was suggested, to me, the way to go is not have the government try to push it. It should almost be inspired. You could suggest it, but if it’s inspired...

Audrey Tang: Like the TSMC Launch a Campaign and things like that?

Yanis Ben Amor: For instance. Then it’s up to the bigger company to say, "You know what? We want to do that. We want to help." Then, once they do, then you promote...

Audrey Tang: Promote it. That’s right.

Yanis Ben Amor: ...the S out of it. You’re like "Look, this is a company that’s doing well, and it’s a company that’s doing good." Then you inspire others. Forever, this company will be seen as being the leader in that field. Then others will follow.

Audrey Tang: Currently, I personally give out the Impact Award if they decide to integrate the SDG innovative companies into their supply chain, and they buy over five millions per year. Then I personally go and give an award.

Audrey Tang: It is basically rewarding business development and supply chain integration, which is great, but it’s not mentorship. Maybe we can actually give out special prize for mentorship. Of course, it’s harder to objectively judge whether the mentee actually learned something, you know what I mean?

Yanis Ben Amor: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: It’s more difficult to quantify.

Yanis Ben Amor: That’s true, unless the mentee starts to adopt some of the practices.

Audrey Tang: That’s right, in a measurable way.

Yanis Ben Amor: Yes.

Audrey Tang: It’s harder to measure, but I think it’s worth pursuing. Maybe just like a partnership award that both of the sides, the mentors and mentees, provide some sort of quantifiable KPIs that they decide by themselves, certainly not the government.

Audrey Tang: They just have to say, "OK, which SDGs it’s correspond to?" That’s the only thing that we audit, maybe something like that. I’ll be sure to talk about it in our next social innovation meeting and see what the ministries think of it.

Yanis Ben Amor: Whether there is a...

Audrey Tang: Yeah, because we do have to have the endorsing ministries in order to, for it to happen. It’s not a purely digital thing, but I think it’s a great idea. Thank you. This ownership as liability thing, I think it actually agrees with most of our indigenous culture in the eastern side of Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: We just need to amplify the cultural impact of our indigenous population, which by area, is half of Taiwan, but by population, less than three percent. We really need to amplify their voices.

Belay Begashaw: Excellent. How do you try to tackle the aging issue?

Audrey Tang: The aging population? Actually, that’s one case where digital diagnostics, digital telemedicine, and robotics and AI is already helping a lot. It is not a future sense. It is basically that enables a limited amount of clinicians to keep track of a large amount of the aging population.

Audrey Tang: My own grandparents, my maternal grandpa is 101 years old now. All four of them are still around. I am very fortunate. I still visit them twice a month. They actually benefit a lot from being able to digitally meet their doctors, and have a lot of just continuous relationship.

Belay Begashaw: The data shows that at that age, for example, in Japan, six percent of them have dementia. You can’t even communicate. They can’t even...

Audrey Tang: My grandpa doesn’t have any short-term memory to write to long-term memory anymore, so every day is a new day for him. [laughs]

Belay Begashaw: They are now trying virtually to craft a new insurance system, because they don’t even know what they sign for. They don’t even know what they’re contributing. It’s becoming very complicated. The insurance companies are working on a special insurance...

Audrey Tang: For amnesia?

Belay Begashaw: Right, for dementia, because their number is growing. Six percent is...

Audrey Tang: It is true, it is true. We’re actually fortunate enough to, I think, just engage the elders, like even in the earlier stages of dementia to just stave it off for longer, just by including them more into, for example, participation.

Audrey Tang: We have our e-participation website. I maybe talked about it, but it’s 5 million user out of 23 million population, one quarter. We see two spikes in participation. One is 15-years-old, another is around 65. These two groups have the most time on their hands, and they think most about public welfare. The people in-between think about private benefit.

Belay Begashaw: Interesting. The other analysis is like Japan now, 64 percent of them are above 65.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Belay Begashaw: What does that mean? The rest of the population is about 36 percent, and less than 18 are 10 percent. Only 26 percent of the population will have a voting power different from above 65 people.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Belay Begashaw: Every policy, every future direction...

Audrey Tang: Caters to the elderly.

Belay Begashaw: ...is catered to the elders. Unfortunately, there is no voting limit. Even you are dementia, you can still vote 105, 104, because no one will stop you. Below 18, you can’t. This is becoming now an issue.

Belay Begashaw: The future policies will depend on this group, and they have strong association everywhere.

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, maybe not. The 15-years-old in Taiwan are very powerful in their campaigns. Actually, the most powerful e-petitions we receive that had an impact, most of them are from 15-years-old.

Audrey Tang: We have a 15-years-old that petitioned for banning of plastic straws or any one-use plastic anywhere. The EPA is forced to respond. They are actually delivering. This year, they are just banning plastic straw for indoor drinks.

Audrey Tang: When the EPA initially thought the petitioner must be a very strong environmental activist to gather 5,000 people in such a short time. When we meet her, she is just a 15-years-old senior high school student.

Audrey Tang: She said that it’s her civic class assignment to find a petition topic that can mobilize people. I think it’s really good that they can meaningfully participate in this way, without having to stop from attending class every Friday, which is happening elsewhere, [laughs] and effecting real change.

Audrey Tang: There is also a petition just recently. We met another 15-years-old, a guy in, again, senior high school that petitioned for the referendum act to be changed so that we cannot take away human right, as agreed by the human right covenants in the UN.

Audrey Tang: As a rule, referendum, just as you said, is going to count the majority of population, sometime to the detriment of the minority of the population. The human rights covenants are there to protect the minorities.

Audrey Tang: He petitioned that it should never be included as a referendum topic. We actually adopted that as well. The 15-years-old are really changing the world, at least in Taiwan. [laughs]

Yanis Ben Amor: Because they are listened to. I think that’s really...

Audrey Tang: Right, they’re empowered.

Yanis Ben Amor: That’s a local advantage that they have as Taiwanese.

Belay Begashaw: And strong associations easily become a tribe.

Audrey Tang: It is, that are exclusive.

Belay Begashaw: If it becomes a tribe, then everything will be a mob. Individual rationality will disappear. When you vote on tribe, you think as a tribe, because the tribe becomes your identity. This is the so-called populism, is that, at the end of the day.

Belay Begashaw: You will have another identity, and that identity will become your tribe. Then you are looking for all other excuses to make your tribe bigger, smarter, and superior. Then when you vote, you vote as a tribe. You don’t vote. You lose your personal rationality, I think.

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Belay Begashaw: That’s why this strong association, particularly for those people who are not anymore productive in the regular work, who are actually sitting. All what they are doing is chewing these ideas of politics and this. It will become like a big sect.

Audrey Tang: I think there is one way, is just to make sure that there’s multiple chance of meaningful participation. Basically, weaken the referendums and the votes every four years. These are still democratic institutions, but if people can participate daily on the budgets, on the petitions, on the regulations, and things like that, it’s much more for them to do.

Audrey Tang: It will also encourage the best of people for the 15-years-old and the 65-years-old, who care about the same thing, to build intergenerational solidarity. Whereas if it’s just one vote every two years, there’s no time for them to build, and no topic at all to build something...

Belay Begashaw: I am glad we are conversant on it, because this is becoming now a future issue buzzword. It will completely affect the way politics and so on.

Audrey Tang: Very much so, very much so.

Belay Begashaw: I am glad. This is very important.

Audrey Tang: If we only limit the referendums to the only thing that people can express, then maybe we just get Brexit every few years. [laughs]

Belay Begashaw: No, it’s good to dwindle things into small pieces and make them to vote every day, so they shouldn’t wait for the big...

Audrey Tang: Exactly.

Yanis Ben Amor: You want to be Switzerland?

Audrey Tang: Yes. That’s where we’re going.

Yanis Ben Amor: You know that there is fatigue after a while?

Audrey Tang: I know, I know.

Yanis Ben Amor: I am half-Swiss. I can tell you that after a while, it just gets like, "Oh, my god, we’re voting again." There is proven...

Audrey Tang: 100-page referendum booklet, who reads that? [laughs]

Yanis Ben Amor: It’s very inclusive as a result. Anybody has an idea, 100,000 signatures, and it goes to referendum.

Audrey Tang: I think basically makes it less like the four tribes within Switzerland.

Yanis Ben Amor: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: If anything, it makes the tribalism more mutually reinforcing than anything.

Yanis Ben Amor: Yeah, I think that’s bringing it to the extreme. There should maybe be like an intermediate body that says, "OK, so, you have 100,000. Let’s look at it, and see whether it’s of interest to the national..."

Audrey Tang: Bodies.

Yanis Ben Amor: Exactly, to see whether...Mostly, they are not inconsequential. They are typically a lot about current issues of ethics or government. Whether GMOs should be plainly labeled, whether they should be coming from Switzerland, the migrants...

Audrey Tang: Universal basic income?

Yanis Ben Amor: Huh?

Audrey Tang: Universal basic income.

Yanis Ben Amor: Exactly, yeah. The one that we had last Sunday was about gun ownership. There is military service still, and we have to do it until 42. We have to do it every other year. You do it at 18 for two years, and then you do it every other year.

Yanis Ben Amor: You are obligated to keep your gun or your rifle at home. In fact, Switzerland has the highest ownership of guns, even to the level of or higher than America. Of course, we have much lower crime. I think that now, with the rates that’s going on worldwide and the craziness, so we had this vote about whether or not we should control guns.

Yanis Ben Amor: Also, because we were completely in disagreement with the EU. I think at some point, the EU came and said, "All right, if you want to stay part of the EEE, then you’re going to have to." Anyways, it’s typically on Sundays, and it happens a lot. That’s the extreme.

Audrey Tang: I think the Swiss model of a longer deliberation before each referendum, even though it does cause fatigue, it also creates a better polity, a sense of polity.

Yanis Ben Amor: It is participatory. It is participatory.

Audrey Tang: That’s where we’re going, for sure.

Belay Begashaw: Thank you very much.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, thank you for your time. I think these are very important issues to think about collectively.

Yanis Ben Amor: Minister, thank you so much.

Audrey Tang: Thank you so much.

Yanis Ben Amor: Any New York trip happening soon, like early in July or in September?

Audrey Tang: Maybe my robot...

Audrey Tang: ...I am cutting down air travels. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.