It seems that the word “CHANGE” has become a prevailing word throughout the world. Candidates emphasize CHANGE as their concern to win polls; ways of communicating changed because of hi-tech; lifestyles are CHANGING because of globalization; and even the theme of CHANGE is in the Women’s Forum Asia’s topics today.

When the speakers talked about how to contribute to economic growth and sustainability, Bruno Lafont from LaFarge focused on CHANGING traditional construction and the composition of cement, since urbanization requires more and more buildings. Many of the practices which create these buildings contribute to global warming and other environmental problems, thus preventing the world, and especially China, who is building so much so quickly, from growth and sustainability. I appreciated their concern about environmental issues, as I am an activist in such problems. Think about tornados in America, think about the growing devastation of the hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean, the heavy snowfalls in China, and the heat wave in India that lasted for nearly a month. The earth is really sending us a pressing message that the climate is CHANGING, so what we need to do now is to CHANGE as well. We cannot just leave it to governments or international organizations, but each one of us has to make a commitment and take action.

In the session about China and India, the two new economic powerhouses, it was mentioned that they are significantly reshaping the global economic and business scene. I know clearly, however, that China is not strong enough economically, though her GDP continues to grow year after year. Maybe it’s the same case in India, as the speakers, also mentioned that what these two countries, as well as the rest of the world needs, is CHANGE.

Mentioning globalization, we regard it as an invader at first, but the fact is that we need globalization to reshape the rules of doing business and enhance cooperation to ensure long-term growth. Change is the basic foundation for this. In China we are troubled by piracy, natural disasters, prevailing diseases, political systems not being so open, and industries depending on manufacturing rather than high-tech, while India has a population problem since they have no one-child policy as that in China, and their economy is not so open. Therefore, we need to CHANGE ourselves by learning from failures and other countries, and increase communications with the rest of the world for everyone to survive sustainably, as we now have a world economy, not just the economies of individual countries.

One of the speakers, Clyde Prestowitz, said that environmental issues like global warming will decelerate growth or even destroy sustainability. Nobody wants to see such a tragedy happen. If China and India fall, the rest of the world falls, too, so actions such as announcing constraints on buying products “Made In China” affect not only China, but everyone. Therefore, the whole world needs to CHANGE.

It’s easy to say but hard to do. We can see how many remarkable women have played an important role to society and economy. We know we can make things CHANGE if we pay attention the issues the Women's Forum Asia is talking about. Why not take action and make inferior things CHANGE right now?