Leveraging our core competencies as a supplier of public infrastructure systems in the areas of water treatment, energy, mobility and healthcare, we’re already making important contributions to the UN effort:

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing the world today. Energy-efficient technologies have a key role to play in the struggle to mitigate global warming and minimize the consequences of the droughts, flooding and other disasters that follow in its wake. We began focusing on these technologies early on and have made combating climate change a cornerstone of our corporate responsibility strategy. Today, our broad range of high-efficiency, ecofriendly energy products and solutions is virtually unparalleled (see The Siemens Environmental Portfolio).

As the world’s population grows, so does the demand for clean drinking water. Recent UN studies predict that water consumption worldwide will have increased almost 40 percent by 2025 – a year in which, according to UNESCO, nearly 40 percent of the world’s population will be suffering from the effects of water scarcity. In 1990, this figure was only about six percent. Clearly, more efficient use of water supplies is not merely a good idea; it’s an absolute necessity. We offer technologies for purifying drinking water and treating process water, industrial wastewater and municipal wastewater – technologies that are already key factors in worldwide efforts to make better use of water resources.

In sub-Saharan Africa alone, approximately 45 million children do not attend school. As a result, almost half the region’s young people grow up behind walls of poverty, discrimination and ignorance. The UN is now aiming to make primary education available to all the world’s children – girls and boys alike – by 2015. To help achieve this goal, we’re supporting UNICEF’s Schools for Africa campaign as part of our Caring Hands program. Since July 2006, the Company and its workforce have donated some €650,000 to finance schools in Africa, giving many African children access to education for the first time. In addition, 1,200 Siemens employees are project sponsors, making regular donations to help build schools, purchase school supplies and educate children.

Another UN Millennium goal is to promote social and economic development by expanding access in developing regions to information and communications technologies. Here, Nokia Siemens Networks is helping with Village Connection Internet kiosks that provide people in remote rural areas, who are often cut off from the outside world, with access to advanced communications tools such as voice, SMS and Internet services. The kiosks also support economic growth in isolated regions by providing the communications channels that local entrepreneurs need in order to set up their own businesses. The Village Connection concept has already been successfully tested in India and Tanzania.

We’re fostering the UN goals with our healthcare technologies as well. A lack of qualified specialists is often a problem in developing regions, where getting to a doctor or pharmacy is usually very time-consuming and often more expensive for the patient than actual treatment and medication. Hospital buses are just one of the solutions we’ve developed to enhance healthcare for patients in remote areas of the globe. Equipped with devices for performing routine tests, X-rays, ultrasound examinations, mammograms and electrocardiograms, these clinics on wheels provide professional healthcare services to people in isolated regions. The air-conditioned buses carry their own water supplies and generators, enabling them to operate even in areas where power and water connections are unavailable. Fifteen of our hospital buses – each capable of providing free, high-quality medical care to 500 patients a day – are already on the road in rural areas of India.

We’re fostering sustainable development around the world while tapping new markets with our products and systems. This strategy is not only powering our business success. It’s also positioning us to fulfill our responsibilities as a global player – today and for the benefit of the generations to come.