The World Economic Forum returns to Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, between January 27-31. Since its inception in 1971, the forum has met annually in Switzerland with the aim of presenting international political leaders, select intellectuals and journalists the opportunity of discussing the most pressing issues facing the world, including global health issues and the environment.
It is the forum’s key belief that improving the state of the world requires catalysing global co-operation to address pressing challenges and future risks. In turn, global co-operation requires stakeholders from business, government, the media, science, religion, the arts and civil society to collaborate as a community. To this end, for the last four decades the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting has convened at the start of the year with the aim of engaging world leaders from all walks of life to shape the global agenda.
Climate change
A World Economic Forum task force has presented world leaders gathered in New York with proposals to accelerate private sector investment and innovation in the fight against climate change. Eighty business leaders and over 40 environmental and scientific experts outlined a plan for stimulating a ‘clean revolution’ in the private sector within the next few years even as governments continue negotiations on a climate policy framework in the UN.
Food and agriculture
In the past year, food security and economic crises have highlighted both the urgent need and the potential for developing sustainable agri-food systems. Over one billion people, or one out of six globally, do not have access to adequate food and nutrition today. By 2050, the global population will grow to a projected 9.2 billion people, and demand for agricultural products is expected to double.
The World Economic Forum’s Consumer Industries Community is championing an initiative through multi-stakeholder engagement in developing a shared agenda for action to meet food security, economic development and environmental sustainability goals through agriculture. The new vision for agriculture initiative engages high-level leaders of industry, government and international institutions and civil society – with support from leading experts – to define joint priorities, recommendations and opportunities for collaboration.
Global health
The Global Health Initiative (GHI) was launched in 2002 by the World Economic Forum and its partners, to improve global health through three key activities: advocacy, dialogue and partnerships. Its focus has been on Africa, India and China and on communicable diseases (HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria) as well as on strengthening health systems.
Education
The primary objective of the GEI is to raise awareness and support the implementation of relevant, sustainable and scalable national education sector plans on a global level through the increased engagement of the private sector. Through its unprecedented partnerships with UNESCO and Education for all fast track initiative, and the continuous commitment and support of the partners and members of the World Economic Forum, the GEI aims to scale education partnerships globally.
In its six years of existence, the GEI has impacted over 1.8 million students and teachers and mobilised over $100m in resource support in Jordan, India, Egypt, the Palestinian territories and Rwanda.
During the past year, the initiative continued supporting the country level work in Rajasthan, and Egypt, restarted the multi-stakeholder collaboration efforts in the Palestinian territories and launched the Global Education Alliance model with a pilot in Rwanda.
Humanitarian relief
The frequency and impact of natural disasters and conflict are increasing worldwide, causing losses of over $200bn and over 180,000 deaths in 2005 alone. The result is the need for an unprecedented level of humanitarian relief. While the private sector has been increasingly generous, corporate response to humanitarian emergencies generally has been reactive, limiting its overall effectiveness and efficiency.
The Humanitarian Relief Initiative aims to increase the global impact of private sector engagement in humanitarian relief. The HRI develops public-private partnerships that match the core competencies of the private sector with the priority needs of the global humanitarian community in advance of humanitarian crises.
Convention project
The wave of financial crises in the last decade has generated a consensus that the international financial system needs to be reformed. But there remain profound disagreements among policy makers and the private sector concerning how far and deep the reforms should go.
To capitalise on this opportunity for progress, the WEF and the Reinventing Bretton Woods Committee, in co-operation with selected finance ministries and central banks of G20 countries, are organising a two year series of public-private roundtables on the future of the international monetary system. This project seeks to provide input into the deliberations of policy makers by convening them for off-the-record sessions with some of the world’s leading private sector and academic authorities.
2010 objectives
The Annual Meeting 2009 theme was “Shaping the post-crisis world”. The intent was to absorb the early lessons from the financial crisis and to understand how risks interconnect, to encourage longer-term thinking and to consider the unintended consequences of various calls for action. The learning and transformation will continue into next year along with increasing expectations for positive change.
In response to today’s global priorities, the theme for 2010 is a call to action, namely: Improve the state of the world: Rethink, Redesign and Rebuild. Driving the rethink at the 40th annual meeting will be the Network of Global Agenda Councils, comprised of over 1,000 experts active in over 70 councils, created to advance solutions to the most critical challenges facing the world today.
The impetus behind the Rethink, Redesign and Rebuild agenda is clear. The global credit crisis and ensuing recession, having raised serious questions about the future of the global economy, have at the same time provided insights into economic interdependencies, governance gaps and systemic risks that go hand in hand with globalisation. These revelations in turn compel the forum to rethink business models, financial innovation and risk management.
Rethinking also triggers attempts at redesign. National legislatures, supervisory authorities and international organisations are now redesigning institutions, policies and regulations with the aim of closing governance gaps, preventing systemic failures and restoring growth. However, these efforts need common vision, collaborative innovation and public-private partnerships for their long-term success. The success drivers are themselves predicated on the individuals and institutions empowered to take action having the trust of stakeholder communities.
Decision makers, therefore, must rebuild trust, not only to establish the legitimacy of their redesign but also to instil confidence in their future success. Rethink, Redesign and Rebuild are invariably complex, as values, norms and incentives change and, in turn, reshape stakeholder communities, social networks, governance structures and industry models worldwide.
In addition the pressure to Rethink, Redesign and Rebuild is increasing in line with the increasing concern over the current state of the world. The fiscal and monetary prescriptions to ease the pain of global economic shocks are now fuelling anxieties about the creation of new economic bubbles.
Furthermore, the demographic, behavioural and technological changes linked to the collapse in global demand are challenging basic assumptions about the nascent recovery. Major industries are still contending with cyclical and structural threats to their business models. In addition to all this, weaknesses of governance systems, exposed by the financial crisis, are mostly unchanged with respect to looming global risks such as climate change, nuclear proliferation and pandemic.
Redesign discussions at the forum will aim to leverage the ongoing work of the Forum’s Global Redesign Initiative, a multi-stakeholder dialogue focusing on adapting structures and systems of international cooperation to the challenges of the 21st century.
