These past three days the World Economic Forum has been meeting in Davos, Switzerland. At its annual meeting, it brings together governments, international organisations, business, civil society, media, foremost experts and the young generation from all over the world in more than 400 working sessions. It engages over 100 governments and 1,000 companies at the highest leadership levels.
This year conspicuous by their absence were UK Prime Minister Theresa May (probably too busy with Brexit), French President Emmanuel Macron (too busy handling the crisis of the gilets jaunes), and US President Donald Trump (too busy with the government shutdown).
I apologise for being a bit cynical. I do appreciate that I would not like to be a UK citizen who does not favour Brexit, or someone in France who has seen one’s income shrink thanks to increased taxation, or a civil servant in the US who has received no salary for nearly a month. This is in fact part of the backdrop against which the World Economic Forum is meeting.
To complete that backdrop, we need to add the real and severe threats of climate change; the increased income inequality with the rich becoming significantly richer and the poor not making any headway to get out of their situation; the increase in migration flows; the trade war between the US and China (even if this is showing signs of abating); the increase in popularity of the so-called populist parties; armed conflicts in several parts of the world; the impact of an increase in interest rates on discretionary expenditure in the leading economies; and a very possible economic slowdown in 2019.
It is clear that the world is more fractured than it has been for the past 30 years
This backdrop does not represent much reason for optimism. To make things worse, we could be seeking to apply old formulae to the new problems, because we may find the scenario familiar. We would not be recognising that in the meantime so many factors have changed, that we may not see the need for a novel approach.
The theme of this year’s Davos meeting was ‘Globalisation 4.0: Shaping a Global Architecture in the Age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution’. It is quite a mouthful for a title, which brings together three different concepts – globalisation, a global architecture implying global governance, and the fourth industrial revolution. Each requires an in-depth assessment which cannot be done in one sentence. So I will come back on each of these themes in the coming weeks.
However, if I go back to the backdrop against which this year’s Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum is taking place, there seems to be a recognition that the noble objective of the 2018 has not been and is not being achieved. Last year the theme was ‘Creating a shared future in a fractured world’.
A year later, it is clear that the world is more fractured than it has been for the past 30 years – coincidentally the end of the cold war – but there has not been so much progress on the idea of sharing.
It is interesting to note that the concept of sharing has featured in the themes of the Davos meeting regularly. Between 2013 and 2018, it featured five times through words, such as ‘trust’, ‘partnering’, ‘shared’ and ‘collaborative’.
On nine occasions, the concept of change featured with the words ‘creative’, ‘innovation’, ‘shifting’, ‘post-crisis’, ‘rebuild’, ‘new’, ‘transformation’, ‘reshaping’ and ‘future’.
The theme for 2019 implies that some of the issues and challenges identified and discussed at previous meetings have not been adequately addressed by governments and business leaders and seem to have now caught up with them. The various reports that have been prepared to coincide with this year’s meeting, such as that by Oxfam on income inequalities is a case in point. Sir David Attenborough’s comment, “The Garden of Eden is no more”, in relation to the environment is another example of how key issues have not been addressed effectively.
The Davos meeting is not one among heads of government like the G20 summit is. It cannot take decisions but it does create a healthy debate and it does it so effectively. I believe the topics discussed at the 2019 Davos World Economic Forum meeting should serve governments a stern warning that unless they act in the name of the common good and not in their narrow electoral interests, their actions could impact negatively the future generations in a very significant way.