Dear Readers,
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is committed to improving the state of the world by assembling together and engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society in an effort to shape global, regional, and industry agendas. It is best known for its annual winter meeting in the mountain resort of Davos in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland but contrary to common perception, far from being a get-together of global leaders with a club of rich people to exchange notes in the daytime and have a ball at night, the annual meeting provides a unique platform for leaders of governments, civil society, industry and the media as well as a wide spectrum of decision-makers to trade ideas on how to solve common pressing problems. The 2014 annual meeting held between 22-25 January convened under the theme ‘The Reshaping of the World: Consequences for Society, Politics and Business’ when more than 2,500 of the world’s elite and other guests descended on Davos. This conference brought together 196 academics, 288 government officials, 48 representatives from international organizations, and 2101 people from the private sector. The special significance of this meeting is amply illustrated in that it featured close to 250 sessions with deliberations involving top policymakers and business leaders from hundreds of global companies, including giants such as PepsiCo, Google, Yahoo, Total, Bank of America, Microsoft, etc. Among the countries the US came on top with 670 participants, followed by UK with 282 persons, while host country Switzerland was represented by 202 persons. India and Germany were tied at fourth place with a total of 124 participants each scheduled to attend the meeting. Among others China had 88 participants while others scheduled at the meeting included Japan’s 69, Russia’s 76, South Africa’s 59, UAE’s 46, Italy’s and Brazil’s 36, Nigeria and Australia’s 22, and Indonesia’s 21. Pakistan had just 9 people scheduled to attend. For the benefit of readers I am reproducing my article “The Davos Challenge”.
This is the DAVOS week, the Annual Summit of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The 20th such event as a Founding Member, my first visit to Davos was in Jan 1993 as part of the delegation accompanying the then PM, Mian Nawaz Sharif. WEF was then not so strict about allowing non-members permission to take part in WEF events.
The Pakistani PM was to grace the PAKISTAN LUNCH, now counted among the significant traditional events in the Davos calendar, this year. Unfortunately the Davos trip was cancelled at the last minute due to the vicious terrorist attack at Bannu. The disappointment notwithstanding, the prime intention being to project Pakistan, the traditional PAKISTAN LUNCH at Davos will take place as scheduled. Almost 50 Pakistanis will join the record 200 WEF members in the Steigenberger Belvedere, this year. A panel of eminent experts, including Dr Ishrat Husain, will debate “PAKISTAN Vision 2025”.
Little did I know in 1993 that in a few months momentous changes would start taking place in Pakistan, most crises man-made. While it definitely should not, terrorists are holding governance hostage, the PM’s cancellation of the Davos trip has thrown this up in stark relief. Rip Van Winkle woke up 20 years later to find the world to be a better place, Pakistan is worse off than we were in 1993. The tragedy is that the country was then set to break the shackles of nationalization and emerge as a potent economic force. The most important thing for us today is not to let the future of our children become hostage to the vicious mindset of the terrorists.
Only a handful of Pakistani businessmen visit Davos regularly, in contrast over 125 Indian businessmen come as WEF members. In keeping with its exclusive nature WEF only caters to the top companies of the world, the fees for being a Corporate Member is high. Husain Dawood, Atif Bukhari, Sultan Allana, Nauman Dar, Arif Naqvi, etc. Mian Mansha having dropped out for some inexplicable reason, cannot shoulder the burden of projecting Pakistan by themselves. Emulating their Indian counterparts our top Pakistani community must use this unique opportunity in greater numbers. What one gets in networking in a week at Davos may not be possible in several years. The Govt may like to give tax rebates amounting to 50% of the WEF Membership, Annual Summit and Regional Summit Fees as an incentive.
The program pillars for this year’s Annual Summit are (1) achieving inclusive growth (2) embracing disruptive innovative (3) meeting society’s new expectations and most importantly (4) sustaining a world of 9 billion. The WEF Global Risks 2014 Report highlights these risks and needs to understand how these are interconnected. The gap between the incomes of the richest and poorest needs to be tackled and the disparities in income and wealth have to be addressed, that is the risk most likely to cause global damage in the coming decade. Compiled by contributions from 700 global experts the Report details ten risks that are “global risks of highest concern” for 2014 viz (1) fiscal crises in key economies (2) structurally high unemployment / underemployment (3) water crises (4) severe income disparity (5) failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation (6) greater incidence of extreme weather events (7) global governance failure (8) food crises (9) failure of a major financial mechanism/institution and (10) profound political and social instability.
Before recession, the buzzword was ‘globalisation’, which is now believed to be an unstable system prone to be disrupted by political tensions, therefore leading to financial turmoil. Nations must not adopt a do-it-alone policy and coordinated policy responses were deemed essential. Environmental risks such as water crises, extreme weather events, natural catastrophes, man-made environmental catastrophes and climate change present another cluster in the interconnections map. Among interlinked risks climate change is of pivotal importance. This displays by far the strongest linkages and is both a key economic risk in itself and a multiplier of other risks, such as extreme weather events, water and food crises.
There is a dire warning of a “lost” generation of young people coming of age in the 2010s lacking both jobs and, in some cases, adequate skills for work, thereby fuelling pent-up frustration. Unemployed youngsters also remain vulnerable to being sucked into criminal or extremist movements. The social upheaval could have catastrophic results as happened in some parts of the world recently. Technology is a significant aspect of the employment landscape for young people, that is where the private sector can guide curriculum and training programme design by communicating about projected skills needs. Establishing partnerships with the educational sector businesses can improve apprenticeship opportunities. Educational and civil society organizations can also prioritize entrepreneurship education, soft skills and earlier delivery of sector-relevant and professional skills in schools, all of which promote employability.
The increasing reliance on the internet to carry out essential tasks and the massive expansion of devices connected to it increases the risk of systematic failure even greater. Recent revelations on government surveillance have dampened the international community’s willingness to work together to build governance models to address this weakness. The effect could be a “balkani-zation” of the internet, or ‘cybergeddon’ where hackers enjoy overwhelming superiority and massive disruption becomes an everyday occurrence.
While each risk holds potential for failure globally, their interconnected nature makes their negative implications force-multiplies their catastrophic potential. To address and adapt to the ever-changing global “risks”, stakeholders must unite and take collaborative multi-stakeholder action. Businesses, governments and civil society can improve how they approach risk by taking steps such as opening lines of communication with each other to build trust, systematically learning from others’ experiences and finding ways to encourage long-term thinking.
President Hassan Rouhani of Iran is here in Davos, and though they will not meet, so is Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. The Presidents of half a dozen Latin American countries are joined by the Brazilian President, US Secretary of State John Kerry is arriving this afternoon to represent the US. Davos attracts attention to a wide range of disparate subjects, debated and discussed by a disparate and eminent experts during the week. The Pakistani PM will miss a unique opportunity to clarify the world’s misconceptions about Pakistan. From Geo-politics and Economics, Actors Matt Damon and Goldie Haven are chairing Session on Arts and Culture. Other Sessions concentrate on Science, Medicine, Environment, etc. For me personally discussions on “Partnering Against Corruption Initiative” (PACI) organized by Elaine Dezenski was most important. We cannot fight terrorism without eliminating its nexus with corruption and organized crime.
A number of geo-political initiatives were launched during the WEF Summit in the 1990s, this included the Israeli-Palestine dialogue between Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres. During the last decade participation from the private sector has increased in contrast to the public sector, the number of participant Heads of State and Govt dropping from an average of over 60 to little more than a dozen, signalling a significant shift of emphasis of the WEF to its original economic mandate.
Networking to create positive perceptions and taking advantage of it is, both as a country and commercially, what the “Davos Challenge” is all about.
M. Ikram Sehgal
