Davos 2020: Five Things To Watch For At The World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting
If it were a human being ‘Davos’ would be in the throes of a recovery from peak misery.
WATCH | What to expect from WEF 2020
If it were a human being, ‘Davos’ would be in the throes of a recovery from peak misery. The World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting, more commonly referred to by the name of the Swiss town it is hosted by, turns 50 this year. A new economic study affirms that middle age is miserable and pinpoints 47.2 years old as the moment of peak unhappiness in the developed world.
It’s been an interesting come back for the ‘billionaire bubble’ as one guest referred to it in the years after the global financial crisis. Or as Jamie Dimon recounted a description that said it best — “It is where billionaires tell millionaires what the middle class feels.”
That’s still mild.
“It is family reunion for the people who, in my view, broke the modern world,” said author Anand Giridharadas to CNN’s Christian Amanpour last year.
A HuffPost article headline dripped with sarcasm — Elites Gather In Davos To Rich-splain Poverty As The World Spirals.
The derision dates back to even before the financial crisis and the more recent alarm that globalisation and economic success, for a few, has come at the cost of income equality, ecology, workers rights... borne by many.
In a 2004 paper political scientist Samuel Huntington wrote about the ‘Davos Man’.
“The rewards of an increasingly integrated global economy have brought forth a new global elite. Labeled ‘Davos Men’, ‘gold-collar workers’ or . . . ‘cosmocrats’, this emerging class is empowered by new notions of global connectedness. It includes academics, international civil servants and executives in global companies, as well as successful high-technology entrepreneurs.”
Huntington added that “these transnationalists have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite's global operations”.
Well, the cosmocrats are on the backfoot as in country after country anti-elite, right-wing populism has pushed back.
This year the marquee speaker in Davos is U.S. President Donald Trump. It is his second outing. And while Trump is hardly the WEF’s penitence, he was after all a billionaire himself, there’s no doubt that Davos is now trying to make amends.
Which should soothe this reader of the Economist who in 2011 said the “Davos Man needs his b@#$s chopping off”.
1. ‘Society’ Scores Highest
Davos cares. About LGBTI rights. About how to cultivate resilience. About mental health. There are 89 sessions encompassing these and other society themes.
Of course income inequality, climate change, technology made it to the agenda years ago. And they’ve pushed economy to the lowest on the list.
Davos Sessions
- Society: 89
- Industry: 82
- Technology: 65
- Geopolitics: 50
- Ecology: 51
- Economy: 27
2. Teenage Attendees
Last year climate activist Greta Thunberg (then 16 years old) train-ed it to Davos, camped out in the bitter cold and told some rather posh people to panic.
“I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And act as if your house is on fire. Because it is.”
This year Davos will host nine more teenagers, including a 13-year anti-gun activist and a 15-year old ‘water warrior’.
Naomi Wadler, 13 (USA)
#MarchForOurLives
Autumn Peltier, 15 (Canada)
#WaterWarrior
Cruz Erdmann, 14 (New Zealand)
#WildlifePhotographer
Ayakha Melithafa, 17 (South Africa)
#ChildrenVsClimateCrisis
Salvador Gómez-Colón, 17 (Puerto Rico )
#DisasterRelief
Greta Thunberg, 17 (Sweden)
#ClimateCrisis
Fionn Ferreira, 18 (Ireland)
#Microplastics
Mohamad Al Jounde, 18 (Syria)
#Refugees
Natasha Mwansa, 18 (Zambia)
#EndChildMarriage
Melati Wijsen, 19 (Indonesia)
#PlasticPollution
3. What About The Billionaires?
Well, there’s $500 billion worth of them headed to the ski town. Bloomberg estimates at least 119 billionaires will attend the annual meeting.
19 from India. Adani, Ambani, Bajaj, Mittal, Kalyani, Kotak, Piramal, Munjal...
4. POTUS And Others...
Speaking of billionaires — U.S. President Donald Trump will be there. Maybe not at his most popular moment. His Senate impeachment trial begins this week. But he’ll have family to comfort him. Daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner will be joining him along with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.
The WEF says 53 heads of state and government will be attending. Among them are Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the world’s youngest Prime Minister 34-year old Sanna Marin of Finland.
5. A New Manifesto
What’s in it for business in Davos?
A new purpose.
Some 40 years after its first manifesto the WEF has updated it. To focus on stakeholder capitalism.
What does that mean? In short — responsible business.
- fair taxation
- zero tolerance for corruption
- respect for human rights
A company is more than an economic unit generating wealth. It fulfills human and societal aspirations as part of the broader social system. Performance must be measured not only on the return to shareholders, but also on how it achieves its environmental, social and good governance objectives. Executive remuneration should reflect stakeholder responsibility.Davos Manifesto 2020: The Universal Purpose of a Company in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Because the billionaires need reminding that the teenagers are owed a future.