Davos: Big Short or Indispensable Summit?

No other international gathering attracts such mythology.  The place where the world’s economic elite co-opts its political leadership.  Or the best place in the world to discuss and solve global problems.  The arguments for and against Davos rage every year.  But it’s as popular as ever.

BIG SHORT

Just before this year’s Davos gathering, Oxfam came out with a report that said 62 individuals now control more wealth than the bottom half of humanity, 3.5 billion people.  The implication was clear.  If not actually the place where those 62 people turned their unprecedented wealth into political access, Davos and what it represents had a responsibility for this state of affairs.  And it is not just NGOs who are sceptical.  Last week the Director General of the British Chamber of Commerce said that while big summits like Davos had their place, they didn’t change the growth prospects for businesses back home.

And then there’s the venue.  Davos is insanely beautiful, a chocolate box of a place tucked away in a little valley, surrounded by heavily forested snowy peaks and cobalt skies.  A langlauf track runs through the village.  As helicopters whisk the rich and powerful in and out, delegates schuss out of the pines through fresh powder.  Like the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) headquarters buried in the mountainside overlooking Geneva, Davos feels like a Bond film set.

So those seeking someone to blame for the excesses of financial liberalisation, the hollowing out of democratic accountability, and the way the lion’s share of the proceeds from economic growth are going to fewer and fewer people in the West, don’t have far to look.

INDISPENSABLE SUMMIT

And yet.  The globalisation that Davos championed may have exposed Western workforces to global competition while Western capital reaped global dividends, but it has also helped halve extreme poverty since 1990.  The global vaccine alliance GAVI was launched at Davos and is now so well regarded that DFID recently pledged £1 billion to its replenishment.  This year the British PM won powerful support for keeping the UK in the European Union (EU).

Every year initiatives are launched at Davos that go on to have global significance.  This year the O’Neill Review and the Wellcome Trust were able to use Davos to get support from the leading pharmaceutical companies to fight antimicrobial resistance.  If we do secure a partnership for developing new antibiotics, Professor Schwab will be in a position to say it was born in Davos.  And this was only one initiative among many.

Each Davos is never as good as the last, according to the habitués.  But the number of global political and economic leaders who attend keeps going up.  Davos acts as a sort of debutantes’ ball for world leaders and this year the darlings were the President of Argentina and the youthful Prime Minister of Canada.  Secretary Kerry was able to talk Syria with Foreign Minister Lavrov in the margins.  In our case, British ministers were able to do business with counterparts from the EU, North America and the emerging economies; to promote UK exports, investment and jobs with the world’s leading multinationals; and to plug themselves into a free-flowing global policy debate.  The oil price, migration, and the future of the EU dominated this year, along with the discussions on the impact of new technologies, what Professor Schwab calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

So Davos isn’t going away. The question is how best to use it to advance the interests of the global constituencies that its participants represent.