Confluence of Emperors : Ramesh Shrestha

The rich and the powerful piss on us and the media tells us it is raining – Anonymous

Davos must have settled back to its quiet resort ambiance with the end of 2024 World Economic Forum (WEF), attended by more than 3,000 delegates, which includes 350+ government officials, 80 national security agencies, executives of high-tech industries and CEOs of major industries from all over the world. Other participants include members of civil society, up-coming leaders, foremost experts in a range of areas, social entrepreneurs and members of the media. As an independent organisation with more than one thousand multinational companies as members, whatever is discussed in this forum have considerable influence on international and national policies everywhere. The Forum engages on political, economy, business, climate and even poverty and cultural issues that could reshape the society together with global and regional agenda. The WEF forum is also an opportunity for academics, humanitarian workers and social activists to plead with the super-rich entrepreneurs to think of humanity beyond profit.

The outcomes of discussions are not binding nevertheless the participating members have considerable influence globally. In 2020, the WEF updated its ‘Davos Manifesto’, which outlined an ethics and code of conduct for leaders, providing guidance on handling corruption and human rights beyond its regular debate on the global economy. It is also a forum to show sympathy to the poor and discuss how to repair the broken economy globally. What has been the impact of Davos proceedings since it started fifty years ago?

The 2024 WEF meeting focused on ‘rebuilding trust in an environment of rapid transformation, trust in our future, trust within societies and between nations’. It appears that the WEF leaders are aware of the growing gap between people’s aspirations and the system of governance imposed on people under the influence of ‘new world order’ promoted by capitalism. The agenda also includes ‘collaborations in building resilience for the next generation, reimagining globalization, rewiring for AI, navigating the green transition, and addressing the empowerment gap and economic inclusion.’ People are living in a time of multiple crises, such as regional political violence, negative impacts of economic policies, fallouts from the climate crisis and rapid advancement of artificial intelligence. The agenda also says ‘Davos 2024 will explore themes including reforming multilateral approaches, leveraging AI for the benefit of all members of society, upholding the momentum from COP28, and maintaining an open trade system’. WEF members must have been extremely efficient to have covered all these issues in one week.

A senior McKinsey partner says ‘Davos is all about making those unusual connections, where you get to talk to people who are doing very different things than you and being able to connect those dots and start to think about things in different ways. For me, it’s never about a session; it’s often about those coincidental meetings that happen in the margins of the sessions.’ Yet, another McKinsey senior partner aptly characterized WEF meeting as ‘it’s business speed is like dating on steroids; connecting with clients takes center stage at the conference.’ So, forget about the grandiose agenda items.

Most of the crises humanity is facing are actually caused by the industries under the watch of the people who are the members of WEF and many others participating in the WEF forum. The geopolitical unrest, dumping of untreated industrial wastes into rivers which eventually finds its way to oceans, excessive emission of greenhouse gases, uncontrolled use and misuse of cyber technology are some of the examples. The shipping of thousands of tons of non-recyclable garbage including toxic wastes to low- and mid-income countries for recycling by the US, Canada and EU countries against the Basel convention of 1989 on the ‘Control of transboundary movements of hazardous waste and their disposal’ is another practical example. This garbage eventually ends up in landfills or incinerated producing poisonous fumes harming the local communities. Between 2017 and 2019 Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia have sent back thousands of tons of garbage falsely labelled as recyclable plastic, blankets and mattresses. The garbage received by Sri Lanka from the UK even include biowaste from hospitals and mortuaries. China has banned import of all recycling materials effective 2018.

It is also noteworthy that all countries except the US have even signed the 1989 Basel convention. But no one takes any responsibility and the forum talks of ‘code of conduct for leaders, providing guidance on handling corruption and human rights’!

In reality WEF is the gathering of sociopaths who have no regard for human lives, let alone the economy of the disenfranchised people. In 2022 Davos airport welcomed 1040 private jets welcoming the executives to talk about climate change among many other issues. In 2024 too, there must have been a similar number of sleek private jets bringing the executives to tell the world what to do. A transport campaigner for Greenpeace says ‘the rich and powerful are swarming to Davos to discuss climate and inequality behind closed doors, using the most unequal and polluting form of transport, the private jets’. These jets in and out of the WEF forum in one-week emitted CO2 equivalent to 350,000 cars. Such an amount of CO2 emission could have been reduced or even prevented had they used regular commercial airlines with a 3- hour train journey from Zurich (runs every hour).

Looking ahead

Davos is a gathering of status-seeking plutocrats who control the global economy without any concerns for the average citizens and the environment, yet, try to project their image as being good doers. Davos also publishes an annual risk report. Incidentally most of the risks such as industrial waste, AI related risks, environmental degradation, mis-information and dis-information, etc. are the outcomes of their own works. But the show must go one.

The WEF itself estimates that some 44% of the workforce may be disrupted by the powerful AI driven technology in manufacturing and in the marketplace in coming years. AI could lead to unintended consequences but very little initiative is in place to control what is and is not permissible in AI innovations with the exception of human cloning. Closely related to artificial intelligence is the havoc created by social media with unlimited fake audio, video and text messages, spreading like a wildfire. It is becoming a real threat for democratic governance. It is especially dangerous when the government itself is complicit in such disinformation and misinformation even if the message is retracted or corrected at a later stage as the damage would have already been done.

Capitalism is at the heart of the modern economy – main focus of WEF, and social media which has taken the center stage of freedom of speech jointly continues to assault democracy. The discussions and outcome of WEF is non-binding nevertheless what happens in WEF has influence in other global forums in shaping global policies across the board. WEF with its more than ten thousand members in 154 countries could do more before it is too late, but will it?

Looking at the overall geopolitical landscape where unelected profit seeking individuals are in the driving seat of the global institutions influencing political, industrial and business agenda, a hope for an egalitarian economy is highly unlikely without a global economic and political upheaval.

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