What is the theme of this year's Annual Meeting 2011 in Davos?
This year’s Annual Meeting is focusing on the theme
“Shared Norms for a New Reality” and you have to break it apart.
First understand that there is a new reality.
There's a new economic reality where
parts of the world are growing much faster and then in the past in the sense
that we have emerging markets driving the global recovery and of course in parts of
the world that historically have been the driver of growth that are not struggling
in a period of austerity, that's mostly the west, so that's part of the new reality.
There's also new political reality.
We live in the age of WikiLeaks but also we live in the age of really complex
global challenges where we need really new partnerships to deal with these
global issues, particularly global risks. That's new reality and by extension you
need to have shared norms to deal with them and by norms we're talking about
behavior, really how do countries - how are countries going to behave in response
to this new reality? A classic example is this current
situation around the macroeconomic imbalance.
Will the shared norm be about protectionism and competitive devaluation?
I should hope not.
Or will it be the shared norm that will emerge will be about greater
macroeconomic coordination particularly at the G20 level.
So we really are going to look at the new reality but more importantly focusing
on really what are the behaviors, the shared behaviors, the shared norms that
are really going to address the new reality.
What critical issues will be addressed in Davos?
In terms of the critical issues for the Annual Meeting, I think first
and foremost will be the global economy, in particular, the notion of avoiding
a jobless recovery. This is - we're in a fragile period in
global recovery, one of the big challenges here is that we see the
employment levels rise again. We're still not there and I think it's
something that's a challenge for both the industrialized and emerging markets.
In fact, this notion of a jobless recovery I think will be first
and foremost how do you avoid a jobless recovery.
Second is that the recovery, as I mentioned, is quite fragile so there are
other shocks to the system and we need to think about them, in fact,
mitigate against them. We're as concerned about food,
energy, security. We have the threat of possible
geo-political incidents around the world that could actually destabilize the
system but more importantly also force us to loose confidence in the future world
prospects. We have emerging new threats,
for example, cyber security. We've seen that in manyfold instances
around the world this past year. So we have to look at these global risks
I think more holistically and systematically so that will be a part of
the agenda and certainly a critical part. But a third element that I think
is really key is actually give support to the institutions that are in fact tasked
with ensuring a robust global recovery and that are also very critical in
dealing with these global risks and that's, for example, the G20.
It's a new informal gathering of these top economies but it's an important one
and that thinks that Davos will be. How can the rest of the stakeholders,
the global stakeholders in society, help support this G20 agenda given the
importance of that, avoiding a jobless recovery, dealing with these global
risks, and the key role that the G20 will play in both, so these will really be on
top of the agenda in Davos.
Who will be attending this year's meeting?
In terms of the Annual Meeting 2011, we're going to have once again great
participation. In fact we anticipate the highest
participation in terms of government leaders, heads of state, heads of
government from around the world. Particular focus will be on leaders from
both the G8 and the G20. We anticipate half the leadership from
both groups to be represented at the highest level and certainly we'll have
over 200 ministers not only from the G20 but the rest of the critical economies
around the world as part of the discussion among the over 2000
participants. Another significant group that will be in
Davos of course is the community of experts in academics who really play
a vital role particularly given that most global issues are in fact complex, are in
fact interdisciplinary, so the fact that we can bring together business leaders
with the government leaders as well as these experts from different domains,
it really allows us to have a real rich discussion and examination of these
critical issues and so we really do look forward to a record participation
and engagement from all the various stakeholder groups from around the world
and it will be I think a fantastic 41st Annual Meeting.