I'm Tanya Beckett joining you live from the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Fiscal challenges, can governments afford to pay back
the debt they now have and is there a solution in hand...
It's been four decades since you first invited
European business leaders up this mountain
and you gave them a pretty stark message:
Modernize and adapt or fall behind and fail.
We are in some way in a post crisis world.
We do not know yet whether we will be really capable
to master all the multiple challenges we are facing now.
A very cordial welcome to the 44th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum.
Some problems are so complicated in the world
they need to be address by a new form of organization
like we have here in Davos.
Nowhere in the world is there another forum which brings together
governments, NGOs, corporate leaders, activists, artists, musicians,
to all come together and talk about the biggest issues facing the world.
Where else in the world can I talk to Jeffrey Sass, President Clinton,
the head of the World Bank, all in the same room?
What was exciting in addition of having most of the G8 leaders here,
we of course had President Medvedev come in after a tragic bombing
because he much wanted to show that the new way to deal with that
is actually to come together rather than to let terrorist issues draw us apart.
It is actually a common platform of putting priorities, shaping agendas,
and also defining opportunities by talking about them in a commonwealth place.
You align a little bit of thinking of, well, a lot of important decision makers and leaders.
We started with Medvedev and then we ended up with the new Tunisian government
which actually reflected real time the extraordinary dynamics
taking place in political systems particularly in the Middle East.
Because democracy here that is built is really horizontal.
The international communities looking at us, so let's maximize our chance of delivery.
In the end we are talking about people,
by having a greater interaction between companies,
so let's say one coming from India, another from Korea,
from Brazil, from Mexico, from Russia,
I think over time that certainly contributes to improvement of the understanding
between people in general, eventually between countries.
If you look to where inventions are taking place,
where economic growth is coming from, it's not from within the sector,
it's the combination between areas of expertise that are coming together.
So the social agenda, the economic agenda, the political agenda coming together,
delivers much more powerful things
than if each and everyone stays in their own silo.
People really eager to share their view, their value
with all the other participant, I think that is great.
And interaction, I think, that is just like not only social or talking to the people,
but I felt a sincereness, an involvement. That is great.
For those positions, do more than a man can do.
It's possible.
One of the things we talked about in this room was the G20.
And the fact that since the crisis,
there has been no mention of women in the G20 deliberation,
yet everybody is searching for global solutions to our economic ills, if you will.
It's a tragedy that our world leaders aren't focused enough
and don't understand, obviously,
the economic business case for the empowerment of women.
So here's the question.
How do we address the need for fuels compatibility
in the context of a need of biomass for food
as well as water to support that model?
And countries that may be doing well on the first two
but ignore human rights and the rule of law, cannot prosper.
You actually are confronted with a lot of different questions,
questions that you probably would have never asked before in that way,
and that is the only path to new discovery.
Because it doesn't force decision making
and just opens people's minds and eyes to the issues of the world,
the last people to leave these forum meetings and prepare responses
the way they think it should be done for their countries.
Don't just talk about the challenges we face.
Do something about it!
You heard about the water initiative? It started here.
Five years ago there was a CEO, granted,
there were some NGOs, they were talking about it,
and most of the world haven't even know anything about it.
Today, it's real, with governments, with companies,
and most of the world understands we're gonna run out of water
before we run out of oil and gas.
If that's not impact, I don't know what is.
We have catalyzed partnerships
with two country level governments, Vietnam and Tanzania,
to help develop new models of public-private partnership,
increase investment in agriculture.
In this blueprint,
we look for the participation of light skilled farmers
in partnership with the public sector
and as the government and the development partners of Tanzania.
It's impossible to spend several days in Davos
without thinking and imagining how the world is gonna change
over the course of the next year or five years, ten years.
I think the biggest impact which is, I think, one of the fondest wishes of the founders
and the people that continue to direct the World Economic Forum
is for a greater level of understanding and breaking down the barriers
between countries, companies, cultures.
I think it's impossible for that not to happen in this setting.
So the atmosphere was a mixture of optimism, entrepreneurial triumph, new inspiration,
but on the other hand, I think people were well aware
that the global agenda is full of challenges
and that we have to work very close together on the global level
with shared values to deal with this new reality.