Doubts about a real interest in finding a solution
Achim Truger is a member of the Economic Expert Council and Professor of State Activities and State Finances at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
I am generally rather skeptical when it comes to such elite meetings. I would rather see democratically elected governments working together to make the world a better place than the self-proclaimed global business elite. After all, their interests do not have to be identical to those of large parts of the world population.
However, one has to admit that really critical and independent minds have always been invited to the conferences and that the issues addressed often went to the heart of the matter, such as climate change or increasing economic inequality. One could already get the impression that the global business elite is sometimes more open-minded than, for example, the economic policy discourse in Germany.
Nevertheless, there are considerable doubts that the economic elite, as the beneficiaries of global inequality and the main cause of climate change, is interested in a real solution to the problems.
Complex uncertainty in the permanent crisis
Cathryn Cluever Ashbrook is a political scientist and senior advisor to the Bertelsmann Foundation. Previously, she was director of the German Society for Foreign Relations (DGAP).
“Complex uncertainty” was stated by the United Nations Development Index last year: The duration and simultaneity of the crises – climate change, pandemic, inflation – would have set human development back by five years last year. The UN researchers hadn’t even factored in the manifold effects of the Ukraine war.
In addition, there is a deep division between democracies and autocracies and increasingly closed information bubbles. The main topic in Davos is therefore “Cooperation in a fragmented world”. This will not work without better coordination between business and government, and so the encounters at the World Economic Forum are not without value.
In the luxury resort of Davos, the task now is to organize state control, innovation financing and technological restructuring in such a way that complex uncertainty decreases. Instead of a purgatory of vanities, raw honesty is needed. This is what Davos 2023 will have to be measured against.
There are no impulses for climate protection
Brick Medak is an expert on climate and energy policy and head of the think tank E3G in Germany.
The World Economic Forum has always seen itself as an innovation laboratory for the global business elite. The topic of climate protection has played a major role there in recent years, although the announcements made by global corporations have often remained too vague. This year, the topic of climate protection has also been sidelined in Davos by other global problems such as the war in Ukraine, the energy price crisis and the corona pandemic.
If the forum wanted to live up to its claim as a global problem solver, it would have to focus much more on the question of what role climate protection can play in overcoming the polycrisis. For example, there should be clear declarations from large corporations on the way to climate neutrality, backed by concrete measures.
If this does not happen to a sufficient extent, it is a missed opportunity. In a year that is very important for international climate protection, there are no clear impulses from the forum.
