From the magic mountain: the World Economic Forum, Simon Zadek

Thu, 29 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Wednesday 21 January, morning

The countdown

As I edge towards the world’s most elite event, the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, I am in low spirits.

It is not the 6am start, the insipid airport coffee, nor even the bright orange, cramped aircraft seats on the Easyjet flight from London’s Gatwick to Zurich. Truth be told, the cause of my depression is the memory of my time at Davos last year listening to the innermost thoughts of the world’s most powerful business people and politicians.

No insult is intended to my conference colleagues. Some of the characters at Davos are amazing; they have achieved incredible things on the back of innovation, energy and vision. The rest? Well, they are in the main average, god-fearing family types who got where they are by being in the right place with the right face – or else by being media- and market-friendly. Almost none of them have horns.

And me: how do I fit into this picture? Well, I am one of the Shakespearean “fools”, invited to amuse, surprise and, within moderation, attack, the gathered throng: an insider-outsider with attitude – yet reasonable manners.

So why the depressive bit about last year? Well, the 2003 event was held just before the invasion of Iraq. This coincidence of timing had its highlights; one of them came unexpectedly at the start of a plenary address by the all-too-sincere Colin Powell, when the tradition of offering a standing applause to Great Dignitaries even before they say anything was trashed by no less than 500 non-US participants (a quarter of the total attendees) who made an extraordinary stand against the war by remaining seated and silent whilst the US delegates rose to welcome their own.

But as vivid is the memory of the United States-sponsored swat team – mandated to convince the great and good of the virtues of Bush’s Middle East venture – which swept the location. This advance force proved far more effective than their rival would-be invaders – the civil activists mobilising outside the gate, who succeeded only in adding a perverse form of credibility to the whole event through the cachet-effect of their spectacle.

Wandering off-campus, beyond the ring of steel and firepower surrounding Davos, I joined the alternative People’s Summit in time to hear some of its speakers, as well as debate between feisty social activists and organisations. I confess that it felt much like a throwback to the very early days of The Other Economic Summit (TOES), the antecedent of many of today’s alternative events. Good spirits, centred ethics, and vibrant energy, combined with testimonies from grassroots activists and the more orderly policy-wonkers.

The fact of the World Social Forum (WSF) had somewhat taken the edge from this dissident event, but in other ways made its local aspects all the more enjoyable. Here, I visited WEF’s own version of “village debates”, where dignitaries from the main event spoke in front of the residents of Davos and its environs, along with an assortment of lost souls like me taking a break from the often stifling intensity of the main game. Sadly, this experiment still needed some adjustment, as the opportunity to “educate the people” reduced most of the speakers to something akin to didactic, Victorian-era poorhouse teachers.

On the eve of Davos 2004, all this remains with me. But in the end, my real downer from last year was to do with substance. Attending several sessions on terrorism and security, it quickly became clear that the days of the “liberal mind” were seen as being numbered. “We are here to help You, since You cannot cope with the emerging situation” was the line of the day. Fifty years of liberal democracy had neutralised the citizenry’s ability to think, it seemed.

Tomorrow we get going. More then.

Thursday 22 January, morning

Orgiastic inspiration

Night falls, and hundreds of weary figures dressed in “business casual” can be seen scattered along the snow-decked Davos streets, dragging themselves back to their hotel beds.

After only a day, participants in the World Economic Forum are already showing signs of that new millennium disease: stakeholder over-dialogue syndrome (SOS). It takes serious stamina to cope with the sheer volume of ideas, dilemmas and solutions being pumped through the e-wired congress building housing the rump of the conference.

Davos is a giant sandwich. The bulky bread is the hundreds of sessions; the real meat inside is the thousands of one-on-one meetings between the leading players. On the first day, I was a carnivore.

I ate my fill in meetings with Maritta Koch-Weser, until recently head of Earth3000, who walked me through progress made on the revitalised social investment initiative, GEXSI; Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Civicus, who briefed me on his participation in Kofi Annan’s Eminent Persons Panel on the UN’s relations with civil society, for which I am preparing a paper on ‘partnerships and the UN’; Adele Simmons, ex-president of the MacArthur Foundation and now chair of the US-based Fair Labor Association, who brought me up to date on the FLA’s recent successes and ambitions; Augusto Lopez, the director of WEF’s Global Competitiveness programme, talked through possible links with AccountAbility’s recently published Responsible Competitiveness Index that maps the relationship between national competitiveness and corporate responsibility; and Ed Mayo, who runs the National Consumer Council, explained his work in the UK looking at public policy responses to the pensions crisis.

You get the idea. Davos is pulsating with inspirational people and ideas. The whole thing is an orgy of initiative.

Meanwhile the set-piece WEF machinery produced piles of bread. Bill Clinton, a Davos regular, gave the equivalent of a “state of the nation” address. Looking decidedly tired, he entreated the gathered dignitaries to move beyond good initiatives and upgrade their endeavours. He extolled Ernesto Zedillo for ridding Mexico of its one-party state, and celebrated Hernando de Soto as the ‘greatest living economist’ for his work on bringing poor people’s assets into the global market to enable them to raise credit.

Clinton went on to argue that we should appreciate the important critique of the anti-globalisers, whilst recognising that their solution was utterly wrong. He described – with apparent surprise – his difficulties in raising money for health initiatives in developing countries. He warned that his success in bringing down the prices of drugs for HIV/Aids still left them too high for poor people – even if the delivery infrastructure was there, which it clearly isn’t.

His curiously repetitive use of the term ‘systematise’ seemed to be a coded suggestion for taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor, perhaps with an intended dose of structured accountability. All sturdy stuff. One only wondered why Clinton didn’t think of all this, or better still do something about it, when he was still ‘leader of the free world’.

Many participants at Davos spend their evenings at pre-planned dinners with speakers and managed dialogue. I had wanted to go to one on the role of memory in social change, but I was committed to being a speaker elsewhere. There were many options: the tribulations of Argentina, new directions for Georgia, putting a price on health, or even “If you’re happy and you know about it”.

My session was entitled, believe it or not, “Do grassroots organisations need to be ring-fenced?” I had hoped that the American Enterprise Institute might show, and spice up the evening with a gentle rant about how NGOs were stripping us all of our basic right to commercialise. But it was not to be. We were a very moderate crowd, with the likes of Denis Caillaux from Care International; Jeroo Billimoria from the Child Helpline International and the Credibility Alliance; Ernst Ligteringen, CEO of the Global Reporting Initiative; and Mark Moody-Stuart, chair of Anglo-American.

We joined in bemoaning the civil accountability gap, and found common cause in wanting to make sure that NGOs did the right thing for the right reasons, before they were made to do it for the wrong ones.

Tottering out of the dinner at 11pm, I too was one of those night stragglers on the chilly Davos roads, reeling towards my bed after a straight 15 hours’ dialogue. A willing victim of SOS, I fell into a dreamy sleep, building energy for the conversations to come.

Friday 23 January, morning

Words and deeds

Breakfast in Davos: coffee, croissants and globalisation. Social entrepreneurs, business and religious leaders; mix together one part Brooklyn labour activist, one part Russian Chief Rabbi, a senior partner from PricewaterhouseCoopers and a sprinkling of blog entrepreneurs – an extraordinary cross-gathering. Then stand back to enjoy the show.

“It’s OK to be rich,” concludes one tableful. “Consider it a gift from heaven. The challenge is to do something good with it.” “We need to get real,” asserts another. “The challenge is not ‘to include’ the poor…they already have real lives, and real economies. They do not want to be included, just not to be poor.” “Check out my blogs,” suggests a third – waving protocol to remind people that this was, after all, 2004, and no self-respecting leader should be without one.

Breakfast over, we turn to the main show. Brief stopover in the congress hall as Arab leaders debate the possibility of an ‘Arab renaissance’. The opening presentation by an American academic highlights the ‘curse of oil’ inflicted on those who have it, one that creates unequal, rentier societies. Thereafter oil fades gently out of the discussion, and actually is not mentioned by a single presenter for the following hour. The problem, a business leader pronounces, is the region’s loss of competitiveness.

Solutions come thick and thin, but all look remarkably similar – get competitive and enter the global markets. But the political challenge does eventually hit the table, as an instant participant voting system signals that political reform is the heart of the issue. After all, challenges one questioner from the floor, what about democratic reform and the gender rights deficit? The suited, all-male panel is unanimous and unambiguous in stating its commitment to political reform.

In its way this is a strong message from a powerful group of people that includes Gamal Mubarak, head of policy in Egypt (and the president’s son), and the Crown Prince of Bahrain. It makes you wonder...I guess it must be complicated to actually do something.

Snuggled in the back of one of the many shuttle buses moving people between events sprawled across a network of hotels throughout Davos, the gentleman next to me reflects on whether the event is useful. “In 1999, after listening to the dot.com leaders here,” he reflects, “I decided to take my company public. Six months later I sold 10% of my stock. It went up 100% in value in the first day and I became a billionaire overnight. Four months later the bubble popped and I lost exactly the same amount.” Did it make any difference to your life, I enquired. “Oh yes,” he laughed, “my wife and I did a load of shopping between the two dates.”

Lunch is a private event about water, or more specifically the conditions under which privatisation of water management can and should proceed across the world. A code has been drafted under the auspices of the World Economic Forum, and a distinguished group has been assembled to comment.

“Seems somewhat market-focused,” I suggest politely, pointing to the code’s focus on a decent financial return to investment, and an explicit rejection of subsidies linked to a statement that “consumers need to understand the real cost of water”.

“What about a rights-based approach,” I proffer as an innocent alternative, pointing out how this can be consistent with reasonable economic returns. The cat is out of the bag.

The debate heats up as Mary Robinson and others weigh in with powerful arguments linking UN conventions and an eco-system perspective just to complete the picture. The Swiss code-design team listen intently, nodding enthusiastically in response to the probing comments, scribbling furiously, but no doubt wondering how on earth to square these demands with the need to bring water companies to the table.

I am invited to an evening reception at Davos’s Kirchner Museum, hosted by the Canadian government. “How is it,” says one of De Beers’ young Oppenheimers, “that NGOs in the know say we are the heartland of all that is right about the diamond industry, whilst others continue to abuse us in the press?”

I cluck politely, suggesting the analogy that if your beloved partner has betrayed you consistently for 25 years, it might take more than a week in the same bed to build back the trust needed for a meaningful relationship. That does not go down well.

Over canapés, we run into some characters who have come from an NGO-WEF advisory group where the hot topic has been WEF’s decision not to invite Oxfam to Davos this year. “A matter of rotation”, claims WEF, pointing to the bulging sessions and the town’s over-patronised, over-priced hotels. “A political decision”, retort some, with Oxfam excluded “because of their hard-arse anti-corporate campaigning tactics”.

“What is to be done?” I inquire casually, squinting out over the top of my wine glass at the small group of assembled NGO-ites. A bit of this and a bit of that, I eventually gather, from the assorted responses – but essentially not much at all. Civil solidarity is a solitary beast. I wonder who will be excluded next year?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, we are told. I suspect that Groucho Marx might have responded that if only the opposite were equally true, that the road to heaven was paved with bad intentions, the world would be a far better place.

Saturday 24 January, afternoon

Davos hots up in the cold

Early morning in the congress hall, and Kofi Annan takes us through our paces on the nature of globalisation and the role of business in development. I am impressed by his ability to blend a deeply disturbing view of the world with a motivating optimism and lightness of soul. Like Bill Clinton, however, one senses a deep weariness in him; it has been a particularly hard couple of years for those at the top who care.

“Does corporate responsibility pay?” is the title of a session that I am opening today. “Maybe, sometimes, but not enough to make a real difference,” I begin – before edging my way cautiously from a celebration of leadership of progressive companies towards the need for public policy interventions to ensure that markets reward business for doing good.

An editor from the Economist wades in, reiterating the publication’s long-standing editorial position that corporate responsibility is either a misnomer for good management; a case of mistaken identity; or rank irresponsibility on the part of managers – essentially vanity-spend of someone else’s money.

Curiously, business leaders at the session were at one in resisting what one alluded to dismissively as “old-style, classical economics”. There was a time when the Economist led the march from the right. Today, it is a weird (although still highly profitable) anachronism, campaigning for a style of business that makes neither money nor sense.

It is Friday, and I have been invited to a Shabbat dinner hosted by the Israeli government. I go with a mix of trepidation and fascination. 100 people celebrate the intended moment of peace, what is meant to be a return to the spirit and family. Around the room are ex-prime ministers and Nobel laureates. One of them rises. Softly and with nuance, he offers words laced with optimism and humour. Then the punchline: “it’s all a matter of demography...60 of them are born for every 40 of us. There is very little time. We must act.” Quietly, I leave the room.

Weekend blues as Dick Cheney takes the stage. It is, I am told, only the second time he has left United States shores since taking up his post in the current administration. There is cause to be optimistic, he asserts, citing his sense of the growing democratisation of the Middle East. Another pointless conversation, as believers applaud the happy words while most of us wonder for the future of our children.

On Saturday afternoon, I sit in on a panel discussing the future of the trade round. Fascinating stuff, as a series of global business leaders call for the abandonment of $318 billion of annual agricultural subsidies.

The sense of the meeting is that the Cancun summit failed because it was tuned to fail from the start. In the last trade round, the US and Europe won, and everyone else lost. This time, the ‘others’ – like the G21 group of developing countries – are not willing to see the same result. The US needs to recognise that there are other partners, not ‘others’. Are we seeing a real development round in the making, or more a fear of the collapse of the round – with untold cost to the more dynamic and powerful parts of the business community?

Sunday 25 January, evening

The bottom line

What did I do at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year? After spending a week with the world’s most powerful people, I conclude that the high point was dancing to Hugh Masekela’s uplifting South African music.

What is so astonishing about Davos is that it brought together the best brains and hearts of the world’s business, political and spiritual leaders, covered every conceivable topic under the sun – and yet managed to avoid serious, open debate about what is really happening in the world.

There was no real debate about how today’s American Dream has established an essentially colonial and destructive attitude towards the rest of us; no real debate about the extraordinary loss of civil rights that comes with this new discipline; and no real debate about the utterly cynical behaviour of many business leaders towards their shareholders, let alone workers and communities.

There was, moreover, no real debate about how our leaders show neither remorse nor shame as they defy their citizens and the laws of the land in taking for themselves, and leading their countries (against the clearly-voiced interests of their citizens) to war against others, and ultimately against themselves.

Dick Cheney’s speech spelt it out in words of one syllable. We do it our way, when we want, and how we want. You do it with us, or you are alone, at best. At worst, by abandoning us and making us seem visibly illegitimate, you will earn the status of Enemy – not of al-Qaida, or Saddam, or the evil axis of North Korea or Iran, but of ‘Us’, the United States.

There is only one big difference between last year’s and this year’s Davos. In 2003, people were so shocked with world events that they couldn’t help but show their concerns, their anger towards the US, and their fury towards the corruption within their midst. A year later, the facial muscles and itchy voice-boxes are back under control. The assembled are largely mute, polite, accepting. Even edgy questions are ritualised in how they are asked, and are assured of mildly irrelevant responses. Corridor conversations illuminate the fact that this silence is not born out of lack of information, thoughtfulness, or ethics. But these more noble traits are swept tidily behind masks of pragmatism. Worse still, they are submerged by people’s passivity towards what they know is morally unacceptable and ultimately destructive behaviour from within their ranks.

There are, of course, voices of discontent. Most audible is probably Kofi Annan, conflicted and compromised by and within the UN, but nevertheless softly and clearly amplifying the limits to what is acceptable, and the simple fact of unacceptability. One applauds the leadership shown by Brazil’s President Lula in trade, access to health care and other debates. There are also heartening individual acts of political heroism – from politicians as they resign their briefs in disgust, and professionals as they voice their unwillingness to be associated with barefaced distortions of the truth.

But civil society, in truth, remains largely absent from the conversation in Davos. NGOs are at the table, but seem to have been put into specialised roles, dealing the ‘minor keys’ that do make a difference but in no way challenge the underlying game-plan. What on earth has happened to our civil champions, sparkling but nevertheless unfocused and divided in Mumbai, and silent in Davos?

So take note, Hugh Masekela. The sounds of your trumpet go to the soul, but your words of liberation are sadly out of step with the times. An independent South Africa may indeed be celebrating its 10th birthday, and for this I am happy for you, and us. But your country is growing up in a troubled world, one that has seemingly lost interest in the principles of radical democracy and the freedom of spirit out of which your country’s independence came.

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From the magic mountain: the World Economic Forum, Simon Zadek