Davos: a view from the summit

Something funny happened on the way to the Forum. Actually, something funny happened at the Forum.

At first glance the 2002 meeting of the World Economic Forum – relocated to New York to express solidarity with this city after 11 September – reinforced the outsider’s impression that this is simply a gala event for the world’s corporate elite and leading politicians. Nothing symbolised this more than the plush environment of the Waldorf-Astoria, which resembled not just a luxury hotel but a castle besieged by threats on all sides.

When I jumped into a taxi at the John F. Kennedy Airport and asked for the Waldorf, the driver was quick to say that we’d never get there because there was some big fancy meeting going on and you needed a very special security pass to get through all the barriers. When I explained that I had such a pass, he looked at me quizzically as if to say “and who the hell are you?”

I quickly explained that I was nobody in particular but somebody interested in the nature and shape of the contemporary global world, and particularly preoccupied by the self-evident failure of globalisation to work for nearly half the world’s population. He wasn’t impressed – “their f****** fault”, he said, “too much bloody corruption in developing countries”. Would this opinion find a clear echo at the Waldorf?

The gulf between us

The Waldorf encapsulated the global gulf between the gated communities of the rich and the rest. The cocooning of the summitteers in a protective security blanket was the first manifestation of this.

The cumulative effect of the protest movements at the previous two years’ summits – from Seattle to Prague, from Goteborg to Genoa – had already guaranteed an intensely controlled environment. The effect of 11 September, in this very city, merely reinforced this perceived necessity.

And, indeed, the Waldorf was isolated. Streets all around the hotel were closed off. There were not just one or two police officers on each corner but dozens. To get into the hotel required thorough security and baggage clearance.

But I for one was quite glad of all this security; I had agreed to go to the World Economic Forum only after much soul-searching and advice from friends and family, and did not relish the prospect of being a potential target for global terrorist networks!

This sense of isolation was compounded on the Saturday of the meeting, 2 February, when over twenty thousand people marched in the cause of the anti-globalisation movement. The scenes outside were less reminiscent of the era of star wars than of Napoleonic warfare, with demonstrators surrounded both by grim armed police and rows of mounted police. Was this the early nineteenth century or the twenty-first?

But all was peaceful. After 11 September, both police and protestors were anxious to keep the demonstration calm. In itself, the spectacle of the castellated Waldorf was not incongruous – after all, New York can absorb almost anything and make it look a normal part of life.

The endless parties and special events, with supermodels and pop stars in attendance, added to the sense of glamour. But they also reinforced the impression that Davos in New York was first and foremost the annual Forum of the rich and famous – who are now increasingly cut off from the rest of the world.

The test of argument

First impressions matter, but they can also mislead. For inside the summit, what took me by surprise was the very serious discussions that took place in nearly every session and workshop. I had been expecting that its political culture would be very close to that of the Bush administration, with the more ruthless face of corporate globalisation on display. This was not so, and the discussions were earnest and often moving.

In the first instance, the centre of political gravity was clearly to the left of the Bush administration. This isn’t necessarily saying very much, but the difference matters! A ‘coalition’ of European business and political leaders, representatives from developing countries, and the heads of many leading inter-governmental organisations gave enormous impetus to the debates, and pushed the discussion toward a very serious agenda.

On countless occasions, it was those with progressive agendas – which sought to transform globalisation so that it works more for the world’s peoples overall – who received the loudest applause. After my first presentation I was utterly astonished to receive an extraordinary ovation, which I found both surprising and affecting.

When a handsome elderly man came up to me and said he wanted to thank me for my talk, which he found as moving as anything he’d heard since the Civil Rights movement, I was deeply touched. He didn’t need to introduce himself as Sidney Poitier, but it confirmed my sense that something odd was happening at the Forum. There was a genuine thirst to think about how economic globalisation can be better tied to social justice and greater accountability.

This hadn’t happened by accident. The organisers of the Forum, led by Klaus Schwab (the President of the WEF), had clearly gone to enormous trouble to ensure that a broad range of serious argument and opinion were present. And this was manifest in many of the meetings and debates I attended.

For instance, in an opening plenary session the speakers were Bono (composer and lead singer with U2), Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (President of the Philippines), H.M. Queen Rania of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Desmond Tutu (Archbishop Emeritus, South Africa) and Elie Wiesel (Professor of the Humanities, Boston University).

At another plenary session on debt, Bono spoke elegantly on behalf of the debt cancellation’s campaign; Bill Gates (Chairman of Microsoft), on what private philanthropy can achieve; Ernesto Zedillo (ex-President of Mexico), on the urgency of increasing aid to the poorest nations; and Paul O’Neill ( US Treasury Secretary), on the importance of economic development for the poorest nations, rather than aid in the conventional sense. Again, this diversity of views led to genuine discussion.

Debating a world getting worse, not better

In many sessions, debates ranged over the politics of globalisation, the complexities of trade negotiations, the importance of deepening multi-lateralism and the scope and bite of international law, and the limits of the markets in the production of urgent global public goods, from environmental protection to a war on poverty.

It was generally acknowledged, even well understood, that a world in which forty-six per cent of the population live on less than two dollars a day (the World Bank standard of poverty measurement); in which 1.2 billion people live on less than one dollar a day; in which eighty per cent of the world’s wealth is in the hands of twenty per cent of the population – is a world without moral justification. A world cannot sustain security and peace under such conditions.

It was generally agreed also that this situation appears to be getting worse, not better, and that even if the catastrophic health and poverty-related problems which threaten over half the world’s peoples doesn’t turn them into terrorists, it is nonetheless a world that creates huge instabilities, the movement of people and human disasters of truly epic proportions.

And it was also acknowledged by some that there’s something shocking about the world’s value systems when they allow the UN to struggle to find 1.2 billion dollars for its annual budget (minus peace keeping) while, for example, Americans spend nearly twenty-seven billion dollars per annum on confectionery, over seventy billion dollars per annum on alcohol, and some figure over the roof on cars. But of course this is not just an American problem – and must not be read as such.

Discussion matters

Redressing these desperate circumstances begins by recognising and discussing them, as we are doing on openDemocracy. And there is much evidence that, especially after 11 September, there is a new willingness to seriously re-think the terms of reference of globalisation.

In different but complementary ways, many speakers – from Kofi Annan (Secretary General of the UN) to James Wolfensohn (President of the World Bank), from Horst Koehler (Managing Director of the IMF), to Raymond Gilmartin (Chairman of the pharmaceutical group Merck) – articulated this essential message.

Yet, while there was serious debate and exploration of global questions in public and private meetings, other aspects of Davos suggest a more sober account of its significance. Public pronouncements and deliberations were only part of the agenda; there were also many other meetings in which only the inner club of the WEF could meet. It’s hard to know what went on there. How far was the depth of discussion and feeling heard on the floor of Davos carried into the inner sanctums of power?

The bottom line is simple. And it was put most elegantly by Bono. Reflecting on the event, he said: “I’m a rock star, and have to confess to liking champagne and the good life; but I’m also concerned that many of the world’s poorest need stark and immediate measures to alleviate their life-threatening circumstances. This place seems like a talking shop – and I see yet no evidence of a willingness to turn talk into action”. And of course this is what counts the most.

The March international conference on finance and development in Monterrey (Mexico), and the September conference on sustainable development in Johannesburg (South Africa), are around the corner. In preparing for them, the world’s economic leaders have an historic opportunity.

They can put pressure now on the Bush administration to shift its global unilateralist stance with respect to geopolitics and geoeconomics. They can support the attempts to create a new anti-poverty fund and a doubling of aid to poor countries to fight AIDS and other diseases. And they can support the deepening of multilateral institutions and the strengthening of the role of the values of social justice and democracy in the world economy. They can do these things…

Common standards, different truths

Of course, the taxi driver is partly right. Support for these events and measures should not be perceived as an action programme without responsibilities on the side of recipient governments – to uphold human rights, maintain the rule of law, and fight corruption in their own regimes. But such efforts have to be matched by a new social contract, without which they are likely to be stillborn. The leaders at Davos have a key role to play here, one that requires political will and imagination.

Those outside the Waldorf’s castle walls would find it hard to appreciate the openness to argument of many of the delegates at Davos. In fact, the quality of argument was so high on occasions that it certainly throws down a challenge to others, especially in the anti-globalisation movements, to meet the same standards of argument, evidence and concern. These standards are not just a monopoly of one group of noble or wise people – a point all parties need to bear in mind in the struggles ahead.

The challenge is clear. One cannot be very optimistic about the translation of words into deeds. On the other hand, without words there’s no starting point.