DAVOS 2017 RESULTS

2017 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting took place in Davos, Switzerland this year. It had more than 3,000 participants from nearly 100 countries, including over 50 heads of state or government who participated in some 400 sessions.

The meeting has planned to focus on four key leadership challenges for this year: strengthening global collaboration, revitalizing economic growth, reforming capitalism and preparing for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. 

1. Environment

There was a new public-private tropical forest fund launched. It will raise $400 million by 2020 to help small-scale farmers in forest areas protect five million hectares of land by reducing deforestation and peatland burning, whilst also improving their crop productivity.

2. China To Green Its Economy

Chinese Ministry of Environment Protection signed an agreement with the World Economic Forum for a major five-year collaboration on advancing China’s environmental policies, including bringing together leading companies, innovators and investors to help China accelerate a circular economy, promote the sharing economy, take further action on climate and oceans; and to harness new fourth industrial revolution technologies for the environment.

3. Tackling Plastics Pollution

Over 40 industry leaders including some of world’s largest consumer goods, retailers and recycling firms, and governments endorsed a detailed action plan to increase global reuse and recycling rates for plastic packaging from its current 14% to 70%.

4. Jobs

Signatories to the Forum’s New Vision for Arab Employment project said they have now helped re-skill 250,000 people since 2013, and are now targeting 1 million current and future workers.

5. Digital Security

The World Economic Forum will join with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Kaspersky Lab and other partners to develop a playbook for governments to strengthen their capabilities in preparing for, responding to and recovering from cyber-attacks.

6. Health

Officially launched at Davos 2017, a new innovative public-private alliance – CEPI – will start on working to outsmart epidemics by creating vaccines that can be released quickly once an outbreak occurs.

7. Impact of Automation

39 top technology companies, agreed to launch a consortium for the skilling of workers displaced by automation. The consortium will provide resources and capital and, through the World Economic Forum platform, focus initially on the financial services and manufacturing sectors.

8. Inclusive Growth

A new Inclusive Growth Report was launched which will present a new global index to provide a richer and more nuanced assessment of countries’ level of economic development than the conventional one based on GDP per capita alone.

9. Responsible Business Leadership

The Compact for Responsive and Responsible Leadership – a roadmap for business leaders to pursue sustainable long-term growth and opportunity, reached a tipping point at Davos with the first 100 compacts signed by leading companies.

 10. World Leaders Ideas

Xi Jinping became the first ever Chinese president to participate in the Annual Meeting. In a major speech at the opening of the meeting, he said that globalization should not be blamed for the world’s problems and called on the international community to press ahead with implementing the Paris Agreement on climate change.
Henry A. Kissinger told participants in the closing session that Xi Jinping’s speech at the opening session was “of fundamental significance”.