The World Economic Forum (WEF) has said in its recent Climate Risk Report that while climate change poses the single greatest risk to the global economy, it is the risk that the international community is least prepared to deal with and the short-term price that countries will have to pay – a cost of living crisis.
The WEF’s Global Risks Report, prepared ahead of its annual gathering of influential political leaders and ‘high rollers’ in the global business community in the Swiss Alpine Resort of Davos, derives its findings from a survey of 1,200 global risk experts, industry leaders and policy makers, asserting that while the biggest challenges facing the international community over the next decade have to do with the immediate environment, what are perceived as more immediate challenges, are distracting world leaders.
Both the aforementioned ‘high fliers’ in industry as well as political leaders are likely to comprise panel discussions that will exchange views at the meeting though the extent to which those will yield any earth-shattering adjustments in terms of global change of direction for key issues is doubtful. One of the reported primary concerns of the forum will be with the envisaged tough trade-offs for governments facing competing concerns for society, the environment and security, according to a report which, reportedly, will occupy much of the attention of the Davos gathering.
The Davos gathering itself has been criticized in the past for engaging in discourses on issues of global concern that yield neither positive results nor concrete remedial action. Davos is hosting 52 heads of state and government and nearly 600 CEOs at the annual meeting which ends today. ‘Davos’ is the popular title given to the annual four-day engagement staged by The World Economic Forum in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. The objective of the forum is to cause the most influential political, business, cultural and other leaders, globally, to engage in the sharing of perspectives that might help shape global and regional agendas on issues of a developmental nature.
The extent to which the deliberations at Davos help shape the policies of individual countries or global development policy as a whole, is unclear.
