Every year, chambered in a well-accommodated ski resort in Davos, Switzerland, the world’s most powerful political leaders, financial conglomerates, and tech moguls gather to discuss and formulate solutions to the world’s most dire problems. The cherry-picked members of the World Economic Forum are forbidden to report who said what during the week’s event, and the World Economic Forum’s Code of Conduct threatens cancellation of participation in the Annual Meeting as a consequence of violation.
The restrictions continue: attendance to the forum is strictly invite-only, and participants must pay $19,000 to attend the conference in addition to the $52,000 fee to become an Economic Forum member. Those qualified this year included US climate czar John Kerry, Former United Kingdom PM Tony Blair, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and South Korean President Yook Suk Yeol. Executive representatives from BP, Chevron, Saudi Aramco, Amazon, and Moderna were also in attendance. So were Idris Elba, Jared Kushner, will.i.am, and Prince Albert II of Monaco, all trying to pave a path towards “cooperation in a fragmented world”— the official mantra for this year’s congregation.
The purpose of Davos seems well-meaning—assembling some of the world’s most powerful people to tackle the world’s most formidable problems. With the immense power and influence garnered by these billionaires, tech moguls, and politicians, they may be well-equipped through collaboration to solve issues ranging from world hunger to climate change.
Yet, ironically, leaders of the countries reckoning with the most violent impacts of climate change, such as Chad, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic, were not invited. Similarly, organizations working against the systemic issues behind poverty and hunger, like the Black Lives Matter Movement organization, were not invited. Instead, in order to understand the perspective of those most affected by these issues, Davos launched a “refugee simulation” in 2017 for elites to simulate “pretending to flee from advancing armies.”
Families have been displaced by the ramifications of the pandemic and disastrous climate change; extreme wealth inequality plagues the majority of the world, and corporations are growing increasingly brazen in pushing the limits of encroachment. Davos is supposed to facilitate change and improvement for these problems. In reality, [set up quote]
“Billionaires are arriving in Davos to celebrate an incredible surge in their fortunes. The pandemic and now the steep increases in food and energy prices have, simply put, been a bonanza for them,” said Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International.
While the climate crisis has been a key global issue for decades, and continues to be, major oil corporations – such as BP, Chevron, and Saudi Aramco – who were all in attendance, did not make any substantive commitments to curtail greenhouse gas emissions.
Meanwhile, people in the Global South continue to endure life-threatening heat levels and housing insecurity.
Adrienne Sorbom, professor of Sociology at Stockholm University, is the co-author of a book on the World Economic Forum. “No real big decisions are ever taken at WEF events. You must remember that it is a private foundation, funded by the world’s most important corporations,” Sorbom explained.
So does the obscure, secretive nature of Davos actually make it conducive to creating tangible solutions? Or does it just facilitate international business commerce?
A number of initiatives have materialized from past conferences. For example, the website Latest Thinking “helps companies put ecologically and socially responsible approaches in place that contribute to the needs of forests, local communities, and global decarbonization goals.” The Cyber Resilience in Oil and Gas initiative seeks to bring together more than 100 oil and gas executives to “foster collaboration and information sharing.” The Global Trade Alliance aims to remove trade barriers in developing countries.
“Things do happen there. Corporations make business, NGOs find new funders, political leaders talk to each other [outside] of media attention and diplomatic protocol,” said Sorbom.
In some ways, the obscurity of Davos may facilitate effective solutions that would otherwise be too controversial for the masses to stomach. However, without transparency and feedback, it is difficult to assess the success and integrity of these solutions and initiatives.
Transparency
The World Economic Forum’s self-proclamation of the forum’s transparency is not persuasive: “it’s hardly secretive. To keep the public informed, there will be more than 1,000 media representatives – one for every three participants.” That being said, what difference do the number of journalists necessarily make, if all attendees must swear an oath of secrecy to the Chatham House Rule? This means participants and journalists are free to share information and initiatives discussed during the conference but cannot reveal either the identity of the speaker or their affiliation.
One thousand journalists may have been in attendance, but this does not translate into public accountability.
The nature of government institutions and forward-facing advocacy groups demand transparency, particularly concerning dramatic, large-scale decisions. What are the implications when plutocrats and celebrities gather to make decisions impacting the world’s most vulnerable and impoverished, without providing a seat for those leaders at the table, and without any transparent, journalistic feedback?
In a podcast for the Economist, Zani Minton Betos reported, “Most of the real work, most of the real impact takes place away from the cameras, away from these big slightly staged discussions in the Congress center and between individuals at meetings behind closed doors; the cocktail parties at the private events [is] where people really have their conversations.”
Sorbom affirms this view. According to her, “the media is there but under heavy restrictions. That is why you mostly would see a sort of limited reports from their events. Most journalists are just happy to be there, in spite of doing mostly promotional work for the WEF.”
Rather than reporting effectively and meaningfully, business journalists make a spectacle of Davos, hyperfocusing on the glitz and glamor. Kyle Pope writes in the Columbia Journalism Review: “Journalists continue to come, in wave after wave, eager to make fun of the scene while making sure that they show up at the right parties.”
Jill Abramson, a former executive editor of the New York Times, wrote in an email to journalist Ben Smith, lambasting Times journalists: “the coverage was a sweetener to flatter the CEOs by seeing their names in the NYT so that they would then speak at high-dollar NYT conferences and—of course—get phony news stories from the conferences into the paper. It was—and is—a corrupt circle-jerk.”
Any journalistic coverage emerging from Davos will inevitably be clouded by the sworn secrecy of the Chatham House rule– but the self-aggrandizement and inauthenticity of business journalists does not help either.
The elitist nature of Davos has triggered an all too common phenomenon plaguing other intergovernmental organizations: conspiracy theories. Prominent right wing media personalities, like Glenn Beck and Infowars host Alex Jones have taken advantage of the elitism of Davos to provoke paranoia regarding “The Great Reset” – the namesake of the 2021 WEF COVID-19 economic recovery plan. According to them, it is a scheme by the “globalist” elite to “eat insects instead of meat in the name of saving the environment.”
This is an extreme and fringe grievance against Davos, but it is easy to understand why blue-collar, working-class people would find fault with the conference. How does it read when Davos panelists warn of populist misinformation, all the while, deliberating under encastled secrecy?
The decisions made at Davos will evidently impact billions of people. But with its continued lack of transparency and diminishing relevance, it is difficult to say how much longer the Davos forum can proclaim its mission as facilitating global development and improvement. Without including those most affected by the world’s most pressing issues, often created by the very same ultra-wealthy elites who participate in Davos, the conference will continue to be lambasted for its performative nature. Next year, the Davos lineup will be announced in early January, and some opinion editorials will be published, criticizing the secretive nature of the forum. But business will continue on as usual. Elite politicians and business people will come together to make paternalistic decisions for the rest of the world.
