Elite meets in Davos
The crisis in the crisis in the crisis
By Horst von Buttlar
01/15/2023 2:34 p.m
The World Economic Forum is taking place under gloomy omens: Never before have decision-makers had to deal with so many crises at the same time. After the years of the pandemic, people in Davos want to evoke at least one thing again: the spirit of cooperation.
It’s good manners in Davos to frown with worry before and during meetings with the powerful. There is always something, a financial crisis, a natural disaster or a “global challenge”, flanked by megatrends that promise both hope and threat. And capitalism, well, you can also criticize it and demand more prosperity for everyone once you have got off the helicopter.
But this year everything is different at the World Economic Forum (WEF): It is the first real meeting after the pandemic – because in 2021, like all events, the WEF was necessarily digital, and in 2022 it was moved to May. But without winter magic in the mountains, without snowshoes and snow flurries, what has been described for years as the “spirit of Davos” didn’t really want to come up.
The second reason this gathering is special is more serious: the world is coming together at a time when it feels like it’s falling apart. The WEF founder Klaus Schwab spoke in advance of numerous, sometimes parallel crises and “increasing fragmentation”. “We’re stuck in a crisis mentality,” said Schwab, who first organized the meeting in Davos in 1971. Davos should help to change this attitude, to think long-term again, to build trust again. That’s why personal encounters are so important: “Only personal interaction creates trust, which we urgently need in a divided world.”
Risks are returning
Many decision-makers, Schwab said, are overwhelmed by the complexity. Because it’s not just a crisis they have to deal with. For some time now, experts and politicians have been talking about “multiple crises”, “nested crises”, a “poly-crisis” – or simply: the crisis within a crisis within a crisis. The pandemic is almost over in many countries, and in China it is only just beginning. War has been raging in Ukraine for almost a year; there is no end in sight. The shock waves for the energy supply have been felt in almost every country. In addition, there is climate change, which many countries are tackling on the one hand and being thrown back again and again on the other. “We are experiencing the most complex geological and economic situation in decades,” said WEF President Børge Brende, former Foreign Minister of Norway.
In its Global Risk Report, which will be published shortly before the meeting, the WEF predicts an “uncertain and turbulent decade”. Threats to food or energy supplies could undo “decades of progress.” “We are witnessing the return of ‘older’ risks,'” the report puts it: inflation, the cost of living crisis, trade wars, geopolitical confrontations and “the specter of nuclear war.” All crises “that hardly anyone in the current generation of business leaders and policymakers has experienced before”. The report is based on a survey of around 1,200 experts and leaders from business and politics.
So the meeting in Davos should mean a breathing space, should help to overcome some divisions – which it has already done in the past. Encounters between Israelis and Palestinians on and behind the stage, between Iranians and Americans, are legendary. And so one of the big mysteries this year was: will there also be a meeting between Russians and Ukrainians? Ukraine arrives with a delegation, has had for years on the big promenade in Davos – where countries and corporations rent and present themselves in shops and apartments throughout the week – even their own house.
However, as in May, the Russians are not invited. In October, WEF President Brende made it clear in an interview with ntv: Russia can only participate again if it complies with “international law, the UN Charter and humanitarian principles” and stops bombing Ukraine. The WEF had discontinued contacts with Russian companies and politicians. But Russia will be very present: as a new threat.
“Speed Dating on Steroids”
The need to speak and the desire to meet is huge in view of the “poly crisis”: the number of participants is as high as before the pandemic (over 2700), and never before have so many government representatives and officials come (around 380). 30 heads of government, 56 finance ministers, 19 central bank heads and 30 trade ministers travel to Davos alone. Olaf Scholz and Robert Habeck will also be on stage, alongside CEOs such as BASF CEO Martin Brudermüller, Allianz CEO Oliver Bäte and Bayer CEO Werner Baumann.
But new faces of the German economy are also traveling to the elite meeting: Alexander Rinke, co-head of the Munich tech company Celonis, for example. Or Mario Kohle, founder of the Berlin solar company Enpal – the fastest growing company in Germany is in Davos for the first time. The world does not find out, or only later, about the deals that are initiated and bagged here. “Davos is business speed dating on steroids,” as one McKinsey partner puts it.
So it’s easy to say: The Swiss mountain village is becoming a bustling world government headquarters. In thousands of panels and discussions, bilateral meetings and parties, the synapses of cooperation are maintained and expanded again.
Experienced participants in Davos are happy to point out that the concerns and statements made by participants at the World Economic Forum were sometimes a kind of counter-indicator – and that they tended to chase some risks instead of anticipating them. The return of geopolitics was not on anyone’s radar in 2020, and armed conflicts between states ranked low as a risk.
And maybe some of the strands of the “poly crisis” will unravel again – not only the filled gas storage tanks are now showing that crises can be managed and resolved. The adaptability and resilience of many companies are always underestimated, as the pandemic had only just shown.