Blogs and Opinions
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What changes in global and regional cooperation will 2021 bring? Here’s what business leaders say
Sunday 24th of January 2021
For geopolitics, 2020 has been a year of paradoxes. The rapid spread of the virus exposed just how interconnected and globalized the world is, as countries grappled with the common experience of a new disease. There was even a sense of global community – as health workers were praised around the world with a nightly clap and tech-enabled global concerts took place, such as One World: Together at Home.
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What technology changes will 2021 bring? Here’s what business leaders say
Sunday 24th of January 2021
A new World Economic Forum-Ipsos survey finds that most adults are uniquely optimistic about accessing technology, digital tools and training in the next 12 months. This is amid general pessimism about other aspects of life, such as health, employment and climate change.
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What changes to environmental stewardship will 2021 bring? Here’s what business leaders say
Sunday 24th of January 2021
With COVID-19 infections and deaths continuing to rise and the entire world feeling the economic impact of the pandemic, getting the coronavirus under control is an immediate priority.
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What changes to industry and society will 2021 bring? Here’s what business leaders say
Sunday 24th of January 2021
Even prior to COVID-19, our world was facing a number of challenges that made our current systems unsustainable, from rising inequality to a need to rapidly reskill populations for the jobs of the future to accelerating climate change and biodiversity loss, to name just a few.
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Davos Agenda: What you need to know about geopolitics
Sunday 24th of January 2021
Following the 2020 Annual Meeting in Davos, World Economic Forum President Børge Brende called for “another period of multilateral renewal” in order for the world to tackle the multitude of economic, environmental and technological risks ahead.
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What changes to economic systems will 2021 bring? Here’s what business leaders say
Sunday 24th of January 2021
With more than 2 million COVID-19 deaths worldwide and rising, getting the virus under control is a top priority for 2021.
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Davos Agenda: What you need to know about technology
Sunday 24th of January 2021
COVID-19 has accelerated the deployment of new technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution – reshaping how we work, shop, learn, socialize, even visit the doctor in ways likely to remain permanent long after the pandemic is under control.
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Davos Agenda: What you need to know about the future of global health
Sunday 24th of January 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic is a health crisis unlike any we’ve seen in our lifetimes – and getting control of the virus and ensuring citizens around the world are vaccinated are top public health priorities.
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Davos Agenda: What you need to know about better business
Sunday 24th of January 2021
The World Economic Forum last year launched a new “Davos Manifesto” in support of stakeholder capitalism, which says companies should “pay their fair share of taxes, show zero tolerance for corruption, uphold human rights throughout their global supply chains and advocate for a competitive level playing field,” as Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab explained.
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Davos Agenda: What you need to know about the global economy
Sunday 24th of January 2021
In May, the world’s top risk professionals identified “prolonged recession of the global economy” as the most feared risk of COVID-19.
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Davos Agenda: What you need to know about the future of work
Sunday 24th of January 2021
The events of the past year have disrupted work, education and society.
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Davos Agenda: What you need to know about saving the planet
Sunday 24th of January 2021
A year ago at the Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos – heeding the advice of speakers including Greta Thunberg, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Prince Charles – government, business and civil society committed to take more concrete action on climate change and save the planet from a hot, smoky, polluted demise.
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The rise of the big idea
Sunday 24th of January 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has further unveiled the decline of our international institutions. But it also reminds us that our biggest problems are global in nature. Whether it’s pandemics, climate change, terrorism or international trade, all are global issues that we can only address or mitigate collectively.
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How to build a trustworthy and connected future
Sunday 24th of January 2021
For much of the recent past, the rise and rise of new technologies has seemed inexorable, snowballing along under its own momentum, and it has come to define a new era, the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The breakneck pace of this new era, with its accompanying life-changing technologies, has been disruptive, raising a range of ethical questions – about genetics, robots, algorithms – and what it means to be human. Like lemmings, we, too, have been swept along, fuelled by a blind faith in this relentless march of progress.
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Will 2021 be the year of living dangerously?
Sunday 24th of January 2021
As the third decade of the 21st century gets under way, we will look back on 2021 as a year when the future of our life on earth balanced on a fulcrum. But which way will we lean? Will we grind out a post-COVID-19 recovery along the lines of the recovery from the last great global financial crisis in 2009 towards a more dangerous future of higher consumption and emissions? Or will policy-makers, politicians, business leaders and civil society summon their collective imaginations, cooperative spirit and willpower to craft stimulus packages and investments that lead to a more sustainable, nature-friendly future?
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Redefining the business of business
Sunday 24th of January 2021
COVID-19 has been a wake-up call for business, shining an unsparing spotlight on the vulnerabilities of many organizations and pulling forward changes in working practices that were expected to take years into a matter of weeks.
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Our moment to choose a fairer, more sustainable world
Sunday 24th of January 2021
A cartoon from The New Yorker magazine last November depicts a caveman and cavewoman crouched in the opening of their dark cave. The woman is hard at work rubbing sticks to make fire while her man, sitting idly by, remarks: “Stop saying everything is ‘unprecedented’.”
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Who’s who at Davos Agenda Week 2021
Saturday 23rd of January 2021
With the COVID-19 pandemic underscoring the need for greater global cooperation, political and business leaders from across the globe are set to convene from 25- 29 January to take part in the World Economic Forum’s virtual Davos Agenda event.
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How 2020 taught businesses to place empathy before profit
Saturday 23rd of January 2021
The pandemic defied every management and organizational system, pushing everyone to their limits, until a transition toward agile, ever-evolving methods began to emerge. 2020 was an interesting year, to say the least – many companies emerged with a fresher face, reinventing themselves along the way. Perhaps the most telling realization was that the key to survival in any catastrophe is empathy.
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How technology can drive a sustainable economic recovery
Saturday 23rd of January 2021
During the financial crisis of 2008, the world had the opportunity to shape a more sustainable economy. According to economist Nicholas Stern, the economic and technological conditions at the time would have made it easier to make progress on climate change. But we failed to grasp it.
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How to ensure fair AI throughout the supply chain
Saturday 23rd of January 2021
For some time now, there has been talk about how leaders developing AI applications need to build “fair AI”; this should be unbiased and equitable, ideally improving the quality of life of everyone it touches.
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Tech can reach the world’s unbanked women – but only if they tell us how it should work
Friday 22nd of January 2021
• Women make up the majority of the global unbanked population.
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How to combine the physical and digital worlds to enable successful, sustainable business
Friday 22nd of January 2021
The pandemic has given our environment a much-needed breather – with carbon emissions falling by a record 7% in 2020 – and has painfully revealed the hard work required to slow down detrimental climate change.
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How the MENA region can shape the post-COVID-19 sustainability agenda
Friday 22nd of January 2021
As the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic continue to play out globally, the major long-term threat facing humanity – climate change – has not vanished.
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Companies must focus on resiliency, profitability and sustainability
Friday 22nd of January 2021
Whilst it is currently difficult to imagine a world in which COVID-19 isn’t part of our daily conversations, we will get there eventually. It is critical for our future how we respond to and recover from this crisis.
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4 ways to build a net-zero economy by 2050
Friday 22nd of January 2021
As we emerge from the shadows of the COVID-19 pandemic, a green recovery will help stabilize and grow our economies for a more resilient future. The EU Green Deal puts Europe on course to reach net-zero by 2050, and includes €1 trillion of investment in climate action.
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ESG investing in the time of COVID-19
Friday 22nd of January 2021
When Infosys announced its ESG 2030 Vision amidst the current volatile business environment, questions arose around the timing of such a declaration. For us, the answer was clear – the COVID-19 crisis, in many ways, was a clarifying moment. Once again, human resilience was shining through with hope and optimism in the face of hardship. We knew this was the moment to reinforce our continued commitment to ESG investing for positive returns and long-term impact on society, environment and business performance.
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11 innovations protecting life below water – and above it
Friday 22nd of January 2021
The ocean is our lifeline – its health is essential to our health. Securing the ocean’s well-being will have positive impacts across many global challenges we face today such as poverty, hunger, human health, unemployment, inequality and more. Finding and elevating promising ocean innovations wherever they may be, connecting them and helping them scale is crucial to ensure we protect one of our planet’s most valuable assets.
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People were asked how 7 risks would affect them – this is what they said
Friday 22nd of January 2021
Technology and improving access to education are reasons to be optimistic in 2021, offsetting concerns about health, loss of livelihood and climate change, according to a new global Ipsos-World Economic Forum survey.
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Here’s how data can help us fix the climate
Friday 22nd of January 2021
It has been more than a decade since former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called climate change the “defining challenge of our era”. There is now widespread scientific evidence pointing to human responsibility in the warming of the climate.
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3 ways regional coordination can drive a lasting recovery
Friday 22nd of January 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered the first economic contraction in Asia and the Pacific in six decades. Though regional trade fell by less than the world average, now more than ever the region’s developing economies need to coordinate policies to build a lasting and resilient recovery.
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Climate data presents a $2 billion opportunity in Africa alone. Here’s why
Friday 22nd of January 2021
Data is a currency of its own in the modern world, so if only a few people can extract, refine and store it, then it will end up widening existing inequality gaps. This is why “data democratisation” has become essential, especially in emerging economies.
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The SDGs can get back on track with more funding and targeted green investment
Friday 22nd of January 2021
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – aimed at combatting global challenges such as climate change, poverty and hunger – are in danger of being missed if they do not get an urgent and sizeable increase in funding.
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5 ways governments can respond to gender-based violence during COVID-19 and beyond
Friday 22nd of January 2021
While the world may have been caught off guard by the size and ramifications of the COVID-19 crisis, it should be prepared to respond to the increased risks to the wellbeing and safety of children and women. Violence against children and violence against women are widespread globally and intrinsically linked, sharing common risk factors and similar adverse and severe consequences. The literature within pandemics may be limited, but we have enough evidence to say unequivocally that related factors—such as confinement, social isolation, increased levels of financial stress, and weak institutional responses—can increase or intensify levels of violence.
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5 charts on the future of the global economy
Friday 22nd of January 2021
With the COVID-19 pandemic still looming, global economic activity could unfold any number of ways this year. Depending on the spread or containment of COVID-19, the pace of vaccine dissemination over the next two years, and the level of global financial stress, three alternative outcomes to the baseline forecast in the January 2021 Global Economic Prospects are possible.
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This electric car battery takes the same time to charge as filling up with gas
Friday 22nd of January 2021
An electric-car battery that can be charged in five minutes, the amount of time it takes to fill up a tank of gas, has been produced for the first time in a factory in China.
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Toxic air causes thousands of deaths a year. Here’s how to prevent it
Friday 22nd of January 2021
Tens of thousands of European city dwellers die prematurely each year due to air pollution, researchers said on Wednesday in a study ranking more than 800 cities according to the risk of early death from two leading pollutants.
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This chart shows how preferred methods of payment differ around the world
Friday 22nd of January 2021
People around the world disagree to a high degree about what the superior method of payment is. As shown in a survey by Global Web Index, most South Koreans wouldn’t trade their cashless payments for anything, while in some other nations, people feel better with a big wad of cash in their pockets.
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How a 4°C temperature rise will affect people around the world
Friday 22nd of January 2021
Another year, another climate record broken. Globally, 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest year ever recorded. This was all the more remarkable given that cool conditions in the Pacific Ocean – known as La Niña – began to emerge in the second half of the year. The Earth’s mean surface temperature in 2020 was 1.25°C above the global average between 1850 and 1900 – one data point maybe, but part of an unrelenting, upward trend that’s largely driven by greenhouse gases from human activities.
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State of the climate: 2020 ties as warmest year on record
Friday 22nd of January 2021
With all the official climate data now in, the world’s surface temperatures in 2020 have been confirmed as effectively tied with 2016 as the warmest year on record.
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How a genderless card deck might make you think differently about inequality
Friday 22nd of January 2021
Indy Mellink, a Dutch card fan, was explaining a game to her cousins last summer when she asked herself: why should a king be worth more than a queen?
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Here’s what astronauts can teach us about coping with isolation
Friday 22nd of January 2021
Being forced into isolation and confinement creates a number of potentially stressful demands. However, we might be able to learn a thing or two about coping with these demands, from people who choose a life in such settings.
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COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 22 January
Friday 22nd of January 2021
1. How COVID-19 is affecting the globe
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3 ways ASEAN can build a stronger future post-pandemic
Friday 22nd of January 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused prolonged socio-economic disruptions in the ASEAN region, exposing fundamental weaknesses and vulnerabilities in various sectors. Yet with steady measures in countries including Viet Nam and Singapore, coupled with the promise of vaccine rollouts, there is optimism for a speedy recovery.
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Meet the next generation turning the tide on plastic pollution
Friday 22nd of January 2021
During a year already heavily burdened by a global pandemic, the environment has suffered too. Existing challenges, like managing plastic waste, were exacerbated by a flood of single-use personal protective equipment, takeaway cups and containers, alongside a slew of COVID-19-related budget cuts slashing recycling and waste recovery capacity.
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Food Systems Summit: Lever for Change – Innovation Public Forum
Friday 22nd of January 2021
In 2021, the UN Secretary General will convene the Food System Summit as part of the Decade of Action to achieve the SDGs by 2030.
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3 ways to fill worrying cybersecurity gaps
Friday 22nd of January 2021
If humanity ever needed reminding of our interdependence, the pandemic has brought that home. As we scale up our response to the crisis, through largely digital means, our interconnectedness grows exponentially. And with it our vulnerability to the risk exposures of the virtual world. In fact, businesses of the future are evolving to be more digital and more shared. The need to prepare to avert a cyber pandemic – with potential even more than the coronavirus to upend our lives – has never been more urgent.
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Hidden wonders – these photos of tiny things may have a big impact on you
Friday 22nd of January 2021
Science and the arts are often thought of as being on opposite ends of the spectrum. But sometimes the pursuit of scientific knowledge turns up images of extraordinary beauty.
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How to finance industry’s net-zero transition
Friday 22nd of January 2021
Trillions of dollars in investment will be required to transition the global economy to net-zero emissions and avert a climate catastrophe. This represents a massive opportunity for capital providers. However, many of the investments that need to be made are large and risky, especially in emissions-intensive heavy industrial and mobility sectors. Financing large and risky projects in these sectors is a complex undertaking – but with the right coordination and cooperation, it can be done.
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Health workers are using TikTok to debunk COVID-19 myths
Friday 22nd of January 2021
As vaccines are rolled out across the world, dispelling misconceptions about COVID-19 has never been more important – prompting scientists and healthcare workers to turn to social media platforms like TikTok to do their bit.
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AI fairness is an economic and social imperative. Here’s how to address it
Friday 22nd of January 2021
Humans have many kinds of bias; confirmation, anchoring and gender among them. Such biases may lead people to behave unfairly and, as such, as a society we try to mitigate them.
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Here’s how to flip the odds in favour of your digital transformation
Friday 22nd of January 2021
Our research shows that more than 80% of companies plan to accelerate their companies’ digital transformation plans, against the backdrop of a global pandemic having accelerated the urgency of digital transformation for businesses.
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Cryptocurrencies are democratizing the financial world. Here’s how
Friday 22nd of January 2021
Many people don’t realise that opening a bank account, sending money to their friends, applying for a mortgage, and other basic financial services we take for granted are luxuries in the developing world.
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What is stakeholder capitalism?
Friday 22nd of January 2021
These days, a lot of political and business leaders debate whether “stakeholder capitalism” would provide us with a better way to organize the economy. But what exactly is stakeholder capitalism, and where does it originate? In this blog, adapted from our book Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy that Works for Progress, People and Planet, we like to tackle this question, and provide the reader with a clear answer.
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‘You can’t do business in a broken world’ – This week’s Meet the Leader podcast
Thursday 21st of January 2021
Putting the planet over profits isn’t a ‘nice-to-have’ – it’s a must have for businesses looking for long-term survival. After all, as Dame Polly Courtice points out, nearly half of GDP is dependent on nature.
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12 trade tasks to prioritize in 2021
Thursday 21st of January 2021
The next director-general of the World Trade Organization faces Herculean challenges. Hercules succeeded at his tasks in the end by trying new tactics, so perhaps fresh approaches should be tried for trade too. The World Economic Forum’s trade community has thoughts on 12 almost impossible tasks to tackle in 2021
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How to build more resilient countries after the COVID-19 pandemic
Thursday 21st of January 2021
In 2020, the world witnessed what happens when a global risk becomes reality. Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have now passed 95 million globally, with more than 2 million deaths. Millions more face the economic effects of the pandemic, with the world’s most vulnerable facing the worst consequences.
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From an Age of Disagreement to an Age of Collaboration
Thursday 21st of January 2021
The concept of “inflection points” fascinates me. Inflection points are moments in time when fundamentals are changing. They give us an opportunity to challenge our assumptions and find a new path to a better future.
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Successful circular economy ‘trailblazers’ do these 5 things: Report
Thursday 21st of January 2021
The world is becoming less circular. As a result, it’s moving further and further from an ideal where waste is eradicated and economic activities strengthen the environment and society at large. Given the current pace, we’ll likely see a doubling of global material use by 2060.
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We’re witnessing a global surge in innovation. This is how we sustain it
Thursday 21st of January 2021
From a foot-operated handwashing machine invented by a nine-year old boy in Kenya, to a new “sky park” opened in Bangkok on an disused railway line that could serve as a model for greening abandoned spaces, to the roll-out of robots in health centres in Rwanda, the pandemic has unleashed an unprecedented wave of home-grown innovation. Communities are adapting, improvising and looking beyond this unparalleled challenge. The question now is how we can support this momentum to foster the conditions to create much-needed jobs and new opportunities as the recovery begins.