Oliver Cann, Director, Public Engagement, Tel.: +41 79 799 3405; E-mail: Oliver.Cann@weforum.org
Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 11 November 2014 – Politics, poor governance and government inaction risk undermining the capacity of countries to address the most pressing global challenges, business, academic and international organization leaders warned participants on the second day of the Summit on the Global Agenda. The Outlook on the Global Agenda report identified the top 10 trends for 2015 based on a survey of almost 1,800 experts from the Forum’s Network of Global Agenda Councils and other Forum communities on what they believe will preoccupy leaders over the coming 12-18 months. The top three trends are: deepening income inequality, persistent jobless growth and lack of leadership.
“All the 10 issues in the report are universal,” said Majid Jafar, Chief Executive Officer of Crescent Petroleum in the United Arab Emirates. “They apply to all parts of the world, and all require a multistakeholder approach.” Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia (2007-2010 and 2013) and a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs of the Harvard Kennedy School, added: “These geopolitical challenges require the most careful handling so they don’t bring down the whole house of cards.”
Rudd worried that stresses, disputes and conflicts across the world – “a radically new landscape than we thought possible even three years ago” – could lead to significant global instability. “Politics and geopolitics if they go wrong can undermine everything,” he said.
How governments deal with the inequality problem and the lack of jobs, especially for young people, is crucial, said Rola A. Dashti, Chairman of FARO International in Kuwait. “Citizens see that they are not the beneficiaries of high growth. People are impatient. There is no more patience to give governments time to do any reforms.”
“The inequality issue is probably the greatest threat we have,” said Amina Mohammed, Assistant Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Post-2015 Development Planning at the United Nations in New York. “We see economies growing without consideration for people or the environment.” There is a lack of leadership and governance focused on actually solving the problems, she argued. “Policy choices don’t focus on the broad range of challenges that we have. There isn’t a cookie-cutter for us. We have to do less about targeting symptoms and more about the root causes.”
The panellists called for greater collaboration among government, business and civil society in such areas as infrastructure development, education and skills development. Companies, governments and the education sector need to work together to address the mismatch of skills and jobs, Dashti said. “We are just credential societies. In real life, you need content and knowledge so you have the skills and can provide the service that is demanded.” She concluded: “We have to have concerted policies to energize the private sector and ensure that the masses are the beneficiaries of growth.”
Adam Posen, President of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, lauded the G20’s concerted moves to promote infrastructure development. “There are huge benefits to be had,” he said, noting that major projects would provide employment, especially for young men. Public-private partnerships in infrastructure can be a way to tackle the global infrastructure deficit, while generating jobs and growth, Rudd agreed. We have to think about “how we use global public capital to make it possible for the vast sums of global private capital to be unleashed in the direction of the global growth agenda.”
Among those joining the session were eight members of the Dubai hub of the Forum’s Global Shapers Community of emerging leaders in their twenties. The theme of the Summit on the Global Agenda 2014 is Shaping the Transformations of the World. More than 1,000 members of the Forum’s Network of Global Agenda Councils, the 86 panels of experts and thought leaders on issues on the global agenda, are participating in the Summit.
Notes to Editors
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