Davos 2015: what’s on the agenda?

The 45th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, which will take place 21-24 January in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, is to convene under the theme, The New Global Context.

The theme reflects the period of profound political, economic, social and technological change that the world has entered, which has the potential to end the era of economic integration and international partnership that began in 1989.

Participating in the meeting will be 2,500 leaders, including the heads of 1,000 of the world’s largest and most successful businesses, heads of state or government from the G20 group and other nations, the heads of the world’s foremost international organizations alongside leaders from civil society, labour unions, the world’s major religions, media and the arts. The Forum’s New Champions communities; Young Global Leaders, Global Shapers, Global Growth Companies, Technology Pioneers and Social Entrepreneurs, will also contribute.

The Annual Meeting 2015 will provide a platform for over 50 initiatives that are currently being led by the Forum, with the aim of contributing positive change to the global agenda, as well as those of industry, business and the world’s regions. These include a public-private initiative to help achieve zero net tropical deforestation caused by agricultural commodities by 2020; a multistakeholder endeavour to stimulate more cross-industry and cross-ministry strategic dialogue on ways to strengthen multistakeholder Internet governance ‎and cooperation; and the Forum’s Gender Parity Taskforces, which work with governments worldwide to improve economic opportunity for the female half of the population.

Supporting these endeavours, the Meeting’s programme will feature over 250 sessions, each researched and designed using input from the Forum’s Global Agenda Councils, a network of over 1,500 world-class experts that is focused on identifying and delivering solutions to over 80 individual global challenges. This programme will be more open to the public than ever before, with over 20 televised sessions and an expanded multilingual webcast capability covering 60 sessions, all contributing to a conversation to be played out over social media as well as the Forum’s blog.

Author: Oliver Cann is Director, Media Relations, World Economic Forum