Davos 2024: What is the World Economic Forum meet and does it matter today?

It’s that time of the year again — the time for the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual meeting in Switzerland’s Davos. The sleepy ski resort town of around 11,000 people will become the centre of the world’s attention as global political and business leaders will converge there for the WEF meeting dedicated to “solving the biggest issues facing our world”.

As the who’s who of politics and business gather in Davos for the annual summit, starting today and running until 19 January, here’s a simple guide explaining everything Davos related.

What is the World Economic Forum?

Before we get to this year’s Davos annual meet, here’s a little background on the WEF.

Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the WEF is an international non-governmental lobbying organisation, focused on addressing global, political and economic issues.

The WEF was founded in 1971 by Swiss-German economist and professor Klaus Schwab with the aim of promoting global cooperation on the world’s most pressing problems.

And in a bid to encourage cooperation, the WEF began to hold a summit each year, starting in 1971 in the Alpine ski town resort of Davos. In fact, Davos has been the home of the annual gathering since the beginning with one exception: The meeting was held in New York in 2002 in a gesture of solidarity following the 9/11 attacks.

Davos 2024, starting today (15 January) will run until 19 January. It will see participating of political and business leaders from across the world. Reuters

Who is attending Davos 2024?

This year’s Davos summit will see an estimate 1,600 business leaders, including 800 CEOs such as JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella. The 54th edition of this meet will also see world leaders congregate there, including France’s Emmanuel Macron, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Vietnamese prime minister Phạm Minh Chính.

The meeting will also be attended by A-list celebrities. In the past, Hollywood stars such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Mick Jagger and environmentalist Greta Thunberg have been present for the summit.

India will also be represented at Davos through Union ministers as well as chief ministers and over 100 CEOs. Smriti Irani, Ashwini Vaishnaw and Hardeep Singh Puri are the three Union ministers representing the country on the big stage.

The CII Lounge ahead of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, in Davos. PTI

Apart from this, chief ministers from Maharashtra, Telangana and Karnataka — Eknath Shinde, Revanth Reddy and Siddaramaiah — will be travelling to Davos for the annual summit.

Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das, and CEOs such as Gautam Adani, Sanjiv Bajaj, Kumar Mangalam Birla, N Chandrasekaran, Nadir Godrej, Sajjan Jindal, Roshni Nadar Malhotra, Nandan Nilekani, Rishad Premji and Sumant Sinha will be part of the Indian delegation.

What is the theme and focus for Davos 2024?

The theme for this year’s summit is “Rebuilding Trust”, focusing on ‘the fundamental principles driving trust, including transparency, consistency and accountability’.

According to the website, the overarching question for leaders will be, ‘Will the coming year be a period of ‘permacrisis’? Or will 2024 be a time for resolution and recovery?’

Ahead of the summit, most specialists pointed that extreme weather and misinformation would be the big risks being discussed at Davos this year. In fact, ahead of the summit, the WEF published a report identifying these two issues as the most severe global risks for the world over the next two years.

Moreover, the Davos summit comes amid the most complicated geopolitical backdrop —the two wars of Russia and Ukraine, and Israel and Hamas.

Importantly, more than 80 countries held a round of talks on the matter of peace in Ukraine, with Ukrainian presidential aide Andriy Yermak, who heads Zelenskyys office’, telling news agency AFP the discussions were open, constructive and detailed on the key principles in reaching a “comprehensive, just and lasting peace for Ukraine”.

The TCS lounge ahead of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, in Davos. PTI

Davos 2024 will also see the creation of AI House Davos, to ‘bring together policymakers, industry leaders, investors, and academics to lead the global conversation on AI’, a spokesperson told Spear’s. “It’s no overstatement to say that AI will likely be the dominant topic in Davos 2024, with the eyes of political and business leaders fixed on the rapid development of this revolutionary technology, the AI House Davos spokesperson said. Their programme includes conversations around the specific applications of AI to medicine and business, and discussions about the role of investors in innovation. They will also host talks on the balance between AI regulation, innovation and experimentation.

Is there a point to Davos?

In recent years, Davos has been criticised with some questioning the relevance of the meet. High-level attendees at the gathering have thinned in recent years. In fact, last year, Germany’s Olaf Scholz was the only leader of a G7 country to attend.

But experts point out that Davos is important from the perspective of networking and knowledge accumulation. As Peter Willetts, emeritus professor of global politics at City, University of London, told Al Jazeera, “Davos has been a useful forum for some global leaders to have … informal, one-to-one discussions outside the meetings.

“What has also been useful is the diversity of the people who attend – from leading national politicians and UN officials to business leaders and the staff of major non-governmental organisations.”

With inputs from agencies