Published in The Post, 30 January 2025

The 55^th. Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) took place last week in Davos, a modest Swiss ski resort not far from Zurich. For all its apparent modesty, throughout the week this small mountain settlement welcomed close to 3,000 visitors from 130 countries, including 1,600 business leaders and 350 heads of state and government, ministers and senior government officials.

Under the rubric “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age” over 500 sessions involving the private, public, and community sectors were held across five themes: reimagining growth; industries in the intelligent age; investing in people; safeguarding the planet; and rebuilding trust.

All very worthy. But what does it achieve? Principally an enormous amount of information exchange, networking and deal-making on the major policy concerns of the day across private, public and community sectors, mainly at an elite level and mainly trans-Atlantic in focus, but increasingly with involvement from the “global south”.

Sixty-nine WEF reports were launched at Davos and a great range of existing and new initiatives on growth, productivity, industry net zero, women’s health, future councils, digital healthcare, navigating climate risk, shift to a nature-positive future, and global cooperation, among many other cross-cutting and focused topics of public interest.

Yet, for all this activity building on a corpus of existing and long-standing work, this year’s meeting did not feel like “business as usual”. On the penultimate day Donald Trump was beamed in to a packed congress hall with a message of tax cuts, deregulation, rolling back climate change initiatives, sidelining ESG (environment, social, governance) and DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) considerations, and prioritising “America first” over traditional alliances and the constraints of multilateralism.

Donald Trump’s address was applauded to the rafters.

In other words, for all the worthy initiatives on the social responsibility of corporates, on anticipating the greatest planetary threat of our time, and on a range of existential threats in the environment, misinformation, and social and political conflict, in the end it is the immediacy of tax cuts, deregulation and pausing climate change initiatives that seems to sway the emotions of the global corporate class.

An apparent inflection point in global affairs, then, and at some distance from New Zealand geographically and politically. But were there any pointers for our political and corporate class?

Energy primacy and security. While the use by Russia of its gas supply as a political weapon may have brought the issue to a head, there was general agreement that the security, quality, and cost of energy lies at the heart of functioning economies. It is striking that in New Zealand we have not had explicit recognition of this, with no obvious forward-looking energy policy and a gaping susceptibility to supply-chain and production vulnerabilities.

Energy transition. Klaus Schwab, in his opening address, pitched the conference as marking a transition from the industrial to the intelligence age. With that goes a fundamental energy transition. While coal, oil and gas fuelled the industrial revolution, “clean energy” is the driving force of an age focused on artificial intelligence, digital enablement, the limits of traditional growth metrics, and the appreciation of planetary boundaries. Arguably New Zealand has squandered its opportunities. Take Norway another country initially reliant on hydropower. It is now on the brink of renewable dominance, while New Zealand flounders.

Global economy. While the meeting of Chief Economists was downbeat, the leader of the WTO pointed out that 80% of world trade is conducted according to WTO rules and, rather than deglobalisation, what we are likely seeing is a form reglobalisation with new supply chains and localised production hubs. There are no magic solutions to growth, other than innovation, smart regulation, competitiveness, productivity, and investment.

Small economies. Are there any “big ideas” for small economies like ours? Singapore featured here. The key lessons seemed to be that the country had to make its own luck, has been pragmatic, consistently governed, has enforced savings alongside tax, has developed a tripartite, consensual approach, and uses industry sectors and clusters. New Zealand by contrast was once one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but it has allowed complacency and short-termism to squander that advantage. Can one imagine Singapore taking half a century before it successfully encouraged savings for retirement and sovereign wealth, or allowing an industrial champion like Fonterra to sell its key brands to an overseas bidder?

Misinformation. Along with environmental threats and conflict, this was one of the key risks identified by CEOs surveyed by WEF. With the decline of mainstream media and the rise of social media echo chambers, New Zealand needs to take stock of its options in this area. We have a vanishingly small public broadcaster, our major media outlets are losing staff and closing outlets, the social media giants are not paying their way, and since the Christchurch Mosque massacre, we still have not found a way to sensibly moderate the public square.

Davos is rightly criticised as being overly elitest and too cosy a club of the traditional transatlantic alliance. But for anyone prepared to stand back and survey the proceedings, there are still nuggets of insight that even a small, distant country like New Zealand can learn from.

Peter Davis, Emeritus Professor in Population Health and Social Science, University of Auckland

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