The World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) recent inaugural summit in Dubai represented the equivalent of an intellectual assault course for its delegates on a range of socioeconomic and geopolitical issues (68 in fact). And at the heart of it lies a puzzle.
Effectively, the experts have set the agenda that will be mooted by the deciders at Davos in January next year. This was no easy feat. A battalion of well-credentialed delegates had 48 hours to transform the issues into a working agenda. In uncertain times, it wasn’t easy to decide what the important issues were. “I’m not sure there has been much of a consensus apart from the fact that change is needed. I think that the change in the way we organize the world … it’s a very ambitious agenda, which the World Economic Forum has put in place,” said Allan Gyngell, executive director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy.
The good news is that the mood was one of resolve and determination, not depression or panic. “I was in Tianjin at the World Economic Forum in China and it was dominated by the crisis and there was a lot of uncertainty and people were standing up and making these impassioned speeches about how terrible it could be and so on,” said one of the delegates, sustainable energy expert Michael Liebreich. “Whereas here, there’s very much the feeling that people are starting to work through the issues and ask, ‘what does it mean? How does my sector deal with it?’ And that’s very interesting to see.”
The only disappointing thing about the forum was that the media were not allowed into sessions where discussions took place. One delegate admitted that the sessions can be fraught with debate and (sometimes verbal) conflict, which leads to the supposition that, like making sausages, this is not a process that should be on public display.
Nevertheless, it was the paradox amidst a general call for greater transparency among organizations globally, combined with the need for more stringent corporate governance. Yet this region is still lacking in these areas and has much to do to improve its attractiveness to international investment. Don’t forget that the Santiago accord on sovereign wealth funds gives those funds a licence for opacity.
What surprised many in the final agenda was that the economy was second in importance to the environment. As one delegate told the gathered assembly, “the financial crisis is just a bump in the road.” Meanwhile Mohammed al-Abbar, the CEO of Emaar and the forum’s co-chairman, assured the media that Dubai’s assets outweigh its debts.
This seems laudable, but for one flaw. Last issue, TRENDS found that economics outweigh green issues in the region (“Pale Shade of Green,” November, 2008), and a survey by Neilsen that was commissioned by local PR company Asda’a found that, where Western youth see climate change as one of the three most important issues on their radar, it does not even register as a blip for Arab youth.
These issues will affect the region, which is accumulating global influence. Indeed, out of the 700 delegates, 50 were from the region. Sheikh Mo-hammed, the UAE’s vice president and ruler of Dubai, gave a keynote speech and the emirate’s government reportedly contributed $10 million towards the event. At the G20 summit soon afterwards, the Gulf was represented by Saudi Arabia. The world order is changing, as Martha Kelly Carlson, chair of the Water Forum, noted. “It’s … symbolic that we’re holding this in Dubai, because the center of power is changing in the world. And this is one of the places it’s moving to.”
The conundrum is this: while the region’s global influence is increasing, two of the major issues addressed are ones that do not resonate here. Even if the environmental issue is brushed aside (as it frequently is), getting businesses to be more transparent is not going to be easy. One idea came to mind: tougher lending criteria may well require businesses to be more open about their dealings, to gain funding. But that practice, which is common in the West, remains untried here.

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