The 2025 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), a distinguished gathering within the Swiss city of Davos, is about to begin on Jan. 20, gathering prime international business and political leaders for discussions underneath the theme “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age.”
The fifty fifth annual assembly of WEF will run by Jan. 24 and is predicted to deliver collectively roughly 3,000 leaders from greater than 130 nations, in line with organizers.
This 12 months’s assembly in Davos is happening towards a number of the main dangers to the worldwide financial system, starting from armed conflicts and excessive climate occasions to misinformation and disinformation, as recognized by a WEF research shared earlier this week.
Armed battle is the highest threat in 2025, a WEF survey launched on Wednesday confirmed, a reminder of the deepening international fragmentation as authorities and business leaders attended the annual gathering.
Nearly one in 4 of the greater than 900 consultants surveyed throughout academia, business and policymaking ranked battle, together with wars and terrorism, as essentially the most extreme threat to financial progress for the 12 months forward.
Extreme climate, the No. 1 concern in 2024, was the second-ranked hazard.
“Rising geopolitical tensions and a fracturing of trust are driving the global risk landscape,” WEF Managing Director Mirek Dusek mentioned in feedback accompanying the report. “In this complex and dynamic context, leaders have a choice: to find ways to foster collaboration and resilience, or face compounding vulnerabilities.”
Donald Trump, who is because of be sworn in because the forty seventh president of the United States on Monday, will tackle the assembly nearly on Jan. 23, being one of many prime leaders becoming a member of the occasion.
“He will join us digitally” on Thursday, Jan. 23, WEF President Borge Brende mentioned in a press briefing previewing the annual assembly, including it will be a “very special moment” to be taught extra in regards to the new U.S. administration’s plans.
“There is a lot of interest, of course, among our participants – also the rest of the world – to decipher and understand the policies of the new administration,” he mentioned.
The U.S. president’s return to the White House was already anticipated to dominate discussions in Davos, a gathering he attended throughout his first time period in workplace.
Brende mentioned organizers anticipated “high-level representation” from the Trump administration throughout the previous few days of the WEF, which closes on Jan. 24.
Trump’s plans to chop taxes and impose commerce tariffs have raised issues that his insurance policies may rekindle inflation and stifle international financial progress.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the meantime, will attend the assembly and provides a speech on Jan. 21, in line with the WEF organizers.
Advisers to Trump concede that the Ukraine struggle will take months and even longer to resolve, Reuters reported on Wednesday, a pointy actuality examine on his pledge to strike a peace deal on his first day within the White House.
Among different international leaders as a result of attend the Davos assembly are European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and China’s Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang.
There shall be a “different dynamic for this Davos,” mentioned Josh Lipsky, senior director of Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, the place attendees “will be reacting over the week to what’s coming out of the new White House.”
Milei, Mideast leaders
Brende mentioned 350 prime authorities officers and greater than 900 CEOs will attend this 12 months’s WEF amongst practically 3,000 contributors.
Trump grew to become the primary sitting U.S. president to attend in practically twenty years, adopted by one other in 2020.
On the world stage, he has been more and more joined by leaders of the same persuasion after elections in 2024 noticed incumbents pushed out.
One of his admirers, Argentine President Javier Milei, will return to Davos this 12 months after a fiery debut speech in 2024.
“We’re seeing the re-emergence of countries thinking about their national interest,” mentioned Karen Harris, an economist on the consulting agency Bain & Company.
While Trump inherits a number of crises within the Middle East, the WEF will host Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa, in addition to Iranian Vice President Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Syria’s interim Foreign Minister, Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani, can also be anticipated to participate weeks after the autumn of Bashar Assad.
Away from geopolitics, synthetic intelligence shall be a significant matter of debate, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy among the many attendees.
‘Declining optimism’
Yet, regardless of all high-profile visits, the WEF, in its survey on the worldwide outlook, warned of “declining optimism.”
“As we enter 2025, the global outlook is increasingly fractured across geopolitical, environmental, societal, economic and technological domains. Over the last year, we have witnessed the expansion and escalation of conflicts, a multitude of extreme weather events amplified by climate change, widespread societal and political polarization and continued technological advancements accelerating the spread of false or misleading information,” it mentioned.
The menace of misinformation and disinformation was ranked as essentially the most extreme international threat over the following two years, in line with the survey and it was the identical rating as in 2024.
The survey additionally confirmed that over a 10-year horizon, environmental threats dominated consultants’ threat issues. Extreme climate was the highest longer-term international threat, adopted by biodiversity loss, important change to the earth’s programs and a scarcity of pure sources.
Global temperatures final 12 months exceeded 1.5 levels Celsius (2.7 levels Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial period for the primary time, bringing the world nearer to breaching the pledge governments made underneath the 2015 Paris local weather settlement.
A worldwide threat is outlined by the survey as a situation that will negatively have an effect on a major proportion of the worldwide gross home product (GDP), inhabitants or pure sources. Experts had been surveyed in September and October.
The majority of respondents, 64%, anticipate a multipolar, fragmented international order to persist.
Source: www.dailysabah.com