GENEVA (AP) — The Swiss city of Davos will host 52 heads of state and government and nearly 600 chief executives when the World Economic Forum holds its annual meeting in the Alps next week, organizers said Tuesday.
Forum organizers said their latest lineup for the elite gathering of political leaders, business executives, cultural tastemakers and heads of international organizations will address issues facing a divided world at the start of 2023, with war and conflict.economic pressures and climate change in focus.
“There is no doubt that our 53rd annual meeting in Davos will take place in the most complex geopolitical and economic context in decades,” said forum president Borge Brende, pointing out challenges such as the threat of a global recession, rising dizzying of energy and food pricesand the need to better address global warming.
Russia’s nearly year-long war in Ukraine and COVID-19 restrictions and now a wave of infections in China have helped weaken the global economy.
Brende pointed to the “record turnout” of 52 heads of state and government, more than half of them from Europe, as well as some recently elected leaders, including President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea, President Gustavo Petro of Colombia and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines About 300 government ministers were expected to participate.
The forum chair said some delegations had asked that the names of their participants “not be shared” immediately for security reasons. Brende said, for example, that unspecified “high-level” delegations from China and Ukraine would attend.
The United States will be represented by officials from the Biden administration, including presidential climate envoy John Kerry, head of national intelligence Avril Haines and US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, as well as several governors and congressional lawmakers.
The meeting features a series of topics discussed in hundreds of public sessions, as well as more secret secret deals by business leaders at the luxury hotels along the Davos Waterfront, near the conference center that hosts the meeting.
The agenda is full of discussions on ideas, innovations and the search for public-private cooperation on issues such as energy, climate, investment, trade, future technologies, employment, health and social mobility, among others.
It’s hard to predict whether altruistic discussions will produce substantive announcements that advance the world’s most pressing challenges. The event has been criticized for hosting wealthy executives who sometimes arrive on emitting corporate jets.
On Monday, the opening day of the meeting, four figures of art and culture will be honored: the artist Maya Lin, the soprano Renée Fleming and the actors Idris and Sabrina Dhowre Elba will receive the “Crystal Award” of the forum, awarded in recognition of artists who are “bridge-builders and role models for all leaders in society.”
