Davos & Its Global Leaders Failed Us
Excerpt from The Understory: Issue One
It now seems obvious that world is a whole lot different than it may have seemed in January 2020 when heads of state, corporate executives, institutional investors, and other government and business leaders from around the world took their annual pilgrimage to Davos, Switzerland, for the 2020 World Economic Forum. We stand perilously at the edge of changed futures as a result of (in)action to racism, social inequality, deforestation, resource extraction, and pollution. In the wake of the George Floyd murder and three weeks of protests around the world, it has become apparent that we have come to rely on citizen uprisings to ignite responsive action from global leaders rather than a willingness to act on the courage of their own convictions.
This year marked the 50th anniversary of Davos, and the World Economic Forum had something more than usual to prove–that their influence ushered in a new era of stakeholder rather than shareholder capitalism. Unwilling to have their historic legacy tarnished, the World Economic Forum decided to give its stakeholder capitalism ethos another kick at the can. Davos 2020, Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World, focused on “renewing the concept of stakeholder capitalism to overcome income inequality, societal division and the climate crisis.”
