World Economic Forum
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The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a Geneva-based foundation whose Annual Meeting of chief executives of the world's richest corporations, some national political leaders (presidents, prime ministers and others), and selected intellectuals and journalists, about 2000 people in all, is usually held in Davos, Switzerland. There are also regional meetings throughout the year. It was founded in 1971 by Klaus M. Schwab, a business professor in Switzerland, and has helped fund his family foundation, the Schwab Foundation for Economic and Social Development.
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Operations
According to its supporters, the WEF is an ideal place for dialogue and debate regarding the major social and economic problems of the planet, since representatives of both the most powerful economic organisations and the most powerful political organisations are present, since intellectuals also participate, and since there is a generally informal atmosphere encouraging wide-ranging debate. Journalists have access to every session at the Annual Meeting in Davos and the majority of sessions are webcast live so that the debates can be open to a wider public. In all about 600 journalists from print, radio and TV take part in the meeting. Whilst business and political leaders make up the majority of participants, NGO leaders from groups such as Amnesty International, Transparency International, Oxfam and various UN organisations attend,as well as trades union leaders and religious leaders.
According to its critics, the WEF is really just a business forum, where the richest businesses can easily negotiate deals with one another and lobby the world's most powerful politicians, and that the aim is profit-making rather than solving economic problems like poverty. Moreover, given the domination of the WEF by corporations, with the status of corporate personhood, and the influence of the WEF in global decision making, it is seen by some critics as an unelected, non-democratic, elitist, secretive world Senate.
For these reasons, WEF meetings have regularly attracted anti-globalization movement protests, especially since the Annual Meeting in January 2000. The suspension of civil liberties during the protests is seen by the critics as evidence of the collusion of local authorities with the anti-human rights nature of the WEF.
Geographical balance
While the WEF has the word World in its title, its membership, the membership of its board, and the attendance at its annual meetings are dominated by people from Europe, the USA and Japan. The main 1000 member companies are only invited to the WEF if they have annual revenues of over $1 billion (as of 2002), companies from poor countries are automatically underrepresented. The WEF claims that 200 companies, mainly from the developing world, are invited to join the WEF membership and events.
In the 2002 Annual Meeting, 75% of participants were from Europe (39%) and the USA (36%), despite their representing only 17% of the world's population. West Asian participants were about five times overrepresented relative to their population, i.e. they constituted 4% of participants although they only represent 0.8% of the world's population.
Correspondingly, although 60% of us live in Asia (as of 2002), only 7.7% of the participants at the 2002 Annual Meeting were from Asia.
Gender balance
Until 2001, the main WEF decision making boards, the Forum Board of Directors and the Council Board of Directors, were 100% male. In 2001, of nine new members, one was female. In 2001 the WEF started its 'Women Leaders Program' with the stated aim of increasing the participation of women in WEF activities and involving them as members in WEF communities. From 2001 to 2004 the WEF estimates that it has increased the participation of women leaders in the Annual Meeting from 8 to 12%.
Participation by politicians
In 2000, 33 national leaders attended the Annual Meeting, including Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, King Abdullah Il Ibn Hussein of Jordan, Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid, South African president Thabo Mbeki and Argentinian president Fernando de la Rua. In 2002, there were 27 elected national leaders, 3 members of royalty, 9 US senators and 9 members of the US House of Representatives expected to attend.
Membership fees
As of 2002, each member company pays a basic annual membership fee of $12,500 and a $6,250 Annual Meeting fee. However, in order for a company to be able to participate in deciding the agendas of the Annual Meeting and the regional meetings, the company must pay $250,000 each year in order to be an Institutional and/or Knowledge Partner, and $78,000 to be an Annual Meeting Partner. The WEF describes the selection of Partners as being based on ability to contribute to and benefit from the mission of the Forum.
WEF's income in 2001 was $104 million, where $38 million of this was from membership fees.
Media access
At any WEF Annual Meeting or regional meeting, while many journalists, selected by the WEF and known as media fellows, participate in most of the formally scheduled panels and events, they are excluded from the many informal industry-wide workshops and private meetings between corporate executives, political leaders and leaders of international financial institutions. Since these informal meetings happen without access either by the mainstream media or authorisation by national parliaments, critics consider them to be undemocratic in nature. The World Economic Forum's own magazine is the annual Global Agenda.
Participation by NGOs
The WEF has attempted to create dialogue with critics by inviting representatives of NGOs to participate in Annual Meetings.
In the 2000 Annual Meeting, participating NGOs included:
- Save the Children
- Amnesty International
- World Wildlife Fund for Nature
- Transparency International
- Oxfam
- Friends of the Earth
- Focus on the Global South
In the 2001 Annual Meeting, while most of these NGOs were invited again, Friends of the Earth and Focus on the Global South were not invited. Critics claim that these two NGOs were not invited in 2001 because their criticisms were too strong and clear.
In 2001, other NGOs were invited, including those from poor countries:
- Martin Khor of the Third World Network in Malaysia
- Vandana Shiva of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in India
- Vicki Tauli of Indigenous People's International in the Philippines
and from rich countries, such as:
However, none of these were invited back in 2002. According to critics such as the Financial Times, the Forum says it is not inviting organizations that contribute only negative views and do not support its "mission" to narrow global divisions.
Greenpeace spent two years trying to cooperate with the WEF on the issue of global warming, but withdrew from the 2002 Annual Meeting because it found the WEF uncooperative. In a letter to Greenpeace, Klaus M. Schwab responded that the demands made by Greenpeace to the automobile industry at the 2001 meeting led to problems.
WEF responses to critics
At the 2001 Annual Meeting, the Swiss Authorities spent $5.4 million on security. In the 2001 Annual Report, Klaus M. Schwab compared the threat of violentalternative globalization protestors to the threat of terrorists. Some critics judge that these type of reactions amount to a refusal to accept and respond to the criticism, however the Forum has always made it clear that is happy to engage with peaceful critics, indeed there have been a number of 'dialogues' with groups from the World Social Forum in Porto Allegre and the Open Forum was started to help foster this dialogue.
The WEF claims that it wishes to open up dialogue with critics. Starting during the 2003 Annual Meeting in January in Davos, an Open Forum Davos 2003 was held in parallel with the main Annual Meeting. 300 members of the public able attended free of charge and the WEF hosted the Open Forum again in 2004 and 2005.
In 2001 the WEF started a series of 'initiatives' with the purpose of engaging business in tackling problems that concern business and its critics. The WEF's portfolio of active initiatives in 2005 include corporate citizenship, global health, global governance, greenhouse gas and water.
Controversy over the WEF's role in planetary decision making is likely to continue throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Regional meetings
The WEF holds between five and ten regional meetings per year, enabling close contact between corporate business leaders, local government leaders and NGOs. The mix of regions varies from year to year, but the meetings in Africa, China and India have been held consistently over the past decade. The European Competitiveness Summit planned for October 2003 in Dublin, was cancelled. Protestors hypothesise that the Dublin meeting was cancelled because city authorities and/or WEF organisers were worried about holding the meeting in the face of massive, peaceful, organised, radically transparent, informed protest. However, the official reason for cancellation was that a report, the European Competitiveness Report would not be ready in time for the Summit. A much larger European meeting was indeed held in Warsaw, Poland a few months later, where the European Competitiveness Report was indeed launched.
Networked readiness index
The World Economic Forum publishes an annual report called the Networked readiness index. It focuses the propensity for countries to exploit the opportunities offered by information and communications technology. It also ranks countries by number on these criteria.
See also
External links
- The Official World Economic Forum (http://www.weforum.org) Site
further research
- Public Citizen | in-depth analysis (http://www.citizen.org/documents/WEFreport.PDF) (in PDF)
- WEF Announcements for residents (http://www.um.warszawa.pl/v_syrenka/esg/index.php) (Polish)
critics
- Anti-WEF site (http://www.antiwef.org)
- World Economic Forum in Warsaw 28-30.04.2004 (http://www.alter.most.org.pl/wef)
- wa29 coalition | Warsaw April 29 (http://www.wa29.org/)
- Alternative Economic Summit | 28-30.04.2004 Warsaw (http://www.alter.most.org.pl/aes)
- WEF regional meeting Ireland cancelled in October 2003 (http://www.freewebs.com/o2o/)de:Weltwirtschaftsforum
eo:Monda Ekonomia Forumo fr:Forum économique mondial nl:World Economic Forum no:Verdens økonomiske forum pl:Światowe Forum Ekonomiczne pt:Fórum Econômico Mundial