What just happened in Davos?

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Robin Pomeroy, host, Radio Davos: From the World Economic Forum ... This is Radio Davos.

The Forum’s Annual Meeting has just finished. But the year 2026 has just started.

On this episode of Radio Davos- we ask - what just happened in Davos, and where does the world go from here.

On Spotify, YouTube, Apple or wherever you get podcasts and at wef.ch/podcasts, this is Radio Davos.

Davos 2026 began on Monday with a spectacular opening concert featuring Jon Battiste, who blended classical, blues and soul music to welcome an audience into a Congress Hall which later in the week would see some of the most influential figures from government, business and civil society address the Forum, and the world, in a week-long meeting under the theme “A Spirit of Dialogue”.

You can watch that performance, those speeches, and many sessions from Davos on our website. And I’ll be playing clips from some of them on this podcast.

For this episode of Radio Davos, I spoke to some of the people who run the World Economic Forum throughout the year, the people who steer the work of its various Centres. I ask them for their highlights from Davos, and to look ahead to the rest of the year.

Let’s start with Børge Brende, President and Chief Executive Officer of the World Economic Forum, giving his opening address in that Congress Hall to the 3,000 participants from 130 countries, including 65 heads of state and govt and 850 company leaders, as well as academics, entreprenneurs, youth leaders and others.

Børge set out the historical significance of this Davos:

Børge Brende, President and Chief Executive Officer of the World Economic Forum: We are convening at such a consequential moment for the world. When geopolitical developments are fast-moving. When long-standing trade and economic architectures are being redrawn. And when technological forces are reshaping our industries and societies.

We are standing at the start of a new reality. The contours of which are still to be defined. But hopefully it is not the jungle growing back. That is why also the deliberations and dialogues we make here in Davos will shape what comes.

Robin Pomeroy: Børge Brende, President and CEO of the World Economic Forum - you can watch the full Welcoming Remarks and Special Address on playback - links in the shownotes.

So let’s hear from other leading voices at the Forum on what their highlights were, what they are looking out for in 2026 and whether they had a ‘Davos moment’ - a particular experience that can only happen in Davos.

Mirek Dusek, is a Forum managing director who has the role of overseeing the entire Annual Meeting.

Mirek Dušek: I'm Mirek Dušek, Managing Director at the Forum.

Robin Pomeroy: What were your highlights of the week?

Mirek Dušek: I think they're all related to the diplomatic platform that the Annual Meeting really provided this week at a time of really fast-paced change.

The transatlantic relationship, we saw the dialogue here around also Greenland and we also saw a major de-escalation around Ukraine. We had President Zelenskyy here who met President Trump and made an important speech also around Ukraine and Europe. And there were also developments around Gaza where we had the launch of the Board of Peace here in Davos but also other dialogues with, for example, the Palestinian prime minister, the Israeli president. So those would be my diplomatic highlights from the week.

Robin Pomeroy: Do you think the diplomatic and the geopolitical maybe, at least in the media, overshadowed some of the other discussions? Because there was lots of other stuff going on here as well, right?

Mirek Dušek: The other big piece that I think was very important this week is around how we can really wrap our head around innovation and technology deployment in industry and society.

And so we had a number of technologists being put together with top economists, top policymakers and really having very frank discussions around artificial general intelligence, what AI deployment actually means for enterprises, separating the signal from the noise, of course looking at what it actually means for labour markets and we don't have the final answers but we felt was important that we put together people from different disciplines that sometimes have very different views and really have that deep conversation around the potential implications.

Robin Pomeroy: So Davos has kind of set the agenda, set the tone maybe, for the rest of the year. That's kind of one of its roles happening in January. What are you hoping to see? What are your hoping to achieve in 2026?

Mirek Dušek: I mean, the one thing that I'm very excited about is that this has always been a multi-regional gathering, leaders, people from around the world gathered here. We had 65 heads of state, for example, here from around the world.

And so what I'm really looking forward to is to underscore and continue these dialogues in the different regions of the world, we will be, for example, having a important meeting in Saudi Arabia, we'll have an important meeting in Türkiye, but just to underscore that the DNA of this organisation has always been that we connect countries and regions around shared challenges. And so I'm looking forward to conducting some of those dialogues in those important geographies.

Robin Pomeroy: Saudi Arabia, it's like what, March coming up?

Mirek Dušek: That's in April and then of course we have the Summer Davos in China which is an annual meeting that we do and will be in Dalian at the end of June.

Robin Pomeroy: And did you have a Davos moment this year?

Mirek Dušek: I think it was, I follow AI a lot and so really, for example, the discussion between Demis Hassabis and Dario Amodei, it was one of those real discussions around is AGI really around the corner or not and overall the agenda around AI with also Jensen Huang and Elon Musk here. So the innovation dimension. There were many highlights for me and many Davos moments around that.

Robin Pomeroy: Yes, AI was, once again, a huge issue at Davos. So lets hear from the CEOs that Mirek mentioned - all luminaries in the world of AI and tech more broadly: Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind, Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX. And, first, here's Dario Amodei of Anthropic.

Dario Amodei, Anthropic: There's this scene from Carl Sagan's Contact, the movie version of it, where they kind of discover alien life and this international panel that's interviewing people to be humanities representative to meet the alien. One of the questions they ask one of the candidates is, if you could ask the aliens any one question, what would it be? One of character says, I would ask, how did you do it? How did you manage to get through this technological adolescence without destroying yourselves? How did you make it through?

It was like 20 years ago, I think, I saw that movie. It's kind of stuck with me. And that's the frame that I used. We are knocking on the door of these incredible capabilities, right? The ability to build basically machines out of sand, right. I think it was inevitable that the instant we started working with fire. But how we handle it is not inevitable.

And so I think the next few years we're going to be dealing with You know, how do we keep these systems under control that are highly autonomous and smarter than any human?

Demis Hassabis, CEO, Google DeepMind: The reason I've spent my whole career on AI is the upsides of solving basically the ultimate tool for science and understanding the universe around us. I've sort of been obsessed with that since a kid. And building AI should be the ultimate tool for that if we do it in the right way.

The risks also we've been thinking about since at least the start of DeepMind 15 years ago and we kind of foresaw that if you've got the upside it's a dual purpose technology. So. It could be repurposed by, say, bad actors for harmful ends. So we've needed to think about that all the way through.

But I'm a big believer in human ingenuity. But the question is having the time and the focus and all the best minds collaborating on it to solve these problems. I'm sure if we had that, we would solve the technical risk problem.

It may be we don't have that, and then that will introduce risk because we'll be sort of, it'll be fragmented. There'll be different projects and people will be racing each other, then it's much harder to make sure these systems that we produce will be technically safe.

Jensen Huang, CEO, NVIDIA: I would advocate that for the developing countries, build your infrastructure, get engaged in AI, and recognise that AI is likely to close the technology divide because it is so easy to use and so abundant and so accessible. And so, you know, I'm actually fairly optimistic about the potential of AI to lift the countries that are, that are that are emerging.

And for many people who haven't had computer science degree all of you can be programmers now You know and so in the past we had to learn how to programme a computer now you programme a computer by saying to the computer how do I programme you you know? And if I if you don't know how to use an AI just go up to the AI and say I don't know how to using AI. How do I use an AI then it would explain it to you And you say, I like to write a programme to create my own website. How do I do that? And it says, it would ask you a whole bunch of questions about what kind of website you would like to build, and then write you the code.

And so it is that easy to use, and that's, of course, the incredible power of AI, which is exciting.

Elon Musk, CEO Tesla and SpaceX: So I'm just trying to understand how do we get here, what's going on, what's real? Are there aliens? Maybe there are. And if we've got spaceships that are travelling to other star systems, we may encounter aliens and we may find many long-dead alien civilizations. But I just want to know what's going on. I'm curious about the universe and. That's my philosophy.

Larry Fink, Interim Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BlackRock: Do you see yourself ever going to Mars in your lifetime?

Elon Musk: Uh, yeah, I mean, I would say, like, I, you know, I don't... That's a long commitment. I've been asked...

Larry Fink: Wasn't that three years each way?

Elon Musk It's, uh, six months.

Larry Fink: Six months, that's all it is?

Elon Musk: Yeah, six month, but the planets only align every two years. Okay. So, uh... Yeah, I've asked a few times, like... Do I want to, you know, die on Mars? And I'm like, yes, but just not on impact.

Robin Pomeroy: Elon Musk in conversation with Larry Fink, before that a Conversation with Jensen Huang, President and CEO of NVIDIA and before that Demis Hassabis, of Google DeepMind and Dario Amodei of Anthropic, speaking in a session called The Day After AGI - you can watch all of those on our website, links in the show notes.

To learn what the Forum was doing on AI and tech more widely, I spoke to Cathy Li, head of the Forum's Centre for AI Excellence at the World Economic Forum.

Robin Pomeroy: Hi, Cathy, AI was one of the big things again in Davos. What were the highlights for you?

Cathy Li: The highlights were some of the topics that we've been working on over the last 12 to 24 months.

For example, what's coming up next in terms of the form of intelligence we've been exploring over the last couple of years, in terms of what's coming beyond large language models and looking into the future in terms of what model architecture, physical AI, robotics, and multi-agents environment.

There are some very exciting things happening in the technical field. At the same time, we're looking at industries are becoming much more mature in terms of AI transformation. By now, every boardroom has a strategy that they're experimenting and implementing we’re seeing companies and organizations move beyond pilots and getting real performance from their AI implementation.

We're also seeing the AI competitiveness and AI sovreignty agenda being one of the most key topic over the last 12 months, where countries are moving towards more of a strategic interdependence and working with each other to form different kind of partnerships in order to achieve the goal of AI sovereignty. I would say, yeah, those are some of the most exciting developments that we saw in Davos.

Robin Pomeroy: So from one Davos to the next, there's maybe a leap in, I mean, you're having conversations throughout the year, but it strikes me as within 12 months, a lot has moved on and you could probably feel that in the conversations there in Davos.

Cathy Li: Absolutely, that's why people sometimes say pne year for humans are almost 100 years in AI, lots could happen. again, as I mentioned earlier, we're seeing there could be potential breakthrough in the more sophisticated model, really looking at how do we use the data around us, all the physical AI, the real world data to infuse into the models to also reduce hallucination and to have more of a deterministic approach. And I think that's quite exciting. And then on the AI sovereignty front, again, the thinking has become much more mature. Previously, AI sovereignty was framed more as full national ownership. Now, the thinking has become much more sophisticated towards strategic interdependence and AI sovereignty can only be achieved through a combination of targeted domestic investment and international partnership.

So we're going to double down on our work on sovereign AI infrastructure, what constitutes a sovereign AI infrastructure, and what are some of the emerging and creative solutions that could come out, such as digital embassies, which we did extensive briefing on in Davos.

Robin Pomeroy: What's a digital embassy?

Cathy Li: So digital embassy, can think of it as almost how you would think about physical embassies. means that a guest country could store your data the territory of a host country, but the data and the AI workloads will still be subject to the guest country's jurisdiction. So almost as if the host country carved out a physical space that the guest country could operate to store their data and at the same time that allows all the countries in the world to be able to access to the sovereign AI infrastructure.

So for us it's very exciting because it's one way to do this kind of demand aligned planning for supply and on the other hand it truly would allow all the countries and regions to have access to the most advanced AI models in the world.

Robin Pomeroy: Did you have a Davos moment?

Cathy Li: I did and it's actually not connected to anything specifically we do on AI. It's a workshop that we run on digital safety where we see, you know, very different community and personalities participating from the face leader community to the community that's advocating anti-hate speech to the communities that have been safeguarding children in the digital era. So again, we're seeing the forum, first and foremost, has remained to be a central platform for public discourse. also gives me hope and confidence that people can still unite, even in the age where everything seemed to be so disjointed and everyone's doing their separate effort, but there are topics that can unite even the most polarized community on different spectrum under the same cause. That was my Davos moment.

Robin Pomeroy: I have a Radio Davos episode all about faith and a lot of that episode is related to AI as well. That will be coming out in a few weeks time. I'll send it your way, Cathy, into our listeners. Do look out for that. Cathy Li, thanks very much for joining us.

Cathy Li: Thank you Robin.

!!!! Kiva?

Robin Pomeroy: My colleague Pooja Chhabria spoke to Jeremy Jurgens, Head of the Forum's Centre for Frontier Technologies and Innovation - and asked for his highlights from Davos.

Jeremey Jurgens: One of the highlights this year was that we're having a much more mature and thoughtful discussion around AI.

I think last year it felt fresh, new, but there was a lot of uncertainty, what we could do with AI, where it would go, and so on.

This year we actually see companies starting to deploy AI. They're bringing it into their organisations. We see user adoption, you know, and hundreds of millions of people globally using it. And there's a lot more thought given around, okay. Well, how can this help? How can this improve productivity? How can make quality of life better?

So I think the maturity of that discussion has been really powerful.

Second area I would highlight is the extent that we're also having a discussion of technology, frontier technologies beyond AI. We had Nobel Prize winners here in a number of domains. We've looked at quantum technologies, biotech, space, fusion. So, areas that, in a few years, will be just as transformative as AI, and again, can have the ability to improve our quality of lives and health of society.

And last area is that we also didn't overlook the risks. And how do we also make sure that people benefit from the application and the deployment of technologies?

So as more of the intelligence goes out to the edge, that we're embedded, we see intelligence embedded in daily devices, a number of processes, we have to be much more thoughtful about cybersecurity. Today, there's an asymmetry with what the attackers have available to them and what the average citizen or average business may have available themselves.

But through cooperation, we can aggregate our knowledge and collectively address these challenges together. And I think this has been an important element also within this week's Annual Meeting.

Pooja Chhabria: And looking ahead to the rest of the year, what are you aiming to achieve in 2026?

Jeremey Jurgens: This year, we're very much looking forward to going deeper in each of those domains.

We've got exciting areas, for example, like biomanufacturing. We're looking at, okay, how do we actually scale up deployment of some of these new capabilities that are taking place in biology? We're also exploring early steps in the implications of brain-controlled interfaces. These are devices that have the ability to return sight to the blind, movement to the motionless and hearing to the deaf. So you have these new capabilities that, again, can augment or improve the lives of so many people around the world. So this is something that we're looking forward to a better understanding and helping support the deployment across this wide range of technologies.

Another area I'm very much looking forward to is that the advancement of technology, it's not just a phenomenon in the United States, in Silicon Valley, or in China, it's actually a global phenomenon. As these technologies become more capable, and more componentized as it may be, you can actually have countries that can get the benefits without having to build out the full ecosystem necessary.

So if I use an example for space, for example, used to be that you had to use your own launching system, your own rockets, your own satellites, your tracking stations, and so on. And today, you can focus on one element of that, and now there's over 100 nations that are actually able to participate in the space economy.

So this year, we want to focus on making sure that these technologies get disseminated to as many users as possible, and that we get the positive benefits effectively around the whole world.

Robin Pomeroy: Staying with technology just for a moment...

Kiva Allgood: Kiva Allgood. I'm a managing director at the World Economic Forum and I have the privilege of leading the San Francisco office as well as all the work on advanced manufacturing, supply chains, the experience economy and urban transformation.

Robin Pomeroy: So what were your highlights from the Davos week?

Kiva Allgood: Well, we had many firsts.

For the first time in a long time, you know, since before COVID, we have started to explore and expand our work on the experience economy. So think all things tourism, really actually going beyond tourism and its impact on the communities as well as on sports. So those were some really interesting dialogues.

We also were able to host for the very first time our Global Lighthouse Network Award ceremony and dinner, as well as the launch of our AI industrial transformation platform called Lumina.

Robin Pomeroy: Remind us what a lighthouse is?

Kiva Allgood: Yes, so lighthouse. Global lighthouses are really the best of the best. You can think of them as a Michelin star for production sites. So it can be anything from a mine to a steel mill to you produce anything.

We also, for the first time, are looking at a couple new dimensions. So we now have talent lighthouses that are really rewarding the people that do the work for coming up with new and novel ways for approaching talent in a production and supply chain environment. So that was also another first for us.

Robin Pomeroy: And what is this Lumina then?

Kiva Allgood: Lumina is an AI platform. It is built off of eight years worth of very deep data from our Global Lighthouse Network. So again, the Global Lighthouse Network is a peer community. It is awarded by an advisory board of the best of the best in manufacturing and supply chain. And we were able to take all of that insight and information and really come up with a playbook. And Lumina is an AI platform that allows for you to go in and look at what tools are available and what problem statements do I have to figure out how you can apply all of those new ideas from an industrial transformation perspective. So very focused on key process indicators, very focused on process improvement. It's got a nice little Luna is our AI agent and she can help you through the journey as well.

Robin Pomeroy: I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Anything you're looking out for for the rest of the year.

Kiva Allgood: Yeah, I'd say for us, the discussion around the reconfiguration of global value chains came up in a lot of different discussions. In the manufacturing and supply chain realm, that really means agility is going to be top of mind for everybody. There's going to have to be a lot of reconfiguration.

We just launched another report that really looks at the global value chains and what you need from a country level to really make an informed decision. So lots of new insights there with that report as well. And you know, I think I'm looking forward to continuing on that journey.

Always for me, the most I'd say aha moments happen in those small multi-lats and the discussions where you get the private sector, the public sector, academia together. They really stimulate different ideas and different approaches and they set our agenda for the whole year. So I'm looking forward to digging into the notes and feedback from all those sessions.

If I rewind, last year at Davos, we had a multi-lat with a core group of folks and the number one thing that came out of that was a really big gap in the number of people who are interested in going into work in manufacturing and supply chain. That started a project called SmartStart, which we also announced this year, SmartStart USA, which is a curriculum that has been co-created between industry, academia, and the public side of the house. So we were able to really take best practises from several different states. We looked at what does NASA do? What does first robotics do? What does Smithsonian Education do? What do industry people need and we've paired that up. So over 60 different constituents over the last year have helped co-develop that curriculum and we're launching it in New York. So we're super excited about that and that was also a press announcement that we made at Davos this year.

Robin Pomeroy: You're listening to Radio Davos as we look back on the Annual Meeting 2026 and ask: what just happened in Davos.

With the world's attention focused during Davos week on US President Donald Trump's threat to take control of Greenland, geopolitics was perhaps an even bigger issue than AI at Davos this year. Let's hear from the Forum's Ariel Kastner.

Ariel Kastner: I'm Ariel Kastner, the head of the geopolitical team at the World Economic Forum.

Robin Pomeroy: Hi Ariel, it's been a busy week for you, hasn't it?

Ariel Kastner: Maybe to say the least, yeah, very busy, a lot going on, and a lot to digest, honestly.

Robin Pomeroy: I mean there's always interesting geopolitics, things going on year round that you're involved in, but this week has been exceptional. I mean if you could just pick out one or two things of the week that were important and that maybe changed the games in some way, what would you say?

Ariel Kastner: Sure. Let me start with the first day of the Annual Meeting. That's when we had the Davos launch of the Global Cooperation Barometer. So that's a tool that the Forum developed in collaboration with McKinsey about three years ago to measure the state of cooperation broadly and in five key areas, so trade, innovation, health, security, and technology.

And what we found this year was that in looking at 41 metrics of the barometer that cooperation isn't ending despite strong geopolitical headwinds. It's really evolving. So we're seeing more forms of minilateral partnerships, so smaller groupings of countries, regional partnerships, and really thematic partnerships. And I think we saw that play out a lot this week in Davos.

Robin Pomeroy: Maybe there've been events in geopolitics and global cooperation that have changed. Would you say that there's a slightly different picture at the end of this week than there was at the start of the week?

Ariel Kastner: Yeah, so I think what we saw this week, and let's be clear, this was not an easy week for the transatlantic alliance or for the geopolitical context more broadly.

But despite, I think, a challenging context, what I saw in the conversations I took part in, in the sessions I participated in, was a real commitment to deepen collaboration, Europe, deepen European collaboration, European collaboration with other regions.

We saw, of course, the Forum continued commitment among partners to implement the Africa Continental Free Trade Area that would bring about $3.4 trillion in value to the continent when fully implemented. We saw even faith leaders come together to discuss how to advance a peaceful solution to what's going on in Gaza.

So I think despite the really complex and challenging geopolitical week that we saw, we saw commitment inside the Congress Centre to advance cooperative approaches moving forward.

Robin Pomeroy: The Davos week is over, but the year has just begun, because the World Economic Forum is working throughout the year on its various things. Are there milestones ahead for you in the coming year?

Ariel Kastner: We are looking, I think, to advance this work of identifying what can collaborative approaches look like in the current context. And key to that, the foundation of identifying what cooperation could look like in a more challenging geostrategic context, is dialogue, is having parties talk to each other, finding where there's common areas of agreement.

And so looking ahead, we're looking to the Forum's meeting in Saudi Arabia in the spring. We're looking to meetings throughout the year to carry this conversation forward, bringing together stakeholders to unpack where do we see alignment despite a more challenging context.

Robin Pomeroy: Davos moment, kind of a moment that could only happen in Davos, did you have one of those this year?

Ariel Kastner: Maybe I'll look to the first day of the Annual Meeting at 6.30 in the morning at the security line coming into the Congress Centre. And for those who haven't been to the Annual Meeting, getting into the congress centre is a lot like airport security. There's a long queue. You put your bags on the conveyor belt.

And I was queueing up at 6.30 in the morning in quite a long line already. And I looked around and I saw a couple of CEOs I recognised. I saw an expert that was going to take part later that day in a discussion we were convening. And it struck me that everyone was going through this kind of unpleasant experience to come into the Congress Centre to talk to each other.

And it felt to me a bit like that is what dialogue is about. It's not always easy, it requires patience, it require some compromise, but we do it because it's meant to advance important things.

And so maybe that's not so much a Davos moment as a Davos metaphor, but that's stuck out at me on the first day of everything.

Robin Pomeroy: No, I know exactly what you mean because you can turn up here not a crack of dawn. It's several hours before dawn usually, extremely cold you have to take your coat off put everything through and then...+

Ariel Kastner: And I think everyone is patient about it, and they're doing it for the same reason, because we all want to talk to each other, we all want to find areas of collaboration and how do we address important issues together.

Larry Fink: So let me introduce and welcome back to Davos The president of the United States, Donald J Trump

Donald Trump, President, USA: Well, thank you very much, Larry. It's great to be back in beautiful Davos, Switzerland, and to address so many respected business leaders, so many friends, a few enemies, and all of the distinguished guests. It's a Who's Who, I will say that.

Robin Pomeroy: Donald Trump addressed an overflowing Congress Hall in a lengthy and wide-ranging speech. Let me play you a couple of clips about the most newsworthy subject within that speech: Greenland:

Donald Trump: We never ask for anything and we never got anything. We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. But I won't do that. Okay? Now everyone's saying, ‘Oh, good.’ That's probably the biggest statement I made, because people thought I would use force. But I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force. I won't use force.

Robin Pomeroy: A little later in the speech, he continued.

Donald Trump: So, we want a piece of ice for world protection. And and they won't give it. We've never asked for anything else, and we could have kept that piece of land, and we didn't. So they have a choice. You can say ‘yes ‘and we will be very appreciative, or you can say ‘no’ and we will remember.

Robin Pomeroy:You can watch the full Special Address by Donald J. Trump on our website - link in the shownotes.

Another government head who was widely cited in the media at Davos happened one day before. Mark Carney, prime minister of Canada struck quite a different tone:

Mark Carney, Prime Minister, Canada: We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

If great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from transactionalism will become harder to replicate.

In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice – compete with each other for favour, or to combine to create a third path with impact.

We shouldn't allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity and rules will remain strong, if we choose to wield them together.

Robin Pomeroy: Selected clips there from the Special Address by Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada.

Trade was at the heart of the some of the geopolitical tensions on display in Davos. Let's hear from another colleague of mine.

Kimberley Botwright: Hello, my name is Kimberly Botwright and I'm the Deputy Head of our Centre for Regions, Trade and Geopolitics.

Robin Pomeroy: Hi Kimberley, should we talk about trade?

Kimberley Botwright: I think that would be good to do.

Robin Pomeroy: Well, you tell me what happened on trade this week.

Kimberley Botwright: It was a pretty box office. I think we had a lot going on in the headlines globally. But importantly then, many important conversations moved forward here in Davos.

We had major world leaders converging and discussing that, while trade is definitely seeing some headwinds, if we talk about the multilateral framework, I think we did see that groups of countries were coming together and trying to find ways to move forward in different configurations.

Robin Pomeroy: In what ways were we moving forward?

Kimberley Botwright: So for example, we did have conversation on our digital economy framework agreement that a small group of Asia Pacific nations are continuing to progress and the Forum's been playing a key role in feeding private sector insights into that to make sure that the framework really delivers the market signal to make the digital economy work across ASEAN nations.

Robin Pomeroy: So what this is trading digital services?

Kimberley Botwright: Yeah, exactly, digital services, but also things like e-payments, data flows. Data flowing across borders is fundamental to how we're going to move forward on the digital economy and many of the AI pieces that have been talked about here in Davos this week as well.

Robin Pomeroy: Any other highlights from the week?

Kimberley Botwright: Definitely. We also had a session on critical minerals. I think we can say if last year was the year of the tariff, this year, 2026, might be the year of minerals, that's a prediction going forward.

But to set that up, we are seeing many economies looking to secure new types of mineral deals so that they can diversify the mineral supply chain. So some of those conversations started, but also importantly, again, with the private sector, so that deal that governments conclude sends that signal to the private sector to diversify the supply chain, these two things can't happen in silos.

Robin Pomeroy: That's probably happening across all kinds of trading goods and services though, isn't it? The diversification, aiming for resilience if things go wrong with certain supply chains. Is that something you've been seeing happening over months leading up to here and joining this week as well?

Kimberley Botwright: I think we can say that diversify, diversify diversify was a big theme of the conversations this week.

Robin Pomeroy: What about the year going forward then, 2026? Are there landmarks you're expecting, things you're working on that you want to tell us about?

Kimberley Botwright: Yeah, moving slightly away from trade and at that bigger economic picture, within the Centre we're really looking forward to continuing the spirit of dialogue in various other locations. So let's say the spirit's going to travel on.

We'll be heading to Jeddah in April for a global meeting on growth and collaboration. Of course, we have our traditional meeting in China in June, but we're also and have managed to secure and announce here at this Davos several country strategy meetings. They will be held in Turkey in March, we'll have one in hopefully in Egypt in the autumn and in Panama also in the Autumn.

So I think why that is important is because we will be able to have really good public-private conversations on economic reform, growth and jobs not just here up in the mountains but also continuing that conversation throughout the year in different locations.

Robin Pomeroy: Did you have a Davos moment, something that could only happen in Davos?

Kimberley Botwright: I think because so much was happening in this Davos, my Davos moment is rather that, that this was the first time that I've really seen stock markets moving based on conversations that were happening here in Davos. And so it was pretty exciting to be a part of that and to witness that.

Robin Pomeroy: Kimberley Botwright on trade.

The head of the World Trade Organisation spoke on two sessions in Davos, one called Many Shapes of Trade, on Thursday, and on the Global Economic Outlook, a highlight of the final day, Friday.

Here she is, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General, World Trade Organization:I don't think we'll go back to where we were.

And I think that if I were a business and a policy maker, I would be planning against a world that is not going to go back to where it was. A world that will have built-in uncertainties in it. And therefore, I need to plan for how I'm going to be resilient with my business or my country. And I also touch on something. Kristalina says, if I was running a country, I'd be trying to strengthen myself and my region. And I'd be looking at my region and then building resilience.

So I don't think things will go back, but they will not be as bad as maybe we'll have a slightly better steady state for the future, but I don't believe we are going back.

Robin Pomeroy: Director-General of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala speaking on the Global Economic Outlook on Friday - you can watch the whole thing on our website.

Now, talking of the economy...

Saadia Zahidi: I'm Saadia Zahidi, I'm a Managing Director at the Forum and I head our Centre for the New Economy and Society.

Robin Pomeroy: What were the memorable moments in Davos 2026?

Saadia Zahidi: The general consensus here seems to be that we are walking into 2026 more resilient than a lot of people predicted, but we're not out of the woods. There are big, big, big risks facing the global economy, everything from geoeconomic confrontation and all that that entails from tariffs and investment screening all the way through to jobs and what the impact might be from artificial intelligence, all the way through to what all of this means for inequality and growth and development and people's wages.

Robin Pomeroy: Were there conversations here that moved the dial on any of those things?

Saadia Zahidi: I think in a few ways, but maybe I'll stick with two.

One, I think people simply coming together and sharing their perspectives on what is this economic context. It looks very different from Indonesia and Brazil and India and Pakistan and South Africa than it does from the United States or from France or Germany or Japan. And I think bringing together those perspectives, pooling those perspectives allowed everybody to build a richer picture of where the risks are and where the growth opportunities are. So that certainly was one key piece.

The second big piece is around jobs. I think we needed these very sober, clear-eyed conversations on where the labour market is headed. And there's clearly two very different pictures that we need to deal with.

One element that we certainly made some progress on is this broader conversation around the developing world and the 800 million job gap that's going to come from all of the young people that are coming into the labour market versus the number of jobs that are being produced and a major call to action around that from both business and government.

And then the other piece which is in much of the advanced economies where there are actually at the moment labour shortages expected because of the demographics. How do you square that circle with where technology is likely to displace jobs and the kind of massive investment in reskilling and upskilling that's needed beyond basic education?

And there again, we made a big set of not just commitments for now, but also conversations about where we need to make a difference in the future. Eight hundred and fifty million people that were reached through reskilled and up-skilled and training through the Forum's Reskilling Revolution programme. But more importantly, beyond the specific set of people, large as that number is, more importantly the underlying systemic change, the broader call to fundamentally changing how economies are focusing on lifelong learning.

Robin Pomeroy: When it comes to risks, people can listen back to our episode, which you co-hosted, Saadia, about the Global Risk Report, which really framed some of these questions just ahead of the Davos week. So that's just an advert for people to go back and listen to that episode if they missed it.

Are there things that you're dealing with that we should be looking out for throughout 2026.

Saadia Zahidi: You know, tying it back to the Global Risk Report, the number one most interconnected risk for the second year in a row was income inequality. Inequality more broadly, that also ties to gender equality and other forms of inequality, but primarily income inequality and the fact that people are feeling the economic pressure of the times that we are currently living in. Where affordability has become a big issue, where cost of living has become a big issue where we're already dealing with higher prices because of the previous wave of inflation and how now there's a deep concern, one about what the geoeconomic situation might do to prices in the future, but also if artificial intelligence is going to disrupt labour markets, what is that going to do to people's ability to earn a living?

All of that together I think is going to be a key part of the Forum's agenda moving forward. It has been for many years, but here we really found a lot of the people that want to be part of a coalition around inequality, social mobility, jobs and growth. That's going to be a key part of work in 2026.

Robin Pomeroy: Did you feel stakeholders were engaging in that here, realising that was a major challenge and something they were going to have to deal with?

Saadia Zahidi: Oh, absolutely. I mean, everything from conversations on technology, to economy, to deeply unrelated topics, you actually ended up having everything really come back to what does this mean for people daily, right? We can admire the context, we can admire the problem and the challenge, or we can start thinking about how did this translate to people's lived reality every single day.

So I heard that in many different directions and I think maybe one piece that came out over and over, a deep recognition that in developing economies and advanced economies within businesses and as individuals the one no-regret move that we can all focus on is investing in human capital. So whether that is us as individuals or whether that's governments and how they're thinking about how to build out the best technology for the future that they can invest in is their people.

Robin Pomeroy: You've had many Davos moments. Was there one moment that stood out this year?

Saadia Zahidi: Oh, I have to say it is the Women Leaders' Dinner, where every year towards the end of the meeting, on that Thursday night before the final day of the meeting, a very large number of the women leaders, some of the most influential women in the world, come together, take stock of everything we've heard, and focus on building their own connections and networks with each other.

And I think to me it really represents that spirit of dialogue, and we've been doing it for a bout. 15 years, but last night was a very powerful, magical moment.

Jeff Merritt: My name's Jeff Merritt, I'm head of Urban Transformation here at the World Economic Forum.

If there's one word for this week, it's unprecedented, I think, across everything that's happening here. But I think as was clear, if you saw the Global Risks Report, turbulence is the name of the game now.

And definitely, if you think about turbulence, if you're probably familiar with that when you're flying, if you own a big plane, you don't feel it as much. Smaller aircraft, you really feel that. And the same thing applies when we're talking to about economies and communities. Our smaller economies, our cities. Are really feeling this and the same thing goes for our small and medium sized enterprises.

Robin Pomeroy: What are the highlights that stood out to you?

Jeff Merritt: Some years it's really about the big picture announcements and sometimes it's more the subtle things that are happening in the background.

This year is the latter. And what I mean by that is the big shift here that we're seeing is actually not big, bold declarations of global change. It's actually about how do we push aside, break through the noise? Keep our focus, double, down on execution. It's more important now than ever to be focused, to deliver results, and that means delivering results on the ground in the communities where companies are operating where their employees live and work.

Robin Pomeroy: And what about the rest of 2026? Are there some milestones you'll be working towards?

Jeff Merritt: 2026 is a year of execution. You know, the commitments that were made here in Davos, their commitments of global companies, oftentimes consumer-facing companies with large workforces, looking at how they can rebuild trust were a really, really pivotal moment where only one in five people globally are feeling that the next generation is gonna be better off.

There are about 70% of individuals that surveyed say that they trust the views of individuals who think differently and so it's really on the front lines that companies are going to rebuild that trust and we're seeing a real move here where companies are driving their purpose-driven activities into local communities and we at the forum have a critical role to play there. How can we actually align those efforts both on the public sector and the private sector side.

Robin Pomeroy: Did you have any Davos moments?

Jeff Merritt: I think for me, one of the great Davos moments was actually right when I arrived here, one of first things that I saw when I was walking down the promenade was a advertisement in a bus stop for Yes Cities. It's one of our flagship initiatives and the forum had nothing to do with those ads. And that's the beauty is when we're doing work where our partners really embrace collective action and they are out there promoting this work and bringing others to the table. That's when you know that you're onto something.

Robin Pomeroy: What is yes it is? Just remind us what that is.

Jeff Merritt: This week in Davos, we announced a new Yes Cities global network, 17 cities around the world that are going to be serving as launch pads and landing pads for new innovations. What does this mean? That means helping to grow local economies to be more resilient, more diversified, and ultimately deliver new products and services that change the way that we live and we work.

One of the things that got a lot of press earlier in the week here in Davos was one of our co-chairs, Larry Fink, talking about the need for the World Economic Forum to really bring the spirit of Davos to cities around the world. We couldn't agree more, and that's why efforts like our Yes Cities initiative are critically important. It's not just about talking about the change that you wanna make. It's about really pushing our partners to walk the walk. That means driving investments into the communities where they operate, where their customers, their clients are.

Robin Pomeroy: Jeff Merritt, head of Urban Transformation and, before him, Saadia Zahidi head of the Centre for the New Economy and Society.

On the economy, Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, spoke on several panels in Davos, and repeatedly warned us all to buckle up for the next shock. You can listen to her on Friday's Global Economic Outlook session, and here she is talking to historian Niall Ferguson on Thursday in a session called Dilemmas around Growth.

Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund: I do expect shocks to continue to come, whether they are shocks from geopolitics, whether they're shocks because of technological advancement that creates misallocation of workers, whether it is climate shocks, I don't know what is going to be. What I do know is that we live in a world of more frequent exogenous shocks.

Matthew Blake: I'm Matthew Blake, I'm the Managing Director at the World Economic Forum. I head the Centre for Financial and Monetary Systems and I also have responsibility for the Centre of Health and Healthcare.

Robin Pomeroy: Let's talk about Financial and Monetary Systems. What were the highlights of the week when it comes to that?

Matthew Blake: We had such a rich programme, Robin. We talked about, obviously, the role in geopolitics and how it is a force to reckon with. And a market-moving force, we actually saw equity markets around the world this week move first down and then back up based on comments that were made here in Davos. That's very significant. We're talking about hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars of market value based on the platform that we operate proudly and market perspectives being shaped by that. Some of the views being expressed here. So geopolitics front and centre.

Technological advancements be it obviously the AI discussion was quite rich. Companies are incorporating AI more forcefully into their business operations and strategy, but there's still a real spectrum in terms of maturity on that. Some companies very involved, others still on the learning curve. I think everyone's essentially on the learning curve but some are much more advanced than others and I think that's natural in any type of technological transformation.

And so AI was big tokenization, stable coins and certainly also some of the demographic trends that we're seeing globally as we live longer as a species. What does that mean for the structure of the financial system and the types of products and services offered to customers.

Robin Pomeroy: Would you say that financial and monetary services sectors is one of the areas where AI is being pioneered and that others will follow?

Matthew Blake: Financial institutions have leveraged AI for a long time. And they're big investors in the space currently like agenetic AI etc. I think to the tune of like 2029 about 100 billion dollars expected in the sector in terms of spend. So a very sophisticated set of actors also looking at this technology as a way to transform business operations.

I think it is a sector that others can learn from. In particular today you know when you look at where AI Is being deployed risk management, onboarding of customers, anti money laundering, anti-terrorist financing discovery and diligence to ensure that those nefarious activities aren't happening and so on. And I think the future is more bringing in agentic models to help individuals augment the workforce to be more efficient and also to drive down costs.

Robin Pomeroy: Are there landmarks you're looking out for in 2026?

Matthew Blake: Absolutely. So we will carry forward many of the themes, the geoeconomic implications on the financial system. That's a core feature. We're studying that regularly. The effects of new technologies on the financial system. demographics as I mentioned. also retail investors you know. individuals are participating much more forcefully in markets. That that's a secular trend from our perspective and our partners believe it as well. So we're looking at that.

A major milestone for us, Robin, is in October of this year. We have a collaboration that we're building with the Bank of Thailand. The Bank of Thailand will actually host the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group for their annual meetings in Bangkok. And we have a collaboration that were building out with the Bank of Thailand to help support their delivery particularly around digitalization and financial services and what that means for customers in terms of how they access products and services. In the financial suite of offerings and how to do that in a responsible way, particularly as we've seen an uptick in fraud as people digitalize their activities with the financial sector. We have to be careful about some of the fraud-related issues, and that's one dimension of many that we're going to look at in October.

Robin Pomeroy: Matthew Blake, head of the Centre for Financial and Monetary Systems.

If you were listening to Radio Davos just before the Annual Meeting, you may have caught our episode on cybersecurity, which included an interview with the head of cyber at Interpol and a discussion about the sometimes underestimated risks to companies' OT - 'operational technology'. That episode was co-hosted by the head of cybersecurity at the Forum

Akshay Joshi: Akshay Joshi, I head the Centre for Cybersecurity here at the World Economic Forum.

Robin Pomeroy: Hi Akshay, we spoke a couple of weeks ago about the Cybersecurity Outlook and I said we'd speak again at the end of this week to find out what's happened in Davos on cybersecurity. What has happened?

Akshay Joshi: So I think there's been great resonance for the insights of the global cybersecurity outlook. As a matter of fact, AI is supercharging the equation and it was fascinating to see that as we move into the agentic era, cybersecurity remains one of the topmost concerns and a lot more discussions around that.

There is broader concern about geopolitics and more so cyber being intertwined with conflicts and other things as we see emerge in the world as of today. So that's a bit of a concern, but what's encouraging is that the vast majority of large organisations seem to be accounting for it in their cyber strategies.

Finally, if I look at cyber-enabled fraud, this has been really big because in conversations with CEOs. It did not come across as an isolated incident. In fact, almost everyone, particularly when they come in new into their organisation, reported having experienced a cloning incident. So it's quite pervasive, actually.

Robin Pomeroy: Cloning what kind of thing does that look like?

Akshay Joshi: So voice cloning, imagine you receive a WhatsApp message, your direct report receives a WhatsApp message that's a voice cloned message from the CEO. And it's like, make a transfer or, you know, share these financial details and all. Typically when the relationships are not as strong and when somebody is coming in new, then we are seeing more of an incident. So for example, new CEOs coming into an organisation, these things are a bit more pronounced.

Robin Pomeroy: Interesting, and earlier you mentioned the geopolitical challenges, how does that manifest itself when it comes to cyber security?

Akshay Joshi: So the reality is that as of today, a lot of organisations can be caught in the crosshairs, right? So if there are operations that are taking place that have more of a geopolitical spin to them, organisations that depend on critical infrastructure, sometimes it's the critical infrastructure that is targeted directly. Other times, you know, how the threat propagates across the networks causes some organisations to be collateral damage. All in all, I think there is heightened uncertainty and therefore the guard is up.

Robin Pomeroy: Are there any landmarks and things that you'll be working on or hoping to achieve during the year?

Akshay Joshi: So the really nice thing about Davos is we get this unique opportunity to get leadership perspectives. And to that extent, we had really great conversations over here, some good ideas in terms of how can we advance our work on cybercrime, which we hope to build. Equally on the resilience side of things, particularly as we think about resilience of small and medium enterprises, lots of discussions and ways by means of which we can be helpful.

So hope to advance these works within the framework of the various initiatives that we are running at the Centre for Cybersecurity and hopefully come back with some good news next year.

Robin Pomeroy: And lots of us have a Davos moment, things that can only happen in Davos. Did you have any of those this year?

Akshay Joshi: You know, one of the things that can only happen in Davos, particularly on cyber, now we have to understand that cyber is essentially perceived as a technical topic, right? What it means is that it's something that's a bit hard to engage with for senior leaders, as opposed to topics such as the economy, such as opportunity side of things, et cetera.

What was really fascinating was that we managed to have a session, which was CEO only, and had around 25 CEOs come in the room. The Davos moment there for me was that contrary to my perception, the CEOs were actually really informed on cyber issues. In fact, so articulate in terms of describing the posture of their organisations and the knowledge that it was like, wow, leadership is really invested in cybersecurity and this has been a big shift from say six years ago. So this is extremely encourgaing.

Robin Pomeroy: Akshay Joshi. There are lots of discussions on cybersecurity to watch back - just type "cyber" into the search box in the Programme part of the website - there's a link in the shownotes to help you do that.

We have looked at geopolitics, at AI and at the economy - what one thing that links them all? Energy. In a moment, we hear from the head of Energy and Materials at the Forum, first, speaking at a session called Who Is Winning on Energy Security?, here's the head of the, International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol.

Fatih Birol, Executive Director, International Energy Agency: We are entering the age of electricity. Electricity demand grows almost three times higher than the total energy demand.

In addition to the usual drivers of electricity demand, there are three additional new drivers. One is that you mentioned, Robin, the AI data centres. One data centre, medium size, consumes electricity as much as a town with 100,000 households. And you need 24-7 electricity. There is no AI without electricity. This is number one.

Number two, air conditioners, this is a big driver of global electricity consumption around the world.

And the third one, the additional one, is electric cars. Today one-fourth of all the cars sold in the world are electric. So they pushed electricity demand growth and it will be met by mainly three things, renewables, natural gas, and nuclear power.

I deal with the energy issues long time. This is my 19th, 19th Davos and if I can tell you something, energy and geopolitics were always interwoven, but I have never ever seen that the energy security risks are so multiplying and the dark and long shadow of geopolitics and energy sector overall.

So therefore, energy security, in my view, should be elevated to the level of national security today. And I can understand that many countries prefer to (a) generate their own energy as much as possible, which gives a boost to nuclear power, renewables, or other energy sources.

And 2, when they make energy trades and deals and contracts, they not only look at how many dollars, how many euros, how many yens, they also look, who is my partner? Can I rely in the long term to this partner?

Roberto Bocca: I'm Roberto Bocca, the head of the Centre for Energy and Materials.

I would say the first highlight is electricity, electricity, electricity.

The electricity demand is growing at an ever faster pace. And there is so much demand for electricity. But unlike as many people think that is about AI only, it is not only about AI. There is demand for the electricity for cooling systems, for electric vehicles, for industrials. But in any case, proper electricity demand.

This is one key highlight. The other one is really how much China is doing when you think about energy transition. And we have seen the deployment of renewable energy, solar, wind, but also batteries and electric vehicles. So it's quite outstanding what is happening in there.

And maybe a third highlight is really the issue of energy security. Energy is a complex system. It's about sustainability, affordability, and security. And security this year was really top of the agenda.

Robin Pomeroy: Are there any things you're hoping to achieve in 2026?

Roberto Bocca: Absolutely. When we think of the demand for energy that is growing, we really need to tackle the optimisation of this demand and the cleanliness of this demand. And the industrial areas are the place where these things can happen. Because if you optimise the infrastructure for energy for industrial area, also the final product that come out from chemical plant or steel plant and so on will be cheaper.

So tackling the demand where is aggregated, where there are industrial clusters, as we call it, is an opportunity and we are working on that. We have now 40 clusters around the world that are working with us to tackle this issue.

Robin Pomeroy: That's something we've covered on Radio Davos, the industrial clusters. We had an episode which looked at Spain and one in Antwerp, in Belgium. So you've now got 40 of these. Just explain again what an industrial cluster exactly is.

Roberto Bocca: Yeah, we have 40 of those in 20 countries. So an industrial cluster is effectively in an industrial zone, is where you have a number of... Take a port, the Port of Antwerp or Port of Rotterdam, where you had, yes, the port, but around this there is a chemical industry or steel industry or aluminium industries. And so all of these industries are co-located and so there is an opportunity to have infrastructure for energy that will reduce the cost.

Robin Pomeroy: Did you have a Davos moment?

Roberto Bocca: I did, I did indeed, I was lucky enough to speak with two Nobel Prizes, not one, two, and I was really struck by their curiosity. You would think that Nobel Prize are the people that know the most, well they do, and they are still curious, they will still ask questions.

I was moderating a session on fusion and there was a Nobel Prize in asking questions and trying to understand more. So that for me is a numbing and very interesting moment where you see a Nobel prize, why he won it, I think is about curiosity. Is because they keep trying to learn.

Robin Pomeroy: That's a really good Davos moment because we're surrounded by a lot of very, very smart people here, real high achievers, and yet, yes, they're always asking questions still. We can all learn from that, right, Roberto?

Roberto Bocca: Absolutely, there are many people here to talk, but it's fantastic to see there are also many people here to listen and learn.

Robin Pomeroy: Roberto Bocca, the head of the Centre for Energy and Materials at the Forum, and before him, Fatih Birol, Executive Director, International Energy Agency.

That was energy, so what about climate change? Here's climate scientist Johan Rockström speaking at a session on Tuesday called How Can We Build Prosperity within Planetary Boundaries?

Johan Rockström, Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research: With the three sources of scientific evidence that proves that we now have overwhelming evidence of the need to transition the global economy within prosperity, within planetary boundaries.

The first one is that the human pressures on the planet has now reached a crisis point. The era where we can continue with economic growth without putting the stability of the planet at risk has come to an end. Welcome to the Anthropocene.

The second is that these pressures on the planet are now at risk of causing irreversible, potentially catastrophic tipping points that would irreversibly drift away from the life support we depend on.

And the third is that we are now understanding, for the first time with scientific evidence, that our world economy depends on the extraordinary stability of the Holocene. We leave the last ice age 18,000 years ago and into what you see here, this extraordinarily stable 12,000 year, which is a 14 degrees Celsius global mean surface temperature with a maximum variability. Can you imagine a plus minus 0.5 degrees Celsius, which gives us the corridor of life that is the basis for all our life support.

Pim Valdre: So my name is Pim Valdre. I'm the head of our economic and policy agenda in the Centre for Nature and Climate.

Robin Pomeroy: So Pim, climate and nature, what happened on that during this Davos week?

Pim Valdre: So I think, despite some of the headwinds we've seen on climate, it was striking to see the resilience of the green economy.

And that was a core topic coming out also at this year's Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders meeting.

The green economy is today the second fastest global sector of the global economy only outpaced by AI and tech. It's standing today at 5 trillion US dollars. And it has a predicted growth value of 7 trillion by 2030.

And what is also interesting is to see that the market is not only now mitigation. So mitigation stands for around 78%, but actually the market segment for resilience and climate adaptation goods and services is growing as we're seeing both the physical climate risk, but also the transition risks increase on climate.

That's a lot of a strong market momentum despite some of the political headwinds.

We are seeing definitely sustained momentum from a lot of the global companies.

And I think the challenge that they are navigating at the moment is extreme short-termism, right? We're seeing a lot of political volatility crisis that might have taken two to three weeks are today happening at, you know minute by minute or hour by hour.

And this poses a particular challenge for climate and nature. Because these are, yes, short-term risks, but they also bear with them long-term structural risks that will have operational and financial impact.

So the challenge really here is how do we keep, you know, of course, being able to manage these short- term risks and disruptions while keeping an outlook and a focus on the long- term risk outlook as well.

And here we actually launched a new set of principles for effective climate and nature governance, where we are working with corporate boards all around the world to really help them do that. Manage short-term disruption, but still keep an outlook on the medium to long-term risk with a focus on environmental and climate risks and opportunities.

Robin Pomeroy: That's a promising start to 2026, despite maybe some headwinds in this area. What are you looking forward to? What has 2026 got in store for you?

Pim Valdre: So 2026 is really sort of a superbowl for climate and nature. We actually have three COPs lined up for the year. So conference of the parties of the three Rio Conventions.

It's going start in August with the UNCCD. So that's the desertification COP. A lot of focus, that's gonna be in Mongolia, a lot of focus on water pressure, land degradation, both. Which is an enormous challenge, not only for Mongolia, where a lot of the land is actually degraded, but it's also an increasing business opportunity.

And then actually, it's a big moment for Nature COP. We have the first review of the Kunming Montreal framework that was adopted in 2022. That's also been called the Paris moment for nature. We're going to be reviewing that. We're going to look at how can we translate that framework, that nature framework into economic frameworks that make sense for business.

And then of course we wrap up the year in November with the COP 31 in Turkey with the presidency of Turkey and also supported by Australia.

Robin Pomeroy: That's the climate COP.

Pim Valdre: That's the climate COP indeed. So it's a big year for climate and nature and it's big year to tackle these issues strategically and not in silos.

Robin Pomeroy: Did you have a Davos moment?

Pim Valdre: I did indeed have one Davos moment this year. I heard my first poem about climate adaptation and whoever knew that this topic would have been so interesting and inspiring, but it was an Indian chemical industrialist named Nadir Godrej. And I'm going to read the first lines here of this brilliant poem that he read at a public session.

It's no longer climate change within a tolerable range/A crisis is what it's about/Storms, floods, as well as drought/Every week, a constant blast/Far worse than seen in the past/If we must, we will adapt, but prevention would be much more apt.

Robin Pomeroy: I wasn't expecting a poem. Was that read out at an event, at a session?

Pim Valdre: Yes, that was read out at a public session called What Does Adaptation Look Like. So that was my Davos moment.

Tania Strauss: Hi, I'm Tania Strauss, Head of Sustainable Growth and People at the Centre for Climate and Nature.

Robin Pomeroy: Great to see you, Tania. What were the highlights of the week for you?

Tania Strauss: Yeah, it's been a really big week here in Davos with world leaders connecting new ideas, new networks.

We kicked the week off on Monday with the inaugural CEOs for Nature session. 50 leading CEOs from the food, mining and finance industries coming together to really discuss some of the top challenges of instability and volatility they're facing in their business, in the communities where they're operating. 50% of the global economy is dependent on nature. We could argue it's bigger than that number, but already 58 trillion feels like it should be discussed amongst especially the materials and food sector, which are macroly very dependent on that economic outcome.

So they were discussing a number of things, both in terms of the short-term, but also in terms long-term capabilities. They came back with two really good consensus. One, on agri-innovation, they need to start thinking about pre-competitive data sharing. And if you're paying attention, this is a game changer for the industry, not very comfortable with this type of, let's say IP that's considered a block to support farmers, to support our food security. So really starting to see that change from the community is something exciting and watch this space.

The second was a consensus on water, more holistically thinking about water resilience and water security, and really seeing CEOs fired up from all of those industries to leverage this particular community to take action.

Speaking of water, this week we also featured for the first time ever the Blue Davos programme, uniting freshwater and oceans as one global water cycle, starting in the ocean, taking us through atmospheric and our rivers and lakes and our soils.

This water cycle is off balance today. We witness it everywhere. Too much water, too little water, too polluted water. It's a very complex and multifaceted challenge. It can't be tackled as one part of it or one sector solving for it. And I think that realisation has started to really settle in, creating a lot of momentum here in Davos.

Robin Pomeroy: On the first point there, about the farming, I think, pre-competitive data sharing, is that what you said? Yes. Can you just tell us what you mean by that?

Tania Strauss: Yeah, so today we can probably use geospatial or even simple satellite data to understand weather patterns, things that we can check from all kinds of levels. But what we don't know is the quality farmer data, the quality value chain data that really helps us create the predictive models needed to help farmers know what to expect weeks and months ahead because harvests are a one-time shot once a year.

And so it's incredibly important to have the kind of support using the advancements in technology to be able to give them the security and stability of both market function and crop function.

And we all rely on that food security. The world's food security depends on 500 million small holder farmers around the world. Some who don't even have access to internet.

So companies and others coming together to solve for this in a pre-competitive space, so far has never happened. It's happening in the health industry. It's happening a little bit now in the energy industry. Food is a bit behind, but it sounded like we're starting to catch up this week.

Robin Pomeroy: Are there any milestones you're hoping to hit, any things we should be looking out for?

Tania Strauss: Yeah, absolutely. It's actually a really big year of water, I would say. So Blue Davos actually kicks off in January here in Davos. Multiple milestones to expect, whether it's the UN Ocean Summit hosted by Indonesia in June or at the end of the year, the UN Water Conference, the second ever in 40 years, hosted by UAE and Senegal. And the Forum signed formal agreements with both of those hosts to be very collaborative partners to bring that public private. Exchange and investment to the table for these important issues.

Robin Pomeroy: Did you have a Davos moment?

Tania Strauss: I did have a Davos moment, and I think I'll combine two because they're very connected.

The first is that we launched our aquapreneurs fourth cohort, the Water Resilience Challenge winners. Our UpLink water challenge is something where we distribute 1.75 million Swiss francs to 10 venture winners. And one of the winners representing that announcement was here, and she's a young woman from Canada. Her solution basically takes a very simple chemistry compound. That she invented and patented from quantum and AI and takes pollutants out of the water. How does that sound to everyone everywhere? Because this isn't a problem in some village that you can't reach or connect to. This is an issue that all of us are facing. And she's able to do that and just seeing her walk around the Congress Centre and just meet world leaders and who's who for every sector that she can solve this problem and just see their faces in reaction to such a solution existing on earth. That early stage technology has a huge role to play in our water challenges.

The other moment which I can't let this go without mentioning it was the pinnacle of our Blue Davos programme. Matt Damon and Gary White from water.org announcing Get Blue, an incredible campaign and coalition with leading brands, partners of the forum, trying to elevate water into the mainstream conscious and cultural conversation while connecting with brands and consumers on mobilising resource for water safety. Get Blue kind of borrows the Bono red model. So think instead of red Apple phones, it'll be blue on leading brands, but also B2B. And it's a really exciting both market-based solution as well as profile and conversation in the cultural mainstream, which is incredibly important right now because we must act on water urgently.

Matt Damon, actor and Co-Founder, Water.org: A million people are going to die this year from completely preventable things. That's unconscionable in 2026, but that's where we are. But it's also the loss of human potential. It's dreams not realised, which is just an incalculable loss to our species and to these people's existence. So that is what water means for one person. So now imagine that multiplied by 2.1 billion. Imagine if we could bring water home for everyone.

Robin Pomeroy: Matt Damon, yes, that Matt Damon, who, as well as being an actor, is also the co-founder of non-profit Water.org, speaking on a session called Water in the Balance. Matt and his co-founder Gary White will be on an upcoming episode of the Forum's Meet the Leader podcast - look out for that.

As we were talking about health, here's the head of Health and Health Care at World Economic Forum talking to my colleague Spencer Feingold.

Shyam Bishen: Yeah, hello, my name is Shyam Bishen, and I'm head of the Centre for Health and Health Care at World Economic Forum.

Spencer Feingold: What were the highlights, what were three highlights of the Annual Meeting 2026 in your sector?

Shyam Bishen: The key highlights from my sector were making sure that we have a real good engagement from both public and private sector. And this year we did get a real good representation from both sectors.

So we have quite a few CEOs from big pharma companies, from big healthcare companies. As well as Minister of Health from Italy, Minister of health from Germany, Doctor Oz from US CMS. So overall the big highlight was the discussion between public and private sector in terms of how do we move healthcare priorities further.

Spencer Feingold: Do you mind just speaking a bit like how that moves the dial, how the public and private partnerships move the dial getting everyone in one place?

Shyam Bishen: So it's very important that both public and private sector work together, because public sector is responsible for policy, regulatory, and for infrastructure, whereas the private sector is more about innovation, developing products and services. But both have to talk to each other so that they understand what's happening on both sides, and they work together. So it was very important to hear from both sides and to bring them together to have this discussion, for example, on AI in health care.

We believe artificial intelligence is going to change the health care world in terms of access, in terms outcome, in terms of efficiency, but it needs regulation, it needs digital infrastructure, whereas the private sector is developing applications of AI in healthcare, but without infrastructure, without regulation, without policy, it won't be implemented. And it can't be scaled up.

So that's why it's very important for the two parties, public and private sector, to come together and have that conversation, and which I believe took place here in Davos this week.

Spencer Feingold: Do you have any Davos moment that you'd like to share? Any wow moment that will be memorable to you?

Shyam Bishen: Yes, the key wow moment for me in Davos was to speak to Dr. Oz, who is the Chief Administrator of Centre for Medicare Services in the US, and to talk to him about the US view or his view in various areas, whether it's vaccines or it's access to health care services in rural areas or it is spending and the cost of health care in the US.

The wow moment or aha moment for me was to understand from Dr. Oz that U.S. Government is actually not against vaccines. You know, they are looking at, you know, how do we make sure that we have proper vaccines of a level, but at the same time make sure there is data and there is good scientific evidence. So I got much better understanding on the US Policy on vaccines and on health care by speaking with Dr. Oz here in Davos.

Robin Pomeroy: Shyam Bishen, head of Health and Health Care at the Forum.

Let's give the final word to the person at the Forum in charge of communicating its message to the world.

Sheba Crocker: I'm Sheba Crocker, Managing Director at the World Economic Forum.

Robin Pomeroy: As well as managing director, you're head of communications and head of international organisations at the Forum. What were the highlights for you this week?

Sheba Crocker: Too many to name, Robin, but I'll cite a few.

I mean, first just, we built this meeting in the spirit of dialogue, and we have certainly seen that come to light this week. We had incredible record participation, over 3,000 participants, 130 countries represented, 400 top political leaders, around 65 heads of state and government, 830 or so top CEOs. We had innovators, we had entrepreneurs, we had leaders in the tech space.

And most importantly, we had really consequential discussions here, both on the big issues of the day and on the issues of tomorrow.

So that's one. I think second, a big part of our role as the communications team at the forum is around transparency. And there we focus on getting, making sure that the public is informed and can access what went on here. We had over 200 live stream sessions. I think we had close to 800 journalists here from about 300 media outlets representing about 40 countries around the world. And we also worked throughout the week to make sure that our partners were informed and up-to-date on what was happening at the meeting.

And then third, going to the substance and some of the work around international organisations that we do here, it's just a really important year for multilateralism and for the future of international cooperation. And given the nature and the breadth of the voices and the actors that are here, we were able to have some really significant discussions with experts, with leaders on the evolution of the multilateral system, where we're going. We had an important session on reimagining aid. We had a great session with multilateral development banks and government ministers and firms, leaders of firms, to talk about building resilience in emerging economies. So, a lot that we can take forward.

Robin Pomeroy: Are there some milestones, some things you'll be working on looking ahead? What do you see coming up in the year?

Sheba Crocker: So in the communication space, I think we're always thinking about innovation. It's a very crowded communications world these days. And so making sure that we are constantly also evolving how we're telling the story of the work of the Forum, the work about communities, the work of our initiatives, and really excited to double down on some of the works that we're doing around brand building, around storytelling, around thought leadership to make sure that we help to remain a credible, a space where people see us as a credible voice and helping to cut through some of the noise and helping continue to drive insights on these big problems that we're all tackling together.

I think in the space of international organisations and the future of humanitarianism, hope to take some of this work forward that we have been working on, that we had a lot of important discussions on this week. But, again, looking at that question of the evolution of global cooperation, how we drive prosperity and jobs and growth in frontier markets, in fragile places, and how we continue the work on what we can do working with a broad range of partners to help drive resilience in emerging markets.

Robin Pomeroy: This is your first Davos, isn't it, Sheba?

Sheba Crocker: It was.

Robin Pomeroy: So sometimes we talk about a Davos moment where there's something that happens, and it's like, well, this could only happen in Davos. Did you have one of those?

Sheba Crocker: I'm gonna bogart the mic a bit here, Robin, and say I had three of those and won Davos Epiphany.

So my three moments were I got to meet a legend from Liverpool Football Club, Steven Gerrard. So that was a highlight. I did a great moderated conversation with singer John Batiste, Grammy Award-winning singer John Battiste and his wife Sulaika Jouad, which was just incredible. And I think both of those things show the power of Davos and this week to make clear that it's not only leaders of government and leaders of business that drive change and that are an important part of the conversations that we have, but it is culture, it is arts, it is sports that also help to really round out that picture.

Then the third thing I would say. Is just the opportunity sometimes by happenstance sometimes by planning bumping into old friends old colleagues and having a chance to really reconnect with so so many of the great folks that were around this week.

And my Davos epiphany that it really was okay for me to wear my snow boots all day. No matter what else I was wearing

Robin Pomeroy: Let me see, have you got them on now? Oh yeah, they're quite smart.

Sheba Crocker: Yeah, they worked.

Robin Pomeroy: And my Davos epiphany is learning that you're a Liverpool fan, so I wouldn't have guessed it. Anyway, Sheba, thanks very much for joining us.

Sheba Crocker: Thank you so much, Robin.

Robin Pomeroy: Jon Batiste again.

You can listen back to the whole opening concert.

Catch up on all the action from Davos 2026 on our website., and follow our three weekly podcasts - this one, Radio Davos as well as Meet the Leader and Agenda Dialogues. They are all available wherever you get podcasts and at wef.ch/podcasts. I interviewed some truly fascinating people, as did several of my colleagues, and those conversations will be dropping onto your podcast app in the coming weeks - only if you're following us though.

This episode of Radio Davos was written and produced by me, Robin Pomeroy. We'll be back very soon, but for now, thanks for listening and goodbye.