Day 4 at Davos 2022

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Robin Pomeroy: It's Thursday, the 26th of May 2022, and from Day 4 of the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. This is Radio Davos. More than 2,500 leaders from government, business, civil society, academia and the media are meeting in person for the first time since COVID-19 stopped the world. They are discussing the biggest issues from geopolitics to climate change, inequality, technology, the future of jobs, all as history is at a turning point. Watch all the action live on catch up at weforum.org and across social media using the hashtag #WEF22. I'm Robin Pomeroy, podcast editor at the World Economic Forum and with daily podcasts from the Annual Meeting 2022. This is Radio Davos.

Robin Pomeroy: So I'm delighted to welcome to the Radio Davos podcast booth for the last time this week my co-host for today, who is Peter Prengaman, who's Climate and Environmental News Director at the Associated Press (AP). Peter, how are you?

Peter Prengaman: Good, thank you.

Robin Pomeroy: And so tell us about what you do in the role that I've just said, climate and environment. What does that encompass?

Peter Prengaman: Well, early this year, the AP launched an initiative to really build out our coverage of climate, environment around the world. The AP, of course, has covered these issues for a long time, but up until now, it was really under the umbrella of health and science. And looking at climate from that perspective, what we're doing now is we've made our own department, which I head, and we're hiring people around the world to really ramp up our coverage of climate change, environmental degradation, biodiversity from all points of view. Right. It's not just a science story anymore. It's a business story. It's a policy story. It's a lifestyle story. That's really what we're aiming to do.

Robin Pomeroy: And so are you here to cover those climate stories here in Davos?

Peter Prengaman: That's right. You know, again, AP's always covered Davos and done some climate from Davos. But this year I decided to come because I really wanted to have a focus on climate change. Before Davos began I took some time and I went through all the panels and I came to about one-third that I counted were related in some way to climate change. So, you know, Davos has a lot of different discussions going on – climate change is a central one. And I felt it was important that, you know, that we be here.

Robin Pomeroy: And have you interviewed anyone or met anyone or just heard anyone who's impressed you on the climate story?

Peter Prengaman: I would say more impressed just by the discussions than any, you know, one person specifically. There have been a lot of really good discussions around carbon capture, a lot of honest discussions about where that technology is and where it needs to be to really take a significant amount of carbon out of the atmosphere. That's been really impressive. I think the announcement today by the First Movers Coalition was also a pretty significant thing. This is more than 50 companies who have committed to buying green technologies down their supply chains to really send a really strong, you know, market signal. How much will that help scale up things in the next couple of years, in the next decade? We'll see. But it's a really large initiative.

Robin Pomeroy: Well, I'm very glad you've mentioned it, because I've cued up a clip here from yesterday's press conference where there was quite the panel, I have to say. Let me read the list of the people here. I'm going to play a clip by John Kerry, but he was flanked by, amongst others, Bill Gates, Brad Smith, the President of Microsoft, Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, Ruth Porat, the Chief Financial Officer of Google. They were all at this launch yesterday. So why don't we listen to the US Presidential Envoy for Climate Change, John Kerry?

John Kerry: We must bring critical technologies to scale much more rapidly than we are today. We have technologies, we know how to do certain things, but the market has to begin to embrace that – it did through a government signal on vaccines, and we created the vaccines because people knew there was a purchaser there. We did the same thing with respect to spaceflight. We said we're going to buy the capacity and we bought the capacity and now there's private spaceflight. The same thing can happen here. This is a demand signal, one of the biggest demand signals that we could send. And so today the First Movers initiative leaps from the 35 initial companies that came to the table to 55 companies. We welcome these companies. They represent almost $9 trillion of global worth. And so today, with the additional companies, people are committing to buy 10% of a particular product like green steel or cement. And in addition, shippers, for instance, are agreeing that they're going to build carbon-free ships. Now, even though that may be more expensive in the beginning, it's going to help to create the demand signal for the market.

Robin Pomeroy: So that was John Kerry, the US Climate Envoy, talking at the announcement yesterday about the First Movers Coalition. We've covered that extensively on Radio Davos. So yesterday's Day 3 podcast – listen back to that. And also we did it when the whole thing was launched at COP26, the climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland last November. Peter, it looks impressive, but we'll wait and see what kind of impact the First Movers Coalition might have. Is that kind of your feeling about it?

Peter Prengaman: Yeah, I think that for a number of years when it comes to climate change, there have been many people who've argued, well, we don't have to make really big changes at the policy level because eventually technology will solve these problems. And that has not been the case so far. If you look just in the last year particularly – emissions are up. And this is at a time when more and more people are focussed on green technologies. On climate change in general and pushing for some changes in legislation. There are many, many debates around what to do and what the future is. So I think we have to wait and see. The First Movers Coalition. How much of this stuff plays out? The parallels that John Kerry gave, for example, the scaling up of vaccines. That's true. I mean, they created a COVID-19 vaccine in just record time. Can that be done in a similar way with green steel, green hydrogen, carbon capture, shipping, which is a really tough industry to take emissions out of, aviation, another one. I mean, we'll see. But certainly strong business signs.

Robin Pomeroy: Yeah. I mean, there's just the complexity of climate change. The virus was unbelievable that they managed to do a vaccine so quickly, an amazing feat. But they were working on one problem and they knew in theory how to tackle it. Climate change is caused by so many things that are overlapping. So that was John Kerry. I believe you interviewed him this week?

Peter Prengaman: I did.

Robin Pomeroy: How did he come across to you?

Peter Prengaman: He came across well. I followed John Kerry and the things that he says about climate for a long time. What I talked to him about was specific to China. I wanted to get a little more information about a partnership that the US and China is putting together to try and basically, on a small level between these countries, find a way to speed up a transition to some green technology. So we talked some about that. I also asked him about Build Back Better signature climate proposal of President Joe Biden, which is stalled, to put it probably kindly. Some have argued that it's dead, but we may see some other kind of climate change legislation that's a little bit smaller scale. Special Envoy Kerry said that as much, that he hoped that there was still a way to have some legislation. And then I asked him as well about, you know, his plans for the future. He's been in the job a little while and there's some speculation that he wouldn't be in this job too much longer. So I asked him that and he said he had no plans to go anywhere anytime soon.

Robin Pomeroy: So looking back then, we're on the last day now. This is your first Davos. So I'm just wondering, you know, what's your impression? You've been to a lot of conferences before and big events, I'm sure. I mean, is there anything peculiar or particularly interesting about Davos that strikes you?

Peter Prengaman: What really strikes me is the accessibility of a lot of the people here just walking down the corridor and you'll see somebody you recognise and you step up and, you know, introduce yourself and give them your card. There's a chance that you'll get to talk to them. You know, maybe it's only for five minutes or 10 minutes or maybe it's the next day. But that really strikes me because access in general can be difficult. Another thing that strikes me is just the willingness of people to really talk about issues here. For example, I was able to interview Egypt's Foreign Minister, Sameh Shoukry, and he is also the president of COP27. And I talk to him about a lot of things related to COP. But one thing that I was very glad to get clarified was that Egypt is going to allow protesters during COP. This is a big question. I think that a lot of people planning to go to cop 27, whether you're a journalist, an activist, you know, whoever you are and you're going to participate. Will protests be allowed? And he said, yes. That's something that we've been working with, with our colleagues in Egypt to try to get a sense of for some months. And here at Davos, he was there. I was able to interview him. He told me about the plans that they have for a specific place where people will be able to protest. So it provides a window to different news pieces that can be important, too.

Robin Pomeroy: And do you get a feeling, as I do, that this is the first big event of any kind I've been to for two years post-COVID. I mean, this it's a very unusual feeling. It's like the first time you took your mask off in a shop. If you're lucky enough to live in a place where that's the situation. Is there an importance to kind of face-to-face in the flesh, in real life meetings, do you think? Or could we all save the airmiles or the railway tickets as it was in my case, the getting here and just all do this back on Zoom?

Peter Prengaman: I think there's a real value in doing things in person. The accessibility that I talked about, you wouldn't have that on Zoom. So I think there is a real value. These last years though, doing so much over Zoom, I think we've learnt to work in a hybrid fashion. And so I wouldn't make any conjecture about the future of Davos. But I think just in general we’ll rethink or think about conferences maybe in different ways than we did before the pandemic.

Robin Pomeroy: Great, Peter Prengman, thanks so much for joining us and enjoy your last day in Davos.

Peter Prengaman: Thank you. It's been great.

Robin Pomeroy: A look ahead to some of the key issues today. German Chancellor Olaf Schulz is giving a special address at 11am. There's an important session on the Global Jobs Outlook at 10.30am. There's so much more. Take a look at the programme. The Foreign Minister of Iran, for example, will be speaking. There's a wide range of discussions from the brave new quantum economy to the future of global cooperation. Follow it all live all on catch up at weforum.org. I've picked one session from yesterday to highlight to you it was called What Next for Global Growth. It was moderated by Tom Keene, the Managing Editor of Bloomberg Television & Radio, and featured economist Mariana Mazzucato, Jim Snabe, the Chairman of Siemens. And giving her assessment of the global economy this is the First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Gita Gopinath.

Gita Gopinath: The war in Ukraine has been a major setback to the global recovery. We had a serious downgrade to global growth in April, and the world continues to face headwinds because we have a cost of living crisis as prices of commodities, including fuel, food, are going up around the world. Central banks are trying to tackle this – high levels of inflation are raising interest rates very sharply and that they need to do. But that has consequences for global finance and trade. China is also slowing because of the new waves of infections that are hitting their population and the lockdowns that go along with it, the weaknesses in the real estate sector. So we have a confluence of shocks hitting the world and we are so not out of the woods. But the point I would also like to make is that this is all happening at a time when we have very divergent recoveries in the world. So we have the advanced economies that, based on our projections, will basically get back to where they would have been in the absence of the pandemic in 2024. So literally no output losses, but we have emerging and developing economies that will be around 5% below where they would have been in the absence of the pandemic. And it is this gap that's going along with now a food crisis, a cost of living crisis, the risk of financial turbulence, of a much greater scale. That's really worrisome.

Robin Pomeroy: Gita Gopinath of the IMF. On the same panel, Professor Mariana Mazzucato of University College London had this warning about the type of economic growth some countries might find themselves getting.

Mariana Mazzucato: And what we have in many countries is that we have growth that is private debt fuelled, consumption led growth. So the ratio of private debt – we always obsess about public debt – private debt to disposable income is back at a level very close to what it was just before the financial crisis. And guess what caused the financial crisis? That. You'd think we'd all be talking about it – it's hidden. It's not talked about, even an election manifesto in terms of what to do to make sure that the bubble won't burst again and how to become resilient. We use this word resiliency, for example, with climate. We're not using it again in terms of making sure that people's incomes are growing. Real wages have not been growing for the last 30 years. Even during the COVID-19 recovery, we had, for example, loans being given out to small companies, to people help-to-buy schemes. I'm talking mainly here about the West. That's not necessarily what you want to do, just pile on even more debt. So I think really for this conversation, the question is how can we have investment-led growth and have that investment directed towards the biggest problems of our time: the digital divide, pollution, weak health systems?

Robin Pomeroy: Jim Snabe of Siemens said that while seeking to recover economic growth, policymakers must not take their eye off the ball of tackling climate change.

Jim Snabe: Well, I do believe that while this Davos and the time we live in this time of uncertainty, the goal of the decade is still the same. We need to decarbonize all of the value chains in which we operate. And so in that sense, while in the short run we have uncertainty, if we keep that goal in focus, we don't need to be that uncertain. Now, what does it take to get there? First of all, I agree that policymakers actually create frameworks for business to operate and the most, let's say, sharp knife in the arsenal of policymakers when it comes to decarbonization is to put a global price on CO2. We need to dramatically accelerate the investments in decarbonizing all of the critical infrastructures. This is the energy systems, the food systems, the transportation systems, the health care systems. We can make them more affordable and we can decarbonize them. And that, in my mind, is the biggest growth opportunity. And I am convinced that those companies who take the lead in driving that, through innovation, reskilling their workforce and engaging in global cooperation, those will be the winners when we come out of this phase. Well, a higher price on coal and oil is a good incentive to rethink the supply chain, not if you provide the coal or you provide the oil, but if you consume it. And so it suddenly becomes a very good business case to actually think about.

Tom Keene: Do you think we'll have a seismic change here? Finally, corporations will be incentivised?

Jim Snabe: I think that we are already at a stage where major corporations invest in this because they can see that it will make them more competitive. We have this wrong assumption in mindset that decarbonization is something philanthropic, something you like green or you don't like green. This is the best business opportunity we ever had. My example is from Maersk, the largest container shipping company in the world. In 2018, we decided to decarbonize shipping, zero-carbon shipping. We had no idea how to do it at the time. Only three years later, we now know exactly how to do it. We ordered the first 12 vessels and we are going to use Power-to-X, which is the conversion of green electricity into green fuels. And my prediction is that the demand for green fuel is going to be dramatically higher than the supply over the next 10-15 years as companies go down this path. And that sounds in my business ears like a great business opportunity.

Robin Pomeroy: And what about runaway inflation? The IMF's Gita Gopinath took on the question of whether demands for higher wages would start a vicious cycle of inflation. This is what she had to say.

Gita Gopinath: I've heard people worry about the fact that, well, wages going up is a problem because that can feed into inflation. This is to be very clear: prices going up are what causes inflation. You could absolutely have a scenario where wages could go up. But all that means is that corporations have lesser profits and prices stay exactly the same. So let's just be very clear about that, that, you know, we suddenly could see an environment where wages go up, but that doesn't necessarily have to generate a wage price spiral.

Robin Pomeroy: You can watch the whole of that discussion on our website and hear the audio on an episode of our sister podcast Agenda Dialogues. Now time to break out of the Davos bubble. Here in Davos, I met Lady Mariéme Jamme. She runs something called iamtheCODE, which teaches computer coding to girls around the world, many of whom would not have access to that kind of education otherwise. Mariéme and I thought it would be a good idea to break out of the Davos bubble and call a couple of her students and see what they would like to hear from the people meeting here. Here's Mariéme.

Mariéme Jamme: What's about to happen right now Robin is really amazing. We are right now watching and listening to Kakuma refugee girls in Kenya who are refugees and Kakuma is a home of over 258,000 people. And then, you know, we are now talking to them live from Davos.

Robin Pomeroy: Hi, Eunice and hi Adit. Eunice, tell me something about yourself. Where were you born? Why are you living in a refugee camp in Kakuma, in Kenya?

Eunice Oleya Lokuju: My mother, came here since 1994 and we were born here in Kenya. My mother used to tell me the stories that happened there back in South Sudan. My mother told me they came in Kakuma because the war was there in South Sudan. So they came here for their safety. I was born in 2005 and I have never gone to South Sudan. I have only been staying here in Kakuma so that I can study hard for me to go back there in South Sudan and change the lives that are there to stop the war that is going on there in South Sudan. Especially in South Sudan, people used to be corrupt. Let's say if you are, finish your studies and you want to be employed. And so to them nowadays they used to give out jobs. If you have a relative it will be easy for you to get a job, but if you don't have your relatives, it will be very difficult for you to get a job. So for me, my career is to become a journalist and I would like those things to stop going on there in South Sudan for people to live in peace. Not saying that if you are my relative, I will give you a job. Let them just equalize everyone and see each one of everyone as her sister or his brother. That's my story.

Robin Pomeroy: If you could ask a question to the people here in Davos, in Switzerland, or if you would want to hear something from them, what would be your message to them here?

Eunice Oleya Lokuju: My message to them is that they should give us, especially girls, they should give them quality education. You know, people nowadays, they used to say that men are the people who can do better, but they don't know what a man can do, a woman can do better. So even women have the right to study as well as the men who don't have a female president until now we have only one female president who is Samia Suluhu, the President of Tanzania. So I'm working hand in hand for me to become the second President of South Sudan who is a human and I hope that I will pursue that.

Robin Pomeroy: I love the ambition. I wish you all the best with it. I'm going to talk to Adit. Adit, can you hear me?

Adit Philip Maze: Yes, I can hear you.

Robin Pomeroy: Brilliant. So tell me something about yourself as well. Have you lived your whole life in the Kakuma refugee camp?

Adit Philip Maze: We came in Kakuma refugee camp in 2013 when the war broke out. I was born in Sudan, Kenana, during the war we came to Kakuma. I also lost my father at that moment. When I grow up I would like to become a leader, a politician. And the main reason why I took that career is that actually I discovered my career when I was eight, nine years, and my father was the one who told me to change South Sudan because especially in getting jobs, everything is corrupt. So he told me not to be corrupt if I become corrupt, making other people suffer the way my father suffered. So I would like to become a leader to give justice for the people who are not recognised and are not given a chance. And I also thank Lady Mariéme because when she came to Kakuma she started giving us courage. And also God has given us words, because from there I start even putting more power in my dream and also knowing that whatever I want to become I can become. Because from the story that Lady Mariéme has taught us. She took my father’s place because my father died. But I forever have an adviser.

Robin Pomeroy: I'm really, really sorry to hear about your father. You're talking about iamtheCODE. From Mariéme, I can explain to our listeners. Mariéme teaches coding to you girls and you can find out more about that from iamtheCODE, her website and the podcast. Adit, can I ask you what would your message be from Kakuma refugee camp to the leaders meeting here in Davos, Switzerland, this week?

Adit Philip Maze: For me, my message is we should have any inquality. You are supposed to do everything equally. We should not corrupt or discriminate any gender or any person from the colour or where she comes from. Also, we should try to help the poor because we do not know why they are poor or their situation. So we should try to just be our sisters and brothers’ people, and also help each other like Lady Mariéme has done for us. She's a very good example here in government. And what I would like to tell the leaders is that they should not be corrupt. They should end discrimination. And also they have to help each other.

Robin Pomeroy: There's a clear couple of messages from both of you. You're talking about equal opportunities for girls and women. You're talking about fighting corruption and not being corrupt. And you're talking about being kind, I suppose, to people who are in poorer circumstances than yourself. Are those three clear messages that you would like leaders here to hear?

Adit Philip Maze: It's also about the business people. Sometimes they used to destroy the environment for that thing. So I would also advise them not to destroy the environment because now many people are cutting down the trees and it's affecting the environment. They are desecrating as they are doing any business activity or mining. They should also concern the world.

Mariéme Jamme: Those messages are really powerful. Robin, what do you think?

Robin Pomeroy: I agree they are. And I hope people are listening to this podcast, which is going out while this meeting is going on. That's all we've got time for, I'm afraid. But I really, really appreciate the time you spared for us here at Davos to Eunice and to Adit. Good luck to both of you. I know you're both studying, you're studying coding with Mariéme, I hope you can advance your ambitions and do as well as you can. I'm sure you will do. Thanks very much for joining us.

Mariéme Jamme: Thank you, girls. Thank you. All the way from Davos. Well done.

Robin Pomeroy: That was Eunice Oleya Lokuju, 17, and 18-year-old Adit Philip Maze, speaking from our Ladies Girls Secondary School in Kakuma, Kenya. This week marked two years since the killing of African-American George Floyd by US police officers, a moment that raised awareness of racism and inequality and the need for change not just in the States but around the world. Here in Davos, my colleague Anna Bruce-Lockhart grabbed an interview with Phillip Goff, Professor of African-American Studies and Psychology at Yale and head of an organization called the Center for Policing Equity. Here's some of what he had to say.

Phillip Goff: Two years after the lynching of George Floyd, communities are demanding more. And they have seen not enough change. This is part of a cycle that I feel like it's important for anyone who cares about democratic stability to understand when folks who are the most vulnerable within a community have a spotlight shone on them on their misery. The cycle is usually that people speak out. They credential themselves morally. They make clear statements about their support. Everybody believed that Black lives mattered afterwards. And then we try and look at what it would take to shift power so the most vulnerable could have more of a say in determining their own outcomes. And we look at how far we'd have to go before we got meaningful equality. And people get tired and those memories fade and their attention goes someplace else. And then we rinse and we repeat. And so if folks are really interested in making sure that they are engaging in government or engaging in business governance or business in ways that prevent the next time that somebody wants to flip cars and light fires. Understand this is a cycle and everything that doesn't take us out of it, that's not a left turn from the ways that we got into it last time, it’s going to bring us right back around to it the next time.

Robin Pomeroy: Every Davos includes a concert, and on this occasion it was cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Emanuel Axe performing live. If you don't recognise this tune, here is Emanuel Axe introducing it at the start of the concert, which happened on the evening of Tuesday daytime.

Emanuel Ax: I know that we are all engulfed by the horrific events in Eastern Europe. As it happens, I actually was born in the city that's very much in the news these days, Lviv. My father was born in the same city when it was called Lemberg, when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. My mother was born in the same city when it was called Lvov and was Poland. I was born in the same city when it was called Lvov and the Soviet Union. And now it's Lviv in the Ukraine, of course I'm not Ukrainian in any way, but I share with the rest of the world the sympathy and the hope for all of the people of Lviv and Ukraine. And we would like to dedicate the Ukrainian national anthem.

Robin Pomeroy: As well as the two musicians who also played the Beethoven Sonata, Opus 69. The concert, called Our Shared Humanity, featured a dance performance by Ahmad Joudeh, an extraordinary artist with an extraordinary story. He was born and raised as a stateless refugee in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, and his natural urge to dance was an affront to his father. Here he is talking about the phrase “dance or die”, which he has tattooed across his neck, and which is also the title of his memoir.

Ahmad Joudeh: The first time I said “dance or die” was not for the war. It was for my father when he was beating me. He tried everything you can imagine to stop me from dancing. He tried to injure me, and he tried to stop me from going to school because he learnt that I wanted to study in the Higher Institute for Dramatic Arts, the dance department where I am already graduated from.

Robin Pomeroy: When Ahmad Joudeh found fame on a Lebanese TV talent show, he found himself the target of Islamist militants.

Ahmad Joudeh: So I was quite well known. And that made me a target for extremists, especially like ISIS or al-Qaida in Syria. I faced them face to face – let's say gun to face and, yeah, I had a gun in my head two, three times, and I survived it.

Robin Pomeroy: Ahmad finally getting statehood in 2019 in the Netherlands, where he dances for the Dutch National Ballet. And now he wants to speak out on behalf of the millions of stateless people around the world.

Ahmad Joudeh: I am super lucky that I am a dancer and I got seen and liked and shared on social media and that's why I got all these opportunities. But other people, they are still there. And they are still struggling and dying and, yeah, life is horrible in there. I want to be their voice. I go to my ballet class every day to improve myself and practise to become an elegant voice for them. So the people with this privileged life would listen to me when I ask them just to think of them. Don't think of governments or war or something. Think of those people who don't have a voice, who don't have enough food to eat.

Robin Pomeroy: Ahmad Joudeh was speaking to Joseph Fowler, Head of Arts and Culture at the World Economic Forum. That's an interview we planned to bring you in full on a future podcast episode. You can watch the whole concert on our website, the concert is called Our Shared Humanity. I hope these daily podcasts have given you a flavour of what's been happening at Davos 2022. Please do dive into the vast programme of events you can watch on our website weforum.org. Over the coming weeks we'll be bringing you a ton of audio that we've been gathering here all week – that will be on Radio Davos. Also on our sister podcast, Meet the Leader and on another sister podcast Agenda Dialogues. Find them all wherever you get your podcasts and also at weforum.org/podcasts and join us on the World Economic Forum Podcast Club on Facebook. This episode of Radio Davos was written and presented by me, Robin Pomeroy with my co-host Peter Prengman. Sound Engineering was by Juan Peron. Editing by Peter ASADA and studio production by Conor Smith will be back soon on Radio Davos. Thanks to you for listening all this week, but for now, goodbye.