Report from Davos 2003

Quotes
Images from Davos
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H.M. Queen Rania of the Hashemite      Kingdom of Jordan addresses the World Economic Forum - pictured with Klaus Schwab, Founder of the WEF

By Darcy Rezac
January 27, 2003, Davos, Switzerland

The Drums of War — Davos, 2003. The ultimate "permission to network" event happens annually during the last week of January: The World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

The delegates, wearing their WEF nametags both inside and outside the Congress Centre, greet one another on the little ski town’s streets, high in the Swiss Alps. This is one place where the wearing of nametags is not just a networking tool — it’s a security requirement.

The larger events are held in the main conference centre, but smaller meetings take place over breakfast, lunch, dinner and nightcaps at dozens of small hotels located all over Davos Platz and Davos Dorf, a three-mile stretch along the railway track at the bottom of a steep valley.

The delegates, who are the top thousand CEOs in the world, ranked by company size — and who don’t normally take buses — use local transportation. They are joined by hundreds of NGO leaders, young Global Leaders for Tomorrow, social entrepreneurs, leading members of the world’s clergy, a hundred or so ambassadors and diplomats, bureaucrats, government heads and dozens of invited media stars.

You never know who you might meet and pretty much everyone is interesting. Chairman Peter Legge and I bumped into Nobel prize winner Robert Mundell walking down the street one day and we all had a pleasant chat. This sort of thing happens all the time during the annual Davos meeting. At a small dinner hosted by author Peter C. Newman, a Canadian now living in Zurich, I introduced myself to a tablemate to find she was a fellow McGill graduate who also happens to be the president of Latvia, Ms. Vaira Vike-Freiberga.

I conservatively estimate about 250,000 business cards were exchanged during the six-day event. It’s what I call "quantum networking" — there’s nothing like it in the world.

The main sessions run from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. in the jam-packed Congress Centre. Delegates clog the narrow passageways in the Centre, catching up with each other while people such as Bill Gates, Christiane Ammanpour and Michael Dell squeeze by without giving these luminaries so much as a glance. The buzz stops only when someone like Bill Clinton or the Queen of Jordan walks by.

Soundbite from U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell: "The nexus of tyrants and terror, of terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, is the greatest danger of our age."

Despite all the networking, a somber tone prevailed at this year’s event with sessions on Dotcom Dust; Public-Private Partnerships; Shared Values; Tolerance; The Hydrogen Economy; and Climate Change, and discussions on Iraq, North Korea and global economic doom.

It was prescient of the Forum organizers to focus on "trust" as the theme of the conference, with sessions on Trust and Governance for a New Era; Al Qaeda: The Missing Pieces; Understanding the Psychology of Terror; What if a Nuclear Weapon Were Launched? and U.S. Omnipotence: What Lies Ahead?

More than ever, the world’s superpower got a rough ride at Davos; though Colin Powell’s address was Churchill-like in quality, it received a decidedly chilly reception by some delegates.

And while this year’s Forum was one of the best-organized WEF events so far, it also brought out the gaps in trust between countries of the world.

There were many separate realities expressed at the conference, and they were voiced loudly. Never before had I heard partisan clapping at events, but a session with Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia, Abdullah Nasseef, president of the World Muslim Congress and hosted by American journalist Thomas Friedman of The New York Times had a divided audience. There is much work to do to build trust.

The Vancouver Board of Trade has been fortunate to be one of a handful of institutional members of the WEF, and we’ve been there for more than a decade. We got involved when B.C. was a featured region in 1989 and have been there ever since. The quality of our world-famous speakers’ program has a lot to do with contacts made at the WEF. We’re in good company: Other members include the UN, the OECD, Harvard and UBC.

British Columbia had an important presence at Davos this year. Peter Legge and I represented The Vancouver Board of Trade. Cabinet minister Rick Thorpe and deputy minister Brenda Eaton represented the province of B.C. Dr. Dan Muyzka, Board of Trade director and dean of UBC’s Faculty of Commerce, was the UBC representative. Fred Kaiser of Alpha Technologies, who started his technology business in Burnaby and now has operations around the world, and is a past director of The Board, was part of the B.C. delegation.

Also attending were old Davos hands and former Board of Trade chairs Brandt Louie (a governor of the WEF), Alan Skidmore (TGI), Rick Turner (IAT) and Graham Clarke (Vancouver Airport Authority).

Board director Mike Costello represented BC Hydro, and NAFTA free trade lawyer Barry Appleton (Appleton and Associates), who is very active as WEF Global Leader for Tomorrow and as The Board’s honourary representative in Washington, DC, attended the Forum.

Also attending was former B.C. resident Peter C. Newman, who described Canada to one audience as "like Vichyssoise — half-French, cold and hard to stir." Newman will be providing his thoughts on this year’s conference in his Maclean’s column.

Davos is nestled in an isolated valley and feels a bit like Shangri-La or a movie set caught in a time warp. Residents still use rotary phones and Internet connections are tough to get. It’s usually gloriously sunny, with brilliant white snow and not a breath of wind. But this year, Davos was gray, overcast and stormy, and the snow had turned to slush. The world forecast for the coming year seems to echo the same gloomy conditions.

Our job at The Vancouver Board of Trade is to help our members make their way through the uncertainty and find those pockets of good weather. Some of our upcoming events may well provide those much-needed aids to navigation, so be sure to visit this page often to find out more about all the issues that matter in our world today.

"Social and Economic Darwinism destroys trust in one another and demoralizes society. The long fight for individual freedoms has ultimately resulted in a boundless egoism with which the individual has to try to contend."
— Pascal Couchepin, President of the Swiss Confederation, Switzerland on trust at the welcome session of the Annual Meeting

"From war to peace is always a long way, and how long depends on the underlying factors. In our case, from genocide to war, genocide to peace, has been a long way. Nonetheless, we have made progress."
— Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda, speaking on conflict resolution

"We have always held the same principle, of reuniting Taiwan with China under the one country, two systems principle and we will not do this through war or force. After all, that would be like fighting between brothers."
— Cheng Siwei, Vice-Chairman of the Standing Committee, National People's Congress, People's Republic of China speaking at the session China's Rise: Regional and Global Impacts

"550 million people enter and exit the United States every year. A highly open society is susceptible to the risk of terrorism, but it is a risk that people understand and are willing to accept."
— John Ashcroft, US Attorney General, US, speaking at a session on terrorism

Phil Knight, founder and CEO of Nike, with Board chairman Peter Legge		U.S. Secretary of State and WEF Founder Professor Klaus Schwab answer questions from the audience
Winter scene from Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum 2003		Board managing director Darcy Rezac, Nobel Prize winner Dr. Stanley B. Prusiner (neurology) and Board chairman Peter Legge. Dr. Prusiner discovered the cause of mad cow disease and its human variant.
"Cyclone networking" - Barry Appleton at the vortex, with Jim Robinson, Fred Kaiser, Liz Donohue and Gayle Hallgren-Rezac		Nobel night at the Posthotel, Davos - Mario J. Molina of MIT, flanked by Robert Mundell of Columbia and David Baltimore, President of Caltech

Darcy Rezac networking with Nobel laureates Dr. Robert Mundell and Dr. David Baltimore at the Posthotel, Davos - photo by Gayle Hallgren

Photos by Darcy Rezac.

For more information, images and reports from the World Economic Forum in Davos, visit the following links:

World Economic Forum 
WEF Meeting Highlights 
WEF Photo Gallery

View Peter Legge's Davos Diary from the April 2003 issue of BCBusiness magazine

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