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Since its inception, the World Economic Forum has been widely viewed here in Davos as a gathering of predominantly white, male, wealthy members of the western corporate elite. A number of developing countries featured prominently at this year’s event – for example, Indian government and business delegations were represented with several ‘pavilions’ along Davos’ central promenade.
Yet, amidst all the intense debates about challenges affecting the world, there is no denying the deep under-representation of communities in the developing world, where most of the world’s population resides. But among those who have made the journey to Switzerland are some strong voices whose perspectives at this year’s summit are worth noting.
One of them is Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, president of the Association for Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad, who peppered this week’s panel discussions with remarks that some of the senior figures present may have overheard uncomfortably.
“This is a place where the elite and billionaires sit together,” she told me after one of those sessions. “They have limited vision because they don’t know the reality on the ground.”
In Ibrahim’s eyes, the specter of hunger hanging over many developing countries proves the bankruptcy of the economic philosophy that has long shaped the WEF agenda. “The globalization they designed isn’t working,” she said. “If it worked, there wouldn’t be a global food crisis.”
In today’s issue we bring an interview with another prominent activist making waves in Davos, Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate. Andrew Hill investigates whether the metaverse could reduce emissions from business travel, and Patrick has an update on Carl Icahn’s pig welfare campaign at McDonald’s (spoiler alert: it didn’t go well).
We’ll be back on Monday with a glimpse of the excitement over HSBC executive Stuart Kirk’s comments on climate risk and what they tell us about the state of sustainable investing. Have a good weekend. (Simon Mundi)
Vanessa Nakate is still waiting for answers
The night before we met in Davos this week, Vanessa Nakate had spoken at a dinner event packed with Western businesspeople. Amidst all the serious talk about sustainability and justice at this year’s World Economic Forum, the Ugandan activist told dinner guests that too little attention is still being paid to the worst problems facing developing countries – not least the impact of climate change in Africa.
“Maybe they were listening,” she told me. “But I didn’t get an answer.”
It was an infamous incident in Davos that helped catapult Nakate to world fame. Her first visit came two years ago when she attended climate protests ahead of the WEF and was photographed with Greta Thunberg and other activists. In the published version of this Associated Press photo, Nakate was cropped out, leaving only her white comrades visible.
Nakate has spoken of the pain this episode has caused her, the feeling that an entire continent is being wiped out. This year, however, she returned to the Alps in the most visible way possible, as a VIP guest, speaking on a podium with the head of the World Trade Organization. But only with far greater representation of Africa’s more than 1 billion people, she warned, would the Davos talks adequately reflect the continent’s challenges. “It feels like people are in their own personal bubbles, detached from the reality of what’s happening,” she said.
Nakate began her activist career in 2018 as the only Ugandan participant in Thunberg’s school strike movement. She has now firmly established herself as one of the world’s most prominent climate activists, having made a huge impact with her calls to action during last year’s COP26 in Glasgow. While this event was more fruitful than many previous UN climate conferences, Nakate was bitterly disappointed at the failure to set up a “loss and damage” facility to compensate developing countries for climate impacts.
It’s not about charity, it’s about justice. Wealthy nations bear a large responsibility for cumulative carbon emissions, she often points out. Africa contributed only 4 percent. For this reason, she argues, climate-related financial aid should come in the form of grants – not loans, which add to the debt mountain that is already staggering for many African countries.
This is anathema to many in the development finance space, who see huge potential for debt finance to help address the worst climate challenges in Africa and elsewhere. But Nakate is adamant. “When climate finance comes in the form of debt,” she told me, “it only hurts the communities that are already on the front lines of the climate crisis.”
Nakate wants more action on this front at November’s COP27 in Egypt. The fact that this summit has an African host raises hopes of a better outcome for the continent. But that alone “doesn’t make it obvious” that the interests of communities affected by climate change are being well represented, Nakate warned.
It could make a big difference, she said, if organizers of events like the WEF and COP set up programs to help members of those communities attend in person and share their stories. The potentates surrounding them this week “need to spend more time listening to the people in these communities and learning the stories beyond the statistics,” Nakate said. “People hear numbers and say, ‘OK, that’s bad,’ and then life goes on. . . But climate change is more than statistics.” (Simon Mundi)
Is the metaverse good news for carbon emissions?
Holding the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in the Metaverse would reduce Davos’ carbon footprint in one fell swoop. During this week, the delegates were able to get an idea of what such gatherings could look like. From the crowded convention center where the WEF hosts its main program, attendees donned virtual reality headsets to be transported to a computer-simulated park dotted with pine trees and surrounded by spectacular mountains.
According to the WEF, this is “the future of cooperation”. In it, delegates could meet to discuss the fate of the planet without the inconveniences of security checks, viral handshakes, unexpected weather, shoe problems, travel disruptions — not to mention high-carbon international travel. In the Global Collaboration Village of the WEF, participants were invited to try out the pilot project of a Metaverse platform developed jointly with Microsoft and Accenture from the comfort of their chairs. From there they were transported to the edge of the Sahara to “watch” the dangerous encroachment of the desert from the shade of a virtual baobab tree (part of the WEF’s 1t.org project to raise, restore and conserve 1 trillion trees) .
With WEF attendees unanimously welcoming the return of the face-to-face summit after two years of meeting online, holding the event in the Metaverse would be a hard sell. A virtual Davos would remove the core benefit of being able to lock eyes with top 40 clients in a matter of days instead of flying to 40 different meetings around the world.
In fact, the organizers don’t see the Metaverse platform as a replacement for face-to-face conversation, but as an “extension”. But Davos 2030 could look and feel very different. At an in-person digital strategy session that pitted Google and IBM executives against each other to predict the next big technological breakthrough, Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark predicted that 6G communications and greater computing power would enable the panel within eight years than high-end ones meet holograms. That would allow CEOs to ground their carbon-spitting jets forever. (Andrew Hill)
Elsewhere in the ESG: Icahn loses pig fight at McDonald’s
Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn © Bloomberg
Our regular readers will remember Moral Money’s interview with activist attacker Carl Icahn and his unlikely crusade at McDonald’s earlier this year over pig welfare. Icahn hit the company not only because of animal welfare, but also because of CEO Chris Kempczinski’s $20 million in wages last year.
On Thursday, hardly any McDonald’s shareholders sided with the longtime activist investor. About 1 percent of McDonald’s shareholders supported the two board nominees that Icahn put to the vote at the company’s annual meeting, the company said.
Icahn’s campaign faced an uphill struggle. He only held 200 McDonald’s shares, not enough to convince wealth managers to vote with him.
The fight was clearly about losing the fight to significantly advance the war. The Humane Society, which worked with Icahn at McDonald’s, found Thursday that other companies had attempted to change their practices after Icahn announced his campaign. General Mills, Conagra Brands and Denny’s have rushed to phase out gestation crates in their pork supply chains.
Icahn’s campaign also stands in uncomfortable contrast to the Republican Party’s fight against environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing, in which former Vice President Mike Pence has claimed that “liberal activist investors are forcing private companies to adhere to ESG investment principles to keep”. For a time, Icahn was Donald Trump’s deregulation czar, and he was a multimillion-dollar contributor to Republicans across the country.
Icahn may have lost at McDonald’s, but the publicity surrounding his campaign could still have implications for the deepening culture war over ESG. (Patrick Temple-West)
Read intelligently
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The convoluted marketing of sustainable investment products threatens to undermine confidence in the entire industry, writes Brooke Masters in this analysis, with comments from executives from BlackRock, PGIM and Pimco.
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