Change the Conversation

Davos 2020: What mattered

McKinsey global managing partner Kevin Sneader during the 2020 WEF Annual Meeting panel: Leading a 21st Century Corporation, held January 22, 2020. By Kevin Sneader January 27, 2020 Unseasonably and somewhat unnervingly mild temperatures provided a fitting backdrop for what emerged as the top issue at the 2020 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting: climate change and its risks. But that was far from the only topic. At the end of this year’s Annual Meeting, I sat down with Rik Kirkland, our director of publishing, to share my reflections. Climate risk is firmly established as a C-suite issue. Research published in reports like the McKinsey Global Institute’s “Climate risk and response: Physical hazards and socioeconomic impacts” has clearly convinced more and more global policy makers and business leaders that the problem of climate change has moved from a far-off priority to a here-and-now risk that demands action. Personal experiences, whether from watching the wildfires in Australia or California or numerous other small examples, have also brought home the reality that this is a topic that requires leadership from the top. While there wasn’t much debate about the science, executives and investors were concerned about the lack of reliable data on the efforts companies and society are making, not to mention their impact. Greater clarity is required in order to speed development of new standards to help markets act more efficiently and reward progress. Beyond metrics, the leaders I spoke with are thinking about the problem in new and creative ways. They are taking a clear-eyed look at what is driving their carbon footprints, beginning to quantify the cost of inaction, and asking how they can accelerate positive change in a way that fits within their core business agenda. That’s a huge shift in tone from even a year ago. The short-term economic outlook is […]

If you can read this headline, you can read a novel.

Judith SeaboyerSenior Lecturer, The University of Queensland Public anxiety about the capacity of digital-age children and young adults to read anything longer than a screen grab has come to feel like moral panic. But there is plenty of evidence to suggest we must take such unease seriously. In 2016, the US National Endowment for the Arts reported the proportion of American adults who read at least one novel in 2015 had dropped to 43.1% from 56.9% in 1982. In 2018, a US academic reported that in 1980, 60% of 18-year-old school students read a book, newspaper or magazine every day that wasn’t assigned for school. By 2016, the number had plummeted to 16%. Those same 12th graders reported spending “six hours a day texting, on social media and online”. American literacy expert and neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf describes the threat screen reading poses to our capacity for “the slower cognitive processes such as critical thinking, personal reflection, imagination, and empathy that are all part of deep reading”. She asks: Will the mix of continuously stimulating distractions of children’s attention and immediate access to multiple sources of information give young readers less incentive either to build their own storehouses of knowledge or to think critically for themselves? But rather than taking up defensive positions on either side of the digital-analogue reading divide, Wolf encourages us to embrace both. As parents and teachers we can help our children develop a bi-literate reading brain. There are several ways we can do this. Reading pathways Reading is a learned skill that requires the development of particular neural networks. And different reading platforms encourage the development of different aspects of those networks. Screen-reading children, immersed from toddlerhood in the pleasures and instant gratification of skimming, clicking and linking, develop cognitive skills that make them adept power browsers, good at the useful ability to scan […]

Iran vows revenge for Soleimani’s killing

Shahram AkbarzadehProfessor of Middle East & Central Asian Politics, Deputy Director (International), Alfred Deakin Research Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University US President Donald Trump has not held back on threatening Iran after the targeted killing of General Qassem Soleimani, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and a key player in expanding Iran’s links with armed groups across Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. In addition to extreme sanctions, Trump’s latest threat includes hitting 52 military and cultural targets in Iran. As might be expected, the Iranian leadership has doubled down on its anti-US rhetoric and promises of retribution. Soleimani was too important to the regime to let this slide. As the commander of the Quds Force in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Soleimani was in direct contact with Hezbollah in Lebanon. He mobilised the militant group to defend Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad against US-backed rebels and armed Islamist groups. Soleimani also visited Moscow in 2016 to make a case for, and coordinate, Russia’s military involvement in Syria. Soleimani made frequent trips to Iraq to bolster the Kurdish and later the Shia militia push-backs against the Islamic State. The recapture of Mosul from the Islamic State in 2016 by the US-backed Iraqi army and the Shia Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) was greeted in Iran with joy. Soleimani was celebrated as a national hero. The Iranian regime praised him for serving the national security doctrine of offensive defence: defeating ISIS beyond Iran’s borders. Direct military confrontation is unlikely It makes sense, then, that the Iranian regime feels compelled to respond to Soleimani’s assassination. Iran cannot afford to let its national hero be slain without retribution. When Soleimani’s daughter asked President Hassan Rouhani, “Who will avenge my father’s blood?”, his response was swift: “We will all take revenge”. But what can Iran do? The […]

‘Don’t be the villain’: Niall Ferguson looks forward and back at capitalism in crisis

The roots of discontent with global capitalism run deep, according to the historian. By looking back, business leaders can get a clearer view of what’s coming. Capitalism is in crisis, as usual. There will always be people questioning the legitimacy of the system. As Joseph Schumpeter wrote in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, published in 1942, capitalism has at its heart creative destruction, and that creates pain; it creates losers. This is the normal state of affairs, and we shouldn’t be surprised that it’s going on. Without the financial crisis, the trends that were increasing income inequality might have led to some kind of political backlash. But trends often need a crisis to bring them to the forefront of people’s minds. That’s one of the lessons of history: trends, if they unfold over decades, don’t necessarily produce big political outcomes; there needs to be some kind of catalyst. In 2008–09, we had the biggest financial crisis since 1929. It was perfectly clear at the time—and I remember writing this in early 2009—that there would be a backlash. The shock was an enormous one. It affected some countries—Greece, for example—as severely as the Great Depression. If there had not been some kind of reaction, that would have been remarkable. It took the financial crisis to make everybody start talking about inequality, even though if you look at the data on income or wealth inequality, it had been widening since the 1980s in the United States, and indeed in quite a few other countries around the world. Nineteenth-century parallels To understand where we are now, you need to go back to the late 19th century, which saw a period of extraordinary globalization. I tend to think of it as the first age of globalisation: enormous increases in trade, in capital flows, in migration. And then […]

The countries where it’s best to be a woman

Norway and Switzerland are the best countries to be a woman and Yemen and Afghanistan the worst, said research on Tuesday which found the state of women’s rights is not “all doom and gloom” around the world. While life for women has improved in some 60 countries, it has deteriorated in Yemen and other war-torn nations, research organizations Georgetown University’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security and Peace Research Institute Oslo concluded. The researchers looked at 167 countries since 2017 when the first Women, Peace and Security Index was compiled, weighing variables such as access to bank accounts, jobs and security. Rounding out the top of the list were Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Austria, United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Sweden and Netherlands tied for ninth place, followed by Canada. At the bottom were Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, South Sudan, Iraq, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Mali and Libya. “There are important areas of progress. It’s not all doom and gloom,” said Jeni Klugman, managing director of the Georgetown Institute and lead author of the index. Gains were strongest in women’s access to financial accounts, either mobile or at conventional banks, in fewer discriminatory laws and through increasing legislative representation. “A national election can bring about big changes, both positive and negative,” Klugman told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “We have a number of countries which boosted the share of women in their national legislatures. We also had several countries which went the other way,” she added. Iceland lost its top spot from 2017 after elections brought a drop in the number of women in parliament. The United States inched up to No. 19 from No. 22 two years ago, in part due to 2018 elections when a record number of women were elected to Congress. But Klugman said the United States […]

Greta: the voice of climate activism who says ‘don’t listen to me’

She’s the voice of a global movement who mobilised millions of young people to demand action against climate change. Yet Greta Thunberg’s message to the US Congress – a hotbed of climate scepticism – was: “I don’t want you to listen to me. Little more than a year ago, we hadn’t heard of Thunberg. That changed after August 2018 when she held her first skolstrejk för klimatet, a ‘school strike for climate’, ducking out of class to protest outside Sweden’s parliament. “I want you to listen to the scientists.” Before long others joined her school strikes and, within a matter of months, a global movement was born. By March 2019, more than 2 million students across 135 countries were holding school strike demonstrations. Thunberg has come a long way in a year, both literally and figuratively. Just weeks after her 16th birthday she attended the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, where she famously urged world leaders to “panic” at the seriousness of the situation. “I don’t want your hope,” she told the audience. “I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I do. Every day. And want you to act. I want you to behave like our house is on fire. Because it is.” In March Thunberg was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Time magazine named her one of the world’s most influential people ans put her on its cover. She has addressed the European Parliament, the French National Assembly, the UK’s House of Commons, and met with Pope Francis. Now she is addressing the United Nations Climate Summit, a meeting she travelled to by carbon-neutral yacht. “It is insane that a 16-year-old would have to cross the Atlantic to take a stand,” she told reporters on arrival at the harbour. “The climate and ecological crisis is the […]

How China’s propaganda machine tried to control the message in the Hong Kong protests

China is known for the strict control it exercises on information, especially online. Discussion of events that might reflect unfavourably on the government is often censored, or framed in such a way that it becomes pro-government propaganda. That’s why so many Chinese citizens remain unaware of, for example, the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Online discussion of the recent protests in Hong Kong against a now-suspended extradition bill was no different. But this was also a rare occasion when China’s news propaganda machine was mobilised to simultaneously target several audiences both inside and outside China. China’s propaganda network is made up of a constellation of domesticand international news outlets. They span social media, mobile apps, websites and traditional media. The news is tailored to particular audiences according to different agendas. Everything, however, comes under the direction of the Central Publicity (formerly translated as “Propaganda”) Department of the Chinese Communist Party. This is an amazing time lapse of the hundreds of thousands of protesters in Hong Kong. Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen the China extradition bill elevated from a local Hong Kong controversy to a story of international concern following the protesters’ lobbying campaign targeted at the G20 summit. As events escalated from peaceful rallies focused on a single issue to at times violent confrontations seeking a range of demands, including the resignation of Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, the agendas of several spheres of China’s propaganda converged. The first day protesters took to the streets was March 31. That was two days after the extradition bill was published in the Gazette, the official publication of the Hong Kong government. The same day, two Chinese-language newspapers that have long acted as de-facto official media of the Chinese government in Hong Kong (but not openly declared as such) swung into action. Wen Wei Po and Ta Kung Pao both used either the entire or the majority of the second […]

We need to protect 30% of the planet by 2030.

Nicole SchwabDirector, International Relations, Last Wild Places, National Geographic Society Kristin RechbergerChief Executive Officer, Dynamic Planet At a time when the world is grappling with meeting the Paris Climate Agreement and trying to prevent the sixth mass extinction on Earth, an international team of scientists has published a way forward – a Global Deal for Nature. The science-backed plan, published in Science Advances, proposes ambitious targets for the conservation of nature as the most effective pathway to address the extinction crisis and help us avert catastrophic climate change, before it’s too late. The deal calls for 30% of the planet to be protected by 2030, with an additional 20% to be maintained or restored to a natural state and designated as climate stabilization areas. The link between biodiversity and climate change Biodiversity – the variety of life on Earth, from species to ecosystems – has a close relationship to climate change. Tropical forests, for example, are home to more than half of all species on land, and capture more of our carbon pollution than any other terrestrial ecosystem. They also sequester much more carbon than planted monocultures. The same is true for other ecosystems, such as intact mangroves and seagrass beds, which are sites of great biodiversity that store more carbon than coastal areas that have been degraded. But we have already transformed over half of Earth’s land to produce our food, and severely damaged our oceans. As a result, not only are we losing species at a rate 1000 times greater than the natural extinction rate, but we are also losing the ability of the natural world to rid us from our own pollution. At the moment, 45% of the planet is still in a natural or semi-natural state. But this is changing rapidly, putting severe pressure on the survival […]

The middle-class dream is moving beyond millennial reach

Do you feel like your cost of living is rising? If so, you’re not alone. Years of low income growth and increasing prices have made the “squeezed middle” a reality for many, with new research showing young people’s prospects are among the hardest hit. The middle class is shrinking in most countries and represents an out-of-reach dream for younger generations, according to the OECD’s report Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class. Just 60% of millennials – people born between 1983 and 2002 – are part of middle-income households in their twenties, compared with almost 70% of baby boomers. “The middle class used to be an aspiration,” the report says. “However, there are now signs that this bedrock of our democracies and economic growth is not as stable as in the past.” A healthy middle class matters, not just for equality and inclusion, but also because it propels consumption growth and investment and generates tax income that helps fund social safety nets 1The OECD defines middle class as a range around the median household income, which varies from country to country. In the US, that’s between about $23,000 and $62,000, whereas in Mexico it’s about $4,000 to $10,000. While the absolute amounts vary from country to country, the global patterns are clear: income growth is sluggish and the cost of goods and services associated with a middle-class lifestyle are increasing. One in five middle-income households spend more than they earn, and over-indebtedness is higher for them than for both low-income and high-income households, the report says. In addition, automation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution have destabilized the labour market, creating uncertainty around job prospects and opportunities for many people. These themes are echoed in the World Economic Forum’s Inclusive Development Index, which ranks economies using three pillars: growth and development, inclusion, and intergenerational equity and […]

How young people are shaping the future of sustainable fashion

Young people around the world are working to clean up a dirty fashion industry. The $2 trillion industry is responsible for 10% of the global carbon footprint, negative environmental effects including water pollution, the use of toxic chemicals and high levels of textile waste, and poor working conditions for millions of workers, primarily women. The World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers community is taking a grassroots approach to address these issues on local and regional levels while promoting a global dialogue about how to encourage sustainable transformations in the industry. “Fashion, as an overarching term for the apparel, footwear and textiles sector, is a huge global industry that touches us all (physically!) and employs millions of people,” says Holly Syrett, 32, a Global Shaper in the Amsterdam Hub. “But it is simultaneously a very dirty business that has long hidden how it works.” This year more than 30 Global Shaper hubs worldwide are participating in Shaping Fashion, an initiative that organizes activities and projects during Fashion Revolution Week to raise awareness of the sustainability challenges of the fashion industry and empower local communities to pursue sustainable fashion solutions. The projects include clothing swaps, film screenings and roundtables – each designed to meet the local community’s needs and inspire sustainable fashion efforts year-round, says Syrett, who is a co-founder of the initiative. For example, the Amsterdam Hub in the Netherlands is bringing together two groups, Sustainable Apparel Coalition and Fashion for Good, to discuss the importance of transparency in the fashion industry with members of the local community.F7 The Lusaka Hub in Zambia is organising a thrift market to promote the consumption of second-hand clothing and a panel discussion to examine what sustainable fashion looks like in Africa. There is opportunity for the African fashion industry to draw from lessons around the world but also form a unique approach to sustainable fashion that honors each local […]

«‹ 11 12 13 14