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Open Forum: Which 2050 Do We Want? – Transcript
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- Panelists at the World Economic Forum Open Forum session in Davos discuss their distinct visions for the year 2050, focusing on global stability, human rights, climate balance, and technology.
- Speakers examine the rise of authoritarian practices, the importance of public policy, and the challenges of misinformation and disinformation globally.
- The panel debates how education, artificial intelligence, and sustained attention or human accountability shape the future landscape of society.
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Guten Abend. Mein Name ist Alois Zwink. Good evening. I'm Alois Zwink, member of the Foundation of the World Economic Forum. I would like to bid you a hearty welcome to this first session of this year's Open Forum. The theme of this year is to develop visions for 2050.
Tomorrow starts now. Or today is the first day of the future, as we can say. For more than 20 years, the Open Forum has been a place where we have dynamic debates. We want to bring in all the different perspectives and discuss about them and also discuss
themes which are of interest for you in the audience. We want you to participate in the debate and therefore we are very grateful that you have taken the time to be with us tonight and discuss with us.
Over the next few days, we will have many discussions about decisions which we will take today or not take and what will be the impact and influence of this on our future life as far as technology is concerned,
health, nature, climate, or also the development of our societies and of all of us. Therefore, we are all concerned. Therefore, I would like to thank you again that you have taken the time to be with us tonight and I wish you to have interesting discussions this week and I hope that you will leave Davos or stay
in Davos, if you live here, with new insights, many things you have learned and seen here for the first time and I would like to wish you wonderful evening. Thank you very much.
>> Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Rody Sheri, host of the Global Business Report on Arise News. Happy to be here moderating this panel and thank you to the World Economic Forum for doing the work for me and introducing the topic. We're very much looking forward to your thoughts as well. So, we're going to begin with our panel. I think it's fair to allow everyone here briefly to pretty much tell us the 2050 that you're looking forward to. Some folks want a 2050 where there's only female presidents or some folks want a
2050 where there's only electric cars. So, just feel free to share the 2050 that you want and then we'll get into more specific questions for each of you then round robin and then we'll bring in our audience. Zainab, want to start with you.
What 2050 would you like to see? Of course. Well, I am young. I'm a woman. I'm from the so-called global south. So, that should be a teaser for what's coming next.
What 2050 do I want? And honestly, the question asks what 2050 do I want, but I really went in and asked so many of my colleagues, friends, even a person who was in charge of running a social media company to tell me what 2050 do they want so that I can tell something along the lines that resonates with most of us.
And the best of the answers um included a world that's liberal, that's democratic, and that's at peace with itself. And this there was a strong emphasis on a world that's at peace with itself and that doesn't need to really have this fight back and forth.
Um and that strongly connects with the 2050 that I want. Um of course, human rights at the center of it. Um I I I don't want a 2050 where we need to come back again and talk about the conversations, the conflicts, and all these problems that we are dealing with today.
But also at the same time, I want a 2050 that we feel prepared. We know that across generations youth, elders, children all feel ready for what's coming next and what's happening now and that they feel included and that they are included.
A little idealistic for sure as we can see it, but that's what young a young a young woman can do, you know? That's what they can put forward in front of everyone and push for it as a result of their hope and resilience.
And I would stop there. All right. And I actually should be introducing everyone. Zainab is Izi, of course, Global Shaper with the World Economic Forum in Kabul. I'm going to come over to Yes, fantastic stuff. You're doing some great work.
This is a very diverse panel. Everybody's doing great work here. Up next, of course, is Agnes Callamard, Secretary General, Amnesty International UK. Agnes, what's what 2050 Well, first of all, I want us to get to 2050.
That's the first thing and frankly given how some of the political leaders are behaving right now, I think we do need to question whether we as as a as as a collective can actually reach 2050. So, that's my first wish. My second wish is that we get to 2050 without annihilation of half of the world, without World War III, without
more repression, more genocide, more destruction of the environment that we have seen. So, that's my two big wish for 2050. Now, if we do manage to get to 2050, if we manage to have the vision to imagine a 2050 without the destruction of the world, if we have the strength to
be like the 1945 generation that re-imagined a world but without World War II, I would want to have 2050 that is predicated on a relationship between human and the planet that allows for a sustaining lives. I would like to see biodiversity respected. I would like to see equality
being maybe not a thing of the past, but certainly something that we are committing to decrease. Equality inequality within state and between state. I would want to see a 2050 that is centered on human rights protection.
Individual rights, collective rights. I would want to see a 2050 that recognize the ills of the past, the injustice of the past that is predicated on the notion that those responsible for those ills, those responsible for bringing the planet to its knee, those responsible for genocide are actually paying for it in 2050. Thank you. All
right. Thank you so much for that. Professor Professor Adam Tooze is the director of the European Institute at Columbia University. Professor, what's your What 2050 do you want to see? I don't think I ever thought I'd be saying this, but an autonomous and self-determining Greenland.
All right. And all that implies of the one of the two countries that I hold a passport of cuz getting us there would at this point imply a substantial change in mind, which may be one of the themes of this week here at Davos, an unusually important important Davos in that respect.
Um more seriously, I think I would double down, not that that isn't serious. I would double down on I would double down on the climate and environmental balance question. And I would double down on it because it's so precisely defined what we need to do.
And because the astonishing good news is that we're actually now in the mid-2020s in a position to get to at least for a very large part of the problem something like sustainability over the next as quickly as the next 10 years. We can We have a chance of hitting the Dubai commitments of 2023, which is a tripling of renewable energy capacity and a doubling of energy efficiency. These are not impossible goals.
And they're crucial. They're absolutely crucial. And you just see it all around. This is the warmest I've ever seen Davos. It's crazy. As we were coming up, it was like 8° at Klosters. It's mad. I mean, this is truly a a thing that is happening. And of course, this isn't a problem principally for incredibly rich and privileged people like ourselves here. They We'll all find ways of coping, I'm sure. But I think if you're looking out to the horizon of 2050, the absolutely central question are the
developmental possibilities of Africa. Full stop. Because by 2050, I'm I'm going to be white and very old and the majority of young people in the world will be African. And that is a radically new scenario. I mean, the you know, Asian predominance is the historical norm.
But the emergence of Africa as a densely populated center of global demographic dynamism is a radically novel phenomenon. In some ways, of course, a very good news story, but one that demands an answer to the question of development and the energy is essential to that. And we have the opportunity at this moment to make that sustainable. So, that for me is the thing.
That's my hope, I think. Okay. Well, I'm I'm from Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa. So, thank you so much for mentioning that. I appreciate I appreciate that very much. Jill Hawkins, you of course are a global shaper in Sydney. Of course, same as I was here, of course, in Kabul. What's your 2050 that you want to see?
So, I think my head and my heart have different answers. Give us both. Well, both I think a future that's defined by dignity, by justice, by things that feel far out of reach at the moment, by sustainability. I think where my head sits though is that we need strategy fueled by hope and hope alone won't get us where we need to be.