Experts seek to plug holes in top global institutions

Dubai: The World Economic Forum is bringing its Global Agenda Councils to Dubai this week for a massive brainstorming session that is designed to find and fill the many holes in the world's institutions.

The aim of the three-day think-in is to find out where the G20, the World Bank, United Nations, and any other international body have missed the point, and make suggestions on how to get it right.

"We seek to define five or six fundamental values on which we will build everything. We will then translate the values into how they will need effective institutions, which we then translate into a risk mitigating and systemic protection system, which allows us to avoid these huge crises that knock the whole system off course.

"We are then able to go for the changing but balanced triangle of growth, sustainability, and security," Andre Schneider, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer of the World Economic Forum, told Gulf News.

He was describing how more than 1,000 experts in over 75 themes will take part in three days of debates. They will define their own priorities within their own areas of specialisation, and then meet members from the other groups and find points of common interest. The final day will be focused on bringing the whole massive exercise into one coherent recommendation.

This recommendation will form the basis of the discussions at World Economic Forum Davos in January 2010, and then again at a new meeting which will finalise what is being called the Global Redesign Initiative, GRI, in Qatar in the spring. After this session, the plan is to spread out into the global multilateral bodies with suggestions on how they could work better, meet the world's priorities more accurately, and plug any gaps.

The 75 Agenda Councils will start work in Dubai today, looking at three fundamental principles: strengthening economies, enhancing security and ensuring sustainability.

‘Vital'

"This triangle of security, growth and sustainability is vital. Without this the world will not go any where," Schneider summed up the three main themes.

However, in order to allow the three main themes' work successfully, the world's institutions have to adopt two additional themes that cross into all areas. Any plan has to include ideas on how to mitigate global risks and address systemic failures, which recently have been financial, but could include natural or social disasters; and it must also build effective global institutions which reflect the necessary institutional context for effective global governance.

As Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said in the World Economic Forum meeting in Dalian, China: "We lack a risk radar system, so even when the World Bank rang the bell no one heard."

He was pointing to a failure of both the multilateral institutions' ability to spot the emerging systemic failure of the world's financial system, as well as its institutions to cope with it.

He was also making the point that the GRI has an important task to suggest how to reform the institutions so that such a disaster will not happen again.

Schneider went into some detail with Gulf News on the thinking behind this plan to refocus the global institutions. "Thinking about security also means making sure that the global, national and human elements are all included," he said. "Today there is a need to improve the global systems that are weak. Most of the international systems are nation to nation, and not global. And many of the underlying systems are person to person.

Values

"At the end of the day we need to base our work on values. We need an awareness of universal values required for constructive coexistence in an interdependent world characterized by cultural diversity," said Schneider. "This is the overarching framework."

GRI has emerged from the last two annual meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos and the first Global Agenda Council held in Dubai last year.

"These meetings made it very clear that you need common values to find the vital triangle of growth, sustainability and security, which in turn is protected against risks and systemic failure, and manage the whole structure efficiently and in a comprehensive and mutually shared way," said Schneider.

"It was becoming very clear that the world's institutions are confronted with more and more interlinked challenges, which can only be dealt with be thinking beyond just businesses or governments, and over many different types of economy.

"The world does not have an institutional vehicle to address this inter-disciplinary multi-stakeholder approach. For example, the United Nations is only for governments and although they may invite NGOs to their debates, there is still no place where business talks with governments.

"This creates a real problem, in how the world deals with the financial crisis."

Agenda

Redesign Initiative

The Global Redesign Initiative is based on six themes:

Creating a values framework: This considers the universal values needed for constructive coexistence in an interdependent world characterised by cultural diversity.

Mitigating global risks and addressing systemic failures: This includes all eventualities and risks which may have adverse consequences on a global level.

Strengthening economies: This encompasses all aspects of economic growth and development.

Enhancing security: This covers global, national and human security.

Ensuring sustainability: This addresses human behaviour in the global ecosystem.

Building effective institutions: This reflects on the necessary institutional context for effective global governance.