Davos Dialogue: 2023 Edition

2023 Commemorative Bookazine Edition

RESTORING A FRAGMENTED WORLD

MASTHEAD CEO & PUBLISHER ANA C. ROLD

SPECIAL SERIES EDITOR JEREMY FUGLEBERG

MANAGING EDITOR SHANE SZARKOWSKI

SPECIAL SERIES EDITOR WINONA ROYLANCE

SPECIAL SERIES EDITOR KELLY R. BAILEY

MULTIMEDIA MANAGER WHITNEY DEVRIES

ART DIRECTOR MARC GARFIELD

BOOK REVIEWER JOSHUA HUMINSKI

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD ANDREW M. BEATO FUMBI CHIMA DANTE A. DISPARTE KERSTIN EWELT

SIR IAN FORBES LISA GABLE GREG LEBEDEV ANITA MCBRIDE

CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS ANNALENA BAERBOCK SWETA BHUSAN ANDREA BONIME-BLANC JEAN DE LA ROCHEBROCHARD DANTE DISPARTE JARED A. FAVOLE HIPPOLYTE FOFACK DANIELLA FOSTER LISA GABLE JOSE JAVIER GUADALUPE SERGEI GURIEV TOM HASHEMI BEATA JAVORCIK EVA KEIFFENHEIM

WENDY KOPP CHIKAKO OZAWA-DE SILVA VARSHA PILLAI SREEHARI RAVINDRANATH ERIC SCHMIDT ROBERT SUNDELIUS APPU SURESH SHANE SZARKOWSKI VISHAL TALREJA ANNA TUNKEL MARIO VASILESCU TRACY WALDER GARIF YALAK JANET L. YELLEN

Copyright © by Diplomatic Courier/Medauras Global Publishing 2023. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Medauras Global and Diplomatic Courier.

LEGAL NOTICE. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form—except brief excerpts for the purpose of review—without written consent from the publisher and authors. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of information in this publication; however, the authors, Diplomatic Courier, and Medauras Global make no warranties, express or implied, in regards to the information and dis­­claim all liability for any loss, damages, errors, or omissions.

EDITORIAL. The content represents the views of their authors and do not reflect those of the editors and the publishers. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of information in this publication, however, Medauras Global and the Diplomatic Courier make no warranties, express or implied in regards to the information, and disclaim all liability for any loss, damages, errors, or omissions.

PERMISSIONS. This report cannot be reproduced without the permission of the authors and the publisher. For permissions please email: info@medauras.com with your written request.

ADV ERTI S EMENT

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

Welcome

T

Ana C. Rold Publisher & CEO

his year’s World Economic Forum annual meetings in Davos, Switzerland promise a return to normal—meaning the return to the winter version of the meeting pre-pandemic—and a tried and tired theme: “Cooperation in a Fragmented World.” I say tried, because this has been the general theme of Davos—and many other similar meetings—long before the pandemic. But it is also tired because to answer the vast number of ongoing crises we need more than a platform for getting together; we need a community of action.

You may be asking, why then, do we cover the Davos meetings with the ferocity we have for over a decade now? We do because Davos remains the singular place where we continue to engage with some of the most interesting, action oriented, and uncommon collaborators in the world. Indeed, right outside Congress Centre in Davos, you will be challenged by the paradox that is this town. A place where one percenters will debate the global economy and supply chains, where million-dollar storefronts and tents house the latest influencers in media, policy, tech, and business. At the same time, major global health, education, and other impact initiatives are born and take shape— and most importantly, are financed.

Indeed, while WEF’s meetings are a platform for the convergence of ideas, it is outside these meetings, in this otherwise unassuming winter town, where stakeholders meet and set action agendas that reverberate in subsequent meetings of importance yearround. That’s the magic of Davos.

For years, our presence at Davos has meant being part or host of these side-meetings, where the initiatives and ideas are born. With our special Davos Dialogue edition, we contribute important thought capital to the discussions but our goals are much loftier.

We bring our community together with the hope that they will convert these ideas to action. And in Davos we find a fertile ground to do so not just with ideas but with people. In this edition, we tackle the issue of fragmentation from a whole of society approach, having invited contributors from technology, policy, and diplomacy to offer a fresh take on solution-making. As always, we welcome your feedback and contributions at editors@diplomaticourier.org.

DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 5

ADV E RTI S EM ENT

Contents DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

05 I Welcome: Restoring a Fragmented World By: Ana C. Rold

44 I The Return of the End of History By: Sergei Guriev

96 I A Vaccine for the Loneliness Epidemic By: Chikako Ozawa-de Silva With: Brendan Ozawa-de Silva

08 I Uncommon Collaborations for a Better World in 2050 By: Shane Szarkowski

12 I United for Humanity By: Annalena Baerbock

16 I With Crypto, The Banker Doth Protest Too Much By: Dante Disparte

20 I What Place for Experts in the Post-Truth Era?

48 I The Global Struggle for Tech Mastery By: Eric Schmidt

52 I The Paradox of Wellbeing and Mindset: Translating Burden to Dividend By: Sweta Bhusan & Sreehari Ravindranath

56 I Binding a Fragmented World Together with the Strongest Ties By: Lisa Gable

By: Tom Hashemi

24 I There Is No Healthy Economy Without Healthy People By: Daniella Foster

28 I Redefining Our Global Understanding of Success By: Eva Keiffenheim

30 I Resilient Trade

By: Beata Javorcik

80 I A New Definition of the Next Normal

Partner Editorials 60 I Cisco Switzerland Brings Innovative Digital Solutions to Patient Care 64 I Transforming Our Relationship with Information By: Mario Vasilescu

By: Varsha Pillai & Vishal Talreja

84 I The Rise and Mainstreaming of Extremism in the U.S. and Europe By: Tracy Walder

88 I The Unbearable Weight of Misinformation By: Appu Suresh

By: Jared A. Favole

40 I Innovative Partnerships to Reconnect a Fragmented World

By: Robert Sundelius

By: Garif Yalak

76 I The Fog of Waronomics

By: Janet L. Yellen

36 I Fill the Global Trust Gap with Transparency

100 I Creating a True Health Ecosystem for Human Flourishing

92 I The Silver Tsunami By: Hippolyte Fofack

68 I Turbocharging Impact through Governance and Trust By: Andrea Bonime-Blanc & Jose Javier Guadalupe

72 I Young Workers Are Searching for Meaning and Wellbeing. Let’s Help Them Find It By: Wendy Kopp

By: Anna Tunkel & Jean de La Rochebrochard

DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 7

Photo via Adobe Stock.

Uncommon Collaborations for a Better World in 2050

By Shane Szarkowski

8 | D I PLOM AT I C COU RIE R

S

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

ixty exceptional individuals. That’s the number of delegates World in 2050 gathered to take part in our inaugural Innovation Lab as we seek solutions to intractable global problems. Our delegates come from five continents and two dozen countries, ages ranging from 20 to 70. They were corporate executives, senior former government officials, civil society representatives, entrepreneurs, and outstanding students.

This diversity helped us carry out an uncommon breed of collective intelligence, bringing together a large, diverse group of people with often radically different perspectives and experiences who nevertheless share the goal of seeking collaborative solutions to big societal issues.

Helping the Future Arrive Well Our Innovation Labs are designed to be a core part of World in 2050’s mission—to help the future arrive well. What does that mean?

There are a bevy of interrelated and overlapping challenges which can have profound impacts on society in the coming decades. We’ve identified and divided these into five long-term megatrends to better conceptualize both underrecognized challenges and uncommon but impactful solutions. They are: •

Exponential technologies are radically reshaping the world.

•

Disruption from climate change, energy transition is only beginning.

•

The workplace cares less about education, more about skills.

•

Societal distrust and fragmentation are surging.

•

Democratic governance institutions are under pressure.

For our inaugural Innovation Lab, we assigned delegates into five committees— one for each megatrend—privileging diversity in background, expertise, and

labor markets and education systems have been under pressure for years.

Labor markets are being disrupted by the recognition that skills are a better measure of potential in the workplace, upsetting established relations between education and work. viewpoint to give each committee the opportunity for rich, uncommon discussions.

Committees considered macro-issues related to each of their themes. Delegates carried out discussions through the lens of the Three Horizons Model, which asks that we consider pathways into the future through three timeframes: •

Horizon One: Current Situation (2020s). What norms in our “business as usual” world now are dying or should die, and how can we help them leave well?

•

Horizon Two: Short-Term Future (2030s). What are our points of volatility along the way, and how can we mitigate the ills while empowering positive changes?

•

Horizon Three: Long-Term Future (2050). What might arrive and how can we help it arrive well?

Key Takeaways Over three months, delegates reached a variety of insights, which we have collected and will learn from. Six of these are highlighted in our recently published report from the inaugural Innovation Lab. While you can find longer discussions of these insights in the full report, we outline the key outcomes below.

Democratize governance of exponential technologies. Governance of exponential technologies is flawed, lagging behind inDAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 9

novation and being neither equitable nor inclusive. Consumers have largely given over their agency to exert purchaser’s control over the exponential products they consume due to those products’ convenience, relying instead on regulators to protect their interests. Regulators have not been up to the task, leaving a major governance gap filled in part by corporations.

A healthier governance ecosystem will ensure healthier individual agency in relation to exponential tech, ensuring that solutions to our problems are also inclusive and equitable.

The narrative on climate change is still about defeating it. Yet the dream of keeping warming below 1.5C is all but dead due to a deficit of political will and cooperation.

Tech standards are more important than tech regulations. Typical suggestions for addressing exponential tech governance gaps have been to make regulators more agile or to slow down the pace at which innovations are introduced to the public space. Both are patchwork solutions.

Delegates suggested we instead focus on building an infrastructure of ethical and practical standards for exponential technologies. Rather than regulating on a granular level, this infrastructure creates guiding principles applicable to all innovation, thus empowering consumers, investors, and regulators even as innovations continue to speed up.

Individuals, not institutions, must be at the center of education and work. Today’s labor markets and education systems have been under pressure for years. Labor markets are being disrupted by the recognition that skills are a better measure of potential in the workplace, upsetting established relations between education and work.

Meanwhile, education advocates have begun talking about “education transforma10 | D I PLOM AT I C COU RIE R

tion” rather than just reform. Delegates suggested a more radical and intertwined approach, arguing that personalization of the education experience—focusing on individual needs rather than systemic optimization—meets both evolving labor market needs and the aims of education transformation advocates.

We should focus on mitigating, not defeating, climate change. The narrative on climate change is still about defeating it. Yet the dream of keeping warming below 1.5C is all but dead due to a deficit of political will and cooperation. Delegates suggested we face the fact that we’re out of time and pivot away from aspirational language of “winning” against climate change, turning instead to pragmatic conversations about mitigation and remediation to protect as many as possible, as quickly as possible, while building resilience. This should also help build momentum for longer-term solutions.

Rethink how we communicate for better climate action. Climate advocates struggle to communicate meaningfully with groups who are skeptical of robust climate action.

Yet we require broad societal buy-in to employ both near-term mitigation and longer-term sustainability strategies. Negative rhetoric about climate action complicates already tough conversations about effective action. Delegates proposed a renewed rhetorical toolkit that includes meeting those you disagree with where they are and building a better taxonomy of those reticent about climate action.

Digital Literacy is key to healing fractured societies. People the world over are increasingly unhappy. Much of this unhappiness hinges on a growing trust deficit within and across societies, thanks in part to populism, misinformation, social media algorithms, and echo chambers. The situation is made worse by a burgeoning infotainment industry, which feeds off this unhappiness to generate engagement and content for revenue. Conversations around how to do better typically center around improving regulation of online content.

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

People the world over are increasingly unhappy. Much of this unhappiness hinges on a growing trust deficit within and across societies, thanks in part to populism, misinformation, social media algorithms, and echo chambers.

Delegates suggested a better approach is building digital literacy so consumers can make informed decisions about what to trust and consume.

An Ecosystem of Ideas; A Community of Action Building a roadmap to actioning these takeaways is a complicated, long-term project beyond the scope of the inaugural Innovation Lab. What delegates did instead was to build what we are calling an “ecosystem of ideas.” Together with our growing “community of action,” these constitute a sort of infrastructure for how World in 2050 aims to help the future arrive well.

Rather than a roadmap to fixing the world’s problems, this ecosystem of ideas is more a treasure map pointing us in the right direction to dig down and find those solutions.

This will be the work for future planned Innovation Labs, which will get more granular in scope.

Our vision for a community of action, meanwhile, comes from World in 2050’s basic tenets, which hold that a spirit of uncommon collaboration and fellowship are the secret sauce that will let us work across national and identity boundaries to co-create solutions to help the future arrive well. All delegates of past and future Innovation Labs are part of this community, but we are also building a platform for a wider and still more inclusive community of action to grow and collaborate, whether under the auspices of World in 2050 convenings or independently.

Building such a diverse community empowered by our growing body of learnings is, we think, what is needed to find the kind of solutions which aren’t just temporary fixes and which don’t leave whole segments of society behind. ***** About the author: Shane Szarkowski is the Managing Editor of Diplomatic Courier and Executive Director of World in 2050.

Editors’ Note: This piece contextualizes and summarizes do tank/ think tank World in 2050’s recently published report from its inaugural Innovation Lab.

DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 11

Photo via Getty Images.

United for Humanity

By Annalena Baerbock

12 | D I PLOM AT I C COU RIE R

H

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

ow can we be optimistic about 2023? As we enter the new year, a devastating war is raging on the European continent. Russia’s war of aggression has slashed a devastating wound far beyond Europe, exacerbating a food and energy crisis in large parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. More than 800 million men, women, and children go to bed hungry every night.

The climate emergency is deepening this pain, stirring conflict worldwide, and robbing people of their land, their homes, and their security.

That outstanding unity was not a given.

More than 140 states spoke out against Russia’s aggression at the United Nations General Assembly in March—from north to south, from east to west—all different in our histories, politics, and cultures. What unites us is a common cause—to do what our citizens expect from us: to make it unwaveringly clear that, in situations of injustice, we will not be neutral. We will take sides—for justice for the woman raped in Bucha, for the orchestra conductor shot in Kherson, and for the toddler forced from his home in eastern Ukraine.

How can we be optimistic in such frightful times of uncertainty? I strongly believe that, as responsible world leaders, we simply have no other option than to face the next year with a firm sense of confidence that we can drive change to improve people’s lives. Not despite this “perfect storm” of crises—but because of it.

Because we could be them, and they could be us. And because, if we were to let this war of aggression pass by, no one, anywhere, could sleep peacefully while living in fear of being attacked by a bigger neighbor.

Nelson Mandela once described the moments when his faith in humanity was tested, but still he would not give in to despair.

“Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward”—that’s how he put it.

To look ahead and stay the course, confident in what we are able to achieve if we stand together—that is, to my mind, what should guide us into the new year. And I am not saying this from a position of naive hopefulness. I am saying this with the confidence of a foreign minister who has learned in many—often difficult—instances over the past 12 months how much we can achieve if we let solidarity and humanity guide our actions and if we defend what we believe in.

That is exactly how we responded to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine— united, in Europe, across the Atlantic, and worldwide—with our clear stand against the war’s inhumanities, with our support for Ukraine, with sanctions aimed at Russia’s war machine, and with investments in our security.

Because we could be them, and they could be us. And because, if we were to let this war of aggression pass by, no one, anywhere, could sleep peacefully while living in fear of being attacked by a bigger neighbor.

Our strength is in our unity. United for humanity—it is this deep conviction that gives me confidence for the year ahead.

For that, we must be better listeners. That is another crucial lesson I have drawn from the past few months—not just with a view to our partners in Europe, but also in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Near and Middle East.

When discussing Russia’s war with many of these partners, I often heard the following sentiment: “You want us to stand with you now that there is a war in Europe. But where were you in recent years when we were in the throes of conflict?”

DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 13

I hear these concerns. And I truly believe we should be willing to critically question our own actions and our past engagement in the world. We should also listen closely when our partners tell us how difficult it is to reduce their dependency on Russia—whether militarily, politically, or economically. This is an immense challenge.

In Germany, we are seeing how the cost of overcoming our dependency is weighing on our citizens’ wallets. For many partners, the slashes cut deeper, and, for them, setting up multi-billion-euro protective shields is simply not possible.

to help alleviate the pain of those most in need, and Germany remains the secondlargest humanitarian donor worldwide.

This solidarity gives me confidence. But it is not enough.

For millions around the world, this crisis is a concrete threat to their lives. I heard from women in northern Mali how droughts are destroying their harvests, driving farmers from their homes, and exacerbating conflicts over land and resources.

At the same time, we will rally partners to tackle one of the most severe underlying causes of the food crisis: the climate emergency. For millions around the world, this crisis is a concrete threat to their lives. I heard from women in northern Mali how droughts are destroying their harvests, driving farmers from their homes, and exacerbating conflicts over land and resources. In Palau, a fisherman took me to his local beach, showing me how the rising sea levels may swallow up his house in less than ten years’ time, robbing him of his home, his safety, and his livelihood.

Our partners must know that they can rely on us. A foreign minister colleague recently said to me, “We need committed partners, not partners who just want to please us.” This should be our guiding principle.

At the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27), I met an activist from Chad who told me, “While we are talking, my country is under water, my mother has lost her home, my sister has lost her home, my cousins have lost their homes.”

Our clear message is that we are not turning our back on the world because there is a war raging in our neighborhood. On the contrary, we are seeing how this very war is driving suffering across the globe because Russia has been curbing access to Ukraine’s grain exports and has been spreading lies about who is to blame for the shortages.

Our response has been the most effective when it has been the most united. It was the UN, together with our Turkish partners, that negotiated the reopening of Ukrainian grain ports. The G7, which brings together economically strong democracies, committed over $14 billion by June 2022

14 | D I PLOM AT I C COURIE R

The World Food Programme had to reduce food rations to Yemen, Somalia, and the Sahel. Every portion cut means another child goes hungry. And if you see your son or daughter starving, you cannot fight for democracy, rights, or freedom. That is why, going into the next year, we must not waver in our joint support.

The climate crisis harms, kills, and displaces. It is a direct threat to human life. It is a blatant injustice that countries like Chad and Palau suffer so tremendously from this crisis while having contributed next to nothing to its creation.

As industrialized countries that are largely to blame for the crisis, we have a special responsibility to help alleviate it, to reduce emissions and keep the 1.5° Celsius path within reach. Because every tenth of a degree less in global warming means less intense storms, floods, and droughts—and thus more security.

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

That is why it was a crucial step forward that we opened a new chapter for climate justice at COP27. It is now on the big emitters to pay their share for the climate losses and damages they are causing in the most vulnerable states. This is not about charity; it is about justice. It is something particularly small island states have been demanding for decades—and rightly so.

This year, we finally sent a clear message: We heard you. We understood. And now, we will act.

In the climate emergency, as well as in other conflicts and crises, it is the most vulnerable who suffer the most: women, children, the elderly, and marginalized groups.

I strongly believe that women’s rights are a yardstick for the state of our societies. In autocratic regimes, they are often the first to give. And if they do, that is a sign of worse to come. What autocratic regimes are most afraid of is when women raise their voice.

If half of the population is suppressed, no society or economy can thrive. That is why, for my government, a Feminist Foreign Policy that promotes the equal rights of each and every one of us in our societies is a core issue of hard security. It will figure prominently in our National Security Strategy that we are currently drafting.

“Women are the first victims of war, but only they hold the unique key to peace.”

Our strength is in our unity.

United for humanity – it is this deep conviction that gives me confidence for the year ahead.

That is how Congolese human-rights activist Julienne Lusenge put it.

“Unless women are safe, no one is safe,” courageous women in Ukraine told me.

“Women, life, freedom,” is what the women in Iran have been chanting. Resounding across the world, their chant is an anthem of courage.

If I am to take strength for the year 2023, I take it from brave women like them, whether they hail from the Congo, Iran, Afghanistan, or Ukraine.

Their chant is our anthem. Their courage is our yardstick. Their cause is our call – to not only be confident, but to boldly take action, united for humanity. ***** About the author: Annalena Baerbock is Minister for Foreign Affairs of Germany. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.

DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 15

Photo via Adobe Stock.

With Crypto, The Banker Doth Protest Too Much

By Dante Disparte

16 | D I PLOM AT I C COURIE R

T

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

he collision of money with the internet was bound to produce a blend of novel risks, as well as serve as a new terrain for ageold human greed, criminality, and fraud. And yet for bankers to proclaim crypto is dead because 2022 produced a particularly dark and cold crypto winter, is not only disingenuous, it ignores one key thing—the emergence of blockchainbased financial services was never about substitution of their business models, it was about augmenting them. So perhaps, 2022 marks the beginning of a crypto ice age of the speculative phase, but not the demise of internet-scale, always-on open technologies in financial markets. Herein, the promise of crypto (short form for cryptography), could not be brighter or its necessity clearer.

Watch what the biggest and most well-endowed banks do, not what they say with repeated dismissals of crypto, bearing in mind crypto as an industry is no more monolithic than banking, central banking, or any other institution. Indeed, the crypto companies that fared well during 2022—a year punctuated by one epic failure after another—have all the basic preconditions and operating rigor of well-regulated, trusted financial services firms. While some have withered in the face of sunlight, the greatest disinfectant, others were born in it. They have eschewed from the outset the idea that stablecoins should be unregulated internet hot money like Terra-Luna—the collapsed $60 billion algorithmic stable-inname-only coin. At best, this was a poorly designed digital derivative. At worst, it was fraud. But to link all crypto innovations, the responsible and the irredeemable, together would be like dismissing all banking because of Danske Bank’s $230 billion money laundering pipeline.

Instead, USDC, the dollar digital currency, which has safely processed more than $8 trillion in blockchain transactions, conforms with existing U.S. electronic stored value, money transmission, and state supervisory frameworks—all while guarding against and being responsive to global

financial integrity and prudential norms.

As countries, global regulators and policymakers call for hardening their regulatory posture towards digital assets, the regulatory principle of same risk, same rules, and technology neutrality should be remembered. All too often, the crypto conversation focuses on risks, which is fair enough especially after an annus horribilis like 2022, despite the fact that most of the failures have human protagonists. However, it is again disingenuous for bankers to criticize the fundamental technologies that underpin crypto, on the one hand, while trying to co-opt its innovations on the other. This is not a dire contest between emerging industries and the technologies that power them and traditional finance, it is convergence.

the crypto companies that fared well during 2022—a year punctuated by one epic failure after another—have all the basic preconditions and operating rigor of well-regulated, trusted financial services firms.

One of the key ways in which well-regulated payment stablecoins (or Europe’s e-money tokens under emerging regulatory frameworks) are making upgrades is by rejecting the leverage and rehypothecation that makes fractional reserve banking risky. Indeed, the conservative balance sheet construct, asset-liability management, and liquidity coverage ratio underpinning USDC is on par or better than what is expected of globally systemic banks. We have to remember the daisy chain of leverage, systemic correlations, opacity, and dangerous financial alchemy that set off the 2008 financial crisis triggered a multi-trillion-dollar public bailout. Thus far, crypto’s eye-watering losses in 2022 have been “self-insured,” borne by sophisticated investors and speculators, early adopters, or people who may know not to invest more in anything than they can afford to DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 17

lose—or not to invest in anything they do not understand. All “crypto” losses triggered by fraud, criminality, or race to the bottom regulatory arbitrage, as with the real economy or any other sector, should be categorically rejected, prosecuted, and consigned to history, like the failure of FTX. If policymakers, legislators and regulators, fail to meet their own calls to action for a digital asset rulebook, the next crypto crisis may not be so cleanly contained from the real economy.

This is not a dire contest between emerging industries and the technologies that power them and traditional finance, it is convergence.

As the frothy, speculative waters of 2022 recede taking with them the brigands, crypto corsairs and frauds, an enduring, regulated, always-on financial system will remain. This is solving for what we cannot do with money, banking, and financial services if they remain largely analog and consigned to brick and mortar. The history of both technology innovation and finance teaches us that it often takes a collapse or a bubble bursting for enduring value to remain. Just as the dot-com bubble handed over the development of the internet to durable companies, unlocking novel business models we now cannot live without, 2022 marks crypto’s Dodd-Frank moment.

Meeting the moment with rules-based competition and sensible regulation that protects consumers and markets is the only right choice. On this, even crypto’s biggest detractors agree. ***** About the author: Dante A. Disparte serves as the Chief Strategy Officer & Head of Global Policy for Circle and is a member of Diplomatic Courier’s editorial advisory board.

18 | D I PLOM AT I C COURIE R

Advertisement

The new genius is a collaborative genius

At Northwestern University’s Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, we believe that relationships among individuals and institutions—globally and locally—are what generate new knowledge that sparks solutions to global challenges.

Learn more at buffett.northwestern.edu.

Photo by Richard Ciraulo via Unsplash.

What Place for Experts in the Post-Truth Era?

By Tom Hashemi

20 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R

I

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

n the Spring of 2020, the world’s governments scrambled to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic; virologists and epidemiologists, economists and public health experts were flung into the spotlight.

At daily televised briefings, scientific experts stood side-by-side with political leaders, many of whom promised to ‘follow the science.’ Were we seeing experts reclaim their place at the center of decision-making? Many op-eds and headlines speculated so.

Yet for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every handful of expert-led press conferences, sprung an anti-lockdown protest or conspiracy theory. While vaccine and Covid-deniers are in a small minority, their views can be loud and troubling.

If your job is to produce, validate, or share knowledge at a mainstream, traditional institution—let’s say a university, research institute, or think tank—you might feel despairing. How can the world tackle a pandemic when some citizens aren’t convinced of its existence? Indeed, how can our societies move forward when different groups live in such different realities?

In healthy democracies, disagreement is an absolute necessity. We must be able to debate what events mean and how we must respond. Yet now, we regularly find ourselves debating whether or not the events themselves have actually taken place.

That’s because our information environment is vastly different to the way it was 30 years ago. Today the challenge is not finding information, but filtering and validating it. Pushed along by a tide of information, many of us resort to following our intuition. We make decisions based on what feels right.

We also follow our intuition when it comes to judging who is or is not an expert. A large proportion of Americans look at the length of time someone has been doing the job when assessing their credibility.

Yet almost as many want to know whether or not the expert has had ‘personal experience’ of the topic they are discussing.

Meanwhile, a key reason Americans distrust experts is when they don’t seem transparent about their allegiances. Another is failing to ‘make sense.’

In this environment, experts must be trustworthy. But they must also show their humanity and be good communicators.

experts are not always expert communicators. Many are unable to help others grasp counter-intuitive evidence, or offer ways to accommodate new information into an existing worldview. This makes them far too easy to ignore.

Because it’s not always clear that experts are people. Traditionally, experts have remained cool, detached in a way of communicating objectivity. But some are suspicious of that detachment. To them, these aloof experts become a symbol of shady establishment control. Nobody stands nowhere, after all. And pretending otherwise appears suspect.

Meanwhile, experts are not always expert communicators. Many are unable to help others grasp counter-intuitive evidence, or offer ways to accommodate new information into an existing worldview. This makes them far too easy to ignore. We can dismiss distrust in experts as a symptom of a populist age. But what if we showed curiosity instead? What might people need from experts that they aren’t getting? Is it a sense of who they are and where they are coming from? Is it a way of talking about topics that illustrates why they care and, therefore, why others should?

This approach helps us interpret polling that shows more and more people turnDAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 21

ing towards ‘alternative experts.’ These are relatable characters. They might have extreme views or a caustic way of communicating, but they seem up front, at least, about who they are and what they think.

They tell it like it is.

Today the challenge is not finding information, but filtering and validating it. Pushed along by a tide of information, many of us resort to following our intuition. We make decisions based on what feels right.

The challenges of our current information environment can’t be solved by experts alone. They can’t be expected to fix the avalanche of fake news, the onset of deep fakes, and the fact that we can now find facts to support just about any position.

But experts can’t insist on remaining detached and rational—staying outside the fray and hoping it all calms down. That’s because experts do not exist outside of society. They are humans and citizens, too.

22 | D IPLOM AT I C COU RIE R

***** About the author: Tom Hashemi is Managing Partner at Cast From Clay.

About the data: Cast From Clay interviewed 1,011 American adults aged 18+ in July 2022, via online panel survey, on their perceptions of democracy, facts, expertise and the information environment. Respondents were screened and weighted to be nationally representative of age, gender and region. The margin of error on the study is +/- 3.1%.

ADV ERTI S EM ENT

GLOBAL IMPACT FROM THE HEART OF AUSTRIA For 75 years, Salzburg Global Seminar has worked for a creative, just and sustainable world. Schloss Leopoldskron inspires people and institutions on every continent. Our art of hosting opens new horizons and changes lives.

www.SalzburgGlobal.org

SGS_Ad_DiplCourier_170822.indd 2

www.SchlossLeopoldskron.com

17.08.22 14:12

Illustration via Adobe Stock.

There Is No Healthy Economy Without Healthy People

By Daniella Foster 24 | D IPLOM AT I C CO URIE R

H

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

ave you ever thought about the data governments release to demonstrate effectiveness?

Many of the numbers shared regularly tend to be economic, focused on GDP, unemployment rates, and inflation. But is that the true measure of success? Of course, a strong economy is critical, but healthy populations are vital to economic competitiveness. So, shouldn’t governments also be measured regularly on how healthy their people are?

According to the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index, 90% of the 191 countries examined failed to achieve a better, healthier, more secure life for their people in 2020 and 2021. In both developed and developing nations, current health systems are not adequately providing the infrastructure for their populations to thrive and contribute to their economic success. For instance, even in the United States, more than 45% of consumers experience at least one unmet basic healthcare need.

Only about 3% of healthcare expenditure across Europe and the United States is spent on preventative care—helping people proactively take care of their basic healthcare needs. If we shifted this imbalance towards well-care, helping people learn how to take care of themselves before they get sick, we’d likely see an upswing in the number of healthier people.

In order to meet these basic needs, behavioral change is needed—both on community and individual levels. There are three practical ways to drive collective change, prioritizing preventative care to build healthier, more prosperous communities to drive economic growth.

1. Expand where health happens to outside the doctor’s office.

Society needs to expand where health happens. It needs to happen in homes, pharmacies, grocery stores, and online— where patients actually are in their daily lives. There are a few ways this is already

happening that can become more commonplace: •

In many communities, people have more access to the local store than a traditional healthcare provider. Services facilitated by a pharmacist or in-store healthcare provider can often be more affordable and offer 360 solutions—people can get healthcare provider-endorsed recommendations for how to take care of themselves, get prescriptions and shop for over-the-counter solutions all in one place.

•

The expansion of digital health will also help foster enablement.

The pandemic certainly encouraged telehealth, but in order to help create health ownership, this should be expanded to other health services.

•

There’s also opportunity for the whole community to take control of their health. In many low-andmiddle-income countries, governments are empowering community health workers to provide health education. These are nonprofessionals who are trained on important and community-relevant health topics—everything from heart health to constipation—and work directly with residents. Since community health workers typically live in the community they serve, they have the unique ability to bring information where it is needed most.

2. Educate policy makers so policy change follows.

Policymakers are bombarded with information and most of the research is in technical language. They don’t have the tools or time to review all of this information and understand the ramifications. Putting the data in relatable terms and having it delivered by a reliable and trusted source could DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 25

be very helpful in making healthcare financing decisions—and hopefully improve the low level of spend against preventative care.

Putting the data in relatable terms and having it delivered by a reliable and trusted source could be very helpful in making healthcare financing decisions— and hopefully improve the low level of spend against preventative care.

When it comes to policy development around preventative care, incentives should become a more important consideration.

“What’s in it for me?” needs to be a key question asked and answered across audiences in order to drive behavioral change.

A strong program will only realize its full potential if it answers the question: “how do we get people to invest today, what will only pay off tomorrow?” This can range from convincing healthcare providers to talk with their patients about disease prevention, individuals to prioritize their own health day-to-day, payers to revisit their structure to reward continued good health and including less traditional health advisors (i.e. nutritionists, nurses) into the fold who might be able to drive behavior change differently.

3. Empower people to take care of themselves.

This sounds basic, but education is an often-overlooked aspect of healthcare.

Research shows 80% of non-communicable diseases could be prevented through healthy lifestyle behaviors. These are the basic practices everyone should be doing to lead a healthy lifestyle—but needs to be communicated in a highly personalized way to drive a change in behavior. With the democratization of digital tools and technological advancement, there’s improved

26 | D IPLOM AT I C COU RIE R

opportunity to create tailored programs that can actually help people understand the personal benefit and what they need to do to improve or maintain their own health.

Behavioral change is hard, so a customized approach is needed. These programs don’t need to be government-led to be successful—there’s a role for schools, healthcare providers, NGOs, and the private sector to create a surround sound approach.

Healthcare providers also play an important role given they are trusted advisors. Most of what is learned in medical school and through continued education is focused on managing disease. More focus—and incentivization—needs to be given towards empowering and teaching doctors how to advise their patients on disease prevention.

A New KPI: Healthy Communities Building resilience is a key to prosperity and a pragmatic approach to prioritizing preventative healthcare should help enable this. The Self-Care Readiness Index, developed by the Global Self-Care Federation, shows there are many best practices around the world we can learn from to create healthier communities, in the areas of consumer empowerment, stakeholder enrollment, policy and regulation change. Good health enables adults to be productive at work and tends to lead to an increased long-term savings rate given longer lifespans and increased concerns about future financial needs. In turn, these healthier communities help fuel economies. People make the world go ‘round.

Hopefully one day our metrics of success will illustrate this, too. ***** About the Author: Daniella Foster is Senior Vice President and Global Head of Public Affairs, Science and Sustainability at Bayer’s Consumer Health Division.

Advertisement

Living authentic moments Living authentic moments Small Luxury Hotel Ambassador à l‘Opéra | Utoschloss | Falkenstrasse 6 | 8008 Zürich-City | Schweiz www.ambassadorhotel.ch | welcome@ambassadorhotel.ch | #hotelambassadorzurich Opera | Dufourstrasse 5 || 8008 Zürich-City Schweiz Small Luxury HotelWorldhotels Ambassador à l‘Opéra | Utoschloss Falkenstrasse 6 | | 8008 Zürich-City | Schweiz www.operahotel.ch | welcome@operahotel.ch | #hoteloperazurich www.ambassadorhotel.ch | welcome@ambassadorhotel.ch | #hotelambassadorzurich Talent_Summit_AD.indd 1

Talent_Summit_AD.indd 1

Worldhotels Opera | Dufourstrasse 5 | 8008 Zürich-City | Schweiz www.operahotel.ch | welcome@operahotel.ch | #hoteloperazurich

09.12.2016 17:22:58

09.12.2016 17:22:58

Image via Adobe Stock.

Redefining Our Global Understanding of Success

By Eva Keiffenheim

28 | D IPLOM AT I C COU RIE R

T

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

o create a safe and sustainable future for the next generations, we must change how we label and measure countries’ progress— through a metric that goes beyond economic growth and prioritizes wellbeing rooted in resourcefulness with ourselves and our planet.

For decades the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a tool to measure economic growth used as a global key indicator for a country’s success, has been considered incomplete, even misleading. In 1968, three decades after the GDP’s introduction, Robert Kennedy said: “Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, [...], the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder [...], and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. [...]. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans. If this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in the world.”

Despite all shortcomings in the GDP’s accounting for wellbeing and sustainability, the metric became our global paradigm, one lens through which we see the world. Measuring and comparing our countries’ success through the GDP-shaped societal structures and the thoughts we tell ourselves. As a late millennial and first-gen student from a wellresourced country, I grew up in a society that equates economic growth with success.

I unconsciously learned what’s acceptable (attaching self-worth to productivity) and what’s not (embodying felt emotions). Unlike many others, I was privileged with the capacity to unlearn beliefs and habits I perceived as harmful to my mental and physical wellbeing.

Questioning the paradigm we grew up with, our most profound beliefs about the world,

is challenging. As systems thinker Donella Meadows explained: “Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm.” It’s easier to continue doing things how they’ve always been done—especially when you’ve been growing up in a specific paradigm—economic growth as a priority— and are surrounded by people all sharing the same paradigm.

Luckily, there are communities operating from paradigms that go beyond economic growth and which prioritize wellbeing rooted in resourcefulness with ourselves and the planet.

We can, for example, build on the work of researchers who have started to develop metrics such as the Thriving Places Index, which includes factors such as mental and physical health, education and learning, and “green” infrastructure; the capability approach, that acknowledges the multidimensionality of people’s real opportunities; or preferencebased approach to wellbeing, that takes into account that people disagree about the relative importance of different life dimensions.

All these metrics go beyond the GDP by integrating sustainability, wellbeing, and equity.

To create a safe and sustainable future for the next generations, we must change how we label and measure progress. The pandemic opened an opportunity to collectively question and redesign a global wellbeing metric.

The knowledge and tools are there. What is needed are bold leaders with the intention and willingness to transcend paradigms to apply different thinking on how we define and measure our country’s success beyond economic growth. The policymakers and business leaders who are ready to shift and move into a new paradigm—on a personal level and, in turn, on a national and global level—will plant seeds that will be remembered long after they are gone. ***** About the Author: Eva Keiffenheim is founder of Speed Up, Buddy!, a mentoring platform for first-gen students, and advises policymakers, think tanks, and NGOs. DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 29

Photo via Adobe Stock.

Resilient Trade

By Janet L. Yellen

30 | D IPLOM AT I C CO URIE R

E

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

conomies across the world have been strained by the events of the last three years. The COVID-19 pandemic claimed millions of lives and brought the world economy to a standstill. Russia’s brutal war has taken a devastating toll on lives and infrastructure in Ukraine, generating seismic repercussions for oil and food prices at a time when the global economy was finding its footing.

Looming above these crises has been climate change. Severe droughts and floods have disrupted agricultural capacity and exacerbated energy shortages around the world. These disruptions have resulted in severe shortages of key goods – from lumber to microprocessors to food and fuel – that have in turn slowed global growth and contributed to high inflation in many economies.

In the developing world, we have seen a rise in poverty for the first time in decades.

Over the past year, US President Joe Biden’s administration has advanced a historic economic plan to strengthen America’s resilience against costly supply disruptions like the ones we have experienced. Here at home, we have built on our work to ease bottlenecks in ports with ongoing monitoring of our supply chains and a historic investment in our physical infrastructure. And we have passed legislation that will expand domestic manufacturing capacity in core twenty-first-century sectors like semiconductors and clean energy.

But I believe that the success of our plan also depends on our economic policy abroad. The traditional conception of free trade emphasizes the efficiency of trade governed by comparative advantage.

That’s the economic theory that suggests that each national economy should produce what it is comparatively best at. Comparative advantage explains the efficiency gains of international trade and specialization. But we have learned that we must also account for the reliability of trade.

In today’s world, I believe that any economic agenda must consider the potential for regional and global shocks to impact

Let’s start with the fundamentals.

No country can, or should, produce every good its economy needs.

Trade brings significant economic benefits to all countries involved. our supply chains, including those shocks driven by the policies of certain foreign governments. We are concerned about vulnerabilities that result from over-concentration, geopolitical and security risks, and violations of human rights. Through an approach called “friend-shoring,” the Biden administration aims to maintain the efficiencies of trade while promoting economic resilience for the United States and its partners.

The Importance of Secure Trade Let’s start with the fundamentals. No country can, or should, produce every good its economy needs. Trade brings significant economic benefits to all countries involved.

We can export goods that we produce more efficiently. And we can import goods produced more efficiently by other countries. For businesses, trade boosts production by providing a larger market for exports. It enables our most productive firms to expand and create good jobs for more people. For consumers, it means lower prices and greater choice in the products we purchase. Trade also encourages the global flow of ideas that is essential for scientific discovery and technological advancement.

We must vigorously protect global economic integration. As we do so, we need secure trade that reaps the benefits of economic integration while providing greater reliability of supply for the goods we depend on.

Three key risks are of particular concern.

The first risk is over-concentration. The US and its partners have a strong interest in creating redundancies in our supply chains. We must avoid over-concentration of the production of critical goods in any DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 31

particular market. Concentration of sources for key components can sometimes lower costs. But it leaves supply chains vulnerable to cascading disruptions that hurt workers and consumers.

Take the example of semiconductors. Microchips are essential building blocks of the modern economy. Yet virtually all manufacturing of the most advanced chips is located in East Asia.

We have seen firsthand the consequences of a shortage which, according to one estimate, has affected at least 169 industries. For the automotive industry alone, the pandemic chip shortage was estimated to have cost $210 billion in lost revenue in 2021, with manufacturers like Ford and General Motors forced to shut down several of their plants temporarily.

Concentration risks can manifest most acutely during a crisis. These events introduce sudden supply or demand shocks; they can also prompt countries to turn inward. Prior to the pandemic, the U.S. imported nearly half of its personal protective equipment from China. When global demand surged in early 2020, this concentration contributed to drastic shortages of PPE for American frontline workers.

We must never again force our healthcare professionals to resort to using trash bags for protection during a public health emergency. And that requires reshaping our supply chains.

We must vigorously protect global economic integration.

As we do so, we need secure trade that reaps the benefits of economic integration while providing greater reliability of supply for the goods we depend on. ports have also driven up food costs. The World Food Programme estimates that Russia’s war could push up to 70 million additional people into acute food insecurity.

Third, we must shift away from supply chains that violate core human rights. For decades, the U.S. has prohibited the import of goods made with forced labor. One area of particular concern are imports from the Xinjiang region in China, where the Chinese government has perpetrated human-rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups. It has subjected detainees in its internment camps to forced labor—using threats of violence, physical and sexual abuse, and torture. The Biden administration is restricting imports of goods produced with forced labor from Xinjiang, including cotton, tomatoes, and certain silica-based products. The U.S. will always stand up for human rights. And we must continue to do so, including through our supply-chain decisions.

Second, we must protect against geopolitical and security risks. Not only is Russia waging a brutal war against the Ukrainian people; it has also weaponized commodity exports against the world. For too long, much of the world was too willing to believe Russia’s claim that it was a reliable supplier of cheap and convenient energy.

The Future Is Friend-Shoring

The consequences are clear. In the first five months following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the price of natural gas in Europe jumped by 170%. Russia’s destruction of grain storages and blockade of Ukrainian

We first need to recognize that the private sector does not internalize the right level of economic resilience by itself. Some firms are highly incentivized to focus on lowering costs in the short term and may

32 | D I PLOM AT I C COU RIE R

Supply-chain risks are a cause for urgent concern. In the past two years, these risks have hampered our economic growth and hiked costs for our families. They have also harmed our national security. It is time for a systematic approach to address these vulnerabilities.

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

not factor in longer-term risks like overconcentration in supply chains. Even when companies pursue a privately optimal level of resilience through insurance policies and inventory build-up, they will often not consider national-security concerns or how an interruption in their production could affect other firms or consumers. Governments play a critical role in strengthening economic resilience at a national level.

away from risky countries and concentrated supply chains.

The Biden administration’s friend-shoring approach aims to deepen our economic integration with a large number of trusted trading partners that we can count on. And it seeks to build in supply-chain redundancies to lower risks for our economies.

The U.S. is creating similar partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region through the IndoPacific Economic Framework and in Latin America through the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity. The countries in the IPEF­—representing 40% of global GDP—have committed to establishing early-warning systems and coordinating with one another on efforts to diversify supply chains.

We must never again force our healthcare professionals to resort to using trash bags for protection during a public health emergency. And that requires reshaping our supply chains.

We believe that it is important to shift away from trade that only chases the cheapest supply chains without considering other factors like concentration, geopolitics and security, and human-rights risks. By doing so, we will create greater certainty and reliability for key goods and critical inputs for our consumers and businesses.

At the same time, friend-shoring is a rebuttal to those who argue that economic security can be achieved only through protectionism. Friend-shoring aims to achieve economic resilience and realize trade’s economic efficiencies simultaneously.

We don’t seek to produce everything ourselves. Nor do we seek to limit trade to a small group of countries. That would substantially harm the efficiency gains of trade and hurt U.S. competitiveness and innovation. Rather, our core goal is to diversify

The Biden administration is pursuing our friend-shoring agenda through a broad array of bilateral and multilateral engagements. Through the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council, we are working together to create secure supply chains in the solar, semiconductor, and rare-earth magnet sectors.

Of course, in any discussion of friend-shoring, it is natural to ask: Who are our friends?

Friend-shoring is not for a closed group of countries. It is open and inclusive of our partners in emerging markets and developing countries, in addition to advanced economies. In fact, a key part of our agenda is to deepen the integration of the U.S. and our partners with developing countries.

For example, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation has invested billions in developing countries, funding projects such as one that connects smallscale rural fishers in Indonesia with the global market, or another to construct a supply-chain regional logistics center in Georgia. Broader programs, like the new World Bank Financial Intermediary Fund for pandemic prevention, strengthen the capacity of developing countries to respond early to public-health threats and other risks. That, in turn, helps protect the resiliency of our supply chains.

Friend-shoring will be gradual. But we are already seeing the development of new supply chains. The European Union, for example, has worked with Intel to facilitate DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 33

Friend-shoring is not for a closed group of countries. It is open and inclusive of our partners in emerging markets and developing countries, in addition to advanced economies. an investment of nearly $90 billion to build up a regional supply chain for semiconductors over the next decade.

The U.S. is also doing its part. We are working with our trusted partners to develop a full semiconductor ecosystem here in the U.S. Our efforts have received a significant boost through the domestic semiconductor manufacturing incentives enacted by the Biden administration this summer.

Moreover, we are working with Australia to build rare-earth mining and processing facilities located in both of our countries.

China traditionally holds a dominant market share in the global production of magnets and rare-earth elements, which are critical inputs for consumer electronics, clean-energy capacity, and military technologies.

More broadly, many businesses are diversifying their supply chains as a response to the recent crises. In one survey, 81% of supply-chain managers worldwide said that they now source raw materials from two suppliers rather than one, up from 55% in 2020. American businesses show growing interest in moving segments of the supply chain out of China, including to Southeast Asia or Mexico.

We know that, over the longer term, climate change will pose increasingly severe risks to the reliability of critical supplies.

Countries need to work together to develop climate resilience, particularly for the most vulnerable communities. They must also work together to avoid the worst effects of global warming by achieving the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

34 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R

In the U.S., we recently enacted our nation’s most aggressive domestic action on climate change, putting us on a promising path to achieve our emissions goals. We will also continue to help developing countries move decisively toward more resilient, low-carbon futures. Beyond the effect on the climate, our collective movement away from fossil fuels will also reduce our vulnerability to oil- and gas-price shocks and our exposure to autocratic regimes, which often control much of the world’s reserves of fossil fuels.

As we pursue these initiatives, we will remain focused on friend-shoring for sectors and products that are critical to our national and economic security. We will coordinate with our trading partners on high standards for human rights, labor, and the environment. And we will continue to support trade integration, which has yielded significant benefits for the global economy.

When we look back decades from now, I believe that the past three years will be viewed as a uniquely volatile period in our modern history. We have all been subject to enormous disruptions in our collective lives: the pandemic, a terrible war in Europe, and increasingly destructive natural disasters. But I also believe that it will be viewed as a moment when the U.S. and its partners advanced a new pillar of our economic agenda, one focused on resilience. I am confident that this agenda will strengthen our economic dynamism while providing greater economic stability for our people. ***** About the Author: Janet L. Yellen is U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.

ADVERTI S EM ENT

THE WORLD MEETS AT THE WILLARD.

D.C’s landmark hotel combines a sense of history and contemporary luxury with worldclass hospitality. Discerning guests from around the world enjoy the legendary Round Robin Bar, classic French fare at Café du Parc and the Willard’s elegant guest rooms and meeting spaces. This hotel was built to impress.

For more details or to make a reservation, please call 202.628.9100 or visit washington.intercontinental.com

In over 170 locations across the globe including HONG KONG • LONDON • NEW YORK • PARIS

Photo via Adobe Stock.

Fill the Global Trust Gap with Transparency

By Jared A. Favole

36 | D I PLOM AT I C COU RIE R

F

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

or the world leaders gathering in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum to solve the globe’s most pressing challenges, perhaps the most insidious is the deep distrust the public has in institutions.

The average confidence Americans have across all institutions is at a new low of just 27% according to a Gallup survey that first began in 1973. Only two institutions—small businesses and the military—are trusted by a majority of Americans. Moreover, Edelman’s 2022 “Trust Barometer” shows that globally concerns about fake news are at an all-time high. And according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), only about half of people worldwide say they trust their national government.

This is not surprising. The COVID-19 pandemic is partly to blame, as numerous governments responded incompetently and myriad weaknesses were exposed in healthcare, finance, and other important social systems. But trust in institutions was on the wane well before COVID-19.

The consequences are widespread and severe. For example, a lack of trust can lead to fewer people taking necessary health precautions, divestment in our communities, and an epidemic of mental health problems, among others

No industry takes transparency— and its twin, privacy—as seriously as Web3, a space that captures blockchain and cryptographic technological systems.

So, what can we do to start to rebuild trust? Transparency. Individuals should demand it and institutions should offer it.

As the OECD notes in its global report on building trust in institutions (see chart), people who perceive information to be open and transparent also have higher levels of trust in institutions.

That people value transparency is clear in other ways, too.

Across the United States, localities are instituting pay disclosure rules so prospective employees know the salary of jobs they are applying for. Nearly 100% of all employees think employers should disclose salary ranges in job postings, according to a survey from the jobs site Monster.

(This example also serves as a reminder that transparency can have unintended consequences—some businesses may no longer want to post jobs in a given state if required to disclose salaries.)

DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 37

As the OECD notes in its global report on building trust in institutions, people who perceive information to be open and transparent also have higher levels of trust in institutions.

Globally, Transparency International, most known for its Corruption Perceptions Index, advocates for transparency as a way to root out corruption. It launched a specific initiative a few years ago to combat COVID-19 corruption, with a particular focus on increasing transparency for how governments spend taxpayer money.

Global industries are also taking up the mantle of transparency. No industry takes transparency—and its twin, privacy—as seriously as Web3, a space that captures blockchain and cryptographic technological systems. That is a bold statement to make in the wake of the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, but it is one that is borne out by the evidence.

Web3 businesses take transparency seriously because their users demand it and because it is at the heart of blockchain technology. The technology underpinning Web3 first emerged during the Global Financial Crisis when people everywhere realized the deep harm that comes when the prevailing values at major financial institutions were greed and opacity. No one, it seemed, had a handle on the way complex financial derivatives had built a house of cards waiting to be blown over at the first sign of wind.

Blockchain, in contrast, is inherently different. Transactions are publicly available for tracking, tracing, and auditing. It is why there are so many headlines about crypto being used for illicit activity—it’s easy to trace down when most transactions are publicly available.

Take the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware Attack. Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis 38 | D I PLOM AT I C COU RIE R

was able to help the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation track the funds used in the attack within a month. Blockchain transparency, in short, is helping fight crime globally.

There are other examples of how blockchain technology is leading to an unparalleled level of transparency. After FTX collapsed (and even before in some instances), digital asset exchanges began attempting to implement “Proof of Reserve” audits to help show customers, regulators, and the general public that they had sufficient customer funds. More work needs to be done on these, but it is a good signal that industry players know transparency is the way to build trust.

Transparency alone is not enough to rebuild the public’s trust in institutions. That will take hard work across the whole of society. But if transparency is adopted as a core societal value, the likelihood that people and institutions will do the right thing increases immensely.

We would all be wise to remember that even in a dark time, sunlight is still the best disinfectant. ***** About the author: Jared A. Favole is a senior director at Circle Internet Financial.

ADV ERTI S EMENT

WEB3 EDUCATION PROTOCOLS Learning Economy Foundation translates leading edge technologies into transformative learning and economic systems that promote equity, mobility, privacy, and individual agency to radically improve lives throughout the world. www.learningeconomy.io

Agency & Opportunity for All

Photo via Adobe Stock.

Innovative Partnerships to Reconnect a Fragmented World

By Anna Tunkel & Jean de La Rochebrochard

40 | D IPLOM AT I C CO URIE R

C

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

alls for a “Great Re-evaluation” or “History at a Turning Point” seem to have dominated global headlines in recent years—not least as the key themes of the World Economic Forum Annual past annual meetings. While aspirational titles get a lot of traction, one might be tempted to scrutinize these taglines and zoom in on the “how.” How do we effectively challenge conventional thinking? How do we actually move the needle on the—too often—daunting challenges we all face today?

The COVID-19 crisis seemed to be the start of a new era of post-competitive partnerships, from vaccine discovery and distribution to food supply chains to transportation sectors. But, with the pandemic in the rearview mirror, we are witnessing the return of isolationist politics and policies, from increasingly protectionist measures, to a deepening of domestic fault lines with lasting ramifications on the fundamental decisions that shape our collective wellbeing.

As global leaders come together in Davos this January, around the shared commitment of fostering “Cooperation in a Fragmented World,” we are reminded of the transformative and vital potential of partnerships to bring the world closer together.

While innovative partnerships have been part of the modus operandi of many organizations, from the United Nations Foundation to the Rockefeller Foundation, to progressive companies such as IKEA or Unilever, to intrinsically cooperative platforms such as the MIT Solve or Global Citizen, a groundswell of change has been happening within perhaps more traditional entities—multilateral organizations. These bodies tasked with the immensely complex responsibility of coordinating, reconciling, and advancing policies that impact virtually every aspect of our lives—from pandemic preparedness to internet safety—are revealing new frontiers of collaboration and investing their considerable weight, credibility, and funding to reinvent the way they operate.

From the World Food Programme’s Innovation Accelerator—leveraging the disruptive power of technology to scale high-potential solutions to end hunger worldwide—to the way in which UNICEF fosters a more resilient world—in areas as diverse as supply chains in times of humanitarian crises, mental health, climate action, to UNHCR’s ventures in mobilizing the power of blockchain to protect and preserve displaced individuals’ lives and livelihoods, to the World Health Organization’s deep collaboration with corporate actors that can not only deliver last-mile health solutions but effectively contribute to shaping upstream policies—including on emerging issues such as climate and health, it seems the world’s most secluded policy arenas have warmed up to the potential of real publicprivate collaboration.

The Annual Meeting is the ultimate bellwether for the year ahead, informing and setting the strategic direction for leaders, taking stock of critical priorities on the global agenda. But it is also a catalyst for lasting and transformational partnerships.

Some organizations have long understood the need and opportunity of deeply ingraining cross-sector collaboration in their DNA, including with multilateral organizations. The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) mobilized more than a dozen multilateral institutions to help accelerate the transition to clean energy in emerging markets, building a bridge between philanthropic and development finance capital—or the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI)— born in Davos—are just two illustrations of a deep paradigm shift in the way the world defines “collaboration” beyond territorial considerations, signaling the advent of more “connected” era.

DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 41

Navigating a Complex Global Agenda The Forum’s Annual Meeting is the ultimate bellwether for the year ahead, informing and setting the strategic direction for leaders, taking stock of critical priorities on the global agenda. But it is also a catalyst for lasting and transformational partnerships such as the First Movers Coalition, the Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders, the 1 trillion trees by 2030 platform, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Accord for a Healthier World, the Lung Ambition Alliance, the Charter for Humanitarian Supply Chain Resilience, the Reskilling Revolution, the EDISON Alliance—and more. This year’s WEF is no exception, as we anticipate a number of new and expanded commitments.

This year already promises to be a fertile year for many crucial decisions through key convenings such as the United Nations General Assembly—and its much-expected High-Level Meetings on Universal Health Coverage, Tuberculosis, and Pandemic Preparedness, as well as its Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Summit, a midpoint juncture to assess progress on the SDGs; Japan’s G7 and its emphasis on a peaceful world and nuclear disarmament, the UAE’s COP 28 and its focus on “Solutions”; or India’s G20 and its commitment to improving the lives of the next 1.5 billion.

What are critical factors for success in navigating this complex and increasingly crowded landscape?

42 | D IPLOM AT I C CO URIE R

•

Map, prioritize and articulate key issues that bridge your organization’s business and societal impact agenda.

•

Assess your advocacy priorities, keeping in mind both credibility and vulnerability.

•

Consider the most effective global, regional and local platforms for engagement.

•

Take stock of your existing partnerships, identify gaps and organizations whose work can accelerate your commitments.

•

Lead with consistency and authenticity.

What are your critical priorities for the year ahead and what partnerships will you catalyze? ***** About the authors: Anna Tunkel is an executive director at APCO Worldwide.

Jean de La Rochebrochard is a director at APCO Worldwide’s strategic partnerships & global engagement practice.

ADV ERTI S EMENT

IMF Publications…

Keeping readers in touch with global economic issues

Visit Bookstore.imf.org I

N

T

E

R

N

A

T

I

O

N

A

L

M

O

N

E

T

A

R

Y

F

U

N

D

Photo via Getty Images.

The Return of the End of History

By Sergei Guriev

44 | D IPLOM AT I C CO URIE R

T

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

hirty years after Francis Fukuyama published his famous book, The End of History and the Last Man, history returned with a vengeance. Following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Europe is once again the site of a large-scale war that is so characteristic of the twentieth century that no one expected to see anything like it today. Far from the “clash of civilizations” that political scientist Samuel Huntington anticipated would shape the twenty-first century, Russia wants to eradicate an independent country with a similar ethnolinguistic and religious background.

The conflict is primarily about different political systems: autocracy versus democracy, empire versus national sovereignty.

While the war has produced countless tragedies, I believe that it will show Fukuyama to have been more right than wrong.

He argued that communism’s implosion had ushered in a world where democracies with market economies would be preferred over alternative forms of government. While Russia’s war of aggression never should have happened, it clearly is an exception that proves Fukuyama’s rule. It has caused enormous suffering for Ukrainians, but they have fought courageously with the knowledge that history is on their side.

Meanwhile, the life expectancy of Vladimir Putin’s regime has abruptly fallen. To paraphrase Talleyrand, Putin’s war is worse than a crime; it is a fatal mistake that other potential invaders will learn not to repeat.

It also reminds us that folly is a feature, rather than a bug, of dictatorships. Without political checks and balances, free media, and an independent civil society, autocrats do not receive the feedback needed to make wise and competent decisions.

In Putin’s case, living in a filter bubble has proven exceptionally costly. Russia’s economy is in a deep recession, its fiscal revenues have taken a massive hit, and the damage will continue to mount in 2023 after the European Union’s oil embargo and the G7’s oil-price cap take effect. Lack-

ing cash, Putin has already moved from a strategy of recruiting soldiers for pay to mobilizing them by conscription, undercutting his own popularity and driving hundreds of thousands of educated Russians to flee the country. Making matters worse for him, Russia is losing the war.

the life expectancy of Vladimir Putin’s regime has abruptly fallen.

To paraphrase Talleyrand, Putin’s war is worse than a crime; it is a fatal mistake that other potential invaders will learn not to repeat. It also reminds us that folly is a feature, rather than a bug, of dictatorships.

Russia’s dismal performance is no accident. After the “end of history” 30 years ago, most dictators learned that the old twentieth-century methods of maintaining non-democratic rule no longer worked. In a globalized and technologically interconnected world, open repression is simply too costly. As Daniel Treisman and I show in Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century, most nondemocratic leaders have adopted a new strategy: pretend to be a democrat. Hold elections (that are neither free nor fair), permit some independent media (though no outlets with a large audience), and allow some opposition parties, all to create the illusion of a popular mandate to rule.

Putin was a master of this approach for 20 years. But as his regime’s corruption and cronyism undermined economic growth, and as digital and social media began to spread, his popularity began to decline.

Mindful of this trend, he swiftly annexed Crimea in 2014, which boosted his popularity for a while. Then, in 2022, he tried to replay this strategy on an even grander scale. But he gravely underestimated DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 45

Ukrainian resolve and Western unity in supporting Ukraine and imposing unprecedented economic sanctions on Russia.

Putin has learned the hard way that it is unwise to start a twentieth-century war in the twenty-first century. And other autocratic and authoritarian regimes will heed this lesson for years to come.

Putin has learned the hard way that it is unwise to start a twentieth-century war in the twenty-first century. And other autocratic and authoritarian regimes will heed this lesson for years to come. One certainly hopes that Russia’s Ukraine debacle will deter China from trying to seize Taiwan by force. Senior officials in the Communist Party of China should see that President Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power poses many risks to the regime.

Moreover, Putin’s war has also caused substantial damage to the global economy, which in turn has contributed to China’s unprecedented economic slowdown. Chinese elites are probably asking themselves whether Xi ought to have done more to prevent the invasion or cut the war short.

That question joins a long list of others about Xi’s zero-COVID policy, his crackdown on private business and the tech industry, and his government’s inability to manage the collapse of a real-estate bubble. In a system as opaque as China’s, it is hard to predict whether such second-

46 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R

guessing will affect the country’s shift toward authoritarianism. But Xi’s mistakes have clearly made the “Chinese model” less attractive to others around the world.

Finally, the past year has underscored the importance of solidarity. During the Cold War, the geopolitical West faced a perpetual, existential threat that superseded internal differences and disagreements. But, following the Soviet Union’s collapse, there was less to unite Western countries, and many succumbed to domestic divisions.

Polarization within and between many democracies deepened, with factors such as rising inequality and the spread of social media accelerating the process. Nonetheless, Western societies came together in 2022 when it counted. While many Western politicians openly praised Putin at the start of the year, almost none do today.

That brings us to the most important question for the year ahead. If the war ends in 2023—as seems likely—will we return to the polarized status quo ante? Or will we find a new common project? We need not look far. As hot as the summer of 2022 was, it will probably be one of the coolest summers of the rest of our lives.

Climate change is a challenge that should unite not just Western democracies but all the world’s governments. That may seem an unlikely outcome in the near term, but we must not stop working toward it. ***** About the author: Sergei Guriev, Provost of Sciences Po, is the co-author of Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century (Princeton University Press, 2022). Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.

ADV ERTI S EMENT

Photo via Getty Images.

The Global Struggle for Tech Mastery

By Eric Schmidt

48 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R

T

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

he past year offered some old lessons about great-power competition. But it also introduced some new ones about how technology is changing the strategic terrain.

There is no longer any doubt about the challenge that China, Russia, and other authoritarian regimes pose to international rule of law, respect for sovereignty, democratic principles, and free people. These threats have grown as China and Russia have harnessed new technologies to surveil populations, manipulate information, and control data flows. They are setting an example for how authoritarians can further clamp down on freedom of thought, expression, and association.

Rising geopolitical tensions have coincided with growing encroachments by disruptive technologies into all aspects of public and private life. The implications for 2023 and beyond are clear: the technology platforms of the future are the new terrain of strategic competition. The United States therefore has a core interest in making sure that these technologies are designed, built, fielded, and governed by democracies.

Ukraine’s Window on the Future Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion (with considerable support from other democracies) crystallizes how technology is transforming geopolitics. A highly networked, tech-savvy country quickly came together against a much larger adversary that initially seemed to possess an overwhelming military advantage. Ukraine is now winning the world’s first digitally networked war, because it has harnessed software innovation and maximized the use of open-source technology and decentralized operations. Its tech capabilities are all stitched together by uninterrupted internet access.

Ukraine is also offering a glimpse of what a tech-enabled democracy could look like: cloud-based services allow the government to connect directly with the citizenry, mostly through everyday devices like personal phones with embedded en-

cryption and privacy software. Young, innovative political leaders and policymakers are working closely with a talented tech workforce, sweeping away decades of bureaucratic sclerosis. If Ukraine can innovate under wartime conditions, all other democracies can and should be able to do so as well.

The implications for 2023 and beyond are clear: the technology platforms of the future are the new terrain of strategic competition. The United States therefore has a core interest in making sure that these technologies are designed, built, fielded, and governed by democracies.

Large and small firms from across the democratic world have aided Ukraine’s tech-first transformation, emerging as important strategic actors in their own right.

They protected critical Ukrainian government and financial data early on by shifting it to the cloud; they provided warnings of, and responses to, Russian cyberattacks; and they helped keep Ukrainians connected directly to one another and the global internet, so that the world would know about Russia’s lies, war crimes, and military setbacks. Without this broader ecosystem and access to technology platforms, the conflict might have taken a very different path.

But now imagine a future where authoritarian states control the technologies and firms that oversee network access, protect networks from cyber threats, build key digital infrastructure, determine what messages to censor, and manage flows of sensitive data. It would be a world of systematic political coercion and invasions of individual privacy, where basic protections for freedom of expression had been extinguished. Neither the Ukrainians nor DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 49

any other democratic polity would control their own destiny.

We should take seriously China’s success in exporting integrated network solutions that bundle hardware, software, and services for customers around the world. These are extending the Chinese government’s sphere of influence and giving it an advantage over the U.S. and other democracies, not just in the technology race but also in the broader geopolitical contest. One cannot simply assume that Western firms’ advantages in areas like cloud technology, data centers, and social media will naturally endure.

imagine a future where authoritarian states control the technologies and firms that oversee network access, protect networks from cyber threats, build key digital infrastructure, determine what messages to censor, and manage flows of sensitive data.

TikTok’s meteoric rise, and the national-security concerns it implies, is a case in point.

China’s inroads in fintech, e-commerce, and other platforms­—built on networks managed by China-based companies, and run with hardware manufactured in China or under its shadow—offer a preview of just how contested the future will be.

Lessons for Democracies For the world’s democracies, the policy challenges are clear. First, we must abandon our hands-off approach to technological development. The dangerous developments described above came at a time when the U.S. maintained a laissez-faire approach to tech strategy. In core areas of hardware, software, and network development, the U.S. and its partners have had to react from a defensive crouch. That was the 50 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R

case with the U.S.-led campaign against Huawei’s 5G first-mover advantage, the CHIPS Act’s $52.7 billion infusion for U.S. semiconductor production (copied elsewhere in the West), and America’s belated effort to develop a comprehensive national artificial-intelligence strategy. These reactive measures merely forestalled disaster, rather than instilling optimism that we are ready for the future.

Second, the U.S. and its partners should identify the “next chips” and orient public policy accordingly. We need a repeatable public-private model for developing and executing a long-term national technology strategy. The risks of large public investments in specific sectors—both political and economic —pale in comparison to the risks of ceding core techno-industrial functions to a strategic rival, or leaving them acutely vulnerable to supply-chain chokepoints.

The U.S. and its allies are moving in the right direction by encouraging more mining and processing of the minerals that will be critical to building the technologies of the future. But there may be other hardware-manufacturing sectors that warrant greater attention and investment. For example, the West should be very worried about China’s dominance in the battery and solar-panel value chains.

Third, America and its partners must identify the next tech “offsets” and accelerate these technologies’ development and deployment. Attempting to replicate every technology-manufacturing base within the democratic orbit is unrealistic and probably prohibitively expensive. Instead, the U.S. and its allies should coordinate their investments in the technologies that will drive the next wave of economic development. I see biomanufacturing and other advanced manufacturing techniques as exciting areas where the most competitive first movers can leap ahead. Equally, AI-enabled breakthroughs in fusion energy could represent an entirely new pathway to cleantech, with huge strategic ramifications.

Finally, democracies must retain optimism in new technologies’ ability to provide un-

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

I see biomanufacturing and other advanced manufacturing techniques as exciting areas where the most competitive first movers can leap ahead. Equally, AI-enabled breakthroughs in fusion energy could represent an entirely new pathway to cleantech, with huge strategic ramifications. foreseen opportunities and benefits. I worry that if we lose sight of the promise of AI, biotech, and other emerging technologies – or if we dwell on the challenges and become too risk-averse – we will regulate ourselves out of competitive leadership and into a strategic cul-de-sac. No one denies that powerful technology platforms raise deep ethical, economic, and political challenges, and that these will require systemic – rather than ad hoc – responses. But we must trust in democratic means to find a balance between innovation, regulation, and other national interests in disruptive sectors.

Civil society, governments, and companies across the democratic world are perfectly capable of finding a balanced approach to governing these technologies. By contrast, authoritarian states have no equivalent governance capacity, nor any checks on how the state might exploit tech platforms in ways that violate human rights, whether

to extend its geopolitical reach, or to undermine its foes. Winning the platform competition will not resolve complicated debates within democratic societies about how to govern technology, but it is a prerequisite for even having a debate in the first place.

Toward a Tech Agenda The agenda hinted at here will require national leadership and systematic organization. The U.S. and other democracies have confronted such challenges before, such as during the mid-twentieth-century space race, which continues to this day.

But we cannot rerun the Cold War playbook for this new era. We must adjust to the rise of new players in technology innovation and funding—from the crowd to venture capital.

We must accept that technology supply chains will still crisscross the world, as will the networks of universities, researchers, and companies that are building the future, albeit in shifting patterns, as we adjust to the new realities of strategic competition.

These shifts can be organized and harnessed to ensure that the U.S. and fellow democracies retain their tech leadership. But democracies must heed the lessons of 2022 if the world is going to have a choice about which platforms it will use to build the future. ***** About the author: Eric Schmidt, a former CEO and chair of Google/ Alphabet, is Chair of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.

DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 51

Photo via Adobe Stock.

The Paradox of Wellbeing and Mindset: Translating Burden to Dividend

By Sweta Bhusan & Sreehari Ravindranath

52 | D IPLOM AT I C COU RIE R

W

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

ith the global population crossing 8 billion in November of 2022, development practitioners and policymakers are back to their drawing boards collating thoughts on ways to unleash the power of the growing demographic burden to a reliable demographic dividend.

The increasing inequality between the haves and the have nots, coexistence of extreme poverty and luxurious living, the carbon footprints of the richest economies of the world brings back the pertinent concern of defining wellbeing and charting out wellbeing related indicators.

The growing recognition of the fact that development does not essentially translate to wellbeing whilst contributing to the wellbeing dividend is based on the failure of economic indicators to capture the non-economic aspects of human living.

Development in its true sense surpasses the economic domains and manifests in the overall human progression, participation, and freedom.

Wellbeing or Being Well?

Though there exist numerous definitions of the term wellbeing, none have been unanimously accepted. The term wellbeing has had a long history starting from indicating happiness and prosperity to the newer dimensions reflecting agency, participation, living, and faring well. For many, wellbeing is synonymous to the material resources that people can control, possess, utilize, and dispose of, and is measured mostly in terms of disposable income.

Despite claims that income and wellbeing are positively correlated, empirical evidence supports the notion that sustainable consumption, despite rising income, result in greater wellbeing, giving rise to what is known as the wellbeing dividend.

However, beyond a certain threshold, rising income does not manifest in the wellbeing of the society at large—a situation commonly known as the wellbeing paradox. To overcome this ambiguity, tools like

Max Neef’s Human Scale Development helps analyze the forms of organization, values, social practices, norms, attitudes, etc. which promote or impede need satisfaction at individual, household and community levels in specific cultural contexts enabling communities to devise strategies to experience wellbeing in their day-to-day life.

Despite claims that income and wellbeing are positively correlated, empirical evidence supports the notion that sustainable consumption, despite rising income, reflect in greater wellbeing, gives rise to what is known as the wellbeing dividend.

The realization of the wellbeing dividend calls for an effective convergence of the objective—material conditions of a person’s life often represented by wealth indicators—subjective (self-evaluation of personal circumstances, life satisfaction etc.), and relational (opportunities available to an individual in relation to other persons) wellbeing parameters. Of late there has been a growing consensus on focusing on economic, social, cultural, and ecological indicators like amenities for a good life, health, social relations, security, and freedom of choice in measuring the wellbeing dividend.

The Need of the Hour The time has come to recognize that a wellintegrated social living, strong interpersonal relationships, and the freedoms of expression and that of choice are more reliable determinants of the wellbeing dividend and this calls for reorienting traditional mindsets towards a more progressive one.

Rather than measuring the cumulative wellbeing dividend in the later stages of DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 53

life, we need to focus on the initial years of a young person’s life. For instance, a child in school can experience happiness through strong interpersonal ties, freedom of expression, and participation in social events which are way beyond the happiness derived from the possession of physical resources. Children can be taken through trainings on life skills like stresscoping mechanisms, critical thinking, resilience, empathy for others etc. to help them thrive sustainably and make meaningful contribution to the society.

All these would require a mindset shift change from the traditional system of rote learning to one that is more dynamic, inclusive, holistic, and has ingrained dynamism in the teaching-learning process.

Teachers and caregivers undoubtedly have a crucial role to play as facilitators spearheading the process of change in the traditional system of assessing the holistic development of the children.

For developing nations like ours, rather than realizing the wellbeing dividend at a macro lens, time has come for us to take urgent steps to implement mechanisms to experience the wellbeing dividend at the ground level so that the demographic burden translates into an uncontested dividend that ensures wellbeing of everyone. ***** About the authors: Dr. Sweta Bhusan is a development professional with a specialization in research, documentation and impact assessments.

Dr. Sreehari Ravindranath, is the Associate Director of Research and Impact at Dream a Dream, Bangalore.

54 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R

ADV ERTI S EMENT FROM GALLUP, PUBLISHER OF 10 INTERNATIONAL BEST SELLERS, INCLUDING STRENGTHSFINDER 2.0

The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It How is your life going?

Gallup has been asking the world’s citizens this question since 2006. Learn more about one of the most concerning trends we have found and how leaders can address it.

How people feel matters

If you feel like the world is getting more negative, you’re right. People are reporting more stress, sadness, physical pain, worry and anger than at any point in the history of Gallup’s tracking.

3.3 billion

2 billion

people want a great job, but only 300 million have one.

people are struggling on their current income.

people worldwide experienced food insecurity in 2020.

people don’t have a single friend.

3 in 10

Over 300 million

Over 1 billion

people are so dissatisfied with their community that they want to leave it forever.

And it’s not just because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Negative emotions have been rising for a decade.

Find out why it’s crucial for leaders — and all of us — to pay attention.

Addressing the blind spot

Discover where the world is suffering in each of Gallup’s five elements of wellbeing and what private and public sector leaders can do to improve how people’s lives are going.

With powerful personal stories and compelling data from Gallup’s World Poll, Blind Spot outlines the indicators leaders need to watch so they are never again surprised by rising negative emotions.

L E A R N M O R E AT G A L L U P.C O M

About the Author

Jon Clifton is the CEO of Gallup. His mission is to help 7 billion citizens be heard on their most pressing work and life issues through the Gallup World Poll, a 100-year initiative spanning over 150 countries. Clifton is a nonresident senior fellow at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion. He serves on the boards of directors for Gallup and Young Professionals in Foreign Policy. Clifton received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and a Juris Doctor from the University of Nebraska. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate from Midland University.

The Gallup brand

Universal and trusted, Gallup’s unmatched authority and credibility transform businesses, nonprofit organizations, schools and faith communities that want to develop their human potential.

Copyright © 2022 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved.

Blindspot_SalesSheet-Jon_080522_es

Photo by Amaury Gutierrez via Unsplash.

Binding a Fragmented World Together with the Strongest Ties

By Lisa Gable

56 | D IPLOM AT I C COURIE R

W

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

hen people around the world are at their most vulnerable, governments, companies, and municipalities need everyone involved to find ways to serve their publics, whether they are constituents, customers, or community members. Now is the time for ESGminded entities to make a breakthrough—to collaborate with faith-based organizations in an all-hands-on-deck approach to address public health risks associated with the global increase in loneliness.

Loneliness, you ask? Research has linked social isolation to greater risks of a variety of conditions, including high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, a weakened immune system, anxiety, depression, cognitive decline, and worse. A feeling of social isolation at work continues to be a key highlight in Cigna’s Loneliness and the Workplace 2020 U.S. Report contributing to billions in employer costs from stressrelated absenteeism.

And the problem has been building. In 2021, a global survey showed “about 33% of adults experienced feelings of loneliness worldwide.” And, according to Age UK, older people say they go over a month without speaking to a friend, neighbor, or family member.

Businesses and governments are reluctant to work with faith-based organizations due to potential public perceptions of disagreements surrounding tenets of belief. Yet, people who affiliate with a religion have extensive community networks, as well as trust among their peers. Their leaders’ ability to inspire positive change and grassroots momentum is unrivaled.

Religious gatherings at churches, synagogues, and mosques continue to be a cornerstone in civil society. These institutions have large, meaningful footprints that include facilities, staff, committed volunteers and a variety of effective communications tools. Thus, we use the power of the “fragmentation of faith” to help put the fragmented world back together again. Good

people should agree to disagree on certain topics and move forward collectively leveraging all available assets to solve this growing concern.

Businesses and governments are reluctant to work with faith-based organizations due to potential public perceptions of disagreements surrounding tenets of belief. Yet, people who affiliate with a religion have extensive community networks, as well as trust among their peers.

In my field of diet related diseases including obesity and food allergies, I find the most direct route to understanding the needs and challenges of diverse patients is working with churches who facilitate conversations in a trusted environment, identify barriers to access and advise on appropriate design of support programs that align with other efforts in the community.

Understanding daily challenges, feelings of isolation, and the impact on mental health provides my peers and I with the data we needed to create solutions. Our work shows that a comprehensive approach which is inclusive of all faiths has the potential to alleviate misery and uplift the world.

Active partnerships across civil society can provide the stabilizing force people need to feel less isolated and lonely. The tools to offset loneliness, interconnectedness, service, family, community, and belonging, are common threads woven through religions across the globe.

At Davos big ideas to “cooperate in a fragmented world” will prevail.

Let me reprise that a one-size-fits-all solution rarely works. People do not always react to a new idea the way we hope. Their responses to interventions can be driven DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 57

What works for one town or group might not work for others.

But how we help people bridge gaps could be one of the most important things world leaders in business and government can do to move everyone onto a path for a more positive future.

3. Create multi-pronged scenarios that have the highest probability of success and be open to alternative concepts presented with data and facts.

by many factors—age, socio-economic status, location, individual health requirements, and culture. What works for one town or group might not work for others.

But how we help people bridge gaps could be one of the most important things world leaders in business and government can do to move everyone onto a path for a more positive future.

5. Create bridge gap funding for organizations which present innovative, interfaith solutions in partnership with nonsectarian NGOs and pave a path for larger scale engagement.

Identifying areas to which we can agree and committing to interfaith collaboration increases capacity for improvement and provides choices for people to re-connect and re-engage in their communities and in the workplace. People are our assets and should be treated as such for the betterment of society and the bottom line.

Here are five suggestions I have found helpful when involving faith-based organizations in my work: 1.

To determine which faith-based groups would make the right partners for you, identify best practice characteristics, and inventory your program investments in areas where your employees reside.

2. Upgrade program effectiveness by benchmarking against best of class models including religious entities which have shown the greatest success in sustainable re-engagement of disenfranchised people.

58 | D IPLOM AT I C COU RIE R

4. Celebrate cross cultural conversation and introduce staff to the interfaith community. Position engagement with religious institutions around a common purpose by reminding employees not to retreat to our bubble and forget that we have more in common than we think.

We can never forget that even the most basic actions completed with compassion and empathy are the right thing to do from a human perspective, and they pay dividends when people are given a chance to work together and solve a problem. Let positive engagement be your guiding light. ***** About the author: Lisa Gable is a Diplomatic Courier Advisory Board member and WSJ and USA Today best-selling author of “Turnaround: How to Change Course When Things Are Going South” (IdeaPress Publishing, October 5, 2021).

ADV ERTI S EMENT

Where nations connect Effective diplomacy requires influence and in DC’s international circles no place says influence like the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. Whether an economic summit, trade negotiation or a private diplomatic affair, our international trade experts and expansive network of leaders enable embassies and governments to amplify their message and strengthen their impact, locally and globally. Expand your reach. Grow your influence with us.

Photo via Adobe Stock.

Cisco Switzerland Brings Innovative Digital Solutions to Patient Care

By Garif Yalak

60 | D IPLOM AT I C CO URIE R

M

PAR TNER EDI TORI AL

edical technologies are improving the lives of patients and making the work of doctors and nurses easier. Cisco Switzerland, with partners such as University Hospital Basel, is looking to the future of these technologies by piloting and innovating novel wearables solutions.

Wristbands and other wearable technologies continue to change the future of patient care and hospital work. Wearables that track vital signs such as heart rate, body temperature, or blood pressure are quickly becoming transformational in health monitoring.

In a hospital setting, wearables optimize operations and reduce the burden on personnel. There is no need to disturb a patient in the middle of the night to take vital signs and measuring of vital signs remains continuous rather than at set points during the day. Data from a wearable is measured, and transmitted via the secure hospital network infrastructure to the appropriate health care team where it is available to be seen and evaluated via the clinical information system. In-person interference by nurses or doctors only occurs if there is a need, allowing for a patient to recover more quickly and for medical personnel to work more efficiently.

Businesses and governments are reluctant to work with faith-based organizations due to potential public perceptions of disagreements surrounding tenets of belief. Yet, people who affiliate with a religion have extensive community networks, as well as trust among their peers. same time at a lower cost, benefiting patients and healthcare providers. Doctors, nurses, and a health care team can observe patients at home in combination with telemedicine and video conferencing, as long as proper cyber security actions are taken.

Wearables can also alert a remote health care team of a dangerous change in vital signs in a patient; for example, data that points to a potential heart attack.

To enable these new technologies, the foundation needs to be properly set. The most important aspect is a modern, stable, and secure network infrastructure. Only once the foundation is set, new applications such as patient care with wearables can be properly implemented in a hospital premise. This modern, stable, and secure hospital network infrastructure can then be bridged to external locations and enable new use cases to be covered such as remote care and decentralized clinical trials.

Additionally, wearables and remote options can improve health-related clinical trials, which face the problem of participants dropping out due to the inconvenience of traveling to see the doctor. Studies show that only 7% of patients conclude a clinical trial, which generally is a lengthy multi-year, and costly process. However, remote clinical trials can improve the retention rate of participants due to ease of use with technology like wearables and at the same time speed up the search for drugs and vaccines, as has happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. In combination with proper security and telepresence, there would be no need for volunteers to travel and see a doctor for all check-ups, which would ease the process and incentivize participation.

For remote care, including elderly care, wearables can allow for a patient to be released from a hospital setting earlier because of the possibility of remote observation. Multiple studies have shown that patients recover faster at home and at the

These possibilities are only made possible by collaboration and team support by all stakeholders involved in the healthcare ecosystem. As part of the Country Digital Acceleration program, Cisco supports the Swiss healthcare system in improving DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 61

healthcare through multiple aspects of digitalization. In the case of the University Hospital Basel, Cisco financially supports the project with its Country Digital Acceleration Initiative in addition to contributing expertise and network technology.

The existing Cisco infrastructure is used to securely connect the wearables for the transfer of data. A connection is automatically established as soon as a registered wristband nears a Cisco access point.

The successful implementation of wearables at the University Hospital Basel demonstrates the power of technology for medical use. Future expansion of wearables and other health technologies relies on the need for a strong, modern, stable, and secure network infrastructure, cybersecurity solutions, and communications solutions such as video conferencing. Cisco delivers all these technologies to support and build these services with a wide range of partners, helping pave way for seminal innovation. ***** About the author: Dr. Garif Yalak is Head of Digital Transformation and leads Cisco’s digitalization and innovation initiative for healthcare, education, and governance at Cisco Switzerland.

62 | D I PLOM AT I C COU RIE R

ADV ERTI S EMENT

Creating value for Switzerland, its economy and citizens Cisco Country Digital Acceleration Strategy #CiscoCDA #SwissCDA C

M

Y

CM

MY

CY

CMY

K

www.cisco.ch/cda

Photo via Adobe Stock.

Transforming Our Relationship with Information

By Mario Vasilescu

64 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R

Y

PAR TNER EDI TORI AL

ou will probably spend around seven hours online today. That’s the global average. What does all this time say about you?

We’ve been conditioned to automatically see that question through the extractive, advertising-oriented lens of Big Tech.

Measuring how we spend our time, and understanding what we’re passionate about, only to sell us things, is one of the most perverse undervaluations and misrepresentations in modern history. Look at it another way, and you’ll see why.

Over the course of your life you will spend as much time consuming content—articles, papers, videos, podcasts, books—and the discussions around it, as you would studying for about four college degrees. Often via content directly created or curated by known experts.

What do you have to show for it? Why does everyone else have data to show your passions and commitment—from advertisers to publishers—but you don’t? We are in a knowledge economy. Valuing our attention and time accordingly could transform everything. First and foremost, it could change how we think about education.

Rethinking Education Today there are 1.2 billion information workers and over 220 million students who spend over $1 trillion every year to formally signal their knowledge and credibility on subjects they care about. They do this through degrees, certificates, and memberships, all of which are poor representations of what we actually know or are passionate about. It is telling that so many professionals are compelled to spend significant additional time and energy, on an ongoing basis, desperately posturing online, via LinkedIn, Twitter, and newsletters. Trying to convey ongoing credibility or growth, using only a fraction of the materials from all that self-directed learning.

Imagine using the data that’s so often siphoned away from us, about our interests and committed time and contributions, in-

stead to build data-driven intellectual portfolios. Letting anyone safely and selectively convey their commitment and credibility on any subject, in a way that is transparent, shows our application, and is expert and industry affiliated. It immediately draws a sharp contrast to how we show our learning today: a usually outdated line item focused more on your alma mater’s brand than showing your actual learning and its relevance.

Look deeper and the impact is even great-

There are over 1 billion people globally who can’t afford to be part of that $1 trillion spent, yet have access to the internet’s wealth of information. What would it mean to them, to be able to easily formalize their self-directed learning in a presentable way? er. There are over 1 billion people globally who can’t afford to be part of that $1 trillion spent, yet have access to the internet’s wealth of information, full of expert content and recommendations. What would it mean to them, to be able to easily formalize their self-directed learning in a presentable way?

What about the untold number of ultra-talented individuals who simply don’t fit into the education system as we know it, usually because they’re autodidactic and grossly mislabeled by a system that sees them as inadequate or unqualified.

Seeing our relationship with the information commons in this new way is empowering, and along the way it goes even further: it fundamentally shifts how we value and experience the internet itself.

Rethinking Trust In a crisis of trust, understanding who deserves our engagement can change the world.

DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 65

By valuing our data to present ourselves, it opens up an entirely new way of structuring popularity and power, where power isn’t awarded only through the quantity of attention you get, but also how you can show the quality of attention you give: how you’ve informed yourself on a subject.

Below is the Twitter feed as it looks today.

Just like on all social media platforms, a user’s prominence is based on how many likes and replies they get. Whether they’re trustworthy, in general, let alone on the subject being discussed, is entirely irrelevant. What’s more, who those likes or comments are coming from also doesn’t matter. Yet we wonder why platforms are so often a toxic cesspool of noise.

Becoming better at signaling our knowledge can not only unlock newfound opportunity for billions of people, it can also transform the dynamics of our public sphere. Earning somebody’s trust around a certain subject area isn’t just for the job market. It’s also a matter of everyday life.

In a world reeling from the effects of online platforms that deliberately amplify uninformed and inflammatory perspectives, this has never been more valuable.

First, consider what this would mean for social media platforms, where power is currently only earned and assigned through volume. You can be the most illinformed person on a matter, but if you can get enough likes or followers, you’ll be at the top of every thread on the subject. It’s this very system of quantity-over-quality reward that is upstream of the social dysfunction we’re witnessing. The internet is the nervous system of our modern world, and we are prioritizing whatever makes it most inflamed, not what makes it most well-informed.

By valuing our data to present ourselves, it opens up an entirely new way of structuring popularity and power, where power isn’t awarded only through the quantity of attention you get, but also how you can show the quality of attention you give: how you’ve informed yourself on a subject.

66 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R

Seen through this new lens, where we can use our commitment and relationship to the information commons as a form of identity, these things are easily remedied.

PAR TNER EDI TORI AL

Despite having fewer likes, a trusted user is shown first, and labeled: attention given (“well-informed”, which can be hovered to reveal their relevant info sources and time invested), and their impact on others’ attention (“helpful”, also transparently browsable). A user with more likes, yet who has shown participation to be wary of, is shown last and with a faint warning stripe.

Participation to be wary of can include: high ratio of inflammatory language, above average ratio of sharing or liking misinformation or polarization sources (which themselves are transparently labeled with reasoning and evidence), frequent spammy or low-quality participation, or strongly biased record of media interactions.

This is all data that exists and is easily identified, but is currently only used against us, rather than for us. This extends to how mindfully or mindlessly we engage, and how it affects us.

Beyond how you present yourself outwardly, how do you understand yourself inwardly? What if all that data were used to provide you with insights, rather than some advertiser? Insights like a Fitbit for your information diet. To be effortlessly equipped to understand how the content you’re consuming is likely affecting your mood, how many times you were deliberately agitated, how your bias is shifting, who owns the media you consume, the diversity of cultural perspectives represented, and more.

lowing ourselves to fall prey to the same myopic view we have been undervalued with until now.

If we enable people to more effectively demonstrate their commitment and added value across any subject, we can go much further instead: letting people set a price on their time, against their expressed capabilities, just like any other marketplace.

When we think of the economic motivation for educating oneself, this would allow us to close the economic loop between learning and earning like never before.

All of this—how we can transform education, the internet, and economic liberation—comes down to one simple question: how will we choose to value our passions and time, through the information medium tying us all together? The data already exists, the time is already being spent, we merely need to shift how we choose to value it all. For addition, instead of extraction.

If we can make this shift, we will watch a smarter, more rational, more inclusive, and more prosperous world bloom. ***** About the author: Mario Vasilescu is the Founder and CEO of Readocracy.

Today we are in a designed crisis of information asymmetry, one that we can fix. Doing so is the ultimate empowerment we can offer the citizens of our modern society.

Signaling Knowledge This reframing of our data and relationship with information is ultimately a democratization of how we signal knowledge—and that has economic power, far more than simply using your data to also sell yourself out for a few advertising dollars. Such an approach, which is all too common, is alDAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 67

Photo via Adobe Stock.

Turbocharging Impact through Governance and Trust

By Andrea Bonime-Blanc & Jose Javier Guadalupe

68 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R

I

PAR TNER EDI TORI AL

n this age of converging, interconnected, and troubling multiyear megatrends creating continuous global turbulence as far as the eye can see, a strong silver lining is also visible. Alongside the darkness is a very hopeful, unparalleled, intense, widespread, technologically turbocharged effort of human intelligence and cooperation concentrated on finding solutions to the world’s biggest problems— most of which are well synthesized in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

Solutions are being undertaken at the macro global level (through the likes of COP27 Climate talks and the COP15 Biodiversity talks), at the regional and national levels (between or within regions and nations), and at the micro level—by NGOs, companies, communities, and even individuals making a difference every day in what they do.

One such effort currently underway in Puerto Rico—the Platform for Social Impact (PSI or the Platform)—could serve as a model anywhere of how to turbocharge capacity

and impact to tackle and solve some of the world’s most intractable challenges. PSI is a holding entity including several non-profits and for-profits whose vision and mission are laser focused on eradicating childhood poverty in Puerto Rico (as well as addressing three other SDGs, including SDG3, Good Health and Wellbeing, SDG4, Quality Education, and SDG8, Decent Work and Economic Growth).

PSI is an innovative, multi-faceted, hybrid social impact vehicle made up of several well-established entities—the Boys & Girls Clubs of Puerto Rico, Vimenti (which includes a Charter School) and the Youth Development Institute (a think tank on child poverty conditions)—as well as start-up organizations—Project Makers (a tech incubator), Work Force Hubs and Vidalus (a community health clinic). PSI is designed to continue to grow capacity through new start-ups and acquisitions—all of them required to be aligned with the vision, mission, and purpose of the overall PSI organization. Chart 1 shows the current structure and components.

Chart 1. Current Components of The Platform for Social Impact

DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 69

The Platform is also innovative in its hybrid funding design which allows for a wide variety of possible funding sources—from foundations, government, corporations, investment funds and individuals.

•

Values driven culture created at the employee grassroots levels (see Chart 2).

•

Adoption of a values infused code of ethics and values.

However, to ensure that everything is done in a best-in-class manner, a foundational decision made by the executive management and boards of the legacy companies that created PSI was to infuse them from day one with a best-in-class governance, ethics and transparency program and structure emanating from the Platform and suffusing all current and future entities comprising PSI. At the center of everything PSI is currently doing and planning for the future is to build deep stakeholder trust and a reputation for humility, continuous improvement, and innovation.

•

Overhaul of governance and boards of directors at every level.

•

Selection of mission-driven board members.

•

Integration of GET program components into overall business strategy.

•

Deployment of GET Program via a PSI-wide “Values Ambassador Network” with key participants from each component entity.

Governance, Ethics and Transparency at the Core

•

The creation of a PSI-wide role of “Director of Integrity & ESG”.

Given the long history of challenges—both man-made and natural—that Puerto Rico has endured over the decades, much of which has led to the reality of the worst childhood poverty rates in the United States and its territories, it was decided at the inception that the design and deployment of this new hybrid form of impact vehicle had to come with best-in-class governance, ethics, and transparency.

•

Deployment of PSI “Integrity Task Force” to tackle real-time GET program issues, risks, and opportunities.

•

Development and implementation of a vigorous “Third-party Screening Process” for, among other things, the evaluation and acceptance of prospective investments and donations to make sure such investments or donations meet the screening criteria. Screening includes standard anti-corruption, politically exposed person screens, as well as alignment with PSI Values, Vision, Mission and the 4 SDGs.

The “GET Program” (as it has come to be known) has been in deployment for almost two years, including a variety of important components: Chart 2. PSI’s Employee-Created 4 Core Values

70 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R

PAR TNER EDI TORI AL

Built to Last For an innovative, groundbreaking hybrid such as PSI to be successful in the long run, it is necessary for there to be a concerted approach to building long term trust, resilience and sustainability. PSI embraced the Virtuous Resilience Lifecycle model displayed in Chart 3 below as a way to visualize the key elements of such long-term resilience and success as well as hold itself accountable to this process of good governance, culture, risk management, vigilance and continuous improvement.

Chart 3. The Virtuous Resilience Lifecycle

Never has the role of good governance, ethics, and transparency been more critical to the enduring success of any effort—whether it be at the international organizational, governmental, corporate, societal or NGO levels. Building for a resilient, equitable, just world where Global North and Global South, East and West, the developed and the emerging worlds, democracies and less free societies are not antagonists but collaborators requires laser focus and the development of innovative approaches to solving these urgent, even existential global challenges so well defined by the SDGs. ***** About the authors: Dr. Andrea Bonime-Blanc is the Founder and CEO of GEC Risk Advisory.

José Javier Guadalupe serves as ESG & Integrity Director for the Platform for Social Impact in Puerto Rico.

DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 71

Photo via Adobe Stock.

Young Workers Are Searching for Meaning and Wellbeing. Let’s Help Them Find It

By Wendy Kopp

72 | D IPLOM AT I C COURIE R

C

PAR TNER EDI TORI AL

ompanies around the world are fretting about how to stem the Great Resignation and, in particular, to engage the 19-25-year-olds who comprise “Gen Z.” As workforces around the world and the young people just entering it search for meaning and wellbeing, those of us working for sustainable development—across the social sector and in universities that are shaping the rising generation’s priorities—should recognize an extraordinary opportunity.

We have long struggled to inspire the most promising graduates to channel their energy towards working full-time for sustainable development. This is true even for Gen Z, well known for being more committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, and sustainability than any generation that has come before. There’s no evidence, yet, that their choices about where to put their full-time energy are any different.

There’s never been a more opportune moment to take this on. Having founded Teach For America more than thirty years ago and led the development of the Teach For All global network over the last 15 years, I’ve worked with our teams over three decades to conduct focus groups of top prospects for our organizations. During 2022’s focus groups surveying diverse, civic-minded undergrads and recent graduates from all academic disciplines and career interests in Armenia, Austria, Brazil, India, and Colombia, I heard something new. For the first time ever, these prospects didn’t express concern that committing two years to join organizations like Teach For India or Ensina Brasil would put them “off track” from long-held career interests. Instead, they told us they were rethinking everything and searching for pursuits that would give them purpose and meaning.

We also heard a loud message around their commitment to prioritizing wellbeing. All of us in the social sector should listen and do everything we can to support this. And, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to help young people recognize that long-term fulfillment comes from immers-

ing ourselves in things that matter—from finding congruence between our values and where we put our energy.

It’s hard to imagine a bigger role (universities) can play than to foster a sense of responsibility in this rising generation to put their full-time energy into solving the increasingly complex problems facing the world and to help them access opportunities to do this.

Universities, which have made significant commitments to support the UN Sustainable Development Goals, should help with this.

It’s hard to imagine a bigger role they can play than to foster a sense of responsibility in this rising generation to put their full-time energy into solving the increasingly complex problems facing the world and to help them access opportunities to do this.

Yet they’ve largely resisted this idea.

Around the world, administrators, professors, and career service offices are typically most driven by the value of “neutrality” among the competing employers. In practice, career service offices are generally driven by corporate interests, given they charge prospective employers for prime visibility opportunities, which means employers’ ability to pay determines their prominence among the offerings.

It’s time for universities to foster critical inquiry into which career choices make the biggest difference, and to prioritize enabling the most promising graduates to make choices that enable them to tackle the societal challenges we face.

We’ve seen some promising movement in this direction. In the UK, for example, a group of universities are working with Transform Society, a network promotDAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 73

“I want to join an organization where I truly serve my nation. Today’s youth are tomorrow’s leaders, and if we focus on our education system, then our Pakistan will develop smoothly.” ing careers in public service, which aims to increase the number and diversity of students entering frontline public service roles. The universities engage this network to create Transform Society Challenges, which engage students in solving problems in their communities, thus gaining practical experience in public service alongside potential employers.

In the U.S., the University of Notre Dame is a positive outlier. Their commitment to social impact is integrated through coursework and career services. It begins with introducing freshmen to social impact through required courses, and continues through a “discernment” process guided by an advisor that involves deep inquiry into how students can best make impact during and beyond college.

With focused effort, we can succeed in enlisting the talent and energy needed to change the trajectory of progress towards sustainable development. Over decades, in different contexts around the world, we’ve seen that effective outreach and messaging works in persuading candidates with many other opportunities to channel their energy towards high-impact but historically low-status job choices. The UK’s Teach First, for example, has been among the 10 most popular graduate employers for 13

74 | D I PLOM AT I C COU RIE R

of the last 15 years, outranking the likes of Google, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, and Amazon. Teach For Nigeria has inspired 79,000 applicants over the past six years.

Even last year, in the face of significant headwinds around teacher recruitment, we saw that in-person sourcing and persistent cultivation of top prospects works. For example, these strategies enabled Teach For Pakistan to more than double its cohort size, from 45 to 120, selected from 3,000 applicants. More than 40% came from the top four universities in the country, and all from the most selective 20%. The diverse cohort—comprised of those who have experienced inequity and others from privileged backgrounds—were not originally intending to teach; more than 40% were from STEM backgrounds and only 4% from an education background. When asked why they had chosen to join Teach For Pakistan, one incoming fellow brought to life the opportunity we have: “I want to join an organization where I truly serve my nation.

Today’s youth are tomorrow’s leaders, and if we focus on our education system, then our Pakistan will develop smoothly.”

At this juncture when the challenges we face are clearer than ever, we need to commit to cultivating the rising generation to put their energy towards addressing them. In fact, one of the best indicators about how we’ll fare against our aspirations for sustainable development will be the career choices of the most promising leaders entering the workforce in the coming decade. ***** About the author: Wendy Kopp is the CEO and Co-founder of Teach For All.

ADV ERTI S EMENT

Learning Without Borders Contact Us: Smithsonian Science Education Center 901 D Street, SW Suite 704-B Washington, DC 20024 www.ssec.si.edu ScienceEducation@si.edu

Photo via Getty Images.

The Fog of Waronomics

By Beata Javorcik

76 | D I PLOM AT I C COURIE R

I

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

n extraordinary times such as wars, pandemics, and natural disasters, all politicians introduce extraordinary measures to soften the negative economic and social impact on their country’s citizens. But only the best among them will do so with the future in mind, helping to create the conditions for longer-term prosperity. As the late Queen Elizabeth II put it, “What leaders do for their people today is government and politics. But what they do for the people of tomorrow – that is statesmanship.”

Owing to the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many governments today are acting as if they are also at war. But they have failed to heed the queen’s implicit advice because short-termism has become all too common in economic decision-making.

The current moment stands in stark contrast to the beginning of 2021, when most governments were focused on building resilience, preparing for another pandemic, and gently winding down the financial support that they had provided during the COVID-19 crisis. Preventing excessive strains on government budgets had become a priority alongside longer-term challenges like the fight against climate change. But that now seems like eons ago.

True, we have not lost sight of climate change, and Europe’s energy crisis will most likely accelerate the green transition on the continent, as more investment is funneled to renewables and permits to build greener energy infrastructure become easier to obtain. But shortages of natural gas have also forced some countries to turn to coal, delaying their plans to phase out the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel.

Now that coal is cheaper than natural gas, kicking the coal habit has become much more difficult. But if the right policies are put in place, faster progress in the future could offset this setback. Besides, no one can blame governments for doing what they need to do to protect energy-insecure households under today’s extraordinary circumstances.

What is harder to understand is the decision by many governments to lower taxes on en-

ergy and fuel. A majority of the G7’s members (Canada, Italy, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) have taken this step, and similar measures are popular in Central and Eastern Europe, where households have been hit even harder by rising heating costs.

subsidizing fuel reduces the incentive to save energy and distorts the price signal needed to make the economy less carbon-intensive. It is also much more burdensome on public budgets compared to means-tested transfers to vulnerable households.

The problem, of course, is that subsidizing fuel reduces the incentive to save energy and distorts the price signal needed to make the economy less carbon-intensive. It is also much more burdensome on public budgets compared to means-tested transfers to vulnerable households. But sweeping subsidies are simpler to implement and more popular with voters, so politicians have seized on them.

Similarly, while poorer households are the ones that need help coping with rapidly rising interest rates (a development that caught even many economists by surprise), governments feel tempted to help everyone. Rather than focus on those who have lost their jobs or are temporarily unable to service their debts, they are exploring larger-scale interventions that could pay off in the next election.

Poland’s government, for example, introduced an across-the-board debt-servicing moratorium on July 7, 2022, allowing all Poles with a mortgage covering “own use” real estate to avoid repayments for eight months.

The National Bank of Poland and the Polish Bank Association estimate that the policy will cost the banking sector $4-5.4 billion.

DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 77

The irony is that Ukraine – the country that actually is at war – has continued to focus on its longterm future. It was servicing its external debt until very recently, and it then asked for rescheduling to avoid a default and all the long-term consequences that would come with it.

This type of a moratorium is highly distortionary, and it comes on top of, and in response to, another distortion: Excess liquidity in the banking system has kept deposit rates very low, thus creating the impression that banks are unfairly raising interest rates on mortgages and other loans. While the moratorium is especially costly for the banking sector in the short run, its fallout will be felt more widely.

For starters, it is a highly regressive policy that will disproportionally benefit larger property owners. It also might weaken the monetarypolicy transmission mechanism, dampening the effect that higher interest rates have on economic activity and forcing the central bank to raise rates even higher in the future to achieve the same effect. And by creating the expectation that the government will announce a debt holiday whenever there is a shock, it introduces moral hazard. In that case, banks may well increase the costs of their loans to price in the likelihood of future moratoria.

A much cheaper and more sensible measure is the “Borrowers’ Support Fund” that Poland also expanded in 2022 to support those who lose their job or whose mortgage costs exceed 50% of their household’s monthly income. The fund has been financed with bank contributions to the tune of $400 million. By extending its coverage to more households in need, policymakers could avoid many of the aforementioned distortions while still protecting the most vulnerable. Of course, this approach might not provide as big a boost for the government at election time.

78 | D I PLOM AT I C COU RIE R

At this point, the “new normal” has been discussed for so long that some policymakers have forgotten basic economics. They have convinced themselves that it is possible to increase public spending without identifying any means to pay for it, and without having to worry about the signals they are sending to markets; or that lower interest rates will bring lower inflation (as Turkey’s president apparently believes); or that price controls do not lead to shortages. But just as we cannot wish away gravity, nor can we escape the laws of economics. Sooner or later, the day of reckoning must come.

The irony is that Ukraine—the country that actually is at war—has continued to focus on its long-term future. It was servicing its external debt until very recently, and it then asked for rescheduling to avoid a default and all the long-term consequences that would come with it. It is also already preparing plans for its reconstruction, even though no one knows when the war will end.

Ukraine knows what a wartime economy feels like. Shame on those who are not at war and yet lose sight of the future. ***** About the author: Beata Javorcik, Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, is Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford and a fellow of All Souls College.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.

ADV ERTI S EMENT

LA RÔTISSERIE Leave the hustle and bustle of everyday life behind as we whisk you off on an exquisite culinary journey.

Chef Stefan Jäckel and his team will surprise you with refined, seasonal creations and innovatively interpreted classics directly from the trolley – perfect for a family get-together, meal with friends or business lunch. storchen.ch

Photo by Dream A Dream..

A New Definition of the Next Normal

By Varsha Pillai & Vishal Talreja

80 | D IPLOM AT I C CO URIE R

I

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

t took a pandemic for us to acknowledge the fault lines in our “normal” way of being. Deep fissures caused by systemic inequities emerged loud and clear. Some pertinent questions that should have plagued us, but never did, insulated in a comfort bubble, far away from the harsh realities that were impacting 80% of humanity. Questions like, how were we ok with people dying from lack of vaccines and access to healthcare? Why were we complacent in our response to colonized countries that were seeking aid? How did we ignore the complete erasure of freedom in some countries? Why did we not understand that there was no ‘normal’ for children who had never seen the insides of a school? How were we ok with the long closure of schools that were the first ones to close and the last to open post lockdowns? How did we unsee what our young people were going through?

systems do not transform. During the pandemic, it was young people who showed us the way forward. They do not need to reform or change, in fact it is our systems that propagate old ways of discrimination that need urgent transformation.

We need to reframe our definitions of normal, for it is not normal for a young person to be caught in the throes of an irrelevant definition of success. It is not normal to propagate competition amongst our young people at the cost of loss of empathy and kindness. It is not normal to create an illusion of a better future when we are teaching young people old ways of usurping resources at the cost of the planet. It is not normal to assume that tech-oriented tools are universal remedies to solve ‘learning losses.’ It was never normal to presume that young people only lost out on learning in the last two years of the global pandemic. It was far from normal to believe that dominant narratives peddled by colonizers were the only way to be. It was not normal that we obliterated indigenous wisdom to force fit another that could never be ours.

It was never normal to regurgitate the old ‘normal’ when we needed a better normal that worked for everyone. A normal defined by acceptance, understanding, and compassion, a normal that would require a complete shedding of the old.

Bangalore, like other major cities of the world is sitting on a veritable drought time bomb and one wonders how we would respond to the looming water crisis; will we seek solutions together or would we fend for ourselves?

Just as the old version of normal is irrelevant, our quest to make young people resilient to the uncertain future becomes redundant if

We need to reframe our definitions of normal, for it is not normal for a young person to be caught in the throes of an irrelevant definition of success. It is not normal to propagate competition amongst our young people at the cost of loss of empathy and kindness.

Similarly, the present education system focuses quite disproportionately on selfgain, hence old ways of education will not pave way for the kind of societies we need for the future. Old definitions of transformation need a fundamental, radical shift where we are rebuilding solutions for the root causes of structural inequities impacting our young people. The new definition of transformation will not be consumeristic seeking economic growth at the risk of loss of physical and mental wellbeing, rather it will emerge from the intersectional lens of dignity, equity, and inclusion.

The three drivers of transformation from the New Education Story Report of purpose, power, and practice can help re-wire and reframe the way education is experienced, the way it needs to be and what it is truly for. If education transformation is viewed from a different lens away from the traditional notions of what it helps DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 81

Just as the old version of normal is irrelevant, our quest to make young people resilient to the uncertain future becomes redundant if systems do not transform.

During the pandemic, it was young people who showed us the way forward.

empathy over competition and pursuit for academic excellence. Such transformation grounded on values when extended to community spaces would allow young people to learn and grow, where their dreams and voices matter and are encouraged. The larger questions looming over us remain—are we resilient enough to unlearn and move away from archaic ideas of success and transformation? Do we dare to let young people choose the kind of humans they want to be in the future? Are we audacious enough to be a values-oriented world that is unafraid to show love and care for young people and the planet?

us achieve (a job, a good career/wealth) would we have a world that is vastly different? Could learners be co-owners and curate their own learning journeys where they decide what they want to learn and how? Could we re-direct energies towards enabling communities that do not have voice and agency? Could we actively engage in unlocking everyday acts of transformation among diverse stakeholders in the education ecosystem?

*****

Transformation could be the creation of classrooms as safe spaces for young people to be their true authentic selves where teachers as facilitators help every young person on their thriving journey, where peers are introduced to compassion and

82 | D IPLOM AT I C COU RIE R

About the authors: Dr. Varsha Pillai heads Narrative Building and Communications at Dream a Dream, an organization that that works to empower over three million children in India to overcome adversity and build the life skills needed to thrive in a fast-changing world.

Vishal Talreja co-founded Dream a Dream 22 years ago that works to empower over three million children in India to overcome adversity and build the life skills needed to thrive in a fast-changing world.

ADVERTI S EM ENT

Photo via Adobe Stock.

The Rise and Mainstreaming of Extremism in the U.S. and Europe

By Tracy Walder

84 | D IPLOM AT I C CO URIE R

T

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

hough not by definition fragile states, the United States and many countries in Western Europe are experiencing a surge in violent right-wing populism because a significant portion of their populations question the legitimacy of the governments in power. Such instability can serve as a breeding ground for terrorist organizations (both foreign and domestic) and ultimately weaken public confidence in political institutions, indefinitely.

In the years I spent attempting to track and diagnose terrorism, I felt that I had a thorough understanding of why people join terrorist organizations: religious fanaticism. I was wrong. While religious motivation is true in a small number of cases, I came to find that most joined because members of Al Qaida found them when they had been abandoned, unable to access education, unable to obtain healthcare, and unable to access a consistent source of food and housing. In short, political instability and the inability of their governments to meet their basic needs contributed to them turning to radicalization. They were the product of failed or fragile states.

The definition of a failed state varies but generally, it is a political body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer function properly.

Per the Fragile State Index, the countries that are considered the most vulnerable to collapse are predominately in the Sahel, Horn of Africa and Near East. Countries such as Yemen, South Sudan, and Somalia. Countries where Al Qaida has found a resurgence: Yemen, in the Arabian Peninsula, South Sudan, Somalia, and the Islamic Maghreb. Illegitimate and/or unstable governments create uncertainty, scarcity, and chaos, leading citizens of these countries to look elsewhere for the stability they need.

A state can also fail, however, even when its government is performing its basic functions properly by losing its legitimacy. In-

deed, for a stable state, it is necessary for the government to enjoy both effectiveness and legitimacy. Those that experience increasing challenges to their legitimacy, real or imagined, are particularly susceptible to destabilizing violence.

Particularly concerning is the sharp rise in extremist groups in the United States in recent years. These groups have also increased their foothold in Europe, with the numbers of attacks quadrupling in recent years.

Recently, the role of political legitimacy has begun to play more of a role in the radicalization of individuals rather that total disintegration of the political apparatus. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic— October-November 2019—IMF estimates rise in unrest predominately in Latin America and the Middle East. Large anti-government demonstrations also took place in advanced economies where unrest is relatively rare, such as Canada, New Zealand, Austria, and the Netherlands.

And, while by definition these countries and others such as Germany, France, and the U.S., are currently stable on the fragile state index, they have experienced a large shift in in regard to how their populations view political legitimacy.

Particularly concerning is the sharp rise in extremist groups in the United States in recent years. These groups have also increased their foothold in Europe, with the numbers of attacks quadrupling in recent years.

Ahead of the German federal elections of 2021, QAnon-type conspiracies grew as groups like the Reichsburger movement, spread their disinformation through online message boards. Ultimately large-scale arrests of members attempting to overthrow the government took place in late 2022.

DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 85

Political discourse is a natural and encouraged byproduct of democracy.

But the recent violence and unfounded rhetoric surrounding legitimate elections fueled by social media platforms, weakens public confidence in democratic institutions indefinitely.

French president Emmanuel Macron was re-elected in 2022 despite his unpopularity.

Claims of election fraud ran rampant in a page borrowed from the U.S. 2020 elections. Demonstration activity increased in mainland France by 61% in 2021, with violence in their overseas territories (Corsica), increasing by 1,120%.

And on the heels of January 6th, 2021, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has monitored U.S. elections for 17 years, raised significant concerns in 2022 regarding rhetoric questioning electoral integrity and how it is directly related to unrest and violence.

In March 2021, Global Trends 2040, a publication of the Office of the National Security Council, warned “that terrorist groups will continue to exploit societal fragmentation and weak governance to push their ideologies and gain power through violence.” Further, “extreme rightwing and leftwing terrorists promoting a range of issues would be highly problematic to the legitimacy of governments.”

Political discourse is a natural and encouraged byproduct of democracy. But the recent violence and unfounded rhetoric surrounding legitimate elections fueled by social media platforms, weakens public confidence in democratic institutions indefinitely.

Much like understanding the motive behind one joining a terrorist organization, to minimize the violence and safety concerns

86 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R

that have arisen as a result of right-wing populist groups denying the legitimacy of elections in democratic countries, we must understand why. There has been a great deal of focus in preventing the spread of misinformation digitally, however no focus on why constituents believe it. A democratically elected leader will never satisfy one hundred percent of their constituency.

This is the beauty of democracy. However, political legitimacy will never be obtained through violence. ***** About the author: Tracy Walder is a teacher and an adjunct instructor of Criminal Justice and terrorism. Previously she worked as a Staff Operations Officer in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, serving multiple tours overseas, and as Special Agent at the FBI. She is the author of “The Unexpected Spy.”

ADV ERTI S EMENT

Scan the QR code to download the e-book for free.

In partnership with GEC Risk Advisory

Illustration via Adobe Stock.

The Unbearable Weight of Misinformation

By Appu Suresh

88 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R

S

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

ocial media is the de facto “town square,” a place where citizens the world over can debate or share ideas and opinions on a public forum. Unfortunately, today’s digital town square has become a global playground for the rampant spread of unreliable and unmoderated information, largely due to a business model that rewards clickbait.

While the spread of misinformation isn’t a new phenomenon, the digital age has accelerated how quickly it can spread, oftentimes leaving reliable sources to play catch up. Studies reveal that users are cognizant of misinformation campaigns on topics like climate change and vaccinations, and we have seen the negative impact in countries like Brazil, Ethiopia, and India where traditional social platforms spread hate. Unfortunately, the business model fans these flames, with algorithms amplifying misinformation and inflammatory content, and ultimately prioritizing profit over people and society.

Learning from Clean Energy Until the climate crisis became a mainstream concern, the term “energy” almost exclusively referred to fossil fuel-based energy. Now, companies have prioritized renewable energy sources, creating a robust “clean energy” industry. Similarly, misinformation online has become another global crisis, polluting our feeds with hate and conspiracy. In order to combat this crisis, we need both a behavioral change and a new business model that promotes factbased and respectful content: a ‘clean social’ media.

As it stands, social media tends to amplify the loudest voices and marginalize truthful content. Much as we have had to change behavior and financially incentivize clean energy, government and industry must work together to encourage a sustainable internet that contributes to social cohesion and stability. Public-private partnerships in the renewable energy space have pushed us towards solar energy, Evs, and more,

so governments need to begin working in concert with the private sector to identify ways to support a transformation to a “clean social” that reduces online threats.

Transforming the Business Model A new report by Oxford’s Internet Institute finds that misinformation has a greater impact on users than reliable information. Instead of taking steps to fight misinformation, amplifying reliable content can lend greater credence to factual information.

The recent triumph of the Marcos family’s disinformation campaigns in the Philippines exemplify platforms’ inability to combat unreliable information.

We need to rethink the traditional social media business model and transform it into one that puts people over profits. Current algorithms and content moderation must be redesigned with the public good, ethical imperatives, and integrity at their core.

Since its inception, big social media’s design has prioritized profits. We need to rethink the traditional social media business model and transform it into one that puts people over profits. Current algorithms and content moderation must be redesigned with the public good, ethical imperatives, and integrity at their core. By incentivizing social media giants or digital “town squares” to prioritize healthy discussion over divisive debates, we can move closer to a cleaner social environment.

This approach is pragmatic as much as it is altruistic, considering how better moderation boosts website traffic and increases conversion rates. In fact, less moderation does not attract more users, as per popular belief; the opposite is true. We witnessed DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 89

The close collaboration between online platforms and information creators, whether NGOs or academic and other researchers (data scientists, social scientists, and more) could put pressure on chokepoints, including those that relate to governance. firsthand how Twitter’s newer, looser content moderation rules were followed by an uptick of hate speech and a decline in user numbers. More loosely moderated platforms still only have a small market share, Truth Social has 3% of market share among social media users, despite 25% of social media users knowing about it. The most popular platforms have superior moderation comparatively and attract the highest user bases.

Collaborating with Intention While users and platforms can improve their practices, meaningful change cannot occur in a vacuum. Any long-term solution must include the building of partnerships with reliable sources of information by engaging users, policymakers, NGOs, platforms, and other stakeholders. The close collaboration between online platforms and information creators, whether NGOs or academic and other researchers (data scientists, social scientists, and more) could put pressure on chokepoints, including those that relate to governance. Corporate social responsibility and how brands spend their money on certain platforms can promote or contradict their ESG goals. With 90% of Twitter’s revenue in advertising, advertisers have the power to force the platform to change its ways.

In its current state, social media is a divisive force in society that has also become a detriment to the democratic process. Plat90 | D IPLOM AT I C CO URIE R

forms need to reevaluate the algorithms they use with input from institutions and sources of reliable information. Collaboration among platforms, NGO’s and researchers should be encouraged to equitably develop a framework for combating misinformation. More engagement from corporations who sustain the high revenue enjoyed by social media platforms would also force them to reevaluate their practices. While a utopian town square with free and respectful debate may be too idealistic, it is integral that we take steps to curtail misinformation and disinformation.

Only with the collective participation of users, platforms, policymakers and other stakeholders can we make Clean Social a reality. ***** About the author: Appu Esthose Suresh is founder of Pixstory. As an investigative journalist, Appu did extensive work on the changing pattern of communal riots in India.

ADV ERTI S EMENT

Events.

Join our events in 2023! w2050.org/membership

Photo via Unsplash.

The Silver Tsunami

By Hippolyte Fofack

92 | D IPLOM AT I C COURIE R

S

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

ince 2011, sales of adult diapers in Japan have outpaced those for infants, reflecting a decline in the country’s fertility rate (live births per woman) from 3.66 in 1950 to around 1.5 by the early 1990s. Since then, Japanese fertility has remained stuck far below the “replacement rate” (2.1), amounting to a mere 1.3 in 2021.

And geriatric Japan is not alone. Fertility rates have also dropped below the replacement level in all eurozone countries, and they are strikingly low in Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan—the five wealthiest East Asian economies, omitting China. At 0.81 and 1.38, respectively, South Korea and Hong Kong’s 2021 fertility rates are among the lowest in the world.

Moreover, China is likely to record an absolute decline in its population in 2023.

Though the government ended its 35-yearold one-child policy in 2016, China’s fertility rate stood at just 1.16 in 2021, down from as high as 6.3 as recently as 1968. The United Nations has revised down its projection of the size of China’s working-age population (those between 15 and 64) in 2100 by a startling 201 million, from 579 million to 378 million. This trend poses a big problem for the Chinese economy. “Today, every 100 working-age Chinese need to support 20 retirees,” Oxford historian Rana Mitter wrote recently in The Spectator. “If trends continue, by the turn of the next century, every 100 workers will have to support 120 retirees.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. fertility rate has more than halved over since 1960, falling from 3.7 to 1.66 in 2021. And even an emerging-market powerhouse like India is experiencing a population decline, recording fertility rates of 2.03 in 2021 and 2.05 the year before, the first time the country had fallen below the replacement rate.

According to the UN’s World Population Prospects 2022 (WPP2022) report, the global fertility rate, which stood at 2.3 overall in 2021, will hit the demographic tipping point of 2.1 by 2050, owing to a globally synchronized decline in birth rates, including in Africa and Latin America.

Declining fertility rates have already shifted the age distribution of the population upward in many economies. According to the WPP2022, “Worldwide, persons aged 65 or over outnumbered children under five for the first time in 2018.” By the middle of this century, there will be twice as many senior citizens as people under five, and around as many as the total number of people under 12.

Fertility rates have also dropped below the replacement level in all eurozone countries, and they are strikingly low in Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan —the five wealthiest East Asian economies, omitting China.

The consequences will be immense, particularly in high-income economies. In addition to straining pension and health-care systems, low fertility rates—in the absence of more immigration—will reduce the working-age population, in turn lowering household consumption and economic growth. Fewer workers also will lead to wage inflation, which could add to uncertainty and volatility in the global economy.

Historically, per capita output growth has accounted for around half of average annual world economic growth, with the other half coming from population growth. But population aging risks upsetting this balance.

As low fertility rates become increasingly entrenched, many countries may adopt aggressively pro-natalist policies. Following Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker’s modeling of household behavior and family planning— which suggests that the demand for children responds to changes in the price of the “marginal child”—such policies tend to emphasize financial incentives, such as paid maternity leave, “bonuses” for couples that have children, monthly grants for mothers who take time off work to raise a third child, and personal tax deductions to cover childcare expenses.

DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 93

Throughout modern history, international migration from low-income, high-fertility countries to those with higher average incomes and lower birth rates has helped shield the latter from demographic headwinds.

But these inducements have not proven especially effective. France offers substantial support to families, but its fertility rate stood at just 1.83 in 2021. Adding to the challenge, rising per capita incomes and medical advances have increased life expectancy, tempering the historical “utility” of having more children as a kind of intergenerational insurance policy.

In the late eighteenth century, the clergyman and economist Thomas Malthus, worried about rapid population growth, posited two sets of factors that might stabilize it: “positive checks” that increase mortality, including wars, famine, and disease; and “preventive checks” such as celibacy, birth control, and attitudes toward family planning. In addition to advances in medicine, the rules-based international order that emerged after the second world war helped to diminish positive checks on population growth. But Malthus could not have imagined how effective the preventive checks of the last 70 years would be.

These developments were fueled by two key influences. First, changes in family-planning approaches can become quite “sticky” once they take hold as social norms, as the resurgent debate about access to abortion in the United States makes clear. Second, and even more consequentially, extremely low fertility rates exhibit a persistence effect, becoming increasingly difficult to reverse the longer they endure.

Throughout modern history, international migration from low-income, high-fertility countries to those with higher average incomes and lower birth rates has helped shield the latter 94 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R

from demographic headwinds. According to the WPP2022, high-income countries’ population growth between 2000 and 2020 was driven primarily by international migration, with net inflows (80.5 million) exceeding the balance of native births over deaths (66.2 million) by more than 20%.

Moreover, international migration is set to become the sole driver of population growth in these economies in the coming decades. That means there will be a swelling of high-income countries’ foreign-born populations, which accounted for over 14.7% of their total population in 2020 – with higher ratios for some of the largest economies, including the US (15.3%) and Germany (18.8%).

Despite the strict immigration policies that many governments have promoted in recent years, international migration has helped highincome countries sustain economic growth and ease the burden of supporting their growing elderly populations, including by keeping state pensions on a sustainable path. At a time of heightened geopolitical tensions and the risk of global fragmentation, it is more important than ever to recognize the mutually beneficial relationship that exists between low- and high-fertility countries.

Still, facilitating migration cannot be the sole long-term solution. If global fertility does fall below the replacement rate within the next 30 years, the consequences for the entire planet may be dire. Our children may be the future, but they will be growing up in a geriatric world. ***** About the author: Hippolyte Fofack is Chief Economist and Director of Research at the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank).

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.

ADV ERTI S EMENT

Publications.

Read & Order all DC Special Editions www.diplomaticourier.com/print

Photo by Christophe Dutour via Unsplash.

A Vaccine for the Loneliness Epidemic

By Chikako Ozawa-de Silva with Brendan Ozawa-de Silva

96 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R

I

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

n 2018, then UK Prime Minister Theresa May said, “Loneliness is one of the greatest public health challenges of our time,” and appointed the country’s first minister for loneliness. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called loneliness a “growing health epidemic,” stating that social isolation is “associated with a reduction in lifespan similar to that caused by smoking 15 cigarettes a day.”

What do the following have in common?

Rising rates of social anxiety and social withdrawal, alarming rates of suicide (up 51% among teenage girls in the U.S. in just a two-year period from 2019-2021, and up over 300% over a ten-year period), the increasing number of mass shootings, the epidemic of burnout in healthcare and other sectors, eating disorders. All too often, at the heart of each of these is a lack of social connection and the feeling of being loved, accepted, and understood. This is loneliness.

Loneliness is not just being alone; it’s feeling alone, feeling absence—specifically, the absence of love. As Mother Theresa put it: ““The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.”

When I began writing my book The Anatomy of Loneliness, I thought I was writing a book on suicide. Suicide rates jumped in Japan in 1998 across the board (but by more than 50% among adolescents), and stayed elevated over the next decade. No one knew why or what to do about it. For years, I interviewed young Japanese and studied discussions on suicide websites and chatrooms, where people met to arrange suicide pacts. Repeatedly I came upon the theme of loneliness. One online post summed it up for me, a young woman who wrote: “I’m too lonely to die alone.

Isn’t there anyone who will die with me?”

These young people expressed a yearning to be valued beyond the transactional productivity they contributed to society, their “instrumental value.” We don’t relate to those we care about in this way: we love them because of who they are. The instru-

mentalization of human value is a core cultural concept at the heart of our social structures that promotes loneliness and that needs to be re-examined. What message are we sending to young people if competition and productivity are not balanced with care and intrinsic self-worth?

The instrumentalization of human value is a core cultural concept at the heart of our social structures that promotes loneliness and that needs to be re-examined.

What message are we sending to young people if competition and productivity are not balanced with care and intrinsic self-worth?

So, where’s the solution? Johan Galtung, the father of Peace Studies, introduced the concept of “positive peace.” True peace is not just the absence of violence, but rather the presence of those things which prevent and protect against violence: institutions, norms, values. Norms and values like empathy, compassion, trust, understanding. Institutions that ensure fairness and justice. The next stage for us is to imagine how to build the norms, values, and institutions that will ensure the end of the lonely society. Increasingly, our world is a global family. If we can make people feel lonely, we can do the opposite too.

Education is the most powerful tool we have for bringing about this change. Recent research in psychology and neuroscience shows that young children and even infants have a natural orientation towards kindness and helping over cruelty.

Research in the field of Social Emotional Learning also shows that kindness, empathy, and compassion can be taught, leading to measurable improvements in academic DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 97

achievement and prosocial behavior, and a decrease in antisocial behavior. At Emory University, an international education program called SEE Learning (Social, Emotional and Ethical Learning), developed in partnership with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, is one such example, providing free curricula and trainings across the world to cultivate these skills in children. My husband, who helped develop the SEE Learning program, had the rare opportunity to ask His Holiness the Dalai Lama about why young people were experiencing intense loneliness and turning to suicide. The Dalai Lama responded, “That is not that individual’s problem. It is society’s problem for not making them feel cared for.”

This is the shift in perspective we need.

Society produces loneliness, an absence of feeling loved, seen, and understood.

The rate of this production has reached epidemic levels, especially among children and young people. The vaccine for this epidemic is educating for empathy: the ability to understand and care for one another.

With this vaccine, we can work towards the ultimate cure: a compassionate society. ***** About the authors: Chikako Ozawa-de Silva is Professor of Anthropology at Emory University and author of The Anatomy of Loneliness: Suicide, Social Connection, and the Search for Relational Meaning in Contemporary Japan (University of California Press, 2021).

Brendan Ozawa-de Silva is Associate Teaching Professor at Emory University’s Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics.

98 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R

Advertisement

Project Syndicate offers its subscribers unrivalled access to the ideas and opinions of the world’s leading thinkers, including Nobel laureates, heads of state, business leaders, civic activists, and distinguished scholars.

PS Premium Subscription FOR UNLIMITED ACCESS What’s included? ‒ A print copy of every new issue of the PS Quarterly magazine, including our annual fourth-quarter magazine, PS Quarterly: The Year Ahead

All subscriber-exclusive content, including:

‒ Full access to our digital magazine archive

‒ Insider Interviews, with leading thinkers on both sides of the table

‒ A one-year Digital gift subscription to give to the person of your choosing for each year you are a subscriber

‒ Longer Read extended commentaries ‒ Global Bookmark long-form book reviews

‒ Big Picture topical collections

‒ Exclusive access to PS Events

‒ Big Question short-form analysis and predictions

‒ Discounts on partner websites

‒ Say More contributor interviews

‒ A pop-up free reading experience

‒ Read More contributor book recommendations

DC 202 2

Diplomatic Courier members can save $35 on a new PS subscription by using this discount code at checkout

project-syndicate.org/subscribe

‒ The full PS archive

Photo by Sebastian Staines via Unsplash.

Creating a True Health Ecosystem for Human Flourishing

By Robert Sundelius

100 | D IPLOM AT I C CO URIE R

T

DAVO S D I AL OG U E I J ANU ARY 2023

he fuel of a nation’s wealth is the health of its people. Serving the injured and sick with grace and compassion is a worthy calling.

It is vital in every nation’s infrastructure. However, more is needed. Not only must we lower the overall cost burden of sick care, we must reduce the very need for sick care. But what does that mean?

It means working towards a future where transformation, not just resilience, informs the creation of a true health ecosystem— an ecosystem of informed and self-directed wellbeing. A system designed for small changes that lead to significant economic gain and human flourishing.

ers can develop new and creative solutions to improve health and wellbeing by working together. Over time, their work will reduce the growing burden on our overstressed care systems.

During the COVID-19 pandemic we learned quickly that we are all connected. Our communities, industries, and global societies both impact and are responsible for health outcomes. Based on this learning, we must offer a view of the most critical health services not as a response to, but as a reduction of, disease and illness, including the reduction of heart and pulmonary disease, obesity, cancer, and diabetes.

Second, we must adopt a view of health that reflects the vital connection between mind, body, and the social fabric. This recognition means prioritizing mental health as a critical component of wellbeing. It also means recognizing social support and trusted networks as essential in promoting both mental health and healthy choices.

The intentional building of a health ecosystem will foster new and valuable connections between local, national, and even global communities. It will also require the ecosystem’s offering and expansion to be fair and equitable.

Investment in this evolving health ecosystem will bring expanding benefits over time.

Like a growing beehive, it will increase in both societal impact and economic value as it matures. Our posture must be longterm and one of purpose and patience. Our stance must also differ from current siloed and short-term prevention programs.

But to create this ecosystem, we must fundamentally rethink our healthcare approach.

First, keeping people healthy cannot be seen as the primary responsibility of our overburdened medical sectors. As an alternative, governments, businesses, and civil society can lead. Collaborative efforts can increase individual health literacy, empower personal health responsibility, and incentivize healthy choices. This approach brings together diverse stakeholders, including technology companies, government agencies, community organizations, and the business sector. These stakehold-

keeping people healthy cannot be seen as the primary responsibility of our overburdened medical sectors.

As an alternative, governments, businesses, and civil society can lead.

Third, the ecosystem must be easy to use and integrated into daily life. We have all we need to start, from proven digital vaccines to digital twins. The talent and raw materials we need already exist today.

These features and outcomes provide practical examples for further exploration.

A true health ecosystem will: •

Foster generations who learn health literacy, healthy behavior, and personal health responsibility.

•

Create an easy-to-use personal health score (and optimal target within a value range) that is clinically driven, accurate, current, and actionable.

DAVOS DIALOGUE 2023 | 101

•

Offer a 24/7 “opt-in” AI-enabled, user-friendly Super App (spanning industry boundaries). The Super App will offer expanding services.

Leading businesses and brands will be the primary resource for this App that will incentivize and guide individuals toward sustained human flourishing.

•

The Super App “beehive” will include cross-industry and local networks on one hand and access to health products and services on the other. These connections will reinforce health literacy and healthy choice related to food, exercise/sport, mental wellness, finance, fashion, and entertainment.

•

Provide gateways within the “beehive” for seamless access to community, national, and even global platforms of prevention services (primary, optical, dental, and dermatology care, mental health, labs/testing, and discretionary offerings).

•

Offer an “Opt-in” community (inperson, virtually, and eventually globally networked), allowing members to support the achievement of optimal health for others.

•

Offer an invitation to partner with causes that resource the poor, those who lack services, and those seeking new possibilities on their journey to flourishing.

•

Radically expand the training and resourcing of primary care physicians. These physicians will be rewarded for keeping individuals healthy and will be digitally skilled, health-coach-supported, and team connected.

102 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R

Investment in this evolving health ecosystem will bring expanding benefits over time. Like a growing beehive, it will increase in both societal impact and economic value as it matures.

The Next Normal presents an invitation to move beyond resilience and toward transformation. Though requiring a shift in mindset and investment, a true health ecosystem will lead to significant economic gain. These gains will accrue from initial and expanding ecosystem activities. They will also accrue from the longer-term reduction of non-communicable diseases. The resulting outcome will be the fruit of an equitable and just society: human flourishing. ***** About the author: Robert Sundelius is a healthcare executive and global board advisor.