Young leaders gather with 2020 vision
More than 100 of the world’s most influential young movers and shakers meet on Friday at the inaugural Forum of Young Global Leaders in Zermatt.
The four-day summit of brainstorming and networking – hosted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) – will focus on formulating a vision for the world in 2020.
“If youth knew; if age could.”
The WEF aims to “synergise” Freud’s aphorism by bringing together every year around 250 leading entrepreneurs, scientists, artists, journalists, economists, politicians and NGO representatives, who are all 40 or younger.
In the first group invited to the Swiss mountain resort, around 100 of the 238 leaders nominated this year will discuss the development of global strategies and concrete actions “in order to advance towards a better world in the year 2020”, according to the WEF.
Klaus Schwab, the Swiss philanthropist and businessman who founded the WEF in 1971, says the new forum will shake up traditional thinking and bring a bold, forward-looking approach to the world.
“We would like to integrate those Young Global Leaders into processes which will allow them to have a real impact on global affairs and to make sure that global decision-making preserves the interests of the next generation,” he says.
Pressing challenges
The select group of leaders will aim to draft strategies in workshops and plenary sessions to address the most pressing challenges facing the world today.
To do this, they will explore solutions on two timescales: short-term actions on urgent issues where the community can engage to achieve rapid results (“quick wins”), and longer-term strategic actions to address and find innovative solutions to global challenges.
The ideas and outcomes of the summit will be fed into the 2006 WEF meeting in Davos.
Names that reflect the forum’s diversity include Waris Dirie, Somalian ex-supermodel and United Nations campaigner against female circumcision, Noreena Hertz, a British professor of economics and expert on economic globalisation, and Queen Rania of Jordan, who chairs the nomination committee.
Among those with links to Switzerland are Georges Kern, CEO of the International Watch Company, and Domenico Scala, chief financial officer at Syngenta.
“Participants can have a really varied influence and can set things in motion,” Scala says.
“But it is presumptuous to think that an event or a forum in itself can achieve something. Ultimately only teamwork can achieve anything.”
Mixed support
The forum will inevitably be compared with its controversial big brother, the annual WEF summit in Davos.
According to its supporters, the WEF is an ideal place for positive debate between politicians, economists, heads of state and intellectuals regarding the most pressing social and economic problems facing the planet.
However, its critics say the WEF is really just a capitalist marketplace, where the richest businesses negotiate deals and lobby the world’s most powerful politicians.
Measuring the success of such meetings is not an exact science, but the 2020 initiative will have a high public visibility to foster increased awareness.
Each year, Young Global Leaders will report on the progress of selected issues and benchmarks. Their findings will appear on a website and in a series of publications.
swissinfo, Thomas Stephens
The 238 leaders – all aged under 40 – represent 68 countries: 71 from Europe, 63 from North America, 49 from Asia, 19 from the Middle East and North Africa, 19 from sub-Saharan Africa and 17 from Latin America.
They include political leaders, business executives, intellectuals and cultural figures.
Women make up 30 per cent of the group.
This is the inaugural summit of the Forum of Young Global Leaders, which is based in Geneva.
It is incorporated as an independent, not-for-profit foundation under the supervision of the Swiss government.
Each year around 250 Young Global Leaders are nominated to serve for five years.
The aim is for a community of 1,111 leaders by 2009.
The World Economic Forum was founded in 1971 by Swiss businessman Klaus Schwab.
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.