January 31, 2010

At the January 31 conclusion of the 40th World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, participants pledged to rethink, rebuild and redesign the global economy based on sustainable principles. The sense of the meeting, echoed by Lawrence H. Summers, Director of the US National Economic Council (NEC), was that the world was experiencing “a statistical recovery and a human recession.” “We are not out of the woods yet,” said Michael Oreskes, Senior Managing Editor of the Associated Press. “The recovery is still very fragile in many developed economies.” Principled leadership is key to stabilization.

“At the end, it’s an interdependent system,” said Josef Ackermann, Chairman of the Management Board and the Group Executive Committee of Deutsche Bank; Member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum; and Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010. “If you lose the support of society, you are not going to achieve your corporate objectives.” “If you have lost the trust of societies, you cannot just respond technically, you have to respond morally,” said Ackermann.

Rowan D. Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, United Kingdom, urged participants to take collective responsibility for the future by being individually responsible now. Living responsibly in the present means living within ecological limits to ensure the security of work and food. “Responsibility for the future means being responsible for a vision of humanity which excites and enlarges us,” he added.

Read a summary of this closing session as well as watch a webcast of it here