Radio Davos

What’s happening on Day 1 of Davos 2022? South African TV anchor Nzinga Qunta joins us in the booth at the heart of the conference centre to look ahead to some of the highlights to expect. The episode includes contributions from:  Saadia Zahidi, head of the World Economic Forum’s Centre for the New Economy and Society talking about the Chief Economists Outlook that will be launched today. Nick Clegg, President for Global Affairs at Meta. International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva.

The World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting, bringing leaders and experts together from around the world, traditionally happens in January. But for the first time, thanks to COVID-19, the Davos meeting is being held in May. But as Forum President Borge Brende says in this preview podcast, the absence of snow is not the main reason this Davos will be like no other.

As the world began to emerge from the pandemic, we were expecting some turbulence, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has upset all predictions. Global Chief Economist at HSBC Janet Henry gives her assessment of where we are and where we’re headed.

The World Economic Forum has been tracking global progress on the ‘energy transition’ for a decade and has just released a special report, Fostering Effective Energy Transition 2022, looking at where things stand at this extraordinary moment in history. The transition is the move away from fossil fuels that cause the climate crisis, while ensuring people around the world can get access to reliable, affordable energy. In this podcast, we listen in on a discussion of the issues, with Roberto Bocca, head of the Platform for Shaping the Future of Energy, Materials, and Infrastructure at the World Economic Forum. The other panelists are Muqsit Ashraf, Senior Managing Director and Global Energy Lead, Accenture; Dev Sanyal, Chief Executive Officer, VARO Energy, and Jesse Scott, International Director, Agora Energiewende and Adjunct Professor, Hertie School. The moderator is journalist John Defterios.  

Radio Davos and its sister podcast Meet the Leader are podcasting from the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland 22—26 May 2022. Here's a three-minute tour of the Forum's podcasts, including out other titles, Book Club and Agenda Dialogues.

Adam Tooze, history professor at Columbia University, looks forward to the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting to be held in Davos in May 2022. The podcaster and author sets out the big issues that will dominate Davos and the global agenda in the months that follow. Adam Tooze is interviewed by Jim Landale and Abhinav Chugh of the World Economic Forum’s Strategic Intelligence platform - find out more at intelligence.weforum.org.

ESG is an acronym that’s on everyone’s lips in the business world. But just what do we mean by the  ‘environmental, social and governance’ performance of a company, and how can we measure that in a meaningful way? Nadja Picard, Global Reporting Leader, PwC, Germany, talks us through what ESG is and how close we are to having clear ways of measuring it around the world.

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics kills between 1.25-5 million people every year. So why is antimicrobial resistance (AMR) not given the priority or funding that some other health problems receive? We hear from Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation which has done the first global assessment of the impact of AMR, and UK AMR envoy Sally Davies, who says AMR needs to be treated as a pandemic.

As opponents to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seek to isolate Moscow, we ask an expert: what are sanctions, do they work, and how will the sanctions and Russia’s counter measures change the geopolitical landscape? Mikael Wigell, Research Director at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and the author of, among many other publications, Geo-economics and Power Politics in the 21st Century, has plenty to say about the efficacy - or otherwise - of sanctions and gives his view on what we should look out for now - not least what China does - and what might be the unexpected consequences of what he calls a new cold war.

It’s boomtime for cyber criminals trying to make easy money by taking computer data hostage and demanding ransom. As online working durged during the pandemic, so did cybercrime - ransomware attacks rose 151% in 2021. The World Economic Forum’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook found there were on average 270 cyberattacks per organization that year, with each successful cyber breach costing a company $3.6m. We speak to Jim Guinn, Senior Managing Director - Security, Strategy and Consulting Lead, Accenture - a company that had its own, well publicized ransomware attack last year, and to Algirde Pipikaite, Cybersecurity Strategy Lead at the World Economic Forum. And to talk about how ransomware can often be considered ‘ransom-war’, we speak to Alex Klimburg, head of the World Economic Forum’s Centre for Cybersecurity. Read the Forum’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2022 here: https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-cybersecurity-outlook-2022