BOLD ACTION and greater international co-operation were needed to deal with the global economic crisis, a senior Chinese diplomat has told a World Economic Forum meeting in Abu Dhabi.
“We need action right away,” China’s UN ambassador in Geneva and former deputy foreign minister, He Yafei, stressed to the 800 members of the forum’s Global Agenda Councils present.
“Governments are hesitating,” he said. “They need to take responsible, immediate and effective measures in their economic, financial and social policies.”
He called for “boldness, not cowardice” from political leaders who should overcome short-term approaches and “take long-term structural reform measures”.
There was a need for increased co-ordination between countries, he said, adding: “We’re all in this together.” There was a need to strengthen macroeconomic policy co-ordination, speed-up global economic governance reform and pay more attention to the development gap between the “north and south” regions of the world.
Former taoiseach Bertie Ahern said at the end of the two-day conference: “It was very informative: the whole idea is to look at new models, new ways forward, new developments.” He said: “Here you have the foremost leaders in the world in their various fields across 70 different areas, and their contribution to finding these solutions is important.”
Mr Ahern, a member of the Council on Conflict Prevention, also attended a number of other council discussions at the event.
The Network of Global Agenda Councils was established in 2008 for academics, politicians and business leaders to discuss the foremost topics in the global arena and help shape the agenda for the forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland in January.
Population growth was highlighted by Harvard professor David Bloom, from the forum’s Council on Ageing Society, who said the world birth-rate was running at about 130 million per annum. “There are over 200 million women in the developing world alone that don’t have access to contraception and family planning services, and that is having a big impact on population.”
Prof Moncef Cheikh-Rouhou received applause when he said: “I am from Tunisia, the youngest democracy in the world now.”
Criticising the G20, established in 1999 to provide a forum for economic communication between industrialised and developing countries, he asked: “Where is the Arab world? Only the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is sitting there.” He added: “That’s why the kids in my country and other Arab countries are saying, ‘We want to be represented because our future is here’.This is a missing link that’s very dangerous.”
Joe Schoendorf, of the forum’s foundation board, said he was “a venture capitalist from Silicon Valley”. “Our largest problem in Silicon Valley today [is that] we need more people. We do not have a shortage of jobs, we have a shortage of qualified people.”