Davos Dispatch:
Clinton brings development to Davos
January 21, 2004
By Nancy Birdsall, President Center for Global Development
In contrast to Davos-in-NY in 2002, when the post-Sept. 11 talk was of the risk of terror
and Davos 2003 when the corridor discussion was mostly about Iraq and the impending war,
there is no grand obsession this year. There is sensible and mildly worried talk about whether the
global economic recovery will be sustained. Most attention is given to the imbalances in the
world economy – particularly U.S. budget and current account deficits; the Europeans’ tepid
growth and stolid Central Bank reluctance to stimulate; and the Chinese resistance to letting their
currency appreciate. In an excellent panel chaired by Martin Wolf on the world economy an
Argentine in the audience asked the Chinese and Japanese panelists why they are so willing to
accumulate dollar reserves (thus sustaining these worrying imbalances). Surprisingly (or perhaps
not) the Chinese panelist did not mention that China’s exchange rate policy and dollar
accumulation are driven by the need to create jobs – lots of them and quickly – by keeping
exports high, to preserve social cohesion and political stability. Which leads me to a lunchtime
talk by President Clinton about global interdependence and the struggle to move to an integrated,
not just interdependent, world.
President Clinton’s talk to a large lunchtime audience brought – at least for a few minutes
– a vision for global development. He gave a call to arms for all these “smart” people – all
making their contributions, to create “systems” to address the world’s big issue: the half of the
world’s population that is left out of globalization.
He started by discussing his time in Mumbai at the Global Social Forum and the
alienation from globalization that millions of even middle-class people feel everyday. He
reminded the Davos participants that 10 million children die annually of entirely preventable
deaths and 130 million children are out of school. He referred to the massive struggle of people
everywhere – even those benefiting from globalization – to find meaning, identity, and a sense of
“rootedness” in their lives. Anti-globalists, he said, are mourning the death of a past that never
existed. Yet, we cannot be deaf to them. Nor are we entirely deaf, he pointed to the work of the
Gates Foundation, Bush administration funding to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean,
the G-8 commitment to education for all, and debt relief.
But despite all that, “we do not have the systems the world needs to deal with these
issues.” Rich countries have not been systematic about developing the capacity of poor
countries, “to take advantage of the things we (rich countries) are supposed to do when we
actually do it.” He used the example of his work to bring down the price of AIDS medicines.
Despite his success there is still neither the infrastructure nor the systems, for rapid deployment.
He challenged the audience to “take it to scale” – all the good, brilliant ideas. The world, he said,
is not organized – systematically – to deal with the fact that we are interdependent, but not truly
integrated.
As a State of the World speech, it was brilliant. But then I am partial. It was, after all,
about the CGD agenda – to push for policies that will help ensure globalization’s benefits are
much more widely shared. Clinton called for systems and systematic ways to address the
challenges of globalization’s rough edges. Maybe he meant institutions; maybe he meant
policies; maybe he meant a new movement of shared values – to combat the isolationist
(backward-looking to an idyllic that never was) tendencies of anti-globalists. Perhaps he was too
vague on this point (as some afterwards said); but he certainly hoped the audience would take up
his point and make it concrete.
At the very least he reminded the rich and famous at Davos about the other five billion,
who spent the day living on less than the price of the cup coffee at each seat.