Devex Newswire: Davos done and dusted; how did it do?

Davos attendees are packing their snow boots and heading home — or to the slopes — as the 53rd World Economic Forum annual meeting winds down. There were some notable absences; billionaires Bill Gates and George Soros weren’t there, neither was U.S. President Joe Biden. But film director Oliver Stone was, and so was former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, who provided some doomsday scenarios to cheer us up. Also in today’s edition: A Greta Thunberg stakeout, and chats with royalty and world leaders. Davos dispatches The annual Swiss Alps shindig is done. Today many participants are nursing hangovers or donning skis, but our Vince Chadwick, with a clear head, of course, filed his latest dispatch. Incidentally, this was Vince’s first Davos. Yesterday saw the launch of a Coalition of Trade Ministers on Climate — 50 ministers from 27 jurisdictions, with four co-leads in Ecuador, the European Union, Kenya, and New Zealand, who will focus in particular on how “trade policies can support the most vulnerable developing and least developed countries.” Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University — someone not easily impressed when it comes to pledges to protect the planet — dubbed it a “really important day for climate action.” But just an hour later, the mood changed and was far less rosy. Contrary to expectations, trade ministers failed to conclude a new WTO Agreement on Investment Facilitation for Development, though the sticking points remain unclear. Vince nudged South Korean Trade Minister Ahn Duk-Geun for details but did not manage to extract much in way of clarity. Vince also asked Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director-general of the World Trade Organization, what she makes of the EU’s planned Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. The “CBAM” would impose a levy on producers importing carbon-intensive products into the bloc, but many low-income countries decry that as protectionism. The former Nigerian finance minister responded with a dodge of sorts, offering that CBAM’s fairness can only be judged when it is implemented and its methodology for measuring emissions tested. “And that’s the plain truth,” she said. + Post-Davos, Devex Pro members can join our Jan. 26 event on key development finance trends to watch in 2023. Not yet a Pro member? Start your 15-day free trial today. Hot ticket Devex attended a snowy (RED) annual nightcap at Goals House in Davos hosted by the Freuds Group on Wednesday night. It was an exclusive affair — painted throughout the WEF week as one of the hottest tickets in town — where guests mingled until after midnight at a venue that doubles day to day as the town's Golf Club. My colleagues Richard Jones and Meg Richardson chatted sustainability with British royal Princess Beatrice, politics with U.S. Democratic Party Senators Chris Coons and Joe Manchin III, and rights and social justice with Open Society Foundations President Mark Malloch-Brown. Other guests included U.K. opposition leader Keir Starmer and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, screenwriter Richard Curtis, and ex-BBC journalists Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel. In a somewhat less glamorous setting, Vince did his best to stake out climate activist Greta Thunberg’s movements for a quick question — unfortunately, about two dozen reporters from around the world had the same idea. The Swede was having none of it, and we’re told she slipped out a side exit, leaving a frostbitten press pack staring at the front door. But, in a testament to her celebrity, global power brokers — including former governor of the Bank of England and possible future Canadian prime minister Mark Carney — cruised by undisturbed as cameras hoped to catch the environmentalist. PR spin My colleague Jenny Lei Ravelo spoke to former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark during our Twitter Spaces event yesterday about how pandemic preparedness is being addressed, or not, during Davos. She didn’t mince her words. "It's there. But of course, it's also the place where the companies are making their PR announcements,” she said. “People are putting their spin on their announcements, but basically, you know, you're not going to get out of the major corporates a desire for any systemic change, because, hey, they're creaming it from the way things have happened, right?" Background reading: Why the world isn’t ready for the next pandemic + Listen to a recording of the full conversation, which also included Amref Health Africa Group CEO Githinji Gitahi, and Pandemic Action Network co-founder Carolyn Reynolds. Doomsday Always ready to steal the show, Al Gore came to Davos with some rather scary commentary about climate change. We are spewing 162 million tons of greenhouse gas daily into the atmosphere like “an open sewer,” he warned, and “the accumulated amount is now trapping as much extra heat as would be released by 600,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every single day on the earth.” “That’s what’s boiling the oceans, creating these atmospheric rivers, and the rain bombs, and sucking the moisture out of the land, and creating the droughts, and melting the ice, and raising the sea level, and causing these waves of climate refugees predicted to reach 1 billion in this century,” Gore said during a panel. I’ll never sleep again! Somewhat contrary, Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone harshly criticized environmentalists for derailing the pace of nuclear energy. “I think the environmental movement did a lot of good, a lot of good, I’m not knocking it, but in this major issue, it was wrong. It was wrong,” he told CNBC in Davos. Final verdict So what did Vince make of his first Davos? “On the one hand, the stereotypes seem to hold true,” he tells me. “There are decadent parties, executives spouting vacuous talking points about sustainability, and behind it all the mysterious World Economic Forum. “Still, every global development leader I spoke to was glad they came. The easy access to top-level corporate and government leaders is hard to replicate elsewhere, even at the United Nations. “But the question for journalists and development practitioners alike is whether, by their sheer presence, they are legitimizing a gathering which could not be more removed from the constituencies they’re meant to serve. Each year, it seems they ask themselves the question. And each year they come back.” + Catch up on all of our coverage of Davos 2023. In other news Venezuela, Lebanon, South Sudan, and three other countries have lost their voting rights at the U.N. General Assembly due to outstanding fees. [AP News] Sierra Leone's President Julius Maada Bio signed a gender equality law which aims to reserve 30% of jobs in both the public and private sectors for women. [DW] U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Europe should ramp up its green spending while defending the U.S. green subsidies delivered at WEF. [Financial Times] Clarification: In yesterday’s edition of Newswire we gave you some details on the newly launched Enterprises for Development, Growth, and Empowerment Fund. A USAID spokesperson says the U.S.Congress has already appropriated funding for the program in the fiscal 2022 omnibus bill. As part of its standard process, the agency provides congressional notification for the allocation of funding that Congress has 15 days to review. Sign up to Newswire for an inside look at the biggest stories in global development.