Experts meet in Dubai for World Economic Forum

Hundreds of the world’s foremost experts on topics including advanced technology, biodiversity, urbanisation, finance, health and energy will gather in Dubai today and tomorrow to design a new era of global co-operation.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Future Councils gathering provides the “intellectual stimulus that will flow” into its larger annual meeting in the Swiss town of Davos in January, said Mirek Dusek, the forum’s Mena head.

The overarching theme of both is what the forum calls Globalisation 4.0.

It identifies a rapidly approaching new era of trade, investment and relations, accelerated by the development of technology such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, the internet of things and Big Data, and how they affect society.

Globalisation provided great gains and lifted record number of people out of poverty but a lack of inclusion, increasing inequality and a backlash including populism in Europe has triggered a need to rethink economic and social systems, Mr Dusek said.

In Dubai, 38 councils will meet on wide variety of topics related to Globalisation 4.0

and building “a new architecture for collaboration”, he said.

To meet the opportunities and challenges from trade, climate change, geopolitics, and the fourth industrial revolution, countries will need to manage their sovereignty while remaining open to co-operation, he said.

This is important to the Arab world and wider region which is at a point where the urgency to address common interests is likely to overcome ideological differences, Mr Dusek said.

For example, sustainability and ecological risks are now perceived as being more important in the region than before.

While the management of common issues has not been high on the agenda in the past, the increase in the frequency of humanitarian and water crises, for example, are changing that.

Mr Dusek said there would be a focus over the next year on the resolution of shared issues in the Arab world through greater “outcome-oriented” collaboration between nations that would otherwise not have worked together because of a lack of alignment in ideologies or values.

This trend is playing out more widely amid a diffusion of power around the world creating a multi-polar reality, he said.

“The UAE is the most globally integrated economy in the region and has always been a great ambassador of the global debate for the Middle East,” Mr Dusek said.

“In that sense, being able to translate some of these bigger trends through the regional dynamics, the UAE has a major role to play on all fronts.”