For one week every year, some of the world’s richest business people and most powerful politicians descend on the Alpine ski town of Davos, Switzerland. They’re here for the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting, which bills itself as the premiere global forum for the public and private sectors to join forces to “drive tangible, systemic change for the future”. 

But systemic change would require them to give up some of their wealth and power, like paying their fair share of taxes, or ending the stranglehold a few, mostly Western countries have over the UN’s Security Council. All the proposals for a more equitable world order that we’ve heard on this season of the podcast depend on those who have power giving some of it up. Are they willing to do so? 

Critics say the global elite’s eagerness to solve the world’s problems lasts only as long as the solutions don't threaten their said wealth and power.

So how are movements to reshape global governance landing with those who represent the status quo? And can advocates and campaigners for change ever really sway the global elite?

Host Heba Aly takes the pulse at Davos to find out. 

Hear from UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, Opens Society Foundations President Mark Malloch Brown, former Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark, president of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation Vilas Dhar, director general of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation Patricia Danzi, and others.

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If you have thoughts on this episode, write to us or send us a voice note at [email protected].

SHOW NOTES

• Director’s Dispatch: Aid and the elite
• Richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together over the past two years | Oxfam International
• UN boss to Davos: You’re the problem | POLITICO