60 Time January 31/February 7, 2022
I recently heard an interview
you did with [Alphabet
CEO] Sundar Pichai, and
you asked him about remote
work. He said that we’re
living on borrowed time.
How do you think about that
sentence, “We’re living on
borrowed time,” and the
necessity of being together
in person?
I think it actually can be
very effective, to create an
exchange of information to
learn from one another, but it
cannot really establish trust
in inter human relationships;
you need the in-person en-
counter. You need to have
some moments on the side of
the video screen. So during
the last two years, [the World
Economic Forum] made con-
siderable progress, because
we always felt we should not
be just event-oriented. As a
matter of fact, today, most of
our partners are engaged in
at least one of our initiatives.
We have over 50 initiatives,
platforms for public- private
cooperation. I’m very proud
to say, since the beginning of
the crisis, we have won over
200 additional partners who
joined us without knowing
when they could go to Davos
or not. But I think the time
has come to bring people to-
gether, because we see a deg-
radation of trust in the world,
and trust only builds through
personal relations. And the
World Economic Forum, in a
broader sense, is a community
of multi stakeholders,
businesses, governments, civil
societies, young generation,
to work together.What was your takeaway
from COP26?
Three comments. The first one
is, I think the whole discus-
sion around COP26 created a
global awareness of how seri-
ous the climate-change issue
is, and that focus on this issue
is already quite a success.
Second, COP26 didn’t ful-
fill all the expectations, but I
think the significant impor-
tance of Glasgow was to show
how businesses are taking
the lead. So there are numer-
ous initiatives, and some had
been created or catalyzed by
the World Economic Forum.
I’m mentioning the Mission
Possible Partnership, which
brings together over 400
companies in aluminum, steel
and so on. That’s something
we pushed very much since
Biden announced the First
Movers Coalition to make
commitments to buy ships or
planes which are run by green
fuel, and by making a com-
mitment to buy such innova-
tive products, advancing the
innovation, because there’s
also people who would say
50% of the innovation, which
we need in order to become
carbon neutral, does not yet
exist.
And the third one I would
say is in the area of nature-
based solutions. It’s the OneWE STILL NEED TO
COME TOGETHER
TIME editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal talks to Klaus
Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, about
collaboration, hopes for the climate, and the power of youth
Q & A