World Economic Forum launches global cooperation project with three governments

"There is a serious deficit in global cooperation when compared to the wide range of pressing challenges such as climate change, energy security, food security, terrorism and proliferation of nuclear weapons. With new players emerging on the world stage and a continuing mismatch between 20th century institutions and 21st century challenges, the international system needs to intensify collaboration and develop innovative solutions,"

said Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum.

The World Economic Forum in 2009 will generate an unprecedented process of discussion and deliberation among business, government, academic, civil society, scientific and media leaders with the purpose of developing a set of principles and guidelines for the adaptation of global economic institutions and arrangements to contemporary circumstances. It will also generate recommendations on a range of specific problems of global governance, encompassing new structures, strategies and actions.

The project will mobilize virtually the entire World Economic Forum community in a pioneering experiment organized in part on WELCOM, the World Economic Forum's new virtual interaction platform for leaders. The use of the WELCOM platform and the Forum's Global Agenda Councils will give the consultations and development of recommendations greater continuity and inclusiveness than would be possible in the traditional task force model of a fixed number of persons, limited number of face-to-face meetings and formally prepared texts. Accordingly, the initiative will be the most ambitious use of information technology as a tool to enhance international governance to date and the first major application of the WELCOM system for world leaders.

The Global Cooperation Project seeks to both inform and raise the ambition level of governments in international cooperation. By focusing on issues that extend beyond the current G20 agenda on financial reform, the World Economic Forum hopes to encourage the international community to tackle other serious global risks and make the systemic changes necessary to improve global governance more generally. The final recommendations will be presented at the World Economic Forum's 40th Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, in January 2010.

"We need moments where we pause, where we step outside our traditional paths, where we try to connect the dots. This is the essence of the spirit of Davos, and we believe the World Economic Forum can make a unique contribution to society in this respect at this pivotal moment in history,"

said Schwab.