GENEVA, Jan 24: World leaders have made no progress in keeping promises to tackle key global challenges such as poverty or climate change and need to engage the corporate world far more, a think tank set up by the World Economic Forum said on Monday.
In a report released just two days before the Forum's annual meeting of global political and business leaders, the Global Governance Initiative said countries had failed to improve on last year's ratings of three to four out of ten in cutting hunger and poverty, or improving health, education, human rights and the environment.
The annual report card also reduced the international community's score from three to two out of ten on peace and security, due to atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region, repeated terror attacks from Madrid to Beslan, and the situation in Iraq.
Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac, Germany's chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the presidents of Brazil, Nigeria and South Africa are due to join business leaders in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos from Wednesday to discuss many of those issues.
The report said governments and international organizations should tap the resources and skills of "profitable and responsible" private enterprise in creating wealth, sharing technology and improving living standards.
The WEF underlined the response to the tsunami disaster as an example of how the corporate world could also "contribute towards global goals". The catastrophe demonstrated that the world was "ever more susceptible to common risks and with a shared responsibility to tackle them," said Gareth Evans, the former Australian prime minister chairing the initiative
But the report also warned that "bad or corrupt" business practices contributed to conflict, poverty, human rights abuse and environmental decline. The World Economic Forum's membership is largely composed of major corporate figures.
Blair is due to launch a task force with major companies in Davos to help tackle climate change, the German business daily Handelsblatt reported on Monday. They include the oil giant BP, Deutsche Bank, the reinsurer Swiss Re, British Airways, the metals group Alcan and the Ford Motor Company, it added. -AFP
