Thursday, February 19, 2009
Every year for the past decade two world forums take place to discuss and elaborate solutions to economic and social problems plaguing the world. The first one takes place at Davos, an elite Swiss Alpine resort and is by-invitation only. The second one has been held in cities in South America, Africa and Asia, and is open to all those who wish to participate.
They are, respectively, the World Economic Forum and the World Social Forum.
This year both forums took place at the end of January, and even though they were both concerned with the current economic crisis, the atmosphere and attitude in each place were significantly different.
In Davos, the mood seemed to reflect the cold weather of the Alpine city. The event, which has been held since 1971, is characterized by a strong neo-liberal approach to economics — placing faith on capitalism, corporations and free trade. This year, however, the faith seems to have been a bit shaken by the world economic crisis. News stories about the event were permeated with anecdotes about how people were searching for someone or something to blame and how pessimism seemed to set the tone. An article by Bloomberg News reported that only “one in five of 1,124 chief executives in 50 nations said they were very confident about prospects for revenue growth in 2009,” while more than a quarter were pessimistic.
However while the rich and the powerful were moping and trying to make sense of the crisis, another group carried itself more gleefully. According to an article by the Guardian, the unofficial motto of this year’s World Social Forum, which was held in Belém, Brazil, was, “We told you so.”
The World Social Forum started in 2001 as a counter to the neo-liberal ideology of the World Economic Forum. From the start it has been open to groups that were excluded from the deliberations at Davos: workers, indigenous groups, students and various forms of social movements. The World Social Forum has a democratic character (this year more than 100,000 people participated) that starkly opposes the elitism of the World Economic Forum. It has also featured prominent intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and Joseph Stiglitz and leaders such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
From the very first, participants in this forum had been issuing warning sirens against the current structures. Unrestricted capitalism was not producing the desired effects; it was marginalizing large sectors of society in all countries of the world. And in 2001 these people decided to speak.
The World Social Forum has had its share of unfortunate events. According to news reports of this year’s forum, after a meeting between the presidents of Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez proceeded to start a chant of “Fidel, Fidel, Fidel!”
But none of this compares to the hubris at Davos, which only now is starting to fall apart.
This year the theme at Davos was “Shaping the Post-Crisis World,” but those at the World Social Forum were aware of the crisis all along, when in 2001 they established in their permanent charter that “Another world is possible.”
Maybe this time the big shots at the top of the mountain heard the echoes from the rest of the world.
— De Oliveira is a Belo Horizonte, Brazil, senior in journalism, history and French.
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