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At the conclusion of the 40th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, participants pledged to rethink, rebuild and redesign the global economy based on sustainable principles. The sense of the Meeting, echoed by Lawrence H. Summers, Director of the US National Economic Council (NEC), was that the world was experiencing “a statistical recovery and a human recession.” “We are not out of the woods yet,” said Michael Oreskes, Senior Managing Editor of the Associated Press. “The recovery is still very fragile in many developed economies.” Principled leadership is key to stabilization.

“At the end, it’s an interdependent system,” said Josef Ackermann, Chairman of the Management Board and the Group Executive Committee of Deutsche Bank; Member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum; and Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010. “If you lose the support of society, you are not going to achieve your corporate objectives.”

Job creation is critical to sustainable recovery. There is a role for all to play in job creation, underscored Patricia A. Woertz, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), and Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010. “And retaining jobs is as important as creating new ones.” The recession also demonstrated that the world must hear better the voices outside of the G8. “The self-confidence of emerging nations is completely different,” said Azim H. Premji, Chairman of Wipro, and Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010. He warned that in India and China “if services are put under severe, unreasonable restrictions, you will get tariffs overnight.”

“If you have lost the trust of societies, you cannot just respond technically, you have to respond morally,” said Ackermann. Rowan D. Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, United Kingdom, urged participants to take collective responsibility for the future by being individually responsible now. Living responsibly in the present means living within ecological limits to ensure the security of work and food. “Responsibility for the future means being responsible for a vision of humanity which excites and enlarges us,” he added.

Key Achievements:

• At the 40th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010, participants found that the global recovery is fragile, and now is the moment to rethink values as the world rebuilds prosperity
• All countries in the G20 and beyond should find new pathways to sustainable growth and job creation
• Concretely, Bill and Melinda Gates, Co-Chairs of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is a founding partner of the GAVI Alliance, pledged US$ 10 billion to vaccinate over 8 million children in the next decade
• Former US President William J. Clinton announced a joint initiative between the World Economic Forum, the Clinton Global Initiative and the UN to support Haiti’s long-term reconstruction
• Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, Mexican President Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa and French President Nicolas Sarkozy all set forth agendas for global engagement to prevent future crises and to promote sustainability and principled growth
• Since its launch 10 years ago, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) has saved over 4 million lives and has immunized an additional 256 million children in the world’s poorest countries

Increased vaccination could save more than 8 million children by 2020; significant funding gaps remain, others must join effort

Bill and Melinda Gates announced today that their foundation will commit $10 billion over the next 10 years to help research, develop and deliver vaccines for the world’s poorest countries.

The Gateses said that increased investment in vaccines by governments and the private sector could help developing countries dramatically reduce child mortality by the end of the decade, and they called for others to help fill critical financing gaps in both research funding and childhood immunization programs.

“We must make this the decade of vaccines,” said  Bill Gates “Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries. Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before.”

Bill and Melinda Gates made their announcement at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting, where they were joined by Julian Lob-Levyt, CEO of the GAVI Alliance.

“Vaccines are a miracle—with just a few doses, they can prevent deadly diseases for a lifetime,” said Melinda Gates. “We’ve made vaccines our number-one priority at the Gates Foundation because we’ve seen firsthand their incredible impact on children’s lives.”

The foundation used a model developed by a consortium led by the Institute of International Programs at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to project the potential impact of vaccines on childhood deaths over the next 10 years.

By significantly scaling up the delivery of life-saving vaccines in developing countries to 90 percent coverage—including new vaccines to prevent severe diarrhea and pneumonia—the model suggests that we could prevent the deaths of some 7.6 million children under 5 from 2010-2019. The foundation also estimates that an additional 1.1 million children could be saved with the rapid introduction of a malaria vaccine beginning in 2014, bringing the total number of potential lives saved to 8.7 million.

If additional vaccines are developed and introduced in this decade—such as for tuberculosis—even more lives could be saved. The new funding announced today is in addition to the $4.5 billion that the Gates Foundation has already committed to vaccine research, development and delivery to date across its entire disease portfolio since its inception.

Public-Private Partnerships Drive Progress in Vaccine Development, Delivery:

Bill and Melinda Gates said their pledge was inspired by the remarkable progress made on vaccines in recent years. For example:

• Record-breaking vaccine access: New WHO data show that global vaccination rates have reached all-time highs, rebounding from years of decline in the 1990s. Between 2000 and 2009, the percentage of children receiving the basic DTP3 vaccine in the poorest countries of the world jumped from 66 percent to 79 percent, the highest on record. The number of people who died of measles worldwide fell by 77 percent between 2000 and 2008, and in Africa, measles deaths fell by 92 percent.
• Improved routine immunization: Partnerships focused on reducing diseases like polio and measles are also helping build a stronger foundation for the delivery of both new and existing vaccines. Trained health workers, proper cold chain function, and surveillance are all necessary to ensure vaccines reach every child who needs them.
• New vaccine introduction: Important new vaccines for the two leading causes of global child deaths—severe diarrhea and pneumonia—are becoming available. Research published this week in The New England Journal of Medicine shows that introducing a rotavirus vaccine in South Africa and Malawi reduced severe diarrhea caused by the virus by more than 60 percent.
• R&D momentum: The vaccine research and development pipeline is more robust than ever. Late-stage trials have begun on a promising vaccine to protect children from malaria, and a new vaccine to prevent meningitis outbreaks in Africa is likely to be introduced this year.

Commenting on the announcement, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said, “The Gates Foundation’s commitment to vaccines is unprecedented, but just a small part of what is needed. It’s absolutely crucial that both governments and the private sector step up efforts to provide life-saving vaccines to children who need them most.”

If long-term global problems are ignored, the economic crisis could lead to a social crisis

In his opening address at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said that it will not be possible to emerge from the global economic crisis and protect against future crises if the economic imbalances that are at the root of the problem are not addressed. “Countries with trade surpluses must consume more and improve the living standards and social protection of their citizens,” he remarked. “Countries with deficits must make an effort to consume a little less and repay their debts.” The world’s currency regime is central to the issue, Sarkozy argued. Exchange rate instability and the under-valuation of certain currencies lead to unfair trade and competition, he said. “The prosperity of the post-war era owed a great deal to Bretton Woods, to its rules and its institutions. That is exactly what we need today; we need a new Bretton Woods.” Sarkozy said that France would place the reform of the international monetary system on the agenda when it chairs the G8 and G20 next year.

In his address, Sarkozy also called for an examination of the nature of globalization and capitalism. “This is not a crisis in globalization; this is a crisis of globalization,” he said. “Finance, free trade and competition are only means and not ends in themselves.” Sarkozy added that banks should stick to analysing credit risk, assessing the capacity of borrowers to repay loans and finance economic growth. “The role of the bank is not to speculate.” He also questioned the rewarding of high compensation and bonuses for CEOs whose companies lose money. Capitalism should not be replaced but it has to be changed, the French president declared. “We will only save capitalism by reforming it, by making it more moral.”

Speaking before Sarkozy, Doris Leuthard, President of the Swiss Confederation and Federal Councillor of Economic Affairs, told participants that the international community has to bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality as it tackles major challenges such as the global economic crisis, climate change and the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations. “We must all sit down together in a responsible manner, bring our part of the solution to the table and allow a conclusion to be reached that benefits us all.” While “rhetoric and reality all too often diverge by large margins,” Leuthard said, the bottom line is that “people need jobs and a salary.” She concluded: “We have talked enough. It is now time to get moving.”

Earlier, World Economic Forum Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab warned of the consequences if countries are too preoccupied by domestic problems and ignore long-term challenges such as global warming. “We hope that governments don’t become overwhelmed by internal issues and constraints to the detriment of exercising the necessary global stewardship.” Added Schwab: “We run the risk that 2010 becomes the year of the social crisis following the financial crisis of 2008 and the economic crisis of 2009.” He noted that one of the top priorities for this Annual Meeting is to encourage entrepreneurship and job creation.