Climate Change Trumps Terrorism as Topic in Davos

DAVOS, SWITZERLAND — Terrorism, a subject that has dominated recent meetings of the World Economic Forums, was largely absent as a topic at this year’s gathering as economic and political leaders turned their focus to climate change.Only one session was devoted to terrorism this year, down from three a year ago, while 17 were about climate change. In 2002, the forum was held in New York out of solidarity after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the only time it wasn’t held in Davos. Terrorism was named as only the 10th biggest risk facing global companies in a poll of business leaders presented on the first day of this year’s forum.The lack of interest shown at this year’s meetings may reflect a divergent approach between America and Europe and the absence of a devastating attack in the West since the 2005 bombings in the London underground.“Terrorism is slipping as a major concern and it’s a trend we’ve seen for several years,” the chief executive of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, which carried out the survey of 1,084 business leaders, Samuel A. DiPiazza, said.The chief executive officer of Coca-Cola Co., E. Neville Isdell, said that “so much has been said that maybe there just isn’t anything more to say for the moment. Davos is very much about what’s of the moment, and climate change is of the moment.”Mr. DiPiazza said companies are learning to manage risks. “It’s still a big issue but they realize that they just have to live with it,” he said. “They’ve built up their security systems and then they just get on with it.”There’s similar thinking on Wall Street, said the president of global markets and investment banking at Merrill Lynch & Co., Greg Fleming, whose headquarters in New York are across the street from the site of the former World Trade Center.“I wouldn’t say that we are blasé about terrorism risks, but I don’t think anyone makes much effort at pricing it into assets,” he said. “It would be such a challenge because it’s just so episodic.”At the one session devoted to terrorism, European and American panelists clashed on how far Western countries should go in adapting their legal systems to combat radical groups.“It is essential that we stick to the principles that we uphold,” the European Union’s counterterrorism coordinator, Gijs de Vries, said. “Detention without trial is not acceptable. Torture is illegal in war or in peace. Don’t send people back to countries were they run the risk of being tortured,” he said in reference to the American practice of capturing suspects overseas and sending them to other countries for interrogation, or interning them in Guantanamo, Cuba.Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security in America, defended the practices without confirming or discussing them.“We should not treat every departure from what would be normal procedures in a criminal case as a catastrophe and fundamental betrayal of what we believe in,” he said.Joseph Nye, a professor of international relations at Harvard University, said the subject is guaranteed to return at future meetings in Davos. “It always slides off the agenda until the next bomb,” he said.

Climate Change Trumps Terrorism as Topic in Davos

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