World plagued by perfect storm on multiple fronts, we can work together to control damage: UN chief Guterres

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Davos, January 18

The world is facing a perfect storm on multiple fronts and all that can be done now is working together to control the damage and seize the opportunities, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday.

In a special address at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2023 here, he also called for ending the addiction to fossil fuels, and stopping "our self-defeating war on nature." "There are no perfect solutions in a perfect storm. But we can work to control the damage and seize opportunities," he added.

Now more than ever, it is time to forge the pathways to cooperation in our fragmented world, he said.

"I am not here to sugarcoat the scale of that challenge, or the sorry state of our world. We can't confront problems unless we look them squarely in the eye. And we are looking into the eye of a Category 5 hurricane," he said.

"Our world is plagued by a perfect storm on a number of fronts. Start with the short-term, a global economic crisis. The outlook is bleak. Many parts of the world face recession. The entire world faces a slowdown," Guterres warned.

He further said COVID-19 is still straining economies while the world's failure to prepare for future pandemics is straining credulity.

"Somehow, after all we have endured, we have not learned the global public health lessons of the pandemic. We are nowhere near ready for pandemics to come," he said.

In addition to that, there is an existential challenge with the world flirting with climate disaster, he said.

"Every week brings a new climate horror story. Greenhouse gas emissions are at record levels. The commitment to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees is going up in smoke. Without further action, we are headed to a 2.8 degree increase," he added.

"The consequences will be devastating. Several parts of our planet will be uninhabitable. And for many, this is a death sentence," he cautioned.

"But it is not a surprise. The science has been clear for decades... We learned last week that certain fossil fuel producers were fully aware in the 1970s that their core product was baking our planet," he said.

"Just like the tobacco industry, they rode rough-shod over their own science. Big Oil peddled the big lie. And like the tobacco industry, those responsible must be held to account. Today, fossil fuel producers and their enablers are still racing to expand production, knowing full well that their business model is inconsistent with human survival," he said.

Guterres said all these challenges, including violence and war, are inter-linked and they are piling up like cars in a chain reaction crash.

"It would be difficult to find solutions to these global problems in the best of times -- if the world was united. But these are far from the best of times, and the world is far from united," he said.

"We risk what I have called a Great Fracture -- the decoupling of the world's two largest economies," he said, adding that it would result in a tectonic rift that would create two different sets of trade rules, two dominant currencies, two internets and two conflicting strategies on artificial intelligence.

There are many aspects in which US-China relations diverge -- particularly on questions of human rights and regional security. But it is possible and essential for the two countries to have meaningful engagement on climate, trade and technology to avoid the decoupling of economies or even the possibility of future confrontation, Guterres said.

He also said that a "morally bankrupt financial system" is amplifying systemic inequalities and called for a new debt architecture that would provide liquidity, debt relief and long-term lending to enable developing countries to invest in sustainable development.

According to him, the multilateral development banks must also change their business models and must concentrate on systematically directing private finance towards developing countries, providing guarantees and being first risk takers.

The Tribune