World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum takes place every January in Davos, Switzerland. According to its website:

The Annual Meeting 2025 will convene global leaders to address key global and regional challenges. These include responding to geopolitical shocks, stimulating growth to improve living standards, and stewarding a just and inclusive energy transition.

However, go behind the headlines and the glitz and glamour of Davos and you discover a comprehensive and muti-faceted organisation with regular meetings on a variety of related subjects and an active membership and website.

World Economic Forum 2025

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international organisation for Public-Private Co-operation. This year its main forum takes place between January 20 -24, 2025. It’s a global, not-for profit platform for connections between stakeholders in business and government to shape global agendas.

In other words, the conspiracy theorists have got it right (but at the same time completely wrong): The WEF is a place where things get decided at a very high level and (in the main we trust) these things are being done for the good of the planet.

Davos of course is a hideously expensive and exclusive ski resort in Switzerland and is suitably far off the beaten track as to make gatecrashing somewhat difficult. Of course, there are some welcome ‘gate crashers’ in the shape of famous people from music and film. Recent invitees have included Sting, Bono, Will.i.am together with random Hollywood and TV celebs and various hip and upcoming business leaders.

Together with the heads of the G7 and the leaders of some of the world’s biggest corporations, it’s a chance for them to sit down and discuss what really needs doing.

Key Areas in this Year’s Forum

According to its website, for 2025, the WEF will consider key global and regional challenges including stimulating growth to improve living standards, responding to geo-political shocks and stewarding a just, inclusive energy transition.

That word-soup of platitudes masks the fact that a lot of what is discussed is not made public in the format in which it was discussed but will lead to future policies and initiatives.

Aside from the headlining public sessions, many politicians and business leaders take the opportunity to discuss matters in a more relaxed and informal manner but inevitably these discussions must have a degree of confidentiality about them.

Why Water Security Should be a Top Priority

The WEF has a huge matrix of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), one of which is Fresh Water. This is linked to many other subjects under the main heading of Climate Resilience.

At Arvia Technologies, fresh water is something that concerns us daily as we develop and produce some of the world’s most advanced electrochemical water treatment systems.

Essentially, the world only has a finite amount of water. The issue is that this amount is being reduced on a daily basis by industrial pollution.

Wastewater from industry, laced with a variety of toxic compounds is being released into sewers and watercourses (and onwards to the oceans) as discharge regulations reflect what was possible 20 years ago. What is possible now is several levels of magnitude more effective and powerful.

PFAS is a Global Threat

Toxic compounds like PFAS, endocrine disruptors and medications like antibiotics, all of which can cause harm to humans are still allowed to be contained in industrial wastewater. The reason is that discharge regulations were drawn up many years ago – before the existence of many of these compounds was known about, and certainly before the science to remove them from water was perfected.

Now the world is in a situation where – worldwide – discharge regulations lag well behind the science and as a result millions of litres of polluted water is being released into the oceans every day – harming marine and well as human life.

This is a scandal that should be top of every environmentally-savvy person’s ‘to do’ list – yet sadly very few people know of it at all. Let’s hope that the WEF sees a way to bring this to the fore in 2025.

How to Safeguard the Environment

Without sufficient water, there can be little hope for our planet. Although the oceans make up a large proportion of its surface area, a polluted ocean, devoid of life or nutrients does little good. Unchecked, this is what will start to happen soon. As a result, fresh clean water will become a precious commodity increasing in price markedly. This will lead to increased inequality and potentially starvation.

Only by recycling much more water – and electrochemical systems are one of the cost-effective methods by which this can be achieved – will our planet be able to sustain greater population growth in the face of rising sea temperatures and increased pollution.

Let’s hope the WEF’s agenda this January will include protecting our water – one the planet’s most under-valued commodities.

Arvia Technology is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of electrochemical water treatment and processing systems. With its HQ, R&D and manufacturing base in Cheshire, UK, it also has facilities in China, India and is expanding into the US.

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