The World is Fast: How to Understand It and Thrive in It
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“There are three major challenges that countries need to address
today as the world has evolved at an ever-increasing pace”, said
Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winning
author. Friedman was speaking at the symposium organized on November
18, 2015 by the IMF’s Middle East Center for Economics and Finance
(CEF) jointly with the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development
(AFESD), and moderated by the CEF Director Oussama Kanaan. The
symposium which was under the theme “The World is Fast: How to
Understand It and Thrive in It” attracted a large audience from the
public and the private sector, academia, and embassies.
“The new
divide in the world is no longer north, south, east, and west but
between order and disorder”, Friedman said. He focused his talk on how
countries, in particular in the Arab World, could deal with a world
that is moving fast on account of mutually reinforcing challenges in
the realm of globalization, the digital revolution, and climate
change.
Friedman said that globalization is making economies
more closely connected to each other, making workers, investors and
markets robustly interdependent and jointly exposed to global trends.
The Arab World could benefit from globalization by removing obstacles
that hamper free flow of trade and exchange of ideas. “Removing
barriers to cross-border trade and free flow of ideas would allow
private sector development and help Arab countries grow globally and
diversify their production base”, Friedman said. “This is even
particularly crucial for oil-producing countries that rely on a single
source of revenues”. Friedman noted that, while East Asian countries
and other emerging economies have raised their production at a high
and sustained growth rate and boosted their competitiveness in the
global market, most Arab countries showed slow or no progress.
The second challenge according to Friedman lies in the Digital
Revolution. “Recent examples show how the increasing power of software
computers and robots requires workers to rapidly adjust their skills
or be at risk of losing their jobs”, Friedman said. “Average is over
for every country”. He added that the Arab region needs to ensure
proper investment in the quality of education and vocational training;
such investment has the potential of catching up with the digital
revolution and could offer substantial benefits to the countries.
Countries with a well-educated and well-trained population can reap
the benefits of the digital revolution and find their niches in
international production networks through exports and
outsourcing.
The third challenge highlighted by Friedman relates
to global warming. “So far, the negative impact of global warming has
barely been addressed in Arab countries”, he noted. He then pointed
out that, if current trends of carbon dioxide emissions are not
reduced, the consequences for the world can be dire, and even more so
for the Arab Gulf region. Governments in the region need to allocate
adequate resources to reduce the risks of warming and prevent its
adverse effects on economic development.
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