Summit proposes new global energy forum Tuesday, 01 June 2010 05:01

By Nasser Al Harthy

DOHA: Particular interest has been shown to some of the proposals of the World Economic Forum Global Redesign Summit which concluded its work here yesterday, according to the Managing Director of the World Economic Forum.

“We know that a few concrete issues are coming out of the summit,” Rick Samans (pictured) said in remarks to The Peninsula. “Already we have some specific interest for example in our climate proposals. Besides, a new international cooperative arrangement also attracted very wide support.”

He said of particular relevance for Qatar is a proposal for the creation of a new and much more inclusive global energy forum. Now we know there is an interest on the part of a number of governments and we have been looking forward to carry the conversation with the government of Qatar on the issue as well.”

These are some of the ideas to emerge at the summit that are receiving a positive feedback and look set to move forward.

The world right now in energy domain is organised in a very fragmented way with commodity specific organizations and organizations that are dominated either by consumers on the one hand or producers on the other, says Samans.

“It is very difficult to have a more holistic conversation among many different interested parties on energy issues in a way that help to identify a common interest and potentially shared agendas,” he said.

In this case what the world needs according to the Council that developed this proposal is a more inclusive forum encompassing the full range of issues, commodities and cross-cutting issues like transport security, research and development priorities or investment rules in addition to price volatility on certain commodities.

There might be quite interesting conversion of interest in a range of issues among consuming and producing countries; advanced and developing countries. Different commodity groups could surface and potentially some of the common interest would be better identified. “There is really an opportunity here for this Global Energy Forum to be created,” says Samans.

He suggested Qatar could play an important role in an idea that surfaced from the discussions in Doha.

Asked whether the creation of a Sustainable Energy Free Trade Area (SEFTA), another idea floated at the Summit was feasible, Samans said, “This is another idea that received very positive feedback and strong interest on the part of both the trade policy and climate communities. I don’t know yet whether there is any individual government that wants to take this up and advance it.”

But, there is quite a lot of support for the idea among those two very considerable communities of thinkers at the Summit.

“The idea is very feasible and very interesting as an innovative idea for both trade policy on the one hand and climate policy on the other,” Samans pointed out. “We are speaking about a free trade area in a class of products that would contribute to cleaner air and helping to progress towards a goal that seems the entire planet has.”

He said that the goal is to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions and it is a very practical proposal for creating a multilateral free trade area for governments that wish to accede to the agreement.

Samans said there is a precedent for such undertaking, noting that in the 90s the international community under the auspices of the World Trade Organization created a multilateral free trade area in information technology products. “This is a format that potentially can work again in this context,” he added.

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