DiEM25: “We reject the World Economic Forum as a fortress of authoritarian power”

“Reproducing a capitalist, patriarchal, warmongering and neo-colonial economy built on exclusion and the relentless extraction of life.”

PHOTO Credit: Reuters.

The world’s elite is in Davos for this year’s World Economic Forum shindig. Last year more than 700 private jets landed at airports near Davos — almost one private jet flight for every four WEF participants.

This year, airports near Davos are likely see a similar number of private jets, if not more. The number of private jets arriving for the WEF has increased three times since 2023.

In a press release about a new report, “Davos in the Sky,” Greenpeace Austria’s Herwig Schuster comments that,

“It’s pure hypocrisy that the world’s most powerful and super-rich elite discuss global challenges and progress in Davos, while they literally burn the planet with the emissions of their private jets. The time for action is now. Governments must act to curb polluting luxury flights and tax the super-rich for the damage they cause.”

Company private jets included those belonging to Aramco, BlackRock, Blackstone, Citigroup, Google, HP, JPMorgan Chase, and Lockheed Martin. Needless to say, private jets are not cheap. A Gulfstream G650 would knock you back about US$65 million.

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, flew more than 12,200 kilometres in his Gulfstream G700, from Hawaii, where he owns a beachside mansion. Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick also arrived by private jet.

Mark Carney gave a pretty good speech yesterday. I don’t know how Mark Carney travelled to Davos and I am certainly not a fan of Carney. But one good speech in Davos does not justify the WEF’s obsession with growth, extractivism, and increasing the global elite’s power and wealth.

DiEM25 (Democracy in Europe Movement 2025) put out a statement this week opposing the World Economic Forum. The statement is posted below in full (and is available here in English, French, Spanish, and German with a list of the 67 organisations that signed on).

Joint international statement against the World Economic Forum 2026

By DiEM25 Communications, 19 January 2026

We, the undersigned, reject the World Economic Forum. Behind its language of global progress, the Forum serves to reinforce the wealth and power of the richest one percent at the expense of people and the planet.

The World Economic Forum is the annual gathering of the corporate elite and state leaders to promote the expansion of corporate control over global governance. Participants are fostering new systems of exclusion that expand wealth and power whilst sacrificing people and the planet. It celebrates the wealth of those at the top, yet excludes the workers, communities, and marginalised peoples who create real value and bear the heaviest burdens of the authoritarian economic system that the forum perpetuates.

We reject the World Economic Forum as a fortress of authoritarian power, reproducing a capitalist, patriarchal, warmongering and neo-colonial economy built on exclusion and the relentless extraction of life.

We oppose the promoted authoritarian form of the global economy that is increasingly closing off democratic spaces, concentrating wealth and silencing the voices of those most affected by its crises, especially in the Global South. The global economy promoted by the WEF rests on patriarchal structures that devalue care work, exploit women and racialised people and deepen inequalities. The WEF’s backroom lobbyism benefits the increasing authoritarian tendencies in many places in the world.

We criticise the WEF’s agenda, which is obsessed with growth and fuels ecological collapse. From extractivism to industrial agriculture and mega-infrastructure projects, its model leads to biodiversity loss, pollution and climate chaos, the expulsion and displacement of communities, their extinction and poverty. Ten years on from the Paris Climate Agreement which was supposed to be a global turning point away from planet destroying industries towards a more just economy, we see the great pushback from the big corporate monopolies including the oil and military giants that are sponsors and strategic partners of the forum. They continue to prey on the planet, especially in the countries of the South, with major greenwashing programmes such as carbon credits.

We observe that the WEF advances policies that link security, surveillance and military expansion to the interests of global capital. Militarisation protects extractive industries, suppresses dissent, and channels public resources into profit-driven arms economies. We reject this militarised model that prioritises corporate gain over human security and supports imperial endeavours around the world.

This is why we call for:

• Recognition of historical responsibilities: Cancel Global South debt, pay reparations for colonialism, slavery and the environmental crises; and end all neo-colonial exploitation. Land grabbing and unjust free trade agreements must be prohibited.

• Democratisation of the economy: Citizens should have a greater say in the economy. Decent work independent of descent is essential. Wealth should be taxed at a global level. We demand an end to the persecution, criminalisation, imprisonment, and killing of environmental, land, and agroecological defenders.

• Democratisation of global economic institutions: Instead of private spaces such as the WEF strengthen the role of the UN and democratise it, including its security council. Social movements and marginalised groups should have more power. The creation of new democratic global economic institutions is necessary.

• Transformation of the economy towards Sustainability and Solidarity: Rewrite the global trading rules in a democratic way to enable food sovereignty and more generally promote local production and consumption, including value-addition in the global South. Small-scale farming and agroecology should be supported. Local communities should be allowed to manage their commons themselves.

• Environmental Justice Now: The WEF promotes market-driven solutions that deepen inequality. We instead want climate justice based on human rights. Resources should be distributed fairly along feminist values. The livelihoods of local communities must be given special protection. Strict environmental and social rules for multinationals are essential.

• Solidarity With Migrants and Displaced Communities: Any kind of justice is impossible without migration justice. We stand with all people forced to move due to conflict, extraction, impoverishment and the climate crisis, and we demand safe pathways, the right to stay and to leave, and dignity for all.

• Alternatives to the World Economic Forum: We demand an end to the World Economic Forum and the promotion of the World Social Forum as a collective alternative – the next World Social Forum happening in from 4th-8th of August 2026 in Cotonou, Benin. We no longer want to defend your world, we want to build our own.