Today in The Geneva Observer, an exclusive story on the mad rush at the World Health Organization (WHO) to meet a self-imposed May 24 deadline to clinch a pandemic agreement, and an op-ed on AI.

Emerging Economies Seeking Extension as Pandemic Accord Deadline Approaches

The late May cut-off point to agree on set of normative rules that aims to ensure that the absolute calamity that the world experienced with the COVID-19 pandemic will never be repeated was set by the World Health Assembly—WHO’s governing body—in 2022. The deadline was always going to be tight, with many WHO watchers immediately questioning whether it might be too ambitious given the complexity of the negotiations ahead. But the magnitude and global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was such that governments and global health actors decided that they had no choice but to act—and fast. They also thought that they had broadly mapped what had gone wrong, which would allow negotiators to work fast. “At its heart, the pandemic is a crisis of solidarity and sharing. The lack of sharing of information and data, the lack of sharing vaccines, technology, know-how, and intellectual property rights, hindered the world from preventing infections and saving lives,” WHO’s D-G Dr. Tedros told the WHA at the time. He was right. Two years, it was felt, would suffice. But willingly or not, Dr. Tedros had, of course, removed politics from the equation.

Deadlines are essential tactical devices for negotiators. They create the necessary dynamic required for diplomats and other stakeholders, such as NGOs or the private sector, to engage in multilateral negotiations. But setting deadlines is an art, rather than a science. Too tight, and they run the risk of not being met, with the blame assigned either to the diplomats and their governments or to the organization itself. Too lax, and the diplomatic momentum can be lost as the process drags on.

Our main report today tells the story of an effort by a group of countries, essentially from the emerging economies, to extend the May 24 deadline—which they believe is unrealistic—while not allowing the negotiating momentum to falter. They fear that if the momentum is not maintained, their demands and interests won’t be taken into consideration, and that power imbalances revealed during the pandemic will be reinforced. Other negotiators, however, insist that the May date must be respected. Privately, many admit that there is another looming deadline which could leave negotiations hostage to fortune in the event of an extension: the potential return to the White House of Donald Trump—who pulled the US out of WHO during his first term—means that after November, reaching an agreement may become more difficult than ever.

-PHM

Malaysia, Indonesia, Botswana, Brazil, and a number of other like-minded low- and middle-income countries, The G|O has learned, are engaged in a concerted behind-the-scenes diplomatic push to salvage the highly complex and ambitious negotiations around a pandemic agreement, as they fear that despite optimistic public statements by WHO, the self-imposed May 24 deadline set by the organization’s 194 members might not be met.

Nine rounds of international negotiations have so far failed to produce a draft document, according to many global health observers, that is advanced enough to be finalized during the next—and last—round, due to begin on April 29 in Geneva. The stakes are enormous: the agreement being negotiated will set normative rules for governments, institutions, and populations that should ensure that the COVID-19 catastrophe will not be repeated. The pandemic was “preventable,” and millions of lives could have been saved had such comprehensive measures existed at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, was essentially the conclusion of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response in 2021.

Sovereignty, power, and technology : the sticking points around the negociations for a “pandemic treaty.”

Last May, the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR) shocked us by bluntly declaring that the COVID-19 pandemic was all but “preventable,” and that the global health system was “clearly unfit” to prevent another infectious pathogen from turning into a new pandemic in the future. At least 5

THE GENEVA OBSERVERJamil Chade

Convinced that it is unrealistic, in the light of the massive divergences remaining on the substantive issues, to expect that an agreement can be clinched by May 24, the group of emerging countries is actively looking for a way to extend the deadline, while at the same time making sure that the negotiations are not abandoned or slowed down. The core group of countries is thus advocating for a way out under the form of a preliminary agreement that would recognize the current state of the negotiations but which would be linked to a binding commitment by WHO’s Member States to keep working toward an accord. The thinking behind the proposal, health diplomats told The G|O, has the support of some European countries, including Norway and France.

Sources privy to the discussions told The G|O that, at this late hour in the game, the terms of the alternatives are clear: either recognize that the negotiations have ended in failure or try to salvage the process and WHO’s credibility. 

But on such a complex issue and at a time when international cooperation is in short supply, sources involved in the negotiations admit that even a procedural proposal that appears sensible remains, in fact, highly divisive.

African countries, among the most affected during the Covid pandemic, are wary that extending the deadline for negotiations would primarily benefit those wanting to defend the status quo. They insist on the urgency of reaching a comprehensive agreement to ensure the benefits of technology transfers, and broader access to medicines, vaccines, and diagnostics—all elements that were lacking during the pandemic.

Among other provisions, the accord would aim to coordinate early disease surveillance; a contentious issue but one Western countries insist on and which has not yet been resolved to their satisfaction. The accord would also commit countries to sharing genome samples from emerging viruses with pandemic potential. In return, there are demands from developing countries for the equitable sharing of any vaccines or diagnostics derived from such samples, under a mechanism known as the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System (PABS). The powerful pharmaceutical industry has voiced strong opposition to waiving intellectual property rights on vaccines.

Most of the Western governments have indicated that they are unwilling to accept the deal as proposed by the African group, and insist that a new pandemic treaty will have to broaden the responsibility of governments over monitoring, transparency and vigilance over disease outbreaks. 

But these are exactly the demands that have made reaching an agreement impossible so far, a situation that has led the proponents of an extension to include a clause of reciprocity in their scenario: any concession accepted by the emerging countries would be matched by a concession by the developed economies. WHO observers note that the principle could add a new layer of complexity to negotiations which are already immensely difficult. 

“Countries remain divided on a wide range of issues that cut to the core of pandemic preparedness and response,” writes Suerie Moon, Director of the Global Health Centre and Professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute. “For example, how much priority should countries give to surveillance versus day-to-day health service delivery? Can investments to better prepare national health systems for potential future emergencies also deliver tangible benefits for health today? Also, any issue relating to vaccines, drugs, and other health technologies is highly contentious: this includes how deeply countries are willing to cooperate on research and development, the extent to which they will push and pull private companies to transfer potentially valuable technology, how much flexibility they are willing to exhibit on intellectual property protection, and what roles they wish to delegate to WHO and other international actors.” Substance aside, after two years of negotiations, two other obstacles remain on the road to an agreement: “the form of rules, and the process to get there.”

For some global health observers, the self-imposed deadline of May 2024 was a mistake to begin with: “the original sin,” in the words of one Asian negotiator. 

Extending it, however, is not without risks. Many emerging countries today draw parallels with the fate of another memorable episode of multilateral diplomacy: In 2001, the World Trade Organization extended the deadline to reach an agreement during the Doha Round to 2003—a mere two years. However, some 21 years later, many of the issues on the table then remain unresolved today.

For others, it is precisely the looming May 24 deadline that is likely to bring an agreement after the last round of negotiations, due to start at the end of April and conclude by May 11. Among the believers is Dr. Tedros, WHO’s chief himself: “Will we have a deal by May 2024? I believe that it can happen for two reasons,” he told a public panel on Monday, moderated by The G|O’s regular contributor Stephanie Nebehay. “First, there is already progress made in the last two years of negotiations,” he went on, “and second because [Member States] know their relative positions so they will be ready for give and take. Meaning if there is give and take it can happen. I know Member States now know what to give and what not to give, where they can be flexible, or where it may be very difficult to be flexible. But at least that's what I believe from what I saw and what I heard. If there is a will, there is a way. And I hope that the deal will be made by May 2024.”

In December 2021, addressing the World Health Assembly—WHO’s governing body—Dr. Tedros told the Organization’s assembled Member States: “The fabric of multilateralism has been frayed. The big question that remains is whether multilateralism will be rescued through a new treaty or whether it will expose its vulnerability,” he asked back then. He, and the world, will soon have the answer to his "big question."

-JC, and PHM. Additional reporting provided by Stephanie Nebehay

Are We Ready for AI Creative Destruction?

By Daron Acemoglu*

The ancient Chinese concept of yin and yang attests to humans’ tendency to see patterns of interlocked opposites in the world around us, a predilection that has lent itself to various theories of natural cycles in social and economic phenomena. Just as the great medieval Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun saw the path of an empire’s eventual collapse imprinted in its ascent, the twentieth-century economist Nikolai Kondratiev postulated that the modern global economy moves in “long wave” super-cycles.

But no theory has been as popular as the one – going back to Karl Marx – that links the destruction of one set of productive relations to the creation of another. Writing in 1913, the German economist Werner Sombart observed that, “from destruction a new spirit of creation arises.”

It was the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter who popularized and broadened the scope of the argument that new innovations perennially replace previously dominant technologies and topple older industrial behemoths. Many social scientists built on Schumpeter’s idea of “creative destruction” to explain the innovation process and its broader implications. These analyses also identified tensions inherent in the concept. For example, does destruction bring creation, or is it an inevitable by-product of creation? More to the point, is all destruction inevitable?

In economics, Schumpeter’s ideas formed the bedrock of the theory of economic growth, the product cycle, and international trade. But two related developments have catapulted the concept of creative destruction to an even higher pedestal over the past several decades. The first was the runaway success of Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen’s 1997 book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, which advanced the idea of “disruptive innovation.” Disruptive innovations come from new firms pursuing business models that incumbents have deemed unattractive, often because they appeal only to the lower-end of the market. Since incumbents tend to remain committed to their own business models, they miss “the next great wave” of technology.

The second development was the rise of Silicon Valley, where tech entrepreneurs made “disruption” an explicit strategy from the start. Google set out to disrupt the business of internet search, and Amazon set out to disrupt the business of bookselling, followed by most other areas of retail. Then came Facebook with its mantra of “move fast and break things.” Social media transformed our social relations and how we communicate in one fell swoop, epitomizing both creative destruction and disruption at the same time.

The intellectual allure of these theories lies in transforming destruction and disruption from apparent costs into obvious benefits. But while Schumpeter recognized that the destruction process is painful and potentially dangerous, today’s disruptive innovators see only win-wins. Hence, the venture capitalist and technologist Marc Andreessen writes: “Productivity growth, powered by technology, is the main driver of economic growth, wage growth, and the creation of new industries and new jobs, as people and capital are continuously freed to do more important, valuable things than in the past.”

Now that hopes for artificial intelligence exceed even those of Facebook in its early days, we would do well to re-evaluate these ideas. Clearly, innovation is sometimes disruptive by nature, and the process of creation can be as destructive as Schumpeter envisaged it. History shows that unrelenting resistance to creative destruction leads to economic stagnation. But it doesn’t follow that destruction ought to be celebrated. Instead, we should view it as a cost that can sometimes be reduced, not least by building better institutions to help those who lose out, and sometimes by managing the process of technological change.

Consider globalization. While it creates important economic benefits, it also destroys firms, jobs, and livelihoods. If our instinct is to celebrate those costs, it may not occur to us to try to mitigate them. And yet, there is much more that we could do to help adversely affected firms (which can invest to branch out into new areas), assist workers who lose their jobs (through retraining and a safety net), and support devastated communities.

Failure to recognize these nuances opened the door for the excessive creative destruction and disruption that Silicon Valley has pushed on us these past few decades. Looking ahead, three principles should guide our approach, especially when it comes to AI.

First, as with globalization, helping those who are adversely affected is of the utmost importance and must not be an afterthought. Second, we should not assume that disruption is inevitable. As I have argued previously, AI need not lead to mass job destruction. If those designing and deploying it do so only with automation in mind (as many Silicon Valley titans wish), the technology will create only more misery for working people. But it could take more attractive alternative paths. After all, AI has immense potential to make workers more productive, such as by providing them with better information and equipping them to perform more complex tasks.

The worship of creative destruction must not blind us to these more promising scenarios, or to the distorted path we are currently on. If the market does not channel innovative energy in a socially beneficial direction, public policy and democratic processes can do much to redirect it. Just as many countries have already introduced subsidies to encourage more innovation in renewable energy, more can be done to mitigate the harms from AI and other digital technologies.

Third, we must remember that existing social and economic relations are exceedingly complex. When they are disrupted, all kinds of unforeseen consequences can follow. Facebook and other social-media platforms did not set out to poison our public discourse with extremism, misinformation, and addiction. But in their rush to disrupt how we communicate, they followed their own principle of moving fast and then seeking forgiveness.

We urgently need to pay greater attention to how the next wave of disruptive innovation could affect our social, democratic, and civic institutions. Getting the most out of creative destruction requires a proper balance between pro-innovation public policies and democratic input. If we leave it to tech entrepreneurs to safeguard our institutions, we risk more destruction than we bargained for.

*Daron Acemoglu, Institute Professor of Economics at MIT, is a co-author (with Simon Johnson) of Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity (PublicAffairs, 2023).

 Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024.

Today's Briefing: Jamil Chade - Philippe Mottaz - Stephanie Nebehay

Guest Essay: Daron Acemoglu

Editorial assistance and research: David Jenny

Edited by: Dan Wheeler

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