‘We Need Not Just Talking. We Need Action’: The Biggest Moments From the TIME100 Dinner in Davos

The 54th annual gathering of the World Economic Forum (WEF) kicked off in the small Swiss ski town of Davos on Monday amid perhaps the most fraught geopolitical backdrop to date—one involving two major wars in the Middle East and Europe, an unrelenting climate crisis, and untold challenges posed by generative AI and its potential to fuel dis- and misinformation amid an unprecedented election year.

Amid such challenges, the prospect of “rebuilding trust,” as is the theme of this year’s summit, might seem trite. “The world is a mess,” Jane Goodall, the prolific environmentalist and foremost expert on chimpanzees, told TIME CEO Jessica Sibley at the TIME100 dinner on the first night of the summit. It’s a feeling of despair that she says is not new to the climate crisis, noting that even youth in the ’90s were losing hope. “They were telling me that they had lost hope because we had compromised their future and there was nothing they could do,” she says. “We haven’t just compromised their future—we’ve been stealing it, and we’re still stealing it today.”

“We need not just talking,” she says. “We need action.”

The issue of climate change has long been a focus of the annual meeting, and this year’s is no exception. WEF’s 2024 global risk report lists extreme weather events, critical change to Earth systems, and biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse as its top three greatest long-term concerns facing the world over the next decade. In the week leading up to the summit, 2023 was revealed to be the hottest year on record, according to the world’s major scientific weather monitoring bodies, overtaking 2016’s record by a large margin.

Still, Goodall believes there is still time to turn things around. “But only if we take action now,” she says. For her part, that means telling stories that reach those with the power to make substantive change not just at their heads, but at their hearts. It’s a distinction that separates Goodall with younger generations of climate activists, many of whom have taken a more confrontational approach to compelling urgent climate action. Indeed, during last year’s summit, Greta Thunberg and other young climate campaigners called out Davos delegates for being at the “very core of the climate crisis.”

But as Goodall sees it, maintaining hope is essential to compelling action. “Because if you don’t have hope,” she says, “you give up, you become apathetic, and you do nothing. And if we all do nothing, especially the young people, we’re doomed. So why do you think I’m still traveling the world 300 days a year aged 90?”

Read More: The Enduring Hope of Jane Goodall

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore echoed that urgency, warning that the world has become “voluntarily enslaved” to the fossil fuel economy, to the peril of the world’s biodiversity that those such as Goodall have dedicated their lives to protecting. “We hear the word ‘polycrisis’ thrown around now,” Gore told attendees, referencing the buzzword that came to define last year’s WEF summit. “Solving the climate crisis is a polysolution that will help us solve a wide range of crises, and we need inspiration.”

Here are some of the other biggest moments from the TIME100 Davos Dinner.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy on “the few who are lighting the way for many”

Amid these challenging times, the Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy spoke of finding hope in the stories of women in her native Pakistan—among them a teacher who stood between militants and her students and a pioneer who formed the first all-female jirga, a traditional forum for resolving conflicts that has traditionally been reserved for men, in a bid to amplify women’s voices. “What gives me hope are the few who are lighting the way for many,” she told attendees; it’s those, she says, “who are working in light so that the rest of us who are seeing darkness can walk in their path.”

Cindy McCain urges greater action on hunger

Among the myriad of crises facing the world today, diplomat and executive director of the World Food Programme Cindy McCain spoke about the urgency of addressing the world’s unprecedented hunger crisis. Fueled by conflicts and climate shocks, WFP estimates that as many as 783 million people are facing chronic hunger. “We talk a great game … but more importantly, what do we do?” McCain asked before paying tribute to her late husband, the former U.S. Sen. John McCain. “He believed that people had a right to food. He believed that people had a right to dignity and honor. Those are the things that we work for. That’s why we’re here.”

Emtithal (Emi) Mahmoud on “walking the line between hope and despair”

The Sudanese poet and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, Emi Mahmoud, who last year lost seven family members to the ongoing conflict in Sudan, recited a poem dedicated to the matriarchs of her family, titled Mama.

 

So I was walking down the street when a man stopped me and said,

Hey yo sistah, are you from the motherland?

Because my skin is a shade too dark not to have come from foreign soil

Because this garment on my head screams Africa

Because my body is a beacon calling everyone to come flock to the motherland

I said, I’m from Sudanese, why?

He said, ‘Yes you is, cause you got a little bit of flavor in you,

Don’t get me wrong, I’m just admiring what your mama gave you

 

Let me tell you something about my mama

She can reduce a man to tattered flesh without so much as blinking

Her words fester beneath your skin and the whole time,

You won’t be able to stop cradling her eyes.

My mama is a woman, flawless and formidable in the same step.

Woman walks into a warzone and has warriors cowering at her feet

My mama holds all of us on her face,

in her body, in her blood and

Blood is no good once you let it loose

So she always holds us close,

keeping us safe from caving in.

 

When I was 7, my mama cradled bullets in the billows of her robes.

That same night, she came home and taught me how to get gunpowder out of cotton with a bar of soap.

Years later when the soldiers held her at gunpoint and asked her who she was

She said, I am a daughter of Adam, I am a woman, who the hell are you?

And last time we went home, we watched our village burn,

Soldiers pouring blood from civilian skulls

As if they too could turn water into wine.

 

The woman who raised me

turned and said,

I’m your mother, I’m here, I won’t let them through.

My mama gave me conviction.

Women like her

Inherit bruised wrists,

Tired eyes and titanium plated spines.

The daughters of widows wearing the wings of amputees

Carry countries between their shoulder blades.

 

I’m not saying that dating is a first world problem, but these trifling guys seem to be

The kind who’ll quote Rumi, but not know what he sacrificed for war.

Who’ll fawn over Lupita, but turn their racial filters on.

Who take their politics with a latte when I take mine with tear gas.

Every guy I meet wants to be my introduction to the dark side,

Wants me to open up this obsidian skin and let them read every tearful page,

Because what survivor hasn’t had her struggle made spectacle?

Don’t talk about the motherland unless you know that being from Africa

means waking up an afterthought in this country.

Don’t talk about my flavor unless you know that

My flavor is insurrection, it is rebellion, it is resistance

my flavor is burden,

It is grit and it is compromise

And you don’t know compromise until you’ve rebuilt your home for the third time

Without bricks, without mortar, without any other option.

 

I turned to the man and said,

My mother and I don’t walk the streets alone back home any more.

Back home, there are no streets to walk any more.

 

TIME100 Davos Dinner was sponsored by Deloitte and SOMPO.

Write to Yasmeen Serhan at yasmeen.serhan@time.com.