Climate change and influence of emerging markets have been identified by World Economic Forum participants as the issues that would most likely have the greatest impact on the world in the coming years.

"Climate change is one of the greatest challenges that we face, " said Ged Davis, World Economic Forum managing director, on Wednesday at a session designed to summarize discussions over the theme of this year's annual meeting: the Shifting Power Equation.

"We need to bring governments and non-state actors together to offer innovative solutions," he said.

Four brainstorming sessions were held earlier on Wednesday to explore the shifting power equation: on economics, geopolitics, technology and society, and business.

In a vote, 38 percent of the participants of the sessions chose climate change as the issue that will have greatest impact on the world, about a third of them named the increasing influence of the emerging markets.

Climate change is also identified as the number one issue that the world is least ready for.

Other issues identified as outstanding elements in the shifting power equation include power dispersal from a uni-polar to a multi-polar world; increasing power of commodity suppliers; increasing shaping power of customers on corporate models; growing anxiety about inequality and job security, particularly in the middle class; growth in private capital flows.

The shifting power equation was chosen as this year's annual meeting theme because "we are living in a schizophrenic world," explained World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, on Wednesday.

Good prospects for the global economy are coupled with many underlying challenges, he said.

(Source: Xinhua News Agency January 25, 2007)