Have religious, cultural, and technological change allowed further global integration of Asian and Gulf economies? Absolutely. Have geopolitical forces, violence and wars – now also in Europe – forged global division? Yes. Does this affect the Western Governments-Industry relationship? Visibly. Will this impact on trade and investment? Clearly. Can better joint and mutually respectful global cultural, history and values education prepare a next generation to regain mutual respect and trust? Is there another way?
Europe’s 300 billion Euro Global Gateway fund demonstrates lessons learnt. Education and training play a substantial role in it. It is ‘CSR-hardened’ and not reflecting any green-, white- or whatever-washing. That can help build new and better bridges for future generations. China’s current assessment of its impressive yet rather one-sided Belt & Road strategy may lead to morphing into true Win-Wins with optimized respect for national sovereignty and security. These two geopolitical moves seem to allow Asian and Gulf countries to not choose. To take from both sides what they truly believe is best for their own people’s future.
2050’s CSR and sustainability records will demonstrate where current authorities at all sides have succeeded or failed. ChatGPT and the likes may already now help chart which of today’s political and industrial leaders are still there and how these will be ‘liked’ by their constituencies. CSR, holistically integrated with market access, market pull and multi-stakeholder approaches will shorten time to market and improve scalability. Within a CSR context issues as Artificial Intelligence and New Genome Techniques will by 2050 appear to have been both indispensable and controllable – creating dramatically needed solutions for food-, water-, health-, jobs- and military securities. CSR will appear to have helped build the Transparency and Trust required to achieve balanced and controlled progress.
