The 2011 Caux summer conferences closed today with the end of the ‘Trust and Integrity in the Global Economy’ session at the Initiatives of Change centre this morning. It is the third consecutive year that there has been an increase in participation in the Caux conferences: over 1200 people from all over the world have participated in the series of four conferences that started on 3 July.

Audience during the Trust and Integrity in the Global Economy conference 2011: (Photo: Maha Ashour)Jean-Pierre Méan, the President of the Foundation CAUX-Initiatives of Change, the owner of the conference centre, gave a closing address. This conference ‘could not have been more timely,’ he said, and it had tried to address ‘problems swept under the carpet’. ‘The world is at a watershed,’ he continued. There are deep deficits of values, and profound doubts about the obsession with maximizing profits to create shareholder value, Méan said. ‘Profit which supports speculation in a world obsessed with material wealth is a drug nourished by greed, and which nourishes greed in return.’ Méan, who is also the President of Transparency International Switzerland, concluded, ‘It looked as if the world of finance would reform itself, after the crisis of 2008, but this window of opportunity has closed, and financial markets have reverted to their old ways, those which had taken us to the brink of disaster.’ ‘Any change in the world must start with individual change,’ he stressed.

The ‘Trust and Integrity in the Global Economy’ conference, the last of the four at the Initiatives of Change centre explored ways to help create a just and equitable global economy, against the backdrop of the economic crisis in Greece and its impact on the EU economies and the US debt ceiling debacle. The conference has been attended by over 200 participants, including businessmen, industrialists, economists, environmentalists, students and concerned individuals. One of the highlights of the conference was a ‘Caux Lecture’ by Göran Carstedt, a former IKEA and Volvo manager and now President of ‘The Natural Step International’, who spoke about the necessity of a new logic and a new era after the industrial period to solve the problems that humanity is confronted with today.

Paul Moore, a former senior banker at the Halifax Bank of Scotland, opened the conference with a talk about the lessons learned from the financial crisis in 2008. Alain Berset, a member of the Swiss federal parliament, responded saying that the financial crisis had led to a crisis in the real economy, to a social crisis and now, in 2011 to a crisis of public finances. The only people who are not paying any price are those who caused the crisis, he said, adding that the power of financial lobbies to protect themselves posed a question to the democratic system.

Closure of the 2011 Trust and Integrity in the Global Economy conference: (Photo: Liubou Pranevich)The International Caux Conferences started on 3 July with a training conference. From 10 to 17 July, the fourth annual Caux Forum for Human Security took place, with a focus on fighting against land degradation. This was followed by the conference ‘Learning to live in a multicultural world’, with participants mainly from Europe, including many representatives from diaspora communities. This conference included a group of 45 young European Muslims who had taken part in a separate programme, ‘Learning to be a peacemaker’, aimed at helping them to become ambassadors of peace and trust in their home communities.

The conferences are jointly organized each year by the Swiss foundation CAUX-Initiatives of Change and Initiatives of Change International, an NGO which is the federating body of some 40 national associations of Initiatives of Change. The International Caux Conferences 2012 will take place from 1 July to 8 August 2012. The programme for 2012 as well as a detailed report about the summer 2011 will soon be available at www.caux.ch .

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