Every year during its Party for Billionaires in Davos, the World Economic Forum releases a Global Risks Report, surveying “over 900 experts across academia, business, government, international organizations and civil society.” The result is a sort of funhouse mirror inverse to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, a graphically pleasing picture of all the worst shit in the world. And this year, in its release on the report, the WEF offers a fun summation:
Okay then. And more, from within the report itself: “We seem to be living in one of the most divided times since the Cold War, and this is reflected in the results of the [Global Risks Perception Survey], which reveal a bleak outlook across all three time horizons – current, short-term and long-term.”
The difference in this year’s landscape, at least from that of just a few years ago, is war. Asked what risk is “most likely to present a material crisis on a global scale in 2025,” state-based armed conflict was the runaway winner, at 23 percent. That’s followed by extreme weather events, geoeconomic confrontation (a fun thing to call the “trade war” that Trump is intent on ushering in), misinformation and disinformation, and societal polarization.
The survey asked respondents to look out at various time points, and the answers vary. In the two-year range, misinformation, extreme weather, and armed conflict top the list of risks; at ten years, it’s all climate change — extreme weather events, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, critical change to Earth systems, and natural resource shortages. These are, of course, related: the misinformation and disinformation flooding the zone today is playing a huge role in stopping us from trying to ease the longer-term climate risks.
The overall global risks, writes WEF managing director Saadia Zahidi in a preface, “are becoming more complex and urgent, and accentuating a paradigm shift in the world order characterized by greater instability, polarizing narratives, eroding trust and insecurity.” And what’s more, she adds, we seem to be getting worse at managing them: “[T]his is occurring against a background where today’s governance frameworks seem ill-equipped for addressing both known and emergent global risks or countering the fragility that those risks generate.”
Davos is populated not just by economic elites but also actual world leaders — and as the WEF notes the world just endured “a complex ‘super election’ year that tested just about every global system.” In other words, incumbents everywhere got absolutely washed in elections around the world; it’s perhaps no wonder that many of them aren’t seeing a lot of hope out there.
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