Trends Identified
Into the Abyss
A cascading series of economic/financial crises overwhelm political and policy responses
2018
The Global Risks Report 2018
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Inequality Ingested
Bioengineering and cognition-enhancing drugs widen the gulf between haves and have-nots
2018
The Global Risks Report 2018
World Economic Forum (WEF)
War without Rules
State-on-state cyberattacks escalate unpredictably owing to a lack of agreed protocols
2018
The Global Risks Report 2018
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Identity Geopolitics
Self-determination around contested borders sparks regional conflict
2018
The Global Risks Report 2018
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Walled Off
Regulatory, cybersecurity and protectionist concerns lead to the fragmentation of the internet
2018
The Global Risks Report 2018
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Power and Values
A period of change in the international system is destabilizing assumptions about global order. Last year’s Global Risks Report argued that the world is becoming not just multipolar, but also “multiconceptual”. This chapter further examines how changing power dynamics and diverging norms and values are affecting global politics and the global economy. The chapter begins by outlining how normative differences increasingly shape domestic and international politics. It then highlights three trends with the potential to trigger disruptive change: (1) the difficulty of sustaining global consensus on ethically charged issues such as human rights; (2) intensifying pressure on multilateralism and dispute-settlement mechanisms; and (3) states’ increasingly frequent use of geo-economic policy interventions.
2019
The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Heads and Hearts
The Global Risks Report tends to deal with structural issues: systems under stress, institutions that no longer match the challenges facing the world, adverse impacts of policies and practices. All these issues entail widespread human costs in terms of psychological and emotional strain. This is usually left implicit but it deserves more attention—and not only because declining psychological and emotional well-being is a risk in itself. It also affects the wider global risks landscape, notably via impacts on social cohesion and politics.
2019
The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Going Viral
The previous chapter looked at the emotional and psychological impact of the multiple transformations the world is undergoing. This chapter considers another set of threats being shaped by global transformations: biological pathogens. Changes in how we live have increased the risk of a devastating outbreak occurring naturally, while emerging technologies make it increasingly easy for new biological threats to be manufactured and released—either deliberately or by accident.
2019
The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Fight or Flight
Rapidly growing cities are making more people vulnerable to rising sea levels. Two-thirds of the global population is expected to live in cities by 2050. Already an estimated 800 million people in more than 570 coastal cities are vulnerable to a sea-level rise of 0.5 metres by 2050.1 In a vicious circle, urbanization not only concentrates people and property in areas of potential damage and disruption, but it also exacerbates those risks—for example, by destroying natural sources of resilience such as coastal mangroves and increasing the strain on groundwater reserves. The risks of rising sea levels are often compounded by storm surges and increased rainfall intensity.
2019
The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Weather Wars
Weather manipulation tools— such as cloud seeding to induce or suppress rain—are not new, but deploying them at scale is becoming easier and more affordable. As the impacts of climate-related changes in weather patterns intensify, the incentives to turn to technological fixes will increase in affected areas. Think of governments trying to manage simultaneous declines in rainfall and increases in water demand. Aside from the potential environmental consequences, at a time of increasing geopolitical tensions even well-intentioned weather manipulation might be viewed as hostile. Perceptions would be paramount: a neighbouring state might see largescale cloud-seeding as theft of rain or the reason for a drought. Cloud-seeding planes might be viewed as dual-use tools for espionage. Hostile uses are prohibited, but cannot be ruled out—for example, weather manipulation tools could be used to disrupt a neighbour’s agriculture or military planning. And if states decided unilaterally to use more radical geo-engineering technologies it could trigger dramatic climatic disruptions. As technologies evolve and deployment increases, increased transparency—about who is using what, and why—would help limit destabilizing ambiguity. So too would active discussion and collaboration on environmental vulnerabilities, both bilaterally between bordering states and on wider regional and global multilateral platforms.
2019
The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition
World Economic Forum (WEF)