Trends Identified
Prepping for the next big thing
Innovations tend to cluster in waves, and five potential platform technologies—nanotechnology, genomics, artificial intelligence, robotics and ubiquitous connectivity— show promise of flowering over the coming decade. In many cases, developments across technologies will be mutually reinforcing. For example, advances in nanotechnology will enable the enhanced computational power necessary for breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. Estimated contribution to global GDP by 2020: $1 trillion.
2011
The great eight: Trillion-dollar growth trends to 2020
Bain and Company
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)
Open Secrets
When the huge resources being devoted to quantum research lead to large-scale quantum computing, many of the tools that form the basis of current digital cryptography will be rendered obsolete. Public key algorithms, in particular, will be effortlessly crackable. Quantum also promises new modes of encryption, but by the time new protections have been put in place many secrets may already have been lost to prying criminals, states and competitors. A collapse of cryptography would take with it much of the scaffolding of digital life. These technologies are at the root of online authentication, trust and even personal identity. They keep secrets—from sensitive personal information to confidential corporate and state data—safe. And they keep fundamental services running, from email communication to banking and commerce. If all this breaks down, the disruption and the cost could be massive. As the prospect of quantum code-breaking looms closer, a transition to new alternatives— such as lattice-based and hashbased cryptography—will gather pace. Some may even revert to low-tech solutions, taking sensitive information offline and relying on in-person exchanges. But historical data will be vulnerable too. If I steal your conventionally encrypted data now, I can bide my time until quantum advances help me to access it, regardless of any stronger precautions you subsequently put in place.
2019
The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition
World Economic Forum (WEF)
City Limits
The world’s political geography is being transformed by surging migration from rural to urban areas, straining the web of connections between the two. Divergences are widening on numerous dimensions, such as values, age, education, power and prosperity. What if a tipping point is reached at which the urban-rural divide becomes so sharp that the unity of states begins to erode? Domestically, divergent values between urban and rural areas are already fuelling polarization and electoral volatility in many countries. Greater bitterness and rivalry could lead to localized nativism and even violent clashes. Separatist movements might break through in wealthy city-regions that resent diverting revenues to poorer rural areas with which they feel diminishing affinity. Leading cities might look to bypass national structures and play an international role directly. Economically, accelerating urban migration could lead to rural depopulation and the decline of local economies, with potential food security implications in some countries. Better long-term planning—for both expanding cities and rural areas at risk of decline—might help to mitigate these dangers. Stronger transport and communications links could help to soften the urban-rural divide. Resources will be needed, which might require more fiscal creativity, such as finding ways to decentralize revenue-raising powers or more widely redistribute the productivity gains that urbanization generates.
2019
The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Against the Grain
With climate change placing growing strain on the global food system, and with international tensions already heightened, the risk of geopolitically motivated food-supply disruptions increases. Worsening trade wars might spill over into high-stakes threats to disrupt food or agricultural supplies. Conflict affecting supply-chain chokepoints could lead to disruption of domestic and cross-border flows of food. At the extreme, state or non-state actors could target the crops of an adversary state, for example with a clandestine biological attack. In these circumstances, retaliatory dynamics could swiftly take hold. Domestically, rationing might be needed. Hoarding and theft could undermine the social order. Widespread famine risk in recent years suggests that greater hunger and more deaths—in least-developed countries, at any rate—might not trigger a major international reaction. If similar suffering were inflicted on more powerful countries, the responses would be swift and severe. More resilient trade and humanitarian networks would help to limit the impact of food supply disruption. But if trade wars were a contributing factor, then countries might seek greater self-sufficiency in food production and agriculture. In some advanced economies, this might require rebuilding skills that have been allowed to fade in recent decades. Agricultural diversification and the development of more resilient crop variants could bolster national security by reducing countries’ vulnerability.
2019
The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Digital Panopticon
Biometrics are already making exponential advances— technologies that were recently in the realm of science fiction now shape the reality of billions of people’s lives. Facial recognition, gait analysis, digital assistants, affective computing, microchipping, digital lip reading, fingerprint sensors—as these and other technologies proliferate, we move into a world in which everything about us is captured, stored and subjected to artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. This makes possible increasingly individualized public and private services, but also new forms of conformity and micro-targeted persuasion. If humans are increasingly replaced by machines in crucial decision loops, the result may lead not only to greater efficiency but also to greater societal rigidity. Global politics will be affected: authoritarianism is easier in a world of total visibility and traceability, while democracy may turn out to be more difficult—many societies are already struggling to balance threats to privacy, trust and autonomy against promises of increased security, efficiency and novelty. Geopolitically, the future may hinge in part on how societies with different values treat new reservoirs of data. Strong systems of accountability for governments and companies using these technologies could help to mitigate the risks to individuals from biometric surveillance. This will be possible in some domestic contexts, but developing wider global norms with any traction will be a struggle.
2019
The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition
World Economic Forum (WEF)