And now, without further ado, the top ten global risks for the next ten years according to the World Economic Forum:
Well, what is very clear here is that environmental issues are at the forefront here. We can’t just pretend our human activities are a small part of the larger biophysical system any more, and that the biophysical system therefore has an inexhaustible ability to support our human activities.
Here’s another way they look at it. This is pretty but maybe it tries to do too much in one picture.
So climate change mitigation, adaptation (adaption?), natural disasters and natural resources, which were at the top of the “top 10 list”, are relatively small bubbles in terms of “risk influence” here. But then they drive “large-scale involuntary migration”, “cost-of-living crisis” (food is too damn expensive?), “collapse of a systematically important supply chain” (not enough food at any price?), “geoeconomic confrontation” (war?), “state collapse” and “erosion of social cohesion” (riots over prices, food, immigration, military conscription?). It’s pretty easy to see how these things can interact, with our ongoing squandering of the planet’s biophysical stability as a root cause.