Climate Action Failure, Extreme Weather top 2 global risks over next 10 years: WEF

11 January 2022

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Geneva, Jan 11: Extreme weather and climate action failure are among the top five short term risks faced by humanity on the planet, according to the Global Risks Report (GRR) 2022 released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Geneva on Tuesday.

At a special global media briefing on the report, attended by Ziraat Times, alongside world’s other top media publications, World Economic Forum GRR 2022 report also revealed that the five most menacing long-term threats are all environmental. “Climate action failure”, “extreme weather” and “biodiversity loss” also rank as the three most potentially severe risks for the next decade.

While Global Risks Perception Survey (GRPS) respondents’ concern about environmental degradation predates the pandemic, increasing concern with climate action failure reveals respondents’ lack of faith in the world’s ability to contain climate change, not least because of the societal fractures and economic risks that have deepened.

The special media briefing was addressed by Børge Brende, President, World Economic Forum; Saadia Zahidi, Managing Director, World Economic Forum; Carolina Klint, Managing Director, Marsh and Peter Giger, Group Chief Risk Officer, Zurich Insurance Group.

The Global Risks Report 2022 presents the results of the latest Global Risks Perception Survey (GRPS), followed by an analysis of key risks emanating from current economic, societal, environmental and technological tensions. The report concludes with re ections on enhancing resilience, drawing from the lessons of the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. The key findings of the survey and the analysis are summarized below.

While for the next five years, respondents again signal societal and environmental risks as the most concerning, however, over a 10-year horizon, the health of the planet dominates concerns: environmental risks are perceived to be the five most critical long-term threats to the world as well as the most potentially damaging to people and planet, with “climate action failure”, “extreme weather”, and “biodiversity loss” ranking as the top three most severe risks.

Respondents have also signaled “debt crises” and “geoeconomic confrontations” as among the most severe risks over the next 10 years.

This year the Global Risks Report also draws on the views of over 12,000 country-level leaders who identified critical short-term risks to their 124 countries, gathered through the World Economic Forum’s Executive Opinion Survey. The areas highlighted in these responses are likely to inform national decision- making and provide a perspective on how short-term risk national priorities may compare with global risks and perspectives.

Respondents to the GRPS rank “climate action failure” as the number one long-term threat to the world and the risk with potentially the most severe impacts over the next decade. Climate change is already manifesting rapidly in the form of droughts, res, oods, resource scarcity and species loss, among other impacts. In 2020, multiple cities around the world experienced extreme temperatures not seen for years—such as a record high of 42.7°C in Madrid and a 72-year low of -19°C in Dallas, and regions like the Arctic Circle have averaged summer temperatures 10°C higher than in prior years. Governments, businesses and societies are facing increasing pressure to thwart the worst consequences. Yet a disorderly climate transition characterized by divergent trajectories worldwide and across sectors will further drive apart countries and bifurcate societies, creating barriers to cooperation.

“Given the complexities of technological, economic and societal change at this scale, and the insufficient nature of current commitments, it is likely that any transition that achieves the net zero goal by 2050 will be disorderly. While COVID-19 lockdowns saw a global dip in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, upward trajectories soon resumed: the GHG emission rate rose faster in 2020 than the average over the last decade.”, the report, which has been shared with Ziraat Times, notes.

“Countries continuing down the path of reliance on carbon-intensive sectors risk losing competitive advantage through a higher cost of carbon, reduced resilience, failure to keep up with technological innovation and limited leverage in trade agreements. Yet shifting away from carbon-intense industries, which currently employ millions of workers, will trigger economic volatility, deepen unemployment and increase societal and geopolitical tensions. Adopting hasty environmental policies will also have unintended consequences for nature—there are still many unknown risks from deploying untested biotechnical and geoengineering technologies—while lack of public support for land use transitions or new pricing schemes will create political complications that further slow action. A transition that fails to account for societal implications will exacerbate inequalities within and between countries, heightening geopolitical frictions”, the report further observes.