According to a World Economic Forum (WEF) survey of experts from around the world, failure to address climate change and environmental degradation tops the list of key risks facing the planet in the next decade.

In addition, current challenges, including the rising cost of living, the energy and food crisis and high public debt, threaten to undermine the collective will and cooperation needed to address such challenges, experts say.

“The interplay between climate change impacts, biodiversity loss, food security and natural resource consumption is a dangerous cocktail,” said John Scott, head of sustainability risk at Zurich Insurance Group, who collaborated with the Marsh McLennan Group on this report. .

Based on responses from 1,200 private sector executives, government policymakers, academics and industry leaders from around the world, the report shows how today’s cost-of-living concerns are being replaced by environmental risks over the course of a decade.

Failure to mitigate and adapt to climate change, natural disasters, loss of biodiversity, loss of natural resources and large-scale environmental destruction dominate the top 10 global risks over a 10-year period.

The report’s findings, which are being prepared ahead of the annual World Economic Forum talks in the Swiss resort of Davos next week, come after a year in which many pledges to act on climate change were shelved in the face of the ensuing energy crisis. war in Ukraine.

This retreat is occurring as extreme weather events and other environmental pressures intensify. Moody’s Investors Service estimated yesterday that insured losses from natural disasters have increased by an average of about $100 billion annually over the past five years.

The WEF report raises the possibility that risks interact with each other to create a “polycrisis”, which it defines as a group of related risks with complex impacts and unpredictable consequences. The report says that rivalry for resources between major powers could give rise to such a set of associated risks.

Other events in the top 10 risk rankings include the impact of forced migration, social breakdown, cybercrime and economic hostility between major trading blocs, which are considered more likely than outright military conflict.

While the scale of such threats and their impact on billions of people around the world remain unpredictable, businesses are already being forced to shift their decades-long focus on lowering the cost of investing in their resilience.

Source: Reuters, APE-MPE.