2018: Critical period of intensified risks

new scientific and technological knowledge to prevent this. Above all, the challenge is to find the will and momentum to work together for a shared future,” said Professor Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum.

According to the GRPS, cyber threats are growing in prominence, with large-scale cyberattacks now ranked third in terms of likelihood, while rising cyber-dependency is ranked as the second most significant driver shaping the global risks landscape over the next ten years.

John Drzik, president of Global Risk and Digital at Marsh, said: “Geopolitical friction is contributing to a surge in the scale and sophistication of cyberattacks. At the same time cyber exposure is growing as firms are becoming more dependent on technology. While cyber risk management is improving, business and government need to invest far more in resilience efforts if we are to prevent the same bulging ‘protection’ gap between economic and insured losses that we see for natural catastrophes.”

Economic risks, on the other hand, feature less prominently this year, leading some experts to worry that the improvement in global GDP growth rates may lead to complacency about persistent structural risks in the global economic and financial systems. Even so, inequality is ranked third among the underlying risk drivers, and the most frequently cited interconnection of risks is that between adverse consequences of technological advances and high structural unemployment or under-employment.

“Future shocks”

The growing complexity and interconnectedness of our global systems can lead to feedback loops, threshold effects and cascading disruptions. Sudden and dramatic breakdowns – future shocks – become more likely. In this year’s Global Risks Report, WEF presents ten short “what-if” scenarios, not as predictions but as food for thought to encourage world leaders to assess the potential future shocks that might rapidly and radically disrupt their worlds:

· Grim reaping: Simultaneous breadbasket failures threaten sufficiency of global food supply

· A tangled web: Artificial intelligence “weeds” proliferate, choking performance of the internet

· The death of trade: Trade wars cascade and multilateral institutions are too weak to respond

· Democracy buckles: New waves of populism threaten social order in one or more mature democracies

· Precision extinction: AI-piloted drone ships take illegal fishing to new – and even more unsustainable – levels

· Into the abyss: Another financial crisis overwhelms policy responses and triggers period of chaos

· Inequality ingested: Bioengineering and cognition-enhancing drugs entrench gulf between haves and have-nots

· War without rules: State-on-state conflict escalates unpredictably in the absence of agreed cyberwarfare rules

· Identity geopolitics: Amid geopolitical flux, national identity becomes a growing source of tension around contested borders

· Walled off: Cyberattacks, protectionism and regulatory divergence leads to balkanization of the internet

Alison Martin, Group Chief Risk Officer, Zurich Insurance Group commented: “Extreme weather events were ranked again as a top global risk by likelihood and impact. Environmental risks, together with a growing vulnerability to other risks, are now seriously threatening the foundation of most of our commons. Unfortunately we currently observe a “too-little-too-late” response by governments and organizations to key trends such as climate change. It’s not yet too late to shape a more resilient tomorrow, but we need to act with a stronger sense of urgency in order to avoid potential system collapse.”