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Earth At Risk Of Environmental Deterioration: WEF

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For India, the WEF report picks the top five risks, as identified by the Executive Opinion Survey (EOS), with acute water supply shortage topping the list, followed by misinformation and disinformation, erosion of human rights, pollution, and labor (talent) shortage in the two-year to the ten-year time horizon.

By Salam Rajesh

The global outlook is increasingly fractured across geopolitical, environmental, societal, economic and technological domains, where over the last year the world community had witnessed the expansion and escalation of conflicts, a multitude of extreme weather events amplified by climate change, widespread societal and political polarization, and continued technological advancements accelerating the spread of false or misleading information.

The assessment comes hard on the heels of the global risks analysis outlined at some length in the 20th Edition of the World Economic Forum’s The Global Risks Report 2025 released last week.

The Current Global Risk Landscape, wherein the different global risks are ranked by severity over the short and the long-term periods, are measured in two scales, firstly, over the period of the next two years and, secondly, over the next ten years.

In the first category, that is, in the projection for the next two following years, up to 2027, of the global risks, misinformation and disinformation tops the list, followed by extreme weather events, state-based armed conflicts, societal polarization, cyber espionage and warfare, pollution, inequality, involuntary migration or displacement, geo-economic confrontations, and erosion of human rights in that order.

For the next ten years’ risks assessment, that is up to 2035, extreme weather events top the list, followed by biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, critical change to Earth’s systems, natural resource shortage, misinformation and disinformation, inequality, societal polarization, cyber espionage and warfare, and pollution in that order.

Saadia Zahidi, Managing Director WEF, reflects that the ensuing risks are becoming more complex and urgent, and accentuating a paradigm shift in the world order characterized by greater instability, polarizing narratives, eroding trust and insecurity.

“Moreover, this is occurring against a background where today’s governance frameworks seem ill-equipped for addressing both known and emergent global risks or countering the fragility that those risks generate”, Zahidi says.

The Global Risks Perception Survey (GRPS) 2024-2025 is the World Economic Forum’s source of original risks data, harnessing the expertise of WEF’s extensive network of academia, business, government, international organizations and civil society. The survey responses were collected from 02 September up to 18 October, 2024, collaborating from the Forum’s multi-stakeholder communities globally.

The impacts of environmental risks have worsened in intensity and frequency since the Global Risks Report was first launched in 2006, the report’s analysts said, hinting at that the outlook for environmental risks over the next decade is definitely alarming, where all the 33 risks in the GRPS are expected to worsen in severity from the two-year to the ten-year time horizon.

Stressing that environmental risks present the most significant deterioration, the GRPS analysis hints that extreme weather events are anticipated to become even more of a concern than they already are, with this risk being top ranked in the ten-year risk list for the second year running. Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse ranks second over the ten-year time horizon, with a significant deterioration compared to its two-year ranking.

At this point of deliberation, it can be noted that the last two years had seen the worst of the environmental risks globally where several pockets of the globe were ravaged by weather events termed as quite extreme. Mega droughts hit Australia while large swaths of western United States was reduced to cinder by extensive wildfires, which ironically is being experienced again in January this year, too, leaving over 12,000 structures charred and thousands of families displaced from their homes in Los Angeles (and Hollywood).

For India, the WEF report picks the top five risks, as identified by the Executive Opinion Survey (EOS), with acute water supply shortage topping the list, followed by misinformation and disinformation, erosion of human rights, pollution, and labor (talent) shortage in the two-year to the ten-year time horizon.

For all countries, the national risks list on the environmental front are prioritized in the following order: biodiversity loss (marine, freshwater, terrestrial), extreme weather events (floods, drought, wildfires), food supply shortage, non-weather related natural disasters (earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis), pollution (air, water, soil), water supply shortage, and armed conflicts (interstate, intrastate, proxy wars).

Environmental risks are evidently and increasingly seen in most parts of the seven continents where human-induced climate change impacts are reportedly leading to more serious consequences for the blue planet. Coral reef bleaching, ground water depletion leading to scorched land (which is reported as a factor for the uncontrolled burning in the Los Angeles wildfires), unprecedented rainfall leading to extensive and damaging floods, cloudbursts induced by glacial melts, heat waves of unpredicted scale, and much more have ravaged the planet in recent years.

As per the WEF report’s analysis, ‘climate change’ is a structural force that encompasses the trajectories of global warming and possible consequences to Earth’s systems, reflecting anthropogenic actions and environmental changes. This amply suggests that ‘global risk’ is the possibility of the occurrence of an event or condition that, if it occurs, would negatively impact a significant proportion of the global GDP, entire populations, or the natural resources.

Concurrent to the stated environment risks analysis, the WEF report reflects that subject to the environmental deterioration globally, over the next two years the uncertainty around the course of current conflicts and their aftermath is likely to remain high, and tensions elsewhere could escalate.

This sense of pessimism follows in the reflection that the loss of support for and faith in the role of international organizations in conflict prevention and resolution is opening the door to more unilateralist moves, which could lead to more conflicting situations internally and externally, with resource crunch becoming the norm of the day.

The more alarming factor, as is spelt out in the report, is the State-based armed conflict (proxy wars, civil wars, coups, terrorism) being highlighted as by far the greatest risk for 2025 (and beyond) among the 33 risks ranked in the GRPS, with 23 percent of the survey respondents anticipating a material global crisis.

GRPS respondents cite geo-economic confrontation as well as the technology-related concerns, cyber espionage and warfare, and, misinformation and disinformation among the risks most closely linked to State-based armed conflict. Concerns about this risk among the respondents remain alarming high on the two year time horizon, as much as is evident from the current Ukraine-Russia war, Israel-Palestine conflict, China-Taiwan stand-off, the North Korea threat, and the numerous civil war-like condition in Africa.

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