A survey of global risk experts conducted by the World Economic Forum (WEF), has revealed that failure to address climate change and environmental degradation top the list of the greatest risks confronting the planet in the coming ten years.
The survey also found that contemporary issues including the rising cost of living, ongoing energy and food shortages and massive national debts pose a danger to the collaboration and unity required to confront these issues.
John Scott, head of Sustainability Risk at Zurich Insurance Group, which partnered on the report with risk strategy group Marsh McLennan, noted that “The interplay between climate change impacts, biodiversity loss, food security and natural resource consumption is a dangerous cocktail.”
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Based on comments from 1,200 private sector risk managers, governmental policy-makers, academics, and industry leaders worldwide, the report illustrates how present cost-of-living concerns will be replaced by environment-related risk as the decade goes on.
The top 10 list of global hazards regarded as most severe over a 10-year period is dominated by natural disasters, biodiversity loss, natural resource loss, large-scale environmental damage, failure to reduce and adapt to climate change, and natural disasters.
The report’s findings follow a year in which numerous climate change promises were abandoned due to the energy crisis caused by the conflict in Ukraine. The analysis was developed ahead of the annual WEF discussions, which are scheduled to take place in the Swiss resort of Davos next week.
Story was adapted from Insurance Journal.
