World Economic Forum  Reveals World’s Top Risks in 2024 Report

The World Economic Forum (WEF) published its annual Global Risk Report 2024, presenting the findings of the Global Risks Perception Survey (GRPS), which capture insights from nearly 1500 global experts.

The report highlights the increasingly complex challenges the world is facing. The top risks identified in the report are cybercrime, adverse outcomes of artificial intelligence, and extreme weather events. This challenge complicates short-term decision-making and long-term strategies.

The report analyses global risks through three-time frames to support decision-makers in balancing current crises and longer-term priorities.

The year 2023 is full of attention-grabbing events: Russia’s continuing invasion of Ukraine, the war between Israel and Gaza, and record-breaking weather events like droughts, wildfires, floods, and the high cost of living crisis.

As 2024 ushers in, the GRPS survey 2023-2024 results show a pessimistic outlook for the world in the next two years, which is expected to worsen in the next ten years.

When surveyed in September 2023, 54% of respondents anticipated some instability and a moderate risk of global catastrophes. Another 27% expected more significant turbulence, and 3% expected global catastrophic risks to materialise in the short term. Only 16% expected a stable or calm outlook in the next two years.

The outlook grows even more damaging in the next ten years, with nearly two-thirds of respondents expecting a stormy or turbulent outlook and less than 10% expecting a calm or stable situation.

Top 10 Global Risks

In the next two years:

1. Misinformation and disinformation
2. Extreme weather events
3. Societal polarisation
4. Cyber insecurity
5. Interstate armed conflict
6. Lack of economic opportunity
7. Inflation
8. Involuntary migration
9. Economic downturn
10. Pollution

In the next ten years:

1. Extreme weather events
2. Critical change to Earth systems
3. Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse
4. Natural resources shortages
5. Misinformation and disinformation
6. Adverse outcomes of AI technologies
7. Involuntary migration
8. Cyber security
9. Societal polarisation
10. Pollution

Environmental risks continue to dominate the risk landscape over all three-time frames. Two-thirds of GRPS respondents rank Extreme weather as the top risk most likely to present a material crisis on a global scale in 2024. It is also seen as the second-most severe risk over two years. Similar to last year’s rankings, nearly all environmental risks feature among the top 10 over the longer term.

The report notes, “However, GRPS respondents disagree about the urgency of environmental risks, particularly Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse and Critical change to Earth systems. Younger respondents rank these risks far more highly over the two years than older age groups, with both risks in their top 10 rankings in the short term. The private sector highlights these risks as top concerns over the longer term, in contrast to respondents from civil society or government who prioritise these risks over shorter time frames. This dissonance in perceptions of urgency among key decision-makers implies sub-optimal alignment and decision-making, heightening the risk of missing key moments of intervention, which would result in long-term changes to planetary systems.”