This photo taken on the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip shows plumes of smoke rising from an explosion above destroyed buildings in the northern Gaza Strip on January 13, 2025, during the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
Menachem Kahan | Af | Getty Images
Risk experts ranked armed conflict, extreme weather and disinformation as some of the most important global threats in the coming year, according to a World Economic Forum (WEF) survey released on Wednesday.
Almost a quarter (23%) of respondents to the WEF's flagship “Global Risk Report” identified armed conflict at the state level as the most urgent problem in 2025.
Disinformation and disinformation were considered the greatest risk in the next two years for the second year in a rowwhile environmental considerations such as extreme weather phenomena, loss of biodiversity AND ecosystem collapse dominated the 10-year risk rankings.
Extreme weather events, including heat waves, tornadoes and floods, feature prominently among both short- and long-term threats. The climate crisis is causing extreme weather conditions more frequent and intense.
The report shows that nearly 3,000 leaders from over 130 countries are preparing to participate in the program WEF annual meeting. The four-day event begins on Monday in the Swiss mountain village of Davos.
“Rising geopolitical tensions, broken global trust and the climate crisis are straining the global system like never before,” Mirek Dušek, managing director of the WEF, said in a statement.
“In a world marked by deepening divisions and cascading threats, world leaders have a choice: foster cooperation and resilience, or face deepening instability. The stakes have never been higher,” Dušek said.
The study covered risks in the short term to 2025, the short and medium term to 2027, and the long term to 2035. More than 900 global risk experts, policymakers and industry leaders were surveyed in September and October last year to prepare report.
“The world is in a sorry state”
The WEF said armed conflict was overlooked as a major near-term risk two years ago, reflecting rising geopolitical tensions and an increasingly divided global landscape.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has done this before warned that the world is facing the greatest number of conflicts since World War II, citing Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as well as conflicts in the Middle East and Africa.
Some of the other short-term threats identified in the latest WEF report include social polarization, cyber espionage, pollution and inequality.
“It's clear that the world is in a dire state and the global risk landscape is like a squirrel's nest where risks are interconnected, overlapping, making the business environment very, very difficult to navigate” – Carolina Klint, chief commercial officer at Marsh McLennan Europe, told CNBC's Silvia Amaro in an interview Wednesday.
World Economic Forum President and CEO Borge Brende is holding a press conference to introduce the upcoming WEF Annual Meeting on January 14, 2025 in Davos, Geneva.
Fabrice Coffrini | Af | Getty Images
Klint said the risk does not necessarily reflect a new, emerging trend, but rather one that is “getting more and more aggressive.”
“I think we are entering an era marked by increasing economic tensions,” Klint said. “And I think we have to acknowledge that fragmentation is not a theoretical problem. This is something we have to face today. The result is a more complex and uncertain trading environment.”