This picture taken from the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip shows smoke plumes rising from explosions above destroyed buildings in the northern Gaza Strip on January 13, 2025 amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
Menahem Kahana | Afp | Getty Images
Risk specialists identified armed conflict, extreme weather and disinformation among the top global risks for the year ahead, according to a World Economic Forum (WEF) survey released on Wednesday.
Nearly a quarter (23%) of respondents in the WEF’s flagship “Global Risks Report” ranked state-based armed conflict as the most pressing concern for 2025.
Misinformation and disinformation were cited as top risks over a two-year time horizon for the second straight year, while environmental concerns such as extreme weather events, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse dominated the 10-year risk rankings.
Extreme weather events, which include heatwaves, tornadoes and floods, featured prominently among both short-term and long-term risks. The climate crisis is making extreme weather more frequent and more intense.
The report comes as close to 3,000 leaders from more than 130 countries prepare to take part in the WEF’s annual meeting. The four-day event kicks off in the Swiss mountain village of Davos on Monday.
“Rising geopolitical tensions, a fracturing of global trust and the climate crisis are straining the global system like never before,” Mirek Dušek, managing director at WEF, said in a statement.
“In a world marked by deepening divides and cascading risks, global leaders have a choice: to foster collaboration and resilience, or face compounding instability. The stakes have never been higher,” Dušek said.
The survey considers risks over the short term to 2025, the short to medium term to 2027 and the long term through to 2035. More than 900 global risks experts, policymakers and industry leaders were surveyed in September and October last year to inform the report.
‘World is in a dire state’
WEF said armed conflict was overlooked as a leading short-term risk two years ago, a development that reflects escalating geopolitical tensions and an increasingly fractured global landscape.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has previously warned that the world is facing the highest 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 risks identified in the WEF’s latest report include societal 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, layered on top of one another, 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 out Wednesday.
World Economic Forum president and CEO Borge Brende holds a press conference to present the upcoming WEF annual meeting held in Davos, in Geneva, on January 14, 2025.
Fabrice Coffrini | Afp | Getty Images
Klint said these risks do not necessarily reflect a new emerging trend — but rather one that is “getting more and more aggressive.”
“I think we’re navigating an era now marked by increasing economic tensions,” Klint said. “And I think we have to recognize the fragmentation is not a theoretical concern. It is something that we need to confront today. So, it has resulted in a more complex and uncertain trading environment.”