Are we sleepwalking toward disaster? Let our experts explain.

The World Economic Forum released its annual Global Risks Report (GRR) Wednesday and the outlook is far from rosy.

The report shows most respondents are expecting conflict in the year ahead. In fact, 85 percent of respondents are expecting major power political confrontations.

Alison Martin, Group Chief Risk Officer, Zurich Insurance Group who authored one of the attached articles below highlighted these three points as key takeaways from the report.

• We will need to find new ways of practicing globalization that respond to the insecurity experienced by many people
• Political strains, most notably the increasing polarization of society, require a radical rethinking of existing institutions and processes to address global risks
• Risks are intensifying, but the collective will to tackle them appears to be lacking. Instead, divisions are hardening, and we are drifting deeper into global problems from which we will struggle to extricate ourselves

She also cited the environment as the leading factor of risk and worry.

“Environmental risks dominate the GRR’s Global Risks Perception Survey (GRPS) for the third year in a row, accounting for three of the top-five global risks by likelihood and top-four by impact. Survey respondents seem increasingly worried about environmental policy failure and its potential impact, with the most frequently cited risk interconnection being the pairing of “failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation” and “extreme weather events”.

Furthermore, the report highlights that climate change exacerbates the urgent need to close the global $18 trillion gap in infrastructure investment, and that rapidly growing cities and the ongoing effects of climate change are making more people (and businesses) vulnerable to rising sea levels.”

If we are in fact sleepwalking towards catastrophe, how can we wake up or at least be ready?

Embedding resilience is the way to prepare for and bounce back from more severe and more frequent disasters -- natural and manmade. As Dr. Stephen Flynn, the Founding Director of the Global Resilience Institute at Northeastern University told the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in October.

Resilience is an imperative and it’s an urgent imperative that we must get out in front of,” said Dr. Flynn. “The rational for this is not because there are more shocks — it looks like from climate generated ones there are — but that’s not the qualitative driver for why we need to focus on resilience. It isn’t that the shocks themselves are more intense — though that’s also looking to be the case in the climate realm — but it is because they are so much more consequential because what used to be a local shock is now cascading in ways that are incredibly costly.”

So what else can we expect and are we that vulnerable to the issues presented in Wednesday’s Global Risks Report?

There’s a lot to explain and a lot of questions to answer and that’s where the experts from the Global Resilience Institute (GRI) at Northeastern University can help.

Dr. Stephen Flynn is the Founding Director of the Global Resilience Institute at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts where is also a Professor of Political Science with affiliated faculty appointments in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. Simply click on Dr. Flynn’s profile to request an interview.