This photo, taken from the Israeli side of the Gaza border, shows plumes of smoke rising from an explosion above a destroyed building in the northern Gaza Strip on January 13, 2025, during the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
Menachem Kahana | Afp | getty images
Risk experts ranked armed conflict, extreme weather events and disinformation as the biggest global risks this year, according to a World Economic Forum survey released Wednesday.
Nearly a quarter (23%) of respondents to the WEF’s flagship ‘Global Risks Report’ identified state-based armed conflict as their most pressing concern in 2025.
Misinformation and disinformation were the top risks for the second year in a row, while environmental issues such as extreme weather events, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse dominated the 10-year risk rankings.
Extreme weather events, including heat waves, tornadoes, and flooding, feature prominently in both short-term and long-term risks. Due to the climate crisis, extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and intense.
The report comes as some 3,000 leaders from more than 130 countries prepare to attend the WEF’s annual meeting. The four-day event begins Monday in the Swiss mountain town of Davos.
“Rising geopolitical tensions, collapsing global trust and the climate crisis are putting global systems under greater strain than ever before,” WEF Executive Director Mirek Dušek said in a statement.
“In a world of deepening conflict and rising risk, global leaders have a choice: to foster cooperation and resilience, or to face compounding instability. The stakes have never been higher,” Dušek said.
The survey considers short-term risks to 2025, short-term and medium-term to 2027, and long-term risks to 2035. To prepare the report, we surveyed more than 900 global risk experts, policymakers and industry leaders in September and October last year.
‘The world is in a serious situation’
The WEF said that just two years ago, armed conflict was overlooked as a major near-term risk, a development that reflects a global environment of rising geopolitical tensions and an increasingly fragmented world.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres previously warned that the world was facing the greatest number of conflicts since World War II, citing Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and conflicts in the Middle East and Africa.
Other near-term risks identified in the WEF’s latest report include social polarization, cyber espionage, pollution and inequality.
“The world is in a dire state and the global risk landscape is like a squirrel’s nest where risks are interconnected and layered, making the business environment very difficult to navigate,” said Carolina Klint, Chief Commercial Officer. an officer with Marsh McLennan Europe told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro in an interview Wednesday.
Borge Brende, President and CEO of the World Economic Forum (WEF), holds a press conference to announce the WEF Annual Meeting to be held in Davos, Geneva, on January 14, 2025.
Fabrice Coffrini | Afp | getty images
Clint said these risks don’t necessarily reflect a new trend, but one that is “getting more and more aggressive.”
“I think we are now living in a time of heightened economic tension,” Clint said. “And I think we have to recognize that fragmentation is not a theoretical problem. It is a problem we have to face today. So it has led to a more complex and uncertain trading environment.”
