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Hello everyone. Welcome to the 5 Minutes podcast. The World Economic Forum. Just released the 18th edition of the Global Risk. Report. And for me, honestly.
I read this for quite. A while since my time at the United Nations, and this. It is, for me, a must-read. If you want. To understand a little bit more about geopolitics and understand. These major global threats that we are facing. And this report is very strong, and it covers different areas. It covers.
Climate change. It covers society. It covers technology, economy, and geopolitics. All of this and try to combine and put them together in two different perspectives, short term, and long term. And why I'm recording this podcast, I'm not aiming here to talk in detail about the specifics of this report, but I want to stimulate. You to take a. Look in a different dimension of what risk is because most of the time, we are in some ways paranoid about something like.
Oh, the delay coming from your supplier of, for example, some materials you are waiting for your project. Yes, this is true, and this is something you need to be concerned about. But you need to understand. Why. This delay, Because sometimes if. You pull the thread, and you will see that the challenges are far. Bigger than your supplier, than your organization. Sometimes your problem or your challenge is a global challenge. And this is why this is so interesting.
And I want to. Share with you the. Top ten in the short term and the top ten in the long term. And I want to share also my comments on it. So if you take a. Look at the ten in the short term and the ten in the long term, out of a list of 30. Risks, in the short term, we can see that half of the. Five risks are related to climate. Change. And on the long term, it goes up to six risks. Then in the short term, three of the risks are related to society, and this goes. Down to two on the long term, one risk in the short term on technology that stays one risk in the long term also. And geopolitics comes from one risk in the short term and one risk in the long term.
So let me go and read the short-term one first one cost of the living crisis quickly. And this is. Obvious, right? Inflation people struggling to pay their bills. And these. Of course, many of you.
Will will ask me why there is no. Economic one. And the first economic one is number 11. Of course, the cost of living has an economic impact, but it has a much bigger societal impact. So people are struggling to pay their bills, People are reducing their consumption, inflation is picking up, and this is. Creating a massive impact on the organization in projects. And initiatives.
The second one is natural disasters and extreme weather events. We can see this, right? We can see, you know, the extreme winter in some parts of the world, floods, and all these kinds. Of. Challenges we can see today. And you. Know one thing, many times when people think about climate change and I.
Remember when I was at the cop in Paris at the time of the UN? You know, people were saying we need to save the world for our grandchildren. You know, we need to save the world for us now because there is no time to wait until the grandchildren. Because when you say this means your future is okay and there is a challenge to generations now, and this is not true. This is not true because we.
Can see these natural disasters happening now. The third one is economic confrontation. Of course, I'm talking. Not only war between. Russia and Ukraine, but I'm talking about geoeconomics. Confrontation. For example, the polarity between the.
United States and China. We can see. European Union and United Kingdom. So all these challenges on who. Will control some flow of resources, some geographic. Areas and exercise the influence on that. And this is risk number three. Risk number four is a failure.
To mitigate climate change is. Our failure to mitigate and to act on reducing. Climate change. The number five, and remember I'm talking in terms of severity, means the number one is. The most severe. One, and the number five. It is the fifth most severe one. The number five is the societal erosion of social cohesion and social polarization. You know, I'm Brazilian, so I don't need to say too much about that. So you saw what happened at the beginning of January in Brazil. We can see this polarization in a dramatic way in many, many parts of the world. And this is a very big risk that is on.
The top rank. The second one is large-scale environmental damage incidents. So, you know, accidents and things that could create a large-scale environmental impact. Number seven is the failure of climate change adaptation. And this is massive. Because it means if we do not act and if we do not adapt ourselves, and if we do not adopt, it will be a big challenge.
Number eight is the only one that is related to technology, and I think it's super relevant is widespread cybercrime and cyber insecurity. So what we can see.
Today is that cybercrime has become one of the most relevant threats. Organizations because of most organizations. They rely on technology. To operate. They rely on technology to do pretty much everything. And with COVID, with people working from home, and with the increasing dependency on technology, this is. Becoming a massive challenge for us. Number nine Natural resources crisis means a lack of resources. And we saw this with the grains exports in Ukraine. You know, people. Facing the. Possibility of starvation. Just because of the complete depletion of grains. So there is no grains available to feed people. And number ten, large.
Scale involuntary migration. It's a societal problem. People moving from one place to another, not just because they want, but because they have no choice, means it's a war. It's drought or it's a massive economic crisis that makes. These people move.
And now, I want just to compare this with the long term. We saw that number one was a societal de crisis, and this went from 1 to 15 in the long term. And all the top four spots are climate related to climate failure to mitigate climate change, failure to mitigate climate change, adaptation, natural disasters and the loss of biodiversity. These are the four top ones in the time horizon of ten years.
Then number five is large scale involuntary migration. It goes. From 10 to 5. Means there will be an increasing risk of migration and not voluntary, and not people because they want, but because they need and. Many times because of climate change, for example, islands that will disappear. Drought and these kind of natural events. Number six, Natural resource crisis. That was the number nine in the short term. Number seven. And this for me is very.
Sad to see erosion of social cohesion because. I thought I remember in the short term it's number five and it's going to number seven. It means that. These societal polarization. Is here to stay. It's not something. That will disappear in one year or in two year. Know it in ten years. This is still. Number seven on the list. And it's a big, big number to be number seven. Number eight is the same cybercrime. And it's it is number eight on the short and the long term. Number nine, geo economic confrontation. So it seems that it will still be very. Relevant, but. It will. Go down from 3 to 9 and number ten, large scale environmental damage incidents. So this is just.
To give you an idea and one final comment. None of the ten in the short and the long are economic. It's so interesting, right, because it's a World Economic forum and the risks. Are not economic. But I. Strongly suggest take. A couple of minutes. Take a look, read. If you don't have too much time, read the executive summary. The full report is 98 pages. But take a look. And it's extremely. Well written. And it will. Give insights for you to make decisions. And also it will open your mind to. The different possibilities on. How you can understand. Your. Risks. So think about that. I hope you enjoy this podcast and see you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
