Trend Economic risks expected to materialize sooner

Summary

The report finds that economic risks are now expected to materialize sooner than before, while biorisks have been pushed further into the future. Respondents increasingly named a global financial crisis and supply chain collapse as risks that could hit the world in the near term. On importance, four of the five economic risks were also rated higher than in the first survey in 2024. The global financial crisis in particular rose six places in importance, with respondents worried both about its systemic reach and about the weaker capacity of the multilateral system to coordinate a response. By contrast, new pandemics and biorisks were mostly classed as long-term concerns, and natural resource shortages, geoengineering disasters and space-based events were expected to have effects only after the next eight years.