The Global Risks Report 2024

Endnotes 1. Severity scor es of 3.9 for the two-year and 4.7 for the 10-year horizon in 2024, compared to 5.3 and 5.2, respectively, in 2023. 2. Institute for Economics & Peace, Global Terrorism Index 2023, 2023, https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/ uploads/2023/03/GTI-2023-web-170423.pdf. 3. Longer -term, macro, structural trends and uncertainties are often used in conducting strategic foresight exercises. For example, the EU’s 2023 Strategic Foresight outlines a set of key social and economic challenges, including the rise of geopolitics and reconfiguration of globalization. The US National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2024 Report outlines four “structural forces”, defined as “conditions and trends that are somewhat knowable or forecastable with data because of existing conditions of patterns”, and includes a detailed set of predictions relating to demographics and human development, environment, economics and technology. The structural forces adopted for the purposes of this report build on and adapt these concepts, to define the most material longer-term shifts in the systemic elements of the global landscape, identified through expert stakeholder consultation. For more information, see: National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2040: A more contested world, March 2021, https://www.dni.gov/index.php/gt2040-home, and European Commission, 2023 Strategic Foresight Report, 6 July 2023, https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/strategic-planning/strategic-foresight/2023-strategic-foresight-report_en. 4. The global population is pr ojected to increase by nearly 0.7 billion people over the next decade, but population growth has been slowing over the past 50 years, with the global growth rate hitting 0.82% in 2021. This reflects rapidly falling fertility rates over the same period, dropping to around 2.3 births per woman, globally, in 2021. In contrast, life expectancy globally grew by almost nine years since 1990. See the following for further details: PRB, Africa’s Future: Youth and the Data Defining Their Lives, https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-update-2022; https://www.prb.org/resources/africas-future-youth-and-the-data-defining-their-lives/#:~:text=By%202030%2C%20young%20Africans%20are,critical%20now%20more%20than%20ever , accessed 30 November, 2023; Rotman, David, “We’re not prepared for the end of Moore’s law”, MIT Technology Review, 24 February 2020, https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/24/905789/were-not-prepared-for-the-end-of-moores-law/; Singh, Anuraag, Giorgio Triulzi and Christopher L. Magee, “Technological improvement rate predictions for all technologies: Use of patent data and an extended domain description”, Research Policy, vol. 50 ,issue 9, November 2021, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733321000950; World Meteorological Association, WMO Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update, May 2023, https://library.wmo.int/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=22272#.ZGZbQqXMK5c; Diffenbaugh, Noah S. and Elizabeth A. Barnes, “Data-driven predictions of the time remaining until critical global warming thresholds are reached”, PNAS, 30 January 2023, vol. 120, no. 6, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2207183120; IPCC, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, 27 February 2022, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-ii/. 5. The IPCC defines a tipping point as a “critical thr eshold beyond which a system reorganises, often abruptly and/or irreversibly”. IPCC, IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_SYR_Annex-I.pdf, accessed 30 November, 2023. 6. At the curr ent level of global warming (~1.1°C), five climate systems could have passed tipping points in theory, including: low-latitude coral reefs; the permafrost; the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets; and the Labrador-Irminger Seas Convection. At 1.5°C of warming, another five could be placed at risk: the Boreal Forests (North and South); Atlantic M.O. Circulation (AMOC); Barents Sea ice; and Mountain Glaciers. Notably, however, this is the minimum temperature level in what can be quite large uncertainty bandings. See: McKay, David I. Armstrong, et. al., “Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points”, Science, vol. 377, iss 6611, 9 September 2022, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn7950. 7. Intergover nmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, 27 February 2022, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-ii/. 8. McKay, et. al., 2022. 9. Lenton, T imothy M., et. al., Global Tipping Points, December 2023, https://global-tipping-points.org/. 10. T ollefson, Jeff, “Catastrophic change looms as Earth nears climate ‘tipping points’, report says”, Nature, 6 December 2023, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03849-y. 11. Dif fenbaugh, Noah S. and Elizabeth A. Barnes, “Data-driven predictions of the time remaining until critical global warming thresholds are reached”, PNAS, vol. 120, no. 6, 30 January 2023, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2207183120; Naughten, Kaitlin, A., Paul R. Holland and Jan De Rydt, “Unavoidable future increase in West Antarctic ice-shelf melting over the twenty-first century”, Nature Climate Change, vol. 13, 23 October 2023, pp. 1222-1228, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01818-x; Lenton, et. al., 2023. 12. Lenton, et. al., 2023. 13. W underling, et. al., “Interacting tipping elements increase risk of climate domino effects under global warming”, Earth System Dynamics, vol. 12, 3 June 2021, pp. 601-619, https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/12/601/2021/esd-12-601-2021.pdf. 14. Lenton, et. al., 2023. Global Risks Report 2024 77