Last year, the United Nations released its inaugural UN Global Risk Report (2025), drawing on 2024 survey data from 1,100 stakeholders across 136 countries, including representatives from governments, industry, civil society and academia, to assess emerging and interconnected global risks and evaluate the preparedness of global institutions to respond to them.
Human Level’s Take:
- Are we prepared for the risks the world faces? The report suggests that while institutions remain relatively effective at identifying risks, they are less equipped to respond to risks that are deeply interconnected across environmental, technological, political, and social systems. It is this interconnectedness that increasingly allows risks to amplify and cascade across sectors and regions.
- While environmental risks rank as the top global concern across all stakeholder groups and regions, the report identifies geopolitical tensions as the most interconnected risk category. The findings suggest that geopolitical instability acts as a multiplier, intensifying challenges linked to conflict, economic instability, migration, energy systems and food security, particularly when crises begin to overlap.
- As risks become more interconnected, the report points to growing concerns around preparedness. Respondents identify particularly low levels of readiness for systemic and cross-border risks such as cyber insecurity, AI and frontier technologies, misinformation, and climate-related disruptions. The findings also suggest that underlying global vulnerabilities continue to shape institutional response capacity.
- So what determines which future pathway the world moves toward? According to the report, the degree of joint action and international cooperation is a defining factor. The scenarios range from deepening geopolitical fragmentation and weakened multilateralism to stronger global collaboration capable of enabling more proactive and integrated responses to complex risks.
- The implications of this for the private sector are considerable. A lack of preparedness and decreased capacity to respond quickly to global crises — an ever-present threat in our current world — means that companies may be left to tackle systemic risks and challenges without a supporting framework from governments and multilateral institutions.
- Human rights risks can quickly amplify in this context, creating not only new vulnerabilities for workers, consumers and local communities but also new commercial and reputational risks for companies. This makes strong, proactive human rights and environmental due diligence, embedded into business planning and decision-making, a lifeline for companies looking for the way forward.
Some key takeaways:
- Risk preparedness is ultimately determined by the interconnected nature of global challenges: Compounding the perceptions of the likelihood and severity of a risk, the report finds that environmental risks are viewed as the top global concern across all stakeholder groups and regions, reflecting widespread concern over climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and ecosystem degradation. At the same time, it emphasises that understanding which risks rank highest is not sufficient on its own. Analysing how risks interact is equally important for shaping effective responses. In this context, geopolitical risks emerge as the most interconnected category of risk, influencing and amplifying challenges linked to conflict, economic instability, migration, energy systems and food security. It is these risks that are systemic, cross-border and deeply interconnected in nature that existing institutions are least prepared for. Low levels of preparedness are identified in areas such as misinformation and disinformation, cyber insecurity, AI and emerging technologies, as well as the cascading effects of climate and geopolitical crises. Overall, the report indicates that many institutions remain better equipped to respond to isolated shocks than to overlapping risks that cut across environmental, technological, political, and social systems.
- Global vulnerabilities and the effectiveness of risk responses are deeply connected: The report highlights that vulnerability is unevenly distributed across countries, institutions, and populations, and increasingly shaped by interconnected environmental, societal, and technological risks. It identifies three major vulnerability clusters: environmental risks linked to natural resource shortages, biodiversity decline, natural hazards and carbon pollution; societal risks centred on pandemics, biorisks and mass displacement; and technological risks associated with cybersecurity breakdowns, AI and frontier technologies, and growing concentration of power in the technology sector. Across all three clusters, respondents view preparedness levels as insufficient relative to the scale and interconnected nature of these risks. The findings further show that coordinated multi-government action is seen as the most effective mechanism for responding to global risks, while weak governance and lack of consensus remain the most significant barriers to effective action.
- Risk outcomes will increasingly depend on the ability of institutions and stakeholders to coordinate responses: The report outlines four possible future scenarios to explore how different approaches to global cooperation and governance could shape risk outcomes. The Breakdown Scenario describes a future of deepening geopolitical fragmentation and weakened multilateralism, resulting in escalating instability, more frequent crises, and reduced capacity to respond to interconnected global risks. The Status Quo Scenario reflects a continuation of current approaches, where reactive and fragmented governance leads to risks becoming more entrenched over time, limiting progress on long-term resilience. The Progress Scenario envisions stronger coordination and incremental reforms across institutions and stakeholders, leading to improved risk management, greater preparedness, and more stable international cooperation. Finally, the Breakthrough Scenario describes a more transformative shift, where systemic reforms and renewed global collaboration enable proactive and integrated responses to complex risks, strengthening resilience across environmental, geopolitical, technological, and social systems.
