The Global Risks Report 2025
World Economic Forum
[Overviews]
Jan 2025, 104p. The 20th annual edition, based on a survey of more than 900 experts, ranks 33 risks over the next 2 years and 10 years. The top risks for 2027 are misinformation, extreme weather, state-based armed conflict, polarization, and cyber insecurity. The bleak global outlook is increasingly fractured.
Global Catastrophic Risks Assessment
RAND Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center
[Overviews]
30 Oct 2024, 237p. GCR “has been increasing in recent years and appears likely to increase in the coming decade.” Summarizes what is known about six threats: 1) Nuclear War (estimates of occurrence vary widely); 2) Climate Change: 2.0oC rise is likely; major uncertainty about earth-system tipping points; 3) AI: amplifies existing catastrophic risk; 4) Pandemic: technology could lower the severity of risk; 5) Super-Volcano Eruption: when and where are unclear; 6) Asteroid Impact: small impactors every 100 years; medium impactors every 100,000 years.
Top Risks 2025
Eurasia Group (Ian Bremmer and Cliff Kupchan)
[Overviews]
6 Jan 2025, 42p. A year of escalating geopolitical instability and economic fragmentation, a profound global leadership vacuum (the ’G-Zero” world), intensified US-China rivalry, political nationalism, “Trumponomics,” AI unbound. Bremmer writes a weekly “Risk Report” for Time magazine.
Risks on the Horizon
EC Joint Research Centre
[Overviews]June 2024, 110p. A world of “increasing turbulence, uncertainty, novelty, and ambiguity.” Based on a Delphi survey of 92 experts, assessing 40 risks in 10 clusters, e.g., decreased well-being, disrupted supply chains, erosion of democracy. Three potential existential risks for humanity: environmental degradation, environmental disaster, and loss of power by humans as AI surpasses humans.
Disruptions on the Horizon: 2024 Report
Policy Horizons Canada
[Overviews]Sept 2024, 37p. Top 10 Most Likely includes “people cannot tell what is true” (#1), ecosystem collapse, billionaires run the world, downward social mobility is the norm, emergency response is overwhelmed, mental health crisis, cyberattacks disable infrastructure, and AI runs wild. The Top Ten with Highest Impact include world war, collapse of the healthcare system, civil war in the US, and breakdown of democracy.
Twelve Global Systemic Stresses
Cascade Institute Polycrisis Program
[Overviews]March 2025, 15p. Visible stresses adding to the present polycrisis and likely to generate additional crises: climate heating, pandemics weakening health care, decline of critical keystone species such as pollinators, aging populations in rich nations with frustrated youth in poor nations; vulnerable food supplies, possible bottlenecks in green energy transition, debt-trapped countries, spread of disinformation, populist authoritarian governance, shift from US unipolarity to unstable multipolarity, next-generation AI outpacing regulation and intensified cyberattacks.
Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
[Overviews]March 2025, 31p. Noteworthy for what is NOT included, contrasted with the 2024 edition (40p). Both Assessments cover terrorism and major state actors (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea). The broader Feb 2024 assessment also covers environmental change, extreme weather, health security, migration, disruptive technology, digital authoritarianism, weapons of mass destruction, Gaza, and potential interstate conflict and intrastate turmoil.
The Era of Global Risk
Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Univ of Cambridge
[Overviews]Vol 1: An Introduction to Existential Risk Studies, Open Book Publishers, Fall 2023, 333p (PDF and hardcopy). 10 essays on history, ecological breakdown, reducing X-risk, biosecurity, military AI, etc. Vol 2: An Anthology of Global Risk, Open Book, Sept 2024, 694p (PDF and hardcopy). 23 heavily footnoted chapters on methods, classifying global catastrophic risks, the likelihood of X-risk hazards, horizon scanning in policy and practice, AI futures, autonomous weapons, climate, volcanic eruptions, bioengineering horizons, etc.
State of the Future 20.0
Millennium Project (Jerome Glenn et al.)
[Overviews]Sept 2024, 519p. The 20th edition overview of 15 Global Challenges on climate, sustainability, the rich-poor gap, AGI, peace, diseases, and (unique from all of the above) global organized crime. Each Challenge has a global overview, impacts in 6 world regions, and a list of 20-25 proposed actions.
Planetary Health Check: Assessing the State of the Planet
Leuka Caesar, Johan Rockstrom, and 16 Others. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
[Planet]Sept 2024, 93p. The first annual report on planetary boundaries, including 6 processes that have breached safe levels: climate change, biosphere integrity, land systems, freshwater, phosphorus and nitrogen flows, and novel entities (plastics, GMOs, synthetic chemicals). Ocean acidification is close to a critical threshold. Atmospheric aerosol loading and ozone depletion are still in safe spaces.
Navigating New Horizons: Global Foresight Report on Planetary Health and Human Wellbeing
UN Environment Programme
[Planet]July 2024, 108p. The polycrisis is “the new global context.” Describes 18 signals of change, including new microbes in the thawing Arctic, new zoonotic diseases, harmful chemicals, AI weapons systems, uninhabitable spaces, and uninsurability.
Living Planet Report 2024: A System in Peril
World Wildlife Fund
[Planet]Sept 2024, 94p. Biodiversity sustains human life and underpins our societies. Since 1970, wildlife populations have shrunk: freshwater by 85%, marine by 56%, and terrestrial by 69%, due to habitat degradation, habitat loss to agriculture, invasive species, disease, and climate change.
The Global Threat of Drying Lands: Regional and Global Aridity Trends
UN Convention to Combat Desertification. Report of the Science-Policy Interface
[Planet]Dec 2024. 156p. “Aridity is the world’s largest single driver behind degradation of agricultural systems, affecting 40% of Earth’s arable lands.” The population living in drylands has doubled from 1.2 billion in 1990 to 2.3 billion in 2020, and up to 5 billion people could inhabit drylands by 2100.
Pathways Out of the Polycrisis: Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report 2024
World Bank Group
[Planet]Oct 2024, 300p. Beginning in 1990, rapid economic growth – especially in China and India – liberated more than 1 billion people from extreme poverty. After 2020, starting with COVID-19, “a major reversal began.” Poverty reduction has slowed to a near standstill, and “progress has stalled amid multiple shocks.” This report identifies new pathways to success and how to deliver the best possible outcomes for the three corners of economic development.
Progress Towards the Sustainable Development Goals: Report of the Secretary-General
UN Economic and Social Council
[People]May 2025, 22p. “The world is on track or making moderate progress on 35% of the 137 SDG targets with available data. Progress on 47% of the targets is insufficient, and 18% of the targets show regression from the 2015 baseline. Hunger and food insecurity have escalated, with over 750 million people hungry and >2.3 billion facing food insecurity. “Peace and security – the foundations of sustainable development – have deteriorated sharply.” Decent work for all has been uneven.
Can Humanity Achieve a Century of Nuclear Peace? Expert Forecasts of Nuclear Risks
Forecasting Research Institute and Open Nuclear Network
[Security]29 Oct 2024, 270p. A nuclear catastrophe by 2045 is defined as the death of >10 million people. Interviews and surveys with 119 domain experts and 41 “expert forecasters” predicted the likelihood of nuclear conflict. Experts had a median 5% probability of catastrophe by 2045; superforecasters only 1%. A sample of the US public was 10%. Several policies of caution would together halve the risk of catastrophe.
Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction
UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction
[Security]June 2025, 253p. Chapters cover global progress in disaster risk reduction targets of the Sendai Framework (the “big five” disasters – earthquakes, floods, storms, droughts, and heatwaves – account for >95% of direct losses, many of them preventable), undercounted costs of risks, risk reduction as a powerful lever to accelerate SDG achievement, future risks and costliest hazards to 2050, and financing and investing for resilience and economic stability.
The Sound of Silence: Ringing the H5N1 Alarm Bells
Pandemic Action Network
[Security]Dec 2024,28p. The world is not paying adequate attention to or preparing for a potential H5N1 avian influenza threat. Critical lessons from past pandemics and COVID-19 have not been learned. H5N1 has spread in recent months, particularly in the US. It could mutate, and the impact could be severe. Advocates increased transparency and data-sharing, more testing and monitoring, and enhanced access to medical countermeasures.
International AI Safety Report on the Safety of Advanced AI
AI Action Summit
[Security]Jan 2025, 298p. An expert panel led by Yoshia Bengio focuses on general-purpose AI, a step toward AGI that has increased rapidly in recent years. Describes three categories of risk: 1) malicious use (fake content, cyber offense, biological attacks); 2) Malfunctions (reliability issues, bias, loss of control); 3) Systemic Risks (labor markets, environmental risks, privacy, copyright infringement). Also discusses challenges for risk management, risk mitigation, and policymaking.
Global Governance Innovation Report 2025: Advancing the Pact for the Future and Environmental Governance
Stimson Center
[Sustainability]June 2025, 110p. On global macrotrends in 2025 and beyond, financing for development, international peace and security, digital cooperation, youth and future generations, moving beyond GDP as a measure of progress, transforming global governance and peacebuilding, and strengthening the international response to complex global shocks.
