This 10th edition of the Global Risks report is published at a time of profound transformations to our global context. Ongoing political, economic, social, environmental and technological developments are challenging many of our underlying assumptions. Across every sector of society, decision-makers are struggling to cope with heightened complexity and uncertainty resulting from the world’s highly interconnected nature and the increasing speed of change. 

Faster communication systems, closer trade and investment links, increasing physical mobility and enhanced access to information have combined to bind countries, economies and businesses more tightly together. In the coming decade – the time horizon of this report – our lives will be even more intensely shaped by transformative forces that are under way already. The effects of climate change are accelerating and the uncertainty about the global geopolitical context and the effects it will have on international collaboration will remain. At the same time, societies are increasingly under pressure from economic, political and social developments including rising income inequality, but also increasing national sentiment. Last but not least, new technologies, such as the Internet or emerging innovations will not bear fruit if regulatory mechanisms at the international and national levels cannot be agreed upon. 

In a world where risks transcend borders and sectors, the motivations underlying the Global Risks report at its inception in 2005 – to shed light on global risks and help create a shared understanding of the most pressing issues, the ways they interconnect and their potential negative impacts – are more relevant than ever. The shared understanding of challenges is needed as a base for multistakeholder collaboration, which has seen increasing recognition as the most effective way to address global risks and build resilience against them. To further inspire action, in this year’s report we include a new section sharing examples of risk mitigation and resilience practices.

As in previous years, the report is based on the annual Global Risks Perception Survey, completed by almost 900 members of the World Economic Forum’s global multistakeholder community. This year’s report introduces a new distinction between risks and trends, which allows the highlighting of trends as an enlarged solution space to many possible risks. The report also presents deep-dive discussions of the risks posed by a resurgence of interlinked economic and geopolitical power plays, the rapid urbanization of the developing world and the exciting realm of emerging technologies, from synthetic biology to artificial intelligence. 

The coming year offers unprecedented opportunities for much-needed collective action to address key global risks, such as the Sendai world conference on disaster risk reduction and the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. As we mark the 10th anniversary of the report and highlight progress that has been achieved over the past decade, my hope remains that this work will contribute to the debate on how we think about global risks, mitigate them and strengthen resilience.