IoD Global Business Blog Banner Image 2

The Global Risks Report 2025

The Global Risks Report 2025, from the World Economic Forum (WEF), showcases the perceived risks to the world over the short term (two-year period) and long term (ten-year period).

Introduction

It is the 20th year of the Report, and it brings together insights on the global risks landscape from more than 900 experts across academia, business, government, international organisations and civil society.

The Report also draws on the WEF’s Executive Opinion Survey (EOS) to identify risks that pose the most severe threat to each country over the next two years, as identified by more than 11,000 business leaders in 121 economies.

This year’s report cites a broad range of risks – combining misinformation and disinformation, extreme weather, state-based armed conflict, societal polarisation and cyber warfare – among the top five over the next two years.

It is striking though that the ten-year outlook is once again dominated by environmental concerns – four of the top five biggest risks (and five of the top ten) relate to climate and environmental breakdown.

Another curious finding is that economic factors, still so prevalent in the day-to-day concerns of people, have vanished from the top ten risks in both the next two and ten years.

One final observation, which warrants further discussion, is that fears over the potential malign influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) – a subject with hours of TV news discussion and countless newspaper and magazine column inches devoted to it last year – does not even appear in the top ten risks in the two year period, ranking 31 out of 33, and takes the 6th spot over the ten year period. Have respondents downplayed or overlooked the potential problems of AI in the short term?

The Risk Report is a serious piece of work that may be a useful tool that company directors and risk committees may want to contrast and compare with their own internal list of potential ‘trip hazards’.

However, the Report is not infallible – state-based armed conflict, the current top risk for 2025, rated by 23% of respondents, was overlooked as a leading two-year risk in 2023.

Short Term Risks

The top risk for 2027 according to survey respondents is misinformation and disinformation – for the second year in a row.

It was a bumper year for elections in 2024, with close to 3 billion people going to the polls to elect new governments across several countries, including the UK and US.

Consequently, it was of little surprise that concerns about social media’s ability to influence, manipulate, divide and polarise the electorate were riding high last year.

However, respondent concern has remained high in the 2025 Report, with this risk a top concern across a majority of age categories and stakeholder groups. It is also becoming more difficult to differentiate between AI- and human-generated misinformation and disinformation.

The report said: “AI tools are enabling a proliferation in such information in the form of video, images, voice or text. Leading creators of false or misleading content include state actors in some countries.”

With fears about misinformation at the top of the rankings, it is perhaps surprising to note that concerns about adverse outcomes of AI technologies, which play an increasingly large role in the production and distribution of twisted and malign narratives, is so low in the risk ranking. In fact, it has fallen in the two-year outlook, now ranking at 31st compared with 29th in last year’s report.

“Complacency around the risks of such technologies should be avoided given the fast-paced change in the field of AI and its increasing ubiquity,” the report added.

Respondents also expressed unease over cyber espionage and warfare, which is 5th in the two-year ranking, echoing concerns outlined in the WEF’s 2024 Chief Risk Officers Outlook, where 71% of Chief Risk Officers expressed concern about the impact of cyber risk and criminal activity, such as money laundering and cybercrime, severely impacting their organisations.

Elevated state sponsored cyber risk perceptions also feed into an environment of heightened geopolitical and geoeconomic tensions. This is reflected in the two-year ranking of state-based armed conflict moving up from 5th in last year’s report to 3rd this year.

Wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, and Sudan have clearly amplified respondents’ concerns. The uncertainty over how a second Donald Trump presidency would deal with multilateralism generally, and particularly agencies like the United Nations and NATO, may also have been an influence.

Notably absent from this year’s top 10 in the short term are economic risks. Last year, two economic risks – inflation and economic downturn (recession, stagnation) – were firmly ensconced in the top 10. Concerns around both have since subsided – inflation, which was 7th last year, has plummeted to 29th, with a similar fall for economic downturn, which was 9th last year and is now 19th.

Long Term Risks

Environmental factors again dominate the risk outlook over a 10-year horizon. The impacts of environmental risks have worsened in intensity and frequency since the Global Risks Report was launched in 2006.

If the rear-view mirror looks bad, the view over the horizon is also pretty alarming.

All 33 risks in the Report are expected to worsen in severity from the two-year to the 10-year time horizon. But environmental risks present the most significant deterioration.

Extreme weather events are anticipated to become even more of a concern than they already are, with this risk coming top in the 10-year risk list for the second year running. Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse ranks 2nd, with a significant deterioration compared with its two-year ranking.

The Report shows there is generational divergence when it comes to risk perceptions of environmental issues. Younger survey respondents are more concerned about this over the next 10 years than older age groups.

For example, pollution is ranked 3rd most severe risk in 2035 by the under 30s – the highest of any age group surveyed. There is also divergence in how pollution is ranked by stakeholder, with the public sector placing it as a top 10 risk in the 10-year ranking, but not the private sector.

Saadia Zahidi, managing director of the WEF, said: “Looking back over the last two decades, environmental risks have steadily consolidated their position as the greatest source of long-term concern. This year’s Global Risks Perception Survey shows that a sense of alarm is also mounting in the shorter term: Environmental problems, from extreme weather to pollution, are here now and the need to implement solutions is urgent.”

Conclusion

Optimism appears to be in short supply. The 2025 Report shows that the global outlook is increasingly fractured across geopolitical, environmental, societal, economic and technological domains.

A majority of respondents (52%) anticipate an unsettled global outlook over the short term (next two years). The landscape deteriorates over the 10-year timeframe, with 62% of respondents expecting stormy or turbulent times.

Extreme weather events at home in the UK and around the world (the Los Angeles wildfires), conflict escalation and political polarisation have contributed to a sense of uncertainty in key areas of our lives. There is also a deepening distrust that current societal mechanisms and governing institutions are capable of turning back that tide.

Source: https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_Risks_Report_2025.pdf

About the author

image of Karl West

Karl West

Freelance journalist, podcaster and media adviser. Senior Consultant at The Institute of Directors.

Karl has more than 25 years of experience in the media sector, including several years at The Sunday Times and Daily Mail, where he wrote about business – mainly transport, defence and UK manufacturing industries.

He has a podcast – The All Points West Podcast – that interviews the founders, CEOs and Chairs of small and medium sized UK companies.

Better directors for a better world

The IoD supports directors and business leaders across the UK and beyond to learn, network and build successful, responsible businesses.

Creating global growth opportunities

Browse valuable global business resources from the IoD.
Internet Explorer
Your web browser is out of date and is not supported by the IoD website. It is important to update your browser for increased security and a better web experience.