World Economic Forum published the Global Risk Report 2019 last week stating ‘Extreme weather events’, ‘Failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation’ and ‘Natural disasters’ are the three dominated risks in terms of likelihood and impact. This is also the third year in a row that environmental-related risks are of greatest concern.
The report presents the results of our latest Global Risks Perception Survey, in which nearly 1,000 decision-makers from the public sector, private sector, academia and civil society assess the risks facing the world. Over a ten-year horizon, extreme weather and climate-change policy failures are seen as the severest threats.
It is predicted that the world might fail to meet the upper limit of 2°C rise in temperature set by the Paris Climate Agreement, stirring up concerns about the failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation policies. Natural disasters become a risk with a high occurrence possibility due to climate change, posing serious threats to economic and societal stability, such as destroying infrastructures, jeopardising livelihoods and disrupting production and delivery activities. Severe impacts brought by climate change include exposing coastal population to flooding threats and amplified storm surges, loss of biodiversity, disruption of food chain and altering changes in transmission patterns of infectious diseases, namely malaria, dengue fever and more.
With two-thirds of the territory being threatened by flooding, the Netherlands serve as an example demonstrating how to alleviate natural disaster risk. The country has been working hard on coastal adaption. First, the country has been constructing hard infrastructures including the largest storm-surge barrier in the world. Second, natural-based defense system is adopted, such as ‘the Sand Engine’ program, which dredges and deposits sediment to shores, protecting the coastline. Relocation of livelihood and investment in training are also strategies for protecting citizens from risks.
Governments should manage their finance properly to support the climate-change policies. For example, adopting robust financing strategy and building up mutual agreement on burden-sharing issue between different sectors, authorities and even countries. Facing an unprecedented level of environmental risks, it is expected that nations should work collectively to tackle climate change problem. Applying weather manipulation tools at scale can be a way to do so, such as cloud seeding. Deploying these tools inevitably affects neighbouring states, so it is essential for countries to work together to prevent misunderstanding and hostility.
