Dodgy Davos (Part 3)

Dodgy Davos (Part 3)

Global socio-economic risks of highest concern identified by the World Economic Forum (WEF) for 2016 ranked as follows: (1) involuntary migration (refugees); (2) Government collapse; (3) inter-State conflict; (4) Employment; (5) National governance1. All of these risks are interrelated, thus systemic in nature, for example weak governments are further weakened by a lack of governance, which can lead to the collapse of the rule of law, which in turn create an environment for conflict, which erodes business confidence and job creation opportunities, which push affected citizens to flee in search of stability, security, and a better future elsewhere.   

Dealing with these global issues must be seen as a “nested problem”, which implies problems feeding into each other (feedback loops in systems science). Once leaders understand and appreciate the systemic nature of our global challenges, then it may lead to the adoption of new approaches to resolve or at least lessen the extent of the problems. Dealing with our global challenges as if they are static, discreet (separate), & linear is in itself co-contributing to the problems. In simple words then, the treatment of the problems is in itself, part of the problem1,2. The inability to appreciate this basic systemic reality, in itself makes the problems worse2. Recall that systemic risks are defined as risks that can trigger unexpected large-scale perturbations (changes) of a system3. Scientific research on this subject, have mostly been focused upon natural disasters like hurricanes, tsunami’s, earthquakes, tectonic plate movements, and our large-scale engineering & build infrastructure like energy networks. It generally have not looked at systemic risks in social & economic systems, which are technically more disruptive in scale, magnitude & consequences since it includes financial systems, economic systems, food & resource security, climate change, wars, epidemics, population growth3. We shall use 1 example from those listed above, say climate change, to illustrate the point of systemic effects. The effects of climate change is already causing roughly a 3rd of global refugees3, whilst future consequences include more frequent natural disasters, water shortages, socio-political instability, involuntary migrations, etc3. These costs and risks are real and unfortunately poorly understood as they reside under social system dynamics, which are given scant attention compared to, say economic system dynamics. Their linkages and inter-relatedness are ignored and they continue to be studied and treated as discrete entities, causing greater problems that decrease our capacity to prepare for such dislocations. When these problems manifest, we will look for whom we can blame, when the truth is that we have been warned by many scholars coming from diverse backgrounds, which is put across succinctly by Bollinger “too many policy failures are fundamentally failures of knowledge”4. Davos participants should appreciate the importance of the systemic nature of our socio-economic systems, for meaningful contributions to our current global challenges, as the very cybernetic future being discussed are directly affected by the currently flawed global architecture.

References

• Rosamond Hutt, R., 2016, World Economic Forum: What are the biggest threats in 2016?, Published Tuesday 19th January 2016;

• Udemans, F., 2012, The golden thread: Escaping socio-economic subjugation: an experiment in applied complexity science, Authorhouse UK;

• Helbing, D., 2010, The Emergence of Risks: Contributing Factors, Phase 1 of IRGC’s project on Emerging Risks, International Risk Governance Council, October 2010, https://irgc.org/Project-Overview.219.html;

• Bollinger, L.C., 2005, Office of the President of Columbia University, Columbia Committee on Global Thought, https://www.columbia.edu/cu/president/docs/communications/2005-2006/051214-committee-global- thought.html;