From the environment to the pandemic, the risks in Davos

The news was celebrated around the world in January this year. Less than four months ago, but it feels like something from another decade… For the first time in the history of the Global Risks Report from the World Economic Forum, the environmental risks dominated the first five places in the probability rank, and three out of five in the impact rank. The report, which maps the risks for the next decade, is made based upon interviews with approximately 800 opinion makers and specialists around the world. This year, the organizers have also interviewed a second group, the Global Shapers, formed by future leaders (around 200 were heard) and the results were similar.

And how about the pandemics? Did Davos foresee what we are so devastatingly living today?

Since the first report was published in 2007, and considering the “Top Five” probability and impact risks, we could see that:

• In terms of probability, the risk “Chronic Diseases” is listed during the first four years (2007-2010), appearing in second, fifth, and twice in third place, respectively. During the following years, no risk related to the subject has ever been considered as highly probable to happen during the following decade.
• In terms of impact, the risk appears in 2007 (fourth place) and 2008 (fifth place), as “Pandemics”. In 2009 and 2010, “Chronic Diseases” comes in fourth place. In 2015, “Infectious Diseases” comes in second place. From then on, no mention in the “Top Five”.
• “Infectious Diseases” is placed tenth in terms of impact in 2020.
• The report also asked the people interviewed what ten risks were believed to increase in 2020. Nobody, neither the current leaders nor the future ones, mentioned anything similar to a pandemic.

Researching what was discussed during the last two Forums, we find the subject was always present some way. In 2018, the Forum held the conference “Are we ready for the next pandemic?”. There was a full house. “We know it will happen, but we have no way to avoid it”, said Sylvie Briand, a World Health Organization’s (WHO) infectious hazards specialist at the time. In 2019, a report published in Davos estimated that “pandemics will be the cause of average annual economic losses of 0.7 percent of global GDP – or $ 570 billion – a threat similar in scale to that estimated for climate change in the coming decades”. The report also mentioned that the world had registered around 200 epidemics annually, as from 2011. The trend was that they would grow even more, due to increases in trade, trips, higher population density, migration, deforestation and climate changes. Such analysis remains true and reflects what we have been witnessing in the news lately.

The 2020 Global Risks Report Executive Summary, when talking about Social Risks, brings a strong message, one we have been experiencing in the worst possible way: “Health systems around the world are at risk of becoming unfit for purpose. New vulnerabilities resulting from changing societal, environmental, demographic and technological patterns threaten to undo the dramatic gains in wellness and prosperity that health systems have supported over the last century (… ) Progress against pandemics is also being undermined by vaccine hesitancy and drug resistance, making it increasingly difficult to land the final blow against some of humanity’s biggest killers. As existing health risks resurge and new ones emerge, humanity’s past successes in overcoming health challenges are no guarantee of future results.”

Another part of the Summary shows that what we have been experiencing because of COVID-19 today was expected. The assertiveness of the analysis is impressive: “Like climate change, health risks pose an expensive and expanding transnational challenge. Around the world, health systems need to take a critical look at the fitness of their current approaches and institutions if we are to maintain the progress of the last century and tackle emerging threats. When health systems fail to mitigate vulnerabilities and adapt to changing contexts, they increase the likelihood of economic crises, political instability, social ruptures and state-on-state conflict.”

It is a fact now. We are – all the world and everybody – struggling against a pandemic that is stealing 2020 from us. Using the comparison made by the WEF itself, I hope (I work intensely against it) that we do not go through the same ordeal concerning climate changes. We were in an optimistic path. We saw the CEO from BlackRock, the world’s biggest investment management corporation, on his letter to the CEOs of the invested companies, explaining that sustainability had become their investment pattern. We saw Davos preaching the “Stakeholder Capitalism”. We had been seeing investors more and more aware of the environmental and climate risks.

We do not know what will happen when the world enters the “new normal”. However, we can and must get informed, be aware, analyze, get ready and act on the environmental risks that have been clearly discussed and that will undoubtedly materialize.