Alert: 2016 Global Risk Report Ranks Water Crises as Top Long-term Risk

An annual survey of the world’s business, political, and scholarly elite reinforces a message that leaders are beginning to understand with greater depth and clarity: pay attention to water.

The World Economic Forum, whose membership includes heads of state, CEOs, and civic leaders, ranked water crises as the top global risk to industry and society over the next decade. Last year, water crises earned the top spot as the most damaging short-term risk. Along with water’s rise in the Paris climate talks, the rankings indicate that water, long the purview of engineers and lawyers, is now an urgent political matter.

The 11th edition of the Global Risks Report, made public this week and viewed as a distillation of the concerns of the world’s most influential businesses and governments, is a warning signal for turbulent times. National economies, some slow to recover from the great recession, are still saddled with debt, unemployment, and slow growth, while facing technological disruptions that promise to upset entire industries. A morass in the Middle East draws countries with superior firepower into conflict with hateful groups whose murderous ideas inspire zealots abroad. The fall in oil prices is forcing petro-kingdoms to reel in fuel and resource subsidies. Most of these trends were noted in previous World Economic Forum assessments. They are now coming to pass.

Amid the economic turbulence, disquieting long-term ecological events also are revealing themselves more fully and destructively. Environmental stress, worsened a by warming planet and a growing population, is leading to tension, both within and between countries, over scarce land, food, and water. The global average temperature is expected in 2016 to be 1 degree Celsius above 1850 levels. A carbon-influenced climate blanket is causing ice sheets to melt, droughts to intensify, and rising seas to flood Miami, Dhaka, and other coastal cities with greater frequency. Ethiopia is at the brink of yet another famine. South Africa, traditionally a corn exporter, will import nearly half its domestic needs this year due to the country’s worst drought in 34 years.

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Taxonomy

• Water Supply
• Water & Wastewater Treatment
• Water