The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2025 found that environmental risks are deteriorating faster than other threats and challenges.
The report, published this month, draws on the opinions of key stakeholders across academia, business, government, international organizations, and civil society. In the aggregate, these experts see worsening extreme weather as the most severe long-term threat.
Along with environmental risks, the report highlights misinformation, rising geopolitical tensions, and increased social fragmentation. These challenges might do more than distract from the collaborative work of environmental protection. They could also actively hamper it.
What Is the Global Risks Report?
The Global Risks Report is an annual study released by the World Economic Forum (WEF), an international organization that promotes global collaboration on economic and geopolitical issues.
The report provides insights into the threats and challenges that humanity faces in the years ahead. The Global Risks Report 2025 was derived largely from the Global Risks Perception Survey 2024-2025 (GRPS), which gathers insights from over 900 experts.
According to Saadia Zahidi, the WEF’s managing director, the report focuses on “multi-decade structural forces,” including “technological acceleration, geostrategic shifts, climate change, and demographic bifurcation.”
The WEF is an important stakeholder in global affairs. The 2026 iteration of its annual meeting in Davos, for example, saw world leaders wrangling on Greenland, tariffs, and other consequential issues.
The WEF’s prominence and reputation make its Global Risk Report an impactful resource for business and political leaders.
Experts See Environmental Risks as Most Severe
Drawing on data from the GRPS, the WEF measured the severity of 33 different risks. Those in the “environmental” category appear as the most severe over a 10-year time horizon.
The most severe risk of all, according to the report, is “Extreme weather events,” followed by “Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse,” “Critical change to Earth systems,” and “Natural resource shortages.” All of these environmental risks are considered more severe than the most concerning non-environmental risk, which is “Misinformation and disinformation.”
This is the second successive GRPS in which “Extreme weather events” ranks as the most severe long-term risk.
The Private Sector’s Lack of Concern for Pollution
In addition to aggregating survey responses, the Global Risks Report shows how different categories of experts ranked the risks.
On the issue of pollution, experts from the private sector expressed far less concern than experts from civil society, academia, and government.
The WEF notes in the report that pollution “is the world’s largest environmental risk factor for disease and premature deaths, and its impacts are unequal, with 92% of pollution-related deaths and the greatest burden of related economic losses occurring in low- and middle-income countries.”
Despite these harms, private sector experts did not rank pollution as one of the 10 largest threats over a 10-year time horizon. Experts from academia, meanwhile, considered pollution the fifth-most-severe risk.
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Environmental Degradation in a Turbulent World
The environmental risks in the Global Risks Report 2025 sit alongside a number of other short- and long-term threats, all of which are expected to increase in severity over the next 10 years.
Across risk categories, experts expressed a pessimistic outlook in their survey responses. Just 8% of respondents expect the world to be “calm” in 2034, while 62% expect it to be “turbulent” or “stormy.”
The report also reflects a deepening of geopolitical and geoeconomic tensions. Twenty-three percent of experts rank “State-based armed conflict” as the No. 1 short-term risk for humanity.
Meanwhile, social fragmentation — defined by risks like “Inequality,” “Societal polarization,” and “Involuntary migration or displacement” — is considered especially threatening. According to the WEF, these social ills tend to exacerbate other risks. For example, inequality can weaken public infrastructure, which in turn worsens natural resource shortages.
For policymakers, it seems, separating environmental objectives from other risks is impossible. The only way forward is to address environmental issues from within the social, political, and economic contexts in which they arise.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of Impakter.com — In the Cover Photo: A flooded village. Cover Photo Credit: Pok Rie.
