Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions, University of Cambridge – Centre for Risk Studies
Sinopse: Risk is an ever-present fact of life. Yet as our world becomes more globalized and interconnected, we have inadvertently built systems which have not just the ability to transmit those risks across geographies and turn them from local into global phenomena, but which also have the ability to cause further global crises to materialize. Moreover, these crises are arguably more ‘existential’ in nature than ever before — have we ever knowingly faced a planetary threat as critical as the one climate change presents?
In the report that follows, we examine the nature of ‘systemic risk’, identifying a Global Risk Nexus of 10 key systemic risks, from climate change to biodiversity loss and natural disasters, through antimicrobial resistance, human and agricultural pandemics, to cyber risk and global governance failure, and ultimately global economic and financial crises. We also examine the interlinkages between those risks, for example, how climate change can drive biodiversity loss, with the potential to impact global food chains and financial and economic crises.
These risks can seem so overwhelmingly large and complex in their nature, it is easy to become resigned to our powerlessness to understand and quantify them, let alone to try to prevent them. Yet as John Dryden observed in the 17th century, ‘It is madness to make fortune the mistress of events, because by herself she is nothing, and is ruled by prudence.’ His words ring as true today as they did then — many of the issues facing us are not in fact unprecedented. With a prudent approach we can analyze and quantify them, predict their severity or frequency, and even prevent them.
