Now in its 11th edition, The Zurich Global Risks Report 2016 draws attention to ways that global risks could evolve and interact in the next decade. The year 2016 marks a forceful departure from past findings, as the risks about which the Report has been warning over the past decade are starting to manifest themselves in new, sometimes unexpected ways and harm people, institutions and economies. Warming climate is likely to raise this year’s temperature to 1° Celsius above the pre-industrial era, 60 million people, equivalent to the world’s 24th largest country and largest number in history, are forcibly displaced, and crimes in cyberspace costs the global economy an estimated US$445 billion, higher than many economies’ national incomes. In this context, the Report calls for action to build resilience – the “resilience imperative” – and identifies practical examples of how it could be done.
