World Economic Forum urges global cooperation against fragmentation rising from competition to combat immediate, short, medium, and long-term risks, according to recent report
Armed conflict between states, disinformation, and misinformation are among the most prominent risks threatening the world in 2025, according to the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report survey results released on Wednesday.
The report said that the top most immediate risk stands out as state-based armed conflict, led by rising geopolitical tensions and global fragmentation, citing the responses of nearly one-quarter of the respondents to the survey.
Disinformation and misinformation are short-term risks for this year, which further fuel instability and undermine trust in governance, it added.
Environmental risks remain the top long-term risk, the report also said. Extreme weather events, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem collapse, as well as shortages in natural resources, lead the 10-year risks threatening the world.
The report showed that some short-term environmental risks were health and ecosystem-related consequences of air, water, and land pollution. Extreme weather events threaten across the board as a short, medium, and long-term, as well as immediate, risk.
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies also contributes to environmental and technological risks, disinformation, and disinformation, the report said.
More than half of the respondents to the survey expect instability within two years due to the fractures in international cooperation. Respondents expressed pessimism about the global landscape by 2035 due to deepening environmental, technological, and societal problems.
“Rising concerns about illicit economic activity, mounting debt burdens and the concentration of strategic resources highlight vulnerabilities that could destabilize the global economy in the coming years,” the report said.
The forum also noted that over half of the respondents estimate global fragmentation due to competition between countries, stressing the need for effective global cooperation, as fragmentation leads to challenges in multilateralism.
