Global risk

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Global risks are risks that are global in nature and effect; H. with effects that go beyond regions of the world and continents and thus represent a global threat.

The global (new) risks that Ulrich Beck believes can set global catastrophes in motion are shaking the institutional and political foundations of modern societies.

Global risks can be divided into the following categories:

Disasters of the kind of global - regenerative - risks have occurred many times and have given people a cultural attitude towards these risks and their management ( "trial and error" ). Compared to existential risks, there is no experience of countering them.

Global natural risks

Global natural risks (e.g. tsunamis triggered by seaquakes , the impact of a celestial body ) cannot be influenced by humans in their formation, but their frequencies and effects can be determined on the basis of historical records.

The risks that threaten human civilization include B. the impact of an asteroid, a massive volcanic eruption or a global nuclear war . The impact of an approx. 2 km diameter asteroid or similar object , the frequency of which is estimated at 1E-6 per year, has such a destruction potential.

A major volcanic eruption that can cause catastrophic climate change, similar to the Toba volcanic eruption , is estimated at a frequency of 2E-5 per year.

The Global Risk Data Platform makes information and data available online on the global risks of natural disasters based on historical records, such as tropical cyclones, drought, earthquakes, fires, floods, landslides, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. By visualizing the events (the places where they originated), the global risks are made more visible and different risk areas can be displayed using zoom functions (e.g. the historical tsunami events off the Japanese coast).

A special feature of the future development of climate-related extreme events arises from the fact that droughts, heat waves and storms cause the soil ( desertification , progressive desertification) and the plants' capacity to absorb carbon dioxide sharply and, as a result, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the global warming . This creates a self-reinforcing effect on the carbon balance of the atmosphere , the influence of which is the subject of intensive research today. Due to the massive emissions of greenhouse gases caused by humans, the disaster risk from global warming can also be assigned to civilizational risks, with the corresponding consequences (see climate policy ).

Global civilizational risks

The maximum potential for destruction - created by man - consists in the nuclear arsenals of the nuclear powers, whose potential hazard (and operational capability) is still there. During the Cuban Missile Crisis (of 1962), 50 years ago , John F. Kennedy estimated the probability of a nuclear war at 33% to 50%.

In the case of civilizational risks (e.g. of the global financial system), the systemic risks are in the foreground: A systemic risk is the potential loss or damage to an entire system, in contrast to the loss of a unit of this system.

The peculiarity of systemic risks is that they are triggered by sudden events, with a potential with large and catastrophic effects having built up over time.

Mechanisms of systemic risk

With increasing globalization in all areas of economy, technology, environment and culture, the risks with global effects also increase. By striving for ever greater effectiveness and higher profit, an ever more intensive networking and bundling of business and communication processes is taking place in the global economy, which results in previously unknown global dependencies and risks. As the financial crisis of 2008 showed, cascading shocks could spread across the world.

According to Nikolai Dmitrijewitsch Kondratjew , the world economy goes through recurring cycles, each of which is ended by severe economic turbulence. The basic mechanisms for the collapse of complex systems, be it in finance or a complex industrial plant, are always the same. It is characteristic of these systems that they consist of a practically no longer manageable number of components or functional units and that they achieve the common system result through multi-layered effect structures (cf. Charles Perrow , "Normal Accidents").

According to Casti , the causes of global shocks lie in the complexity of the systems, which in turn consist of two or more interlocking complex systems. The complexity gradually develops to a critical state, which can lead to a system breakdown (the "X-Event"). The financial crisis of 2008 , for example, was characterized by global, inscrutable dependencies between financial institutions, highly complex financial products and ineffective financial controls (based on the view that the market regulates processes to a sufficient extent). The Fukushima reactor accident in 2011 revealed gaps in the highly complex safety system as well as weaknesses in the effectiveness of its monitoring due to a close connection between politics and the power plant operator. For systems - dominated by humans - there are practically no data and trustworthy models to predict such developments. We move here ignorantly in the unknown (“ unknown unknowns ”). Only the degree of complexity - however measurable - can be an indicator of the instability of the system.

In order to better understand the causal connections of the global threats, the visible indicators , the obvious weaknesses in the world economy, such as economic imbalances, strongly fluctuating raw material prices and currencies, colossal national debt and budget deficits, are of the invisible drivers of the tightly woven connections between the commercial information - and the supply chains of the world economy.

The evaluation of experiences from extreme events / natural disasters should be used to identify the damage mechanisms underlying the events and to be recorded in international databases and made generally accessible, e.g. B. the "OFDA-CRED International Disaster Database".

The global shocks also have a positive side. They shake up ingrained, encrusted structures in society, government institutions and industry and open up a great deal of freedom for a “new way of thinking” that would not be possible without such a shock.

Risk management

International institutions recommend the systematic application of risk management (RM) at national level to avert danger from environmental disasters . To this end, multinational cooperation to identify the dangers and risks is to be improved and intensified:

  • OECD Reviews of Risk Management Policies - Future Global Shocks: Improving Risk Governance. 2011
  • UN - International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR): A system to support worldwide activities to identify and monitor disaster risks. 1999
  • UN - Global Risk Identification Program (GRIP): National Disaster Observatories and National Risk Information Systems to integrate all existing disaster and risk related information and make it available to all potential users. 2007
  • World Bank - Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR): The principal goal is to reduce human suffering and economic loss caused by natural and man-made disasters. 2006
  • EU Commission - Risk Assessment and Mapping Guidelines for Disaster Management: To improve coherence and consistency among the risk assessments undertaken in the Member States at national level. 2010
  • G20 / OECD - Disaster Risk Assessment and Risk Financing: The value of Disaster Risk Management. 2012

These programs are intended to support countries with a high disaster potential (such as earthquakes , volcanoes , floods , landslides , droughts , forest fires ) in the application of risk management in order to better analyze and understand the risks. ( Improving disaster risk management capacity in member countries. )

These include in particular the training of national institutions national to set up risk management systems that capture and store uniform data on nature-related and technological hazards, the development of analytical tools, international standards for RM and the exchange of good practices ( " best practice ") .

This “new knowledge” has already found its way into school books in various countries and promotes a culture of disaster risk reduction.

The essential components of disaster risk management are:

  • Analysis of the disaster risk by identifying the dangers (threats) and determining the overall breadth of the possible effects and their probabilities, naming the uncertainties on which the analysis is based. Consideration of the entire spectrum of possible catastrophes, their causes ( underlying drivers ) using historical events and trends (such as climate change, terrorism, industrial accidents).
  • Communication of risk results ( risk communication ) to decision-makers and the population. Since the risk analysis is generally complex and difficult to understand for the layperson, the results should be presented as simply as possible. For the transparency and traceability of the analysis, the methods used (including expert estimates), sources, data, assumptions and limits of the analysis must be named. The results of the analysis should be verified by an independent body.

Approaches to assessing disaster risks

European Union

The EU is developing - in the time frame up to 2014 - a European guideline on the methods for analyzing and creating risk plans in European countries ( Risk assessment and mapping guidelines for disaster management ). This is intended to promote the use of risk methods in the individual member countries and to enable the analyzes and results to be compared. The experience already available about national risk assessments in various countries (especially in UK, NL, DE, SE, FR, USA, Australia, Canada) is used.

The EU directive covers the analysis of all natural and man-made disasters, such as floods, drought, earthquakes, forest fires, agricultural risks, pandemics, industrial accidents, nuclear risks. Warlike and terrorist events are excluded from this. Based on historical experience, the risk results should, as far as possible, be based on quantitative probability values.

The risk and hazard plans ( risk / hazard maps , see also danger zone planning ) in risk-relevant geographical areas are important components of risk prevention in the countries by promoting transparency and communication about the risk results between social groups. They also provide the basis for making decisions about the priority risks and the measures to be taken to prevent them. The implementation of the "national risk analysis" is a task in the individual member countries, which must be centrally managed and coordinated by an authorized organization.

Floods with their cross-border effects represent the greatest disaster risks in Europe. Accordingly, the risk plans for floods are the most developed and have brought together 24 European countries and organizations to create them (Cross-border Dimension of Risk Assessment). For this purpose, the EU created Directive 2007/60 / EC on the assessment and management of flood risks.

WorldRiskReport

The WorldRiskIndex quantifies the risk from extreme natural events for 173 countries worldwide and is published annually in the WorldRiskReport . The disaster risk that is determined for a country or a region takes into account not only the part of the risk analysis consisting of the probability and impact of the disaster event, but also the social, political and environmental factors of the country, as they affect in the event of a disaster. The vulnerability of society concerns the susceptibility, coping capacity and adaptability of a country's population to the natural event concerned. It is determined as part of the risk assessment based on the living conditions of the people in the country, such as infrastructure, housing, medical and disaster preparedness, education, environmental protection.

The risk analysis of natural hazards is based on experience from 1970–2005 with regard to floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and droughts. These comprise 74 percent of all natural hazards and 88 percent of all deaths caused by natural hazards. In the decade 2002–2011, 4,130 catastrophes were documented around the world, killing over a million people.

In the global risk ranking of the 15 countries with the highest risk, there are 8 island states that are particularly exposed to natural hazards such as cyclones, floods and the currently observed rise in sea ​​level . In terms of exposure, the Netherlands ranks 12th among the most vulnerable countries in the world. Social, economic, ecological and institutional factors significantly reduce the risk of disasters in the Netherlands and ranks 51st.

After disasters prevent societies from developing progress, this deficiency in turn increases the risk of disaster. To break this vicious circle, sustainable strategies to reduce disaster risks must be developed.

World Economic Forum

The Global Risk Network was founded in 2004 by the World Economic Forum to investigate global risks . The following results are found in the studies of current global risks:

  • Economic differences and social inequality between states pose a risk that reverses the successes of globalization (2012).
  • The world is now more threatened by the ongoing economic weakness, it undermines our ability to meet the ecological challenges (2013).
  • Global risks are largely determined by the increasing dependencies between international financial systems, supply chains, health, energy, the Internet and the environment, which can lead to cascading shocks. Due to the numerous and complex interconnections of global risks, it is very difficult to make reliable predictions (2014).

method

The determination of global risks is based on 50 risk categories from five areas of economy, geopolitics , environment, society and technology. The risk categories are assessed in terms of their probability (L-likelihood) and severity (I-Impact) - as they can develop in a time frame over the next 10 years - in a value range of 1 (low) and 7 (high) . They are determined by interviewing around a thousand experts, the results of which are published annually in the “Global Risks Reports”.

The main goals of the investigations are to identify changes in global risks from year to year, to identify the risk drivers, to network risks and to identify strategies to contain global risks. In order to identify and avoid the risks, it is necessary to understand the underlying causes. They have their roots in a complex chain of events that arise over time from socio-economic factors, environmental conditions and individual behavior. This causal chain offers many starting points for interventions.

Results of the risk assessments

The results of the risk assessment are shown in the table below, with the 5 risk categories identified with the highest probabilities (L-likelihood) and the greatest possible effects (I-Impact) being listed.

Risk categories / evaluation years 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
economy
Severe income differences L. L. L.
Chronic budget imbalances L / I L / I
Significant systemic financial errors I. I.
Extreme fluctuations in energy and agricultural prices I. I.
Financial crises I. L / I I. I.
Collapse in asset prices L / I L / I L / I L / I I.
Downsizing through globalization I. I. L. I. L / I
Chinese economy slowing down (<6%) L. I. L. L.
Oil price spikes L / I L / I I. I.
environment
Increasing greenhouse gas emissions L. L.
Meteorological disasters L. L.
Hydrological disasters L. I.
Loss of biodiversity L.
Climatological disasters L / I L / I
geopolitics
corruption L.
Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction I.
Geopolitical conflicts I.
Global government weaknesses L. L.
Middle East instability L.
Failed and failing states L.
Interstate and Civil Wars I.
Social
Water supply crises L / I L / I
Mismanagement of the aging population L.
Food scarcity crises I. I.
Chronic diseases L. L. L / I L / I
Pandemics I. I.
technology
Cyber ​​attacks L. L.
Collapse of the critical information infrastructure L. I.

See also

literature

  • Charles Perrow: Normal Accidents, Living with High Risk Technologies , Basic Books, USA, 1984 (In his studies of industrial accidents, Perrow points to the high complexity of industrial plants - nuclear power plants, chemical plants - which make the systems inscrutable with regard to their risks and intended improvements increase the complexity and therefore also the system risk.)

Web links

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Global Risks 2009, Appendix 2: Global Risks Report: Process and Definition.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / members.weforum.org  
  2. ↑ Ulrich Beck: World Risk Society. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2007.
  3. ↑ N. Bostrom, Existential Risks - Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards, Journal of Evolution and Technology Vol. 9 - March 2002. online (PDF; 83 kB),
  4. ^ Clemens Rumpf, Hugh G. Lewis, Peter M. Atkinson: The global impact distribution of Near-Earth objects . In: Icarus . tape 265 , February 2016, ISSN  0019-1035 , p. 209–217 , doi : 10.1016 / j.icarus.2015.10.026 ( elsevier.com [accessed August 25, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Chapman, Clark R., Impacts on the Earth by asteroids and comets: assessing the hazard, Nature, Volume 367. bibcode : 1994Natur. 367 ... 33C
  6. ↑ David Morrison, Defending the Earth Against Asteroids: The Case for a Global Response, Science and Global Security, 13: 87-103, 2005. online (PDF; 102 kB)
  7. ^ Rampino, MR and Ambrose, SH, Super eruptions as a threat to civilizations on Earth-like planets, Icarus, 2002.
  8. ↑ Global Risk Data Platform .
  9. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from April 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Extreme Weather Heats Up Climate Change - Global warming could intensify itself through extreme meteorological events, August 14, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bgc-jena.mpg.de
  10. ↑ Noam Chomsky, Im Schatten von Hiroshima, WG Friedensforschung, August 2, 2012. online
  11. ↑ Graham Allison, The Cuban Missile Crisis at 5o - Lessons for US Foreign Policy Today, 2012. online (PDF; 339 kB)
  12. ↑ a b Global Risks 2010 (PDF; 3.9 MB)
  13. ↑ a b OECD - Reviews of Risk Management Policies - Future Global Shocks - IMPROVING RISK GOVERNANCE, 2011.
  14. ↑ a b OECD - Global Modeling of Natural Hazard Risks, September 2012. (PDF; 6.6 MB)
  15. ^ Charles Perrow: Normal Accidents, Living with High Risk Technologies, Basic Books, USA, 1984.
  16. ↑ a b c Archive link ( Memento of the original dated February 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 140 kB), John Casti. “X-Events in Social Processes - Trends and Transitions”, 2012. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / xeventsunlimited.com
  17. ^ OFDA-CRED International Disaster Database EM-DAT.
  18. ^ OECD Reviews of Risk Management Policies - Future Global Shocks - Improving Risk Governance, August 4, 2011.
  19. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from August 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , UN - International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), 1999. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.unbrussels.org
  20. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from March 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , UN - Global Risk Identification Program (GRIP), 2007. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.undp.org
  21. ↑ a b c World Bank - Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), 2006.
  22. ↑ a b EU Commission - Risk Assessment and Mapping Guidelines for Disaster Management, 2010.
  23. ↑ a b G20 / OECD - Disaster Risk Assessment and Risk Financing - A G20 / OECD METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK. (PDF; 2.3 MB)
  24. ^ A new EU Floods Directive.
  25. ↑ Directive 2007/60 / EC on the assessment and management of flood risks, November 6, 2007 .
  26. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 10.2 MB), World Risk Report 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.weltrisikobericht.de
  27. ↑ a b c World Risk Report 2010 ( Memento from September 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 6.7 MB), World Risk Report 2012.
  28. ↑ Global Risks 2012 - Seventh Edition.
  29. ↑ a b Archive link ( Memento of the original from March 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , World Economic Forum Global Risks 2013 Report. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.weforum.org
  30. ↑ World Economic Forum Global Risks 2014 Report. (PDF)
  31. ↑ a b Global health risks report, 2004. (PDF; 3.8 MB)