Two significant reports were released in mid-January offering insights on the perceived dangers to the world and to the UK, writes our regular contributor Robert Hall.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) launched its annual Global Risks Report (GRR) 2025 ahead of its Davos gathering, while the UK Government published its biennial National Risk Register (NRR) 2025. Both documents merit close study as they provide valuable assessments and give useful information on possible responses. This article highlights the main points of the two documents by way of a comparative overview.
Beyond the obvious point that the reports address different geographic regions, it is worth pointing out that risk is a combination of threat and vulnerability: if there is no vulnerability there is no risk. Hence, it is important to bear in mind that countries or regions may experience the same threat but vary in risk assessments according to specific vulnerabilities.
Methodologies
The 104-page GRR incorporates data mainly from two surveys: one looks at the thoughts from over 900 world experts across academia, business, government, international organisations and civil society; the other identifies risks that pose the most severe threat to countries over the next two years, as identified by over 11,000 business leaders in 121 economies. Accordingly, the report reflects the risks perceived primarily by the private sector but they can still be interpreted and valued by a much wider readership. The risks in the GRR are portrayed by way of rankings over time based on survey returns of likelihood and impact (severity); the latter is measured on a 1-7 scale.
The 186-page NRR on the other hand draws on ‘input and challenge from hundreds of experts from UK Government departments, the devolved governments, the government scientific community, intelligence and security agencies, and independent experts’. This includes academic institutions and industry. The audience is primarily the public sector but it also has a wider appeal as an official record of the upcoming dangers.
For obvious reasons, the NRR, based on the classified National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA), does not highlight any vulnerability that an opponent would find advantageous other than by giving a broad overview of potential impact if a risk materialised. It claims to provide a ‘cause-agnostic basis for planning for the common consequences of risks’. The report uses a traditional 5×5 risk matrix that assesses each risk by impact (1-5) against likelihood (1-5).
In a separate announcement on January 16, the UK Government acknowledged that the NRR (and the NSRA) had ‘moved to a dynamic assessment process, with risks updated several times a year in response to changes to the risk landscape or new evidence’. The hope is that more users of the NRR will benefit from this shift as well as enable them to carry out better ‘resilience planning’. This could be facilitated with a brief explanation of the shifts, the actions, the learnings and the responsibilities that emanate.
Timeframes
The GRR explores risks over one-, two- and ten-year horizons. This is a valuable contribution to seeing how risks may evolve and change in prioritisation. The NRR, however, restricts itself to assessment periods of five years for non-malicious risks such as accidents or natural hazards, and two years for malicious risks such as terrorist attacks or cyber-attacks. While horizon scanning beyond a few years is challenging, it is important to stretch the horizon as far as possible when long lead times are often demanded in design and manufacture. This is particularly true for solutions in the biomedical, defence and environmental arenas; hospitals and flood defences take years in the planning and delivery. Hence, looking a decade ahead, no matter how imperfect, seems more pertinent than adopting any lesser time.
Catalogues of risks
The NRR includes information on 89 risks, with 63 listed (some grouped) in the matrix. There are nine risk themes: Terrorism; Cyber; State Threats; Geographic and diplomatic; Accidents and systems failures; Natural and environmental hazards; Human, animal and plant health; Societal; Conflict and instability). Most of the risk summaries include a scenario, key assumptions, response capability requirements, and recovery notes.
This is the same categorisation and number of risks as in the NRR 2023 but does represent a 134 per cent rise in the number of risks since the NRR 2020. An increase in probability could reasonably be anticipated for certain risks in a more volatile world. Yet, the latest risk matrix indicates a reduction in likelihood of a ‘Conventional attack on infrastructure’ from a rating of 4 (i.e. highly unlikely, 5-25pc) to one of 3 (i.e. remote chance, 0-5pc). With the Scandinavian countries experiencing attacks on energy and communication links in the Baltic, and recent maritime intrusions in the North Sea, the danger to the UK from similar links around our shores could be expected. The NRR does concede that the likelihood of the risk of ‘Disruption to global oil trade routes’ has increased from 2 to 3 (i.e. remote chance).
The only other major change highlighted in the NRR is the impact of a ‘Major outbreak of African swine fever’ which has increased from 2 to 3, costing hundreds of £millions rather than tens of £millions. Other scenarios or variations of risk have been updated. As anticipated, a pandemic remains one of the risks with the highest impact (5) – there are four others – but is believed to be highly unlikely (4). (In the GRR infectious disease does not appear in the short- or- long-term, top-ten rankings.)
To illustrate the problems of applying a risk matrix, it should be pointed out that the overall risk (15) in the NRR for a ‘Failure of the National Electricity Transmission System’ (i.e. 5 for impact, 3 for likelihood) is the same as that for a ‘Disaster response in the Overseas Territories’ (i.e. 3 for impact, 5 for likelihood), hardly a worthy comparison but the consequence of simple graphical representation.
A GRR ‘Global risk’ is defined as the possibility of an event or condition that would negatively impact a significant proportion of global GDP, population or natural resources. Relevant definitions for each of the 33 global risks are offered. Five risk categories are explored: economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal, and technological. The key risk findings for all timeframes in the report are described as: Declining optimism, Deepening geopolitical and geo-economic tensions, A growing sense of societal fragmentation, Environmental risks – from long-term concern to urgent reality, and Technological risks – still ‘under the radar’.
The top GRR risk for 2027 is shown as ‘Misinformation and disinformation’ which drops to fifth in 2035. (The NRR records this as a chronic risk – see below.) ‘Extreme weather events’ occupy the second slot but become top after ten years. ‘Looking ahead to the next decade, ‘Inequality’ and ‘Societal polarization’ continue to feature among the top ten risks. This is an important pair of risks to watch, given how related they can be to bouts of social instability, and in turn to domestic political and to geo-strategic volatility.’ (The NRR does not feature these risks.) Interestingly, social polarization is currently seen in the GRR as more important by people over 50. Perhaps the NRR would benefit from a consideration of age disparities in its risk calculations to help inform the audience responsible for the delivery of certain public services.
Chronic risks
The focus in the GRR of mega-risks and trends highlights the main difference between the two reports. The GRR documents them in detail and is valuable for its analysis and the ideas listed under ‘Actions for today’. One of those actions is support for multilateral institutions to reduce state-based armed conflict. It believes that: ‘it is clear that there is no viable alternative to multilateral solutions going forward’. Nevertheless, the well-intentioned sentiment may be overly optimistic in the current political climate where multilateralism in on the wane.
The NRR concentrates primarily on acute rather than chronic risks. A short section is devoted to the latter which it states are ‘long-term challenges that gradually erode our economy, community, way of life, and/or national security’. Twenty-six chronic themes and drivers are briefly listed, ranging from climate change through fraud and illicit finance to anti-microbial resistance for example.
In an apparent effort not to make a long document even longer, the register states: ‘To make the NRR most usable by resilience practitioners, these ‘chronic’ risks are not included in the NRR.’ It goes on to say that the government has established a new process for identifying and assessing these risks and that: ‘The methodology utilises futures and systems thinking to help policy makers understand the potential implications of these risks on their policy areas, and develop appropriate mitigations.’ The government announced on January 16 that a public-facing version of the classified assessment of chronic risks ‘will be published soon’. It is regrettable that the complete list of acute and chronic risks could not be published under one cover to provide a comprehensive, albeit long, account.
Resilience
One aspect receiving scant mention in this year’s GRR is resilience as a specific action to counter the mega-risks and their cascading consequences. Resilience is mentioned only four times in the whole text (compared to 39 times in 2023 and 17 in 2024) but will surely be of over-riding importance in the responses to any upcoming global disruption.
By way of comparison, the foreword to the NRR places great emphasis on resilience as a response to the growing catalogue of risks. It concedes that national resilience is a ‘top priority’ and the recommendations from both the Covid-19 and Grenfell inquiries have given added impetus to this priority. (See Note) With the UK Government saying it is committed to sharing risk information as openly as possible, users should look forward to further assessments, particularly on chronic risks. Several announcements on national resilience are expected in April but can be expected with minimal funding when budgets are tight.
The final word belongs to the Preface of the GRR which states: ‘The ensuing risks are becoming more complex and urgent, and accentuating a paradigm shift in the world order characterized by greater instability, polarizing narratives, eroding trust and insecurity. Moreover, this is occurring against a background where today’s governance frameworks seem ill-equipped for addressing both known and emergent global risks or countering the fragility that those risks generate.’ A gloomy prognosis for a worthy document.
Note: For a review of the resilience findings of the Grenfell and Covid-19 inquiries, see Resilience lessons from the UK Grenfell Tower Inquiry and Exploring the Covid-19 Inquiry’s ‘new approach’ to whole-system preparedness and resilience respectively.
About the author
Robert Hall is co-founder and former executive director of Resilience First Ltd. He is author of Building Resilient Futures (2023, ISBN: 978103581262). His book, The Resilience Mindset, will be released in spring 2025 (ISBN: 9781035878284), followed by his third book in the series, Nature’s Resilience (ISBN: 9781035878260).
