The Global Risks Report 2021 16th Edition

The Global Risks Report 2021, 16th Edition, is published by the World Economic Forum.

In 2006, the Global Risks Report sounded the alarm on pandemics and other health-related risks. That year, the report warned that a “lethal flu, its spread facilitated by global travel patterns and uncontained by insufficient warning mechanisms, would present an acute threat.” Impacts would include “severe impairment of travel, tourism and other service industries, as well as manufacturing and retail supply chains” while “global trade, investor risk appetites and consumption demand” could see longer-term harms. A year later, the report presented a pandemic scenario that illustrated, among other effects, the amplifying role of “infodemics” in exacerbating the core risk. Subsequent editions have stressed the need for global collaboration in the face of antimicrobial resistance (8th edition, 2013), the Ebola crisis (11th edition, 2016), biological threats (14th edition, 2019), and overstretched health systems (15th edition, 2020), among other topics.

Robert Muggah contributed to the annual report.

Read the report