Environmental Concerns Distracted by Short-term Crises

Key Data from the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026 

A sandstorm sweeps across Ethiopia. iStock

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026 paints a nuanced picture of humanity’s relationship with environmental risk. While climate and ecological threats continue to dominate the long-term outlook, the report finds that governments, businesses, and experts are increasingly distracted in the short term by geopolitical conflict, economic instability, misinformation, and technological disruption. 

Key Global Data 

• Extreme weather events remained the number one global risk over the next 10 years, according to the Forum’s Global Risks Perception Survey (GRPS), reflecting persistent concern over floods, droughts, wildfires, heat waves, and storms linked to climate change.  

• Yet in the two-year outlook, environmental concerns lost ground relative to a broad range of geopolitical and societal risks that the report also covers, such as economic downturn and cyber insecurity. Extreme weather events fell from second in the previous report’s short-term outlook to fourth in the new report.

• Pollution dropped as well in the two-year outlook, falling from sixth in the prior report to ninth.  

• Critical change to Earth systems—which includes risks such as ice-sheet collapse, ocean circulation disruption, and forest dieback—fell seven positions in the short-term rankings compared with the previous year’s report.   

• Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse declined five positions, to 26th in the two-year outlook, and landed in the lower half of the short-term risk rankings despite ranking second in the list of long-term concerns.   

• Natural resource shortages ranked sixth long-term (but only 17th short-term) in the new report.

• The report notes that all environmental risks declined in severity scores for the two-year horizon, suggesting not only lower rankings relative to other threats but “an absolute shift away from concerns about the environment.”  

• Despite this near-term deprioritization, environmental threats continue to dominate the longer horizon: Five of the top 10 global risks expected over the next decade are environmental in nature.   

• Concerns over pollution held steady beyond time horizons, ranking ninth, short-term, and 10th long-term.

• The GRPS also found that environmental risks give rise to the greatest long-term pessimism among experts. Nearly three-quarters of respondents described the environmental outlook over the coming decade as either “turbulent” or “stormy,” making it the most pessimistic risk category surveyed.  

Source: World Economic Forum