Politique Internationale — Never before have risks seemed so prevalent, whether on the level of the planet and its major issues, or on the level of society and the way it operates. What explains this phenomenon? Is it the price of modernity?
Thomas Buberl — It’s difficult to draw any definitive conclusions from the current period, because the context of polycrisis that we’ve been experiencing for the past few years continues to be so fluid. Furthermore, the perception of risk is not the same in all parts of the world, and can also depend on one’s position in the economy or society. That said, if we look at the long term, we can say that the notion of risk has become increasingly present over the last twenty years. What is special about our times in this respect? On the one hand, all these risks – some of which have been known for a long time, while others are more recent and emerging – are interconnected. Secondly, crisis sequences are following each other at an accelerated pace: in the past, a period of major crisis was often followed by a period of calm. Today, there is no longer the respite phase that allows people to recover and rebuild. Finally, the nature of risk has changed: we are now faced with systemic threats capable, as their name suggests, of shaking the entire system. Global warming, Covid and even cyber threats all fall into this category.
P. I. — You mention this interconnection of risks. Is it like a game of dominoes, where each piece upsets the arrangement of the next?
T. B. — Let’s look at geopolitical risk: it is now largely merged with the cyber threat. Take the climate crisis: we can’t dissociate it from the effects on public health that it may generate, or migration, with its potential geopolitical consequences. Ultimately, everything is linked. We can no longer, as in the past, content ourselves with simply segmenting the risks. If you’ll forgive the image, it’s like a jumper: as soon as you pull on one thread, the whole garment is weakened. This interconnectedness of risks does not, on the contrary, prevent us from taking a methodical approach to understanding and analysing them, so that we can deal with them more effectively. That’s why, as part of our Future Risks Report, a unique study that serves as a benchmark for all our stakeholders in that it provides an overview of the risks of tomorrow, we ask more than 20,000 people, including 3,000 experts in some fifty countries, each year to rank the risks in order of importance.
For some years now, climate risk has been at the top of the league table. This is to be expected, given what is at stake in the climate transition. Personally, I believe that social risk is the greatest threat to our societies. Not that we should underestimate the dangers of global warming, but in the face of this peril, many players – companies first …