The Global Risks Report 2026: What It Reveals About Climate Risks

What Is The Global Risks Report?

Each January, the World Economic Forum publishes its Global Risks Report — an annual ritual for many, myself included. First launched in 2006, the report has become a trusted way of taking the world’s temperature on risk, capturing how perceptions shift in response to a changing global landscape. The 2026 edition marks the 21st Global Risks Report.

The report is based on a global survey of policymakers, business leaders, academics and risk professionals. Participants are asked to identify the most significant risks facing the world across two distinct time horizons: the next two years and the next ten years. It signals how global leaders and institutions perceive risk across these time horizons and offers insight into how focus shifts as time horizons change — providing a window into the global mega trends that are shaping our collective priorities.

What It Reveals About Climate Risks

The Global Risks Report 2026 reveals a growing disconnect between short-term global priorities and long-term climate reality. Geopolitical conflict, economic volatility and rapid technological change dominate near-term risk perceptions. Yet over the longer term, climate-related risks — including extreme weather, biodiversity loss and critical changes to Earth's climate systems — remain the most severe threats.

The report points not to a lack of awareness, but to a persistent tendency to defer environmental risks in favour of immediate crises, even as climate pressures continue to intensify.

The Two-Year Outlook

In the two-year outlook, climate risk is not dominant. Instead, the highest-ranked risks are, not surprisingly, geopolitical instability, economic disruption, misinformation, technological risk and social polarisation. These risks are real and immediate. Ongoing conflict, rapid technological change and fragile political systems demand attention.

But their prominence also reflects a world operating in short cycles. Crises are frequent, often daily. As soon as we have started to responded to one, the next is already upon us. This is the new norm for governments, institutions and businesses.

Climate change appears in this short-term picture, but often on the periphery. Extreme weather is acknowledged, yet it competes for attention with faster-moving risks that dominate headlines and agendas. The issue is not that climate risk has diminished. It is that our focus is now consumed by what feels like daily crises, leaving us in a constant state of firefighting.

The Ten-Year Outlook

When the horizon extends to ten years, the picture changes dramatically. Environmental risks rise to the top of the rankings. Extreme weather events, ecosystem collapse, natural resource shortages and potential tipping points to Earth's climate systems dominate the longer-term outlook.

This shift is striking, but not surprising. The physical impacts of climate change intensify over time, and the consequences and costs become harder to avoid. What is notable is the consistency of this pattern. Climate risk is repeatedly recognised as severe and systemic in the long term, but is deprioritised in the near term. This creates a persistent tension between what is known and what is acted upon.

Climate Risk Is A Systemic Risk

One of the most important messages in The Global Risks Report 2026 is that climate risk does not exist in isolation. It interacts with almost every other major risk category. Extreme heat stresses water infrastructure. Flooding disrupts transport networks and supply chains. Drought affects food security, migration and political stability.

Ageing infrastructure magnifies these impacts, turning environmental stress into economic and social shocks. In this way, climate change acts as a risk multiplier. It amplifies existing vulnerabilities rather than replacing them. Treating climate change as a standalone environmental issue misses this systemic reality.

Other Risks Still Matter

A climate-focused reading of the report does not mean ignoring other risks. Rapid technological change, particularly in artificial intelligence, features prominently in the short-term outlook. Misinformation and the erosion of trust are identified as destabilising forces. Geopolitical fragmentation and economic pressure continue to shape global risk perceptions.

What matters is how these risks interact. Technology can support climate adaptation, or it can accelerate instability. Geopolitical tension can undermine cooperation on climate action. Economic stress can delay investment in resilience and adaptation. These risks are interlinked, and affected each other.

Conclusion

The Global Risks Report 2026 does not suggest that climate risk is misunderstood. On the contrary, it shows that climate change is widely recognised as severe, systemic and structural.

The challenge lies in how risk is prioritised over time. Environmental risks rise to the top of the rankings when the horizon extends to ten years, yet struggle to command attention in the near term, where immediate shocks dominate the news agenda and decision-making. This gap between recognition and response is not a failure of information. Long-term risks are acknowledged, then repeatedly deferred as the relentless short-term crises take priority. 

The warning in this year’s report is simple. Climate risks are neither unknown nor unexpected. They are well understood — but in the short-term seem to be consistently side-lined.