The recently released Global Risk Report sponsored by the World Economic Forum revealed that “800 million people live in more than 570 coastal cities vulnerable to a sea-level rise of 0.5 metres”.
It did not say how many of these are in the Algarve. But it is astonishing that no media in Portugal reported this daunting risk.
Predictable disasters, such as the fires in recent years in Portugal and the dam collapse in Brazil, happen because politicians act only to gain more votes in their next election. Control agencies act insufficiently causing millions of claims on cartel-sectors such as banks, telecoms, fuel, energy, transportation, drugs and post.
“Reduced well-being and societal shifts away from intrinsic motivations (related to community feeling and affiliation) and towards extrinsic motivations (financial success and social status).”
Among the most probable problems the risk report mentions are extreme weather events, the failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation, natural disasters, data fraud or theft, cyber-attacks, man-made environmental disasters. The reasons we read in Fig.2 “Failure of regional and national governance, of urban planning, asset bubbles,” etc.
Also “the tension between the globalisation of the world economy and the growing nationalism of world politics is a deepening risk.” And, “In the human food chain, biodiversity loss is affecting health and socioeconomic development, with implications for well-being, productivity, and even regional security.”
Science as always may bring good or bad results: “technological vulnerabilities: around two-thirds of respondents expect the risks associated with fake news and identity theft to increase in 2019, while three-fifths said the same about loss of privacy to companies and governments. There were further massive data breaches in 2018, new hardware weaknesses were revealed, and research pointed to the potential uses of artificial intelligence to engineer more potent cyber-attacks.”
Finally, DO READ IT!
Jack Soifer
http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2019/executive-summary/
