The Growth of Global Risks After the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The 2006 Global Risks Report sounded the alarm on pandemics and health-related risks. Unsurprisingly, the global pandemic became a reality, and the immediate human and economic costs were affected. The efficiency of managing risks is accompanied by high levels of uncertainty, and the planning is unable to ensure accountability and yield reliable projections. This work aims to examine the complex system of risks and their interconnectivity with COVID-19 pandemic. Each risk itself may be considered a complex system that upon interaction with the global system of risks might be unstoppable and trigger a sequence of catastrophic events. This calls for a systematic examination of risks in a complex system to project the probability of risks becoming events, initiated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Risks have proliferated in recent years and the pandemic is an ascending factor. This paper analyzes the risks indicated by World Economic Forum, The Global Risk Reports from 2006 to 2022. We form our model by defining the risks associated with COVID-19 pandemic. The association between risks accelerating the probability of risk occurring, and increasing its impact. The most important elements are the virtually unheard factors produced in a fast-changing environment, which changes so fast because the system of factors is not a national or regional one, but the world functions uniformly. Informative and predictive functions under this reality does not provide information for the future, and the more important qualification of this information is uncertain unless the information from the past and the present has all the qualitative historical data, and the proportionate analysis is used. Dealing with risk under the development of a model would result in exclusion of certain factors or variants from this model, which could become a restricted perception and subject of imposing certain influential theories which demolished in conflict with reality. Risk events demonstrate the success and failure of risk management, which consistently point to poor planning as a major cause of risk management failure. This may be not the only reason for poor planning under conditions of high uncertainty. Furthermore, business is unaware of risk governance and lacks an understanding of risk situations, promoting individualism when governance necessitates broader participation. This lack of understanding or refusal of collective contribution is a societal malfunction and an avoidance of corporations’ respective responsibilities in social welfare. Keywords: COVID-19, global risks, economic crisis, risk management, governance