A new report from ASRA, the Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment, calls for a radical change in risk management thinking.
Facing Global Risks with Honest Hope, co-developed by a global network of 50+ transdisciplinary risk experts, underscores the urgent need for change in how we assess and respond to risk.
From climate inaction and biodiversity loss to global conflicts and the unchecked proliferation of AI and disinformation, complex and interconnected risks are escalating rapidly. They threaten to cause irreversible harm and have cascading impacts, such as the damaging effects of extreme heat on human health, food systems, infrastructure, and more. Yet, says the report, decision-makers remain ill-equipped to respond, with outdated tools that fail to match the scale and urgency of this ‘polycrisis’ moment.
While noting positive progress in risk management, the authors argue that the dominant approach to risk assessment remains fragmented and siloed—lacking cross-sector coordination, integrated governance, and focusing solely on single harms. This failure to address critical interdependencies leaves us increasingly vulnerable to sudden shocks that cascade across systems, as happened with COVID-19 and the 2008 financial crisis.
Released ahead of the UN Summit of the Future, ASRA outlines how critical capacity and capability gaps can be effectively tackled. Recommendations include:
- Governance organizations at all scales should nurture roles and responsibilities so that leaders have the express authority, mandate, and adaptive capacity to assess and respond to systemic risk.
- Corporations, financial institutions, and regulators should redirect capital and spending to address systemic risk.
- Citizens, civil society, and advocates should be supported to engage in public and private sector decision-making processes, and take an active role in these processes.
- Private and public sector data generators and data holders should develop and share new evidence and datasets fit for systemic risk assessment and response.
- Research bodies, agencies, and institutes of education should foster a necessary renaissance in research and education in systemic risk, and rapidly ‘upskill’ for a polycrisis world.
- Philanthropic, public, private, and multilateral funders should radically increase funding to meet systemic responses and transformation across sectors.
What is systemic risk?
ASRA defines systemic risk as the potential for multiple, increasingly severe, abrupt, differentiated yet interconnected, and potentially long-lasting and complex impacts on coupled natural and human systems.
