A new report, “Hazards with Escalation Potential: Governing the Drivers of Global and Existential Catastrophes”, has been published by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, in collaboration with the International Science Council, the Simon Institute for Longterm Governance and Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.
The report aims to identify the hazards that could lead to global and existential catastrophes when combined with corresponding vulnerabilities and exposures. The study involved reviewing the literature, expert surveys, and consultations to distil governance insights on risk cascades. These hazards have common traits, such as the ability to affect multiple systems and bypass established coping capacities, making them more challenging to handle. By focusing on these characteristics, governance strategies can be refined to become more adaptive to the various manifestations of risk.