The World Economic Forum's work on Regional and Country risks has found that similar growth trends across the world are placing rising and competing demands on water, energy and infrastructure.
A report into Regional and Country risks in the Middle East and North Africa was presented at the start of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa, taking place in Marrakech, Morocco, from 26 to 28 October 2010. It follows other, similar publications on Africa, Latin America, Europe and India.
Together, the risks to water, energy and infrastructure have the potential to impede economic progress as well as heighten the danger of critical failures in essential services. The MENA report, written in collaboration with Oliver Wyman, the management consulting arm of Marsh & McLennan Companies, discusses the trends and uncertainties that are driving the evolution of these risks and the resulting trade-offs involved in formulating response strategies.
“The Forum feels that the region’s business leaders master a high degree of understanding of the complexity of global risks today,” said Sherif El Diwany, Senior Director, Middle East, at the World Economic Forum. “Resilience is seen increasingly as a business strategy imperative for the Middle East and North Africa. "Every region in the world must assume it is vulnerable one way or another to the global risks in this decade. The Middle East was to some degree spared during the recent crisis, but it is certainly time to think collectively how we can be more resilient to avoid a case where we would be reacting to another global crisis of a different nature and reach.”
“Population growth, resource shortages, and economic conditions in one country impact entire regions. Global leaders and decision-makers must support initiatives to improve global and regional risk resilience,” said Brian Duperreault, President and Chief Executive Officer of Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc. (MMC), and Co-Chair of the 2010 World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa.
The report argues that in MENA countries as in others around the world, more integrated water and energy management strategies within and between countries are absolutely critical, given the limited resources that must be shared across sectors and geographic boundaries. Energy security is an increasingly urgent risk despite extensive fossil fuel reserves in some countries.
In the MENA region its highly energy-intensive growth model is exacerbating the impact of resource depletion, limited conversion capacities and unbalanced regional distribution of fossil fuels. Increasing the price of energy and water across the region could help spur investment in more resilient distribution networks while creating incentives to reduce demand and increase efficiency; however, price increases create difficult trade-offs for economic and social development.
In Africa, the key risk is also identified as Food and Freshwater Security. Others include geopolitical instability, the continent's exposure and vulnerability to economic shocks, and climate change and how global warming will affect Africa.
As with all global risks, these four threats to Africa’s future are not isolated risks; their drivers, triggers and potential consequences are highly interconnected, the report stresses.
