Addressing risk at the Annual Meeting 2011

Kevin Steinberg is a guest blogger for the Forum. He is the Chief Operating Officer, World Economic Forum USA and will be attending the Annual Meeting in Davos.

Risk was a big topic this year at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2011 in Davos-Klosters. Recent earthquakes, floods, the Stuxnet virus, economic uncertainty and other shocks were on everyone’s lips. But which global risks are the priority? Security threats? Pandemics? Water, food or energy shortages? Climate change? As might be expected, no one specific challenge was identified. Instead, participants suggested we should not focus on the ever-growing and ever-changing list of risks, but rather on a framework for addressing today’s challenges. A multilateral mechanism for responding to shared, global risks is urgently needed. That’s exactly what the Forum’s Risk Response Network, or RRN, launched this week in Davos, aims to do. In our new world of risk, the RRN platform will help to better understand, prepare for and respond to today’s complex, interdependent risk.

During the entire meeting, participants seemed to agree that the world has done a commendable job of thinking about and acting upon some institutional risks. But we have generally failed at rethinking and collaborating to address other risks, such as nuclear proliferation, systemic financial risk, cyberattacks or a myriad of other threats. Many suggestions were made on addressing these varied risks. The main recommendation, if just one can be stressed here, is that our focus must shift from repairing the past to fixing the future. Risk response and mitigation require a new mindset, attitudes and incentives. It was noted that the human reaction seems to be either to panic or to ignore risks. So how can the global community shift to prevention? A first step is to clearly communicate the opportunities associated with prevention to policy-makers, civil society, international organizations and businesses. That is what the World Economic Forum did this week in Davos and will continue to do with its Risk Response Network.