04.03.2022
The World Economic Forum report focuses on growing social inequalities as well as climate and environmental conditions. Different handling of the pandemic creates greater tensions within and across national borders.
This year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) Risk Report focused its attention on the consequences of increasing social inequalities as well as climate and environmental conditions. It emphasises that the pandemic, particularly the way it has been managed, has contributed to increased inequalities between countries and social classes and has led to increased tensions within and across national borders.
The report points to unemployment, inflation, unstable global supply chains, increasing protectionism and geopolitical unrest as examples of these tensions. This situation makes it more difficult to build support for the coordinated measures needed to tackle major social issues such as climate and environmental change. These areas (social unrest and climate/environmental change) make up the top eight factors of the WEF’s Global Risk Factors for the world economy. The results are based on assessments from almost 1,000 international experts.
Within the field of climate change, the WEF points out that the lack of international cooperation on this issue will lead to ever-increasing tensions between countries and economic sectors. Political inaction on climate challenges will also lead to worsened climate impacts and require an even greater section of society to tackle the consequences experienced. A political desire to “ease the burden” on business life and civil society will be necessary to secure support for climate initiatives, but may also lead to a slowing down of transition that is needed. The report points out that countries with a significant dependence on fossil fuel-based energy have more to lose from the transition to renewable energy and because of this may be less willing to innovate. CCS and CDR (Carbon Dioxide Removal) are viewed as key measures for achieving climate goals, but may also end up being adopted in a way that results in “greenwashing” and weakens the structural transition that fossil fuel-based industries need to implement. The WEF points out that any route to a zero carbon emissions society will in all likelihood be quite “disorderly”.
Trouble for natural gas and nuclear energy: Disputes over the EU taxonomy The European Commission recently presented its long-awaited regulatory proposal as to how natural gas and nuclear energy should be treated in the EU taxonomy for sustainable finance activities. Different forums of discussion Energy types are essentially only entered into the taxonomy for a …
Increased energy demand There seems to be a consensus that the main reasons are related to increased energy demand in connection with the post-pandemic reopening of the economy, as well as the failure of energy companies to increase supply quickly enough due to low investments over time. The fact that the crisis has hit Europe …
