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Hazards with escalation potential: Governing the drivers of global and existential catastrophes

This report identifies hazards and vulnerabilities that could trigger global catastrophes, emphasizing climate change and artificial intelligence as key factors. These hazards demand a shift in governance strategies, as current systems are ill-equipped to handle emerging global worst-case scenarios, requiring changes in risk research and governance.

This report identifies the hazards that, once paired with corresponding vulnerabilities and exposures, would escalate and cause global and existential catastrophes. Its goal is to distil governance insights on risk cascades from a review of the literature, an expert survey and expert consultations.

Hazards with escalation potential: Governing the drivers of global and existential catastrophes

Stauffer, M., Kirsch-Wood, J., Stevance, A., Mani, L., Sundaram, L., Dryhurst, S. and Seifert, K. (2023). Hazards with Escalation Potential: Governing the Drivers of Global and Existential Catastrophes. Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.

Escalating hazards share core characteristics such as the ability to affect multiple systems and to bypass established response and coping capacity. Focusing on these characteristics of the worst hazards can refine governance strategies, making them more adaptive to the various manifestations of risk. 

Image by Joel Filipe on Unsplash.

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