UNITED NATIONS, September 16 — Large-scale war has vaulted to the top of the world’s fears, climbing sixteen places in the rankings since 2024 in the steepest rise of any risk a new United Nations survey tracks. The UN Global Risk Report, released on Tuesday, draws on the views of 1,300 people from government, international organizations, civil society, the private sector and academia across every region of the world.
Respondents rated 28 political, economic, environmental, societal and technological threats on how likely they were, how damaging, and how ready the world was to cope. Large-scale war was the only risk to land in the top six across all four measures the survey tracked: importance, imminence, how interconnected it is with other dangers, and how unprepared institutions are to respond.
A shift from environmental threats to geopolitics
Two years ago, environmental threats, misinformation and pandemics dominated the picture. Now geopolitical tension, war and a weakening rule of law sit at its centre. In the report’s foreword, UN Secretary-General António Guterres wrote: “The findings are sobering.
Political risks have moved centre stage. The prospect of large-scale war is seen as far more important and far more immediate than it was two years ago.
At the same time, the institutions expected to respond are seen as less able to act.” The shift is global. Large-scale war and geopolitical tension now rank among the top 10 threats in every one of the seven regions the survey covers, and in the top five in six of them. Two years ago, these same risks made the top five in just one region.
Weapons of mass destruction also broke into the top 10 in Central and Southern Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania. In Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, worries grew over a possible global financial crisis, the downsides of artificial intelligence, and the growing power of technology companies.
AI-related risks also entered the top 10 in Europe and North America. Pandemics and biological threats, by contrast, fell out of the top 10 everywhere — a sharp reversal from two years ago, when they still ranked among the most pressing risks in Eastern and Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Risks feed on one another
The report argues that no risk exists on its own. Shortages of natural resources, economic fragmentation, misinformation and weakening multilateral institutions all raise the temperature on geopolitical tension, which in turn makes large-scale war more likely. Of the 705 connections between risks that the survey identified, the link between geopolitical tension and war was the strongest.
Artificial intelligence draws particular attention. Concerns about AI, other frontier technologies and the concentration of power they enable have grown sharply in two years, even as respondents say the multilateral system is the least prepared to handle technological threats.
Climate change has not gone away. Inaction on it remains the single risk rated most important overall, and it ranks high in every region, alongside worries about resource shortages. The report’s authors caution that other environmental risks slipping down the list does not mean they have become less dangerous, only less visible; issues that draw less attention often lose funding too.
Respondents pointed to weak governance and coordination, a lack of political consensus, and eroding trust and accountability as the biggest obstacles to responding. More than a third of those surveyed think the effects of large-scale war could touch a significant share of humanity within a year, and a large majority expect that within seven years.
What to watch next: whether the report’s warning about unprepared institutions translates into any change in how governments and multilateral bodies prioritize geopolitical risk — or whether, as the authors suggest, the risks that fall down the list simply fall out of sight.
