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Climate and environmental issues are intrinsic to many of the core global risks facing our planet, according to the WEF’s Global Risks Report 2023, which will likely come as no surprise given the increasing frequency and severity of weather-related disasters seen around the world. However, says Managing Director Saadia Zahidi in the report, these are also the risks for which we are the least prepared.
The report, released in advance of this week’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, “highlights the multiple areas where the world is at a critical inflection point.” It also serves as “a call to action, to collectively prepare for the next crisis the world may face and, in doing so, shape a pathway to a more stable, resilient world,” Zahidi says.
In this article, we’ll look at the top global economic threats and explore how open source can help.
Short- and Long-Term Risks
“The next decade will be characterized by environmental and societal crises, driven by underlying geopolitical and economic trends,” the report says. For example, the “cost-of-living crisis is ranked as the most severe global risk over the next two years, peaking in the short term.” Additionally, “biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse is viewed as one of the fastest deteriorating global risks over the next decade.”
Specific risks (as identified through the Global Risks Perception Survey) include the following:
Top five short-term risks (next two years)
- Cost of living crisis
- Natural disasters and extreme weather events
- Geoeconomic confrontation
- Failure to mitigate climate change
- Societal polarization and erosion of social cohesion
Top five long-term risks (next 10 years)
- Failure to mitigate climate change
- Failure of climate change adaptation
- Natural disasters and extreme weather events
- Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse
- Large-scale involuntary migration
Open Source Can Help
The report also emphasized the relationships between these risks, noting that “leveraging the interconnectivity between global risks can broaden the impact of risk mitigation activities.” Additionally, developing successful solutions will require cross-society collaboration.
This is where open source can help.
Consider the energy sector and the path to net zero carbon emissions, for example. Roberto Bocca, Member of the WEF Executive Committee, says, “Energy is a foundational block of the global economy,” and, as such, “the crisis has forced us to fundamentally rethink the way in which we produce, deliver and — importantly — consume it.”
Fully two years ago, the late Shuli Goodman, Executive Director of LF Energy, said, “In this moment, the energy industry must learn from its mistakes and come together through open source technology and shared development. This is the key to speeding up innovation …”
Generally, collaborative open source efforts help speed innovation by distributing development efforts, lowering costs, and decreasing time to market. Specifically, the following LF Energy projects demonstrate how open source is already working to address energy-related issues:
- OpenEEmeter — an open source toolkit for implementing and developing standard methods for calculating normalized metered energy consumption
- OpenSTEF — provides a complete software stack that forecasts the load on the electricity grid
- PowSyBl (Power System Blocks) — an open source library dedicated to electrical grid modeling and simulation
“Adopting an open source strategy that maximizes flexibility, agility, and interoperability … will help the energy sector innovate at the speed of technology,” noted Goodman more recently.
Call to Action
The call to action is clear, according to the WEF report: “This is the moment to act collectively, decisively and with a long-term lens to shape a pathway to a more positive, inclusive and stable world.”
In the words of Shuli Goodman, “the effect of climate change on our environment provides a stark reminder that we’re in a race against time to save our planet. … we cannot use a slow, patchwork response that creates more chaos, hardship, and civil strife than we already see today.”
Learn More
How to Fight Climate Change with Open Source from FOSSlife
Open Source Projects to Help Measure and Manage Energy Use from FOSSlife
Greta Thunberg: Our politicians will not come to the rescue of planet Earth from New Statesman
The Environmental Costs of Cryptocurrency from FOSSlife
This climate action tracker shows what we’re doing right — and wrong — on the road to net-zero emissions from World Economic Forum
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