| The world’s business elite, apprehensive about turbulent geopolitics after a year of international turmoil, nonetheless sees the biggest risks to society in the next decade coming from changes outside boardrooms and parliaments.
Degradation of the planet’s natural systems — its air, land, water, and living creatures — is the most worrisome threat to social and political stability in the next 10 years, according to the World Economic Forum’s annual survey of leaders in business, academia, government and civil society.
For the first time in the history of the Global Risks Report, respondents ranked environmental factors, including extreme weather and failure to respond to climate change, as the top five risks that are most likely to occur.
More nuanced thinking has emerged in recent years. Water crises, in acknowledgement of their far-reaching consequences, are now categorized as a societal risk. Threaded throughout the report are references to water’s connection to food production, human health, conflict, ecosystem function, and extreme weather. | 
