Climate, environment and fake news among the principal risks for humanity
Environment — di Andrea Barolini
The World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report places climate, environment and fake news at the top of the list of long-term threats.
Climate, environment and fake news among the principal risks for humanity
The World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report places climate, environment and fake news at the top of the list of long-term threats.
"The world is entering a phase that will be characterised by greater instability, polarising positions, a decline in trust and a lack of security." Saadia Zahidi, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum, summarises in these words the forecasts contained in the annual report published on 15 January by the international body. In 2025, therefore, we can expect a continuation of the year just ended — one marked by profound uncertainty.
Environmental issues dominate the long-term risk rankings
What stands out, however, in the long-term risk rankings — covering the next ten years — is the overwhelming presence of all threats linked to the environment. In first place are extreme weather events, which represent one of the consequences of ongoing climate change. In second place come the loss of biodiversity and the collapse of ecosystems. Third are critical changes to the systems that guarantee balance on Earth. And fourth are potential shortages of natural resources. Also in the top ten is pollution, ranking tenth.
According to economists, scientists, experts and civil society representatives surveyed by the World Economic Forum, climate and the environment represent the very core of the dangers we will face in the coming years. To these are added, of course, other threats — beginning with the possibility of armed conflicts, as well as the continuation of existing ones. But according to the Davos forum, attention must also be paid to the rise of populism.
The rise of populism risks undermining multilateralism
From the re-election of Donald Trump in the United States, to the presence of Giorgia Meloni in Italy and Viktor Orbán in Hungary, combined with the growing support for the far right in countries such as Austria, Germany and France, the risk is that the world will turn inward on itself. Entering a phase of closure, of new nationalisms that could strike a disruptive blow against multilateralism, already weakened and under strain. In this sense, attempts to provide global responses to global problems could also suffer — starting with climate change itself, whose planetary scale demands coordinated responses from governments around the world.
On the contrary, the world is fragmenting ever more, even on fronts where it should be acting in unison. And it is precisely in this sense that disinformation plays a particularly problematic and dangerous role. Fake news now has an unprecedented capacity to influence the opinions of millions of people, aided and abetted by technologies linked to artificial intelligence.
Fake news, fuelled by AI, targets the climate crisis above all
But that is not all: faced with this scenario, the owners of the major social network platforms — rather than imposing stricter rules and introducing systems of control, moderation and verification — are lowering their guard. The most recent example is that of Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Meta, the company that controls Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, who has followed in this regard the negative example of Elon Musk, who since 2022 has preferred to give free rein to all information circulating on his platform X.
The 20th @wef Global Risks Report ranks misinformation as a top short-term risk, eroding trust and cooperation. Long-term, the adverse effects of AI technologies emerge as a critical challenge alongside environmental crises.
#GlobalRisks #AI #Misinformation
#GlobalRisks #AI #Misinformation
"Algorithms are designed with the aim of keeping us on social networks for as long as possible, which exposes us to every kind of information. And fake news spreads faster than true news. Just as extreme claims penetrate more easily," explained to the French newspaper Novethic Lou Welgryn, co-president of Data for Good and a specialist in disinformation. According to her, even more worrying is the fact that "it is precisely on the climate crisis, and more broadly on issues related to ecology, that fake news is most prevalent".
Disinformation offers simple answers to complex questions and plays on emotions
But why do these topics in particular attract the greatest concentration of fake news? One explanation lies in the fact that disasters such as the one that recently struck Los Angeles — devastated by ferocious wildfires — represent fertile ground for the spread of disinformation. Fake news makes it possible to provide simple answers to complicated questions — giving readers the feeling that they have "closed the loop". Often, moreover, false stories offer both a solution and a culprit.
There is also a matter more closely tied to each person's emotional sphere. Certain feelings in particular, such as anger and indignation, can find "confirmation" in fake news. Furthermore, information that unsettles us is more easily "retained" by human memory. This is especially true in places like social networks, where we are bombarded with useless information.
Fake news accounts for just 5% of content, yet it keeps scrolling past us
In this way, even conspiracy theories manage to proliferate, despite having no scientific basis whatsoever. This is because the fuel that drives their spread is not linked to their validity but to our emotions. As explained by Thomas Huchon, a journalist specialising in disinformation, "fake news accounts for only 5 per cent of the content published on social networks. And yet we keep seeing it scroll past us: this is because people, driven by indignation or anger, react, comment, share." Algorithms then detect these interactions, pushing the same false stories ever further into the spotlight.