LONDON: Regional business leaders run the risk of underestimating the threat of climate change, a World Economic Forum report has warned.A new analysis of regional risks found that economic and governance issues rank most highly as topics of concern among executives in the Middle East and North Africa.But environmental factors are “not top of mind,” despite being a real risk, the World Economic Forum (WEF) report found.The WEF’s “Middle East and North Africa Risks Landscape” report published on Thursday draws on data from the forum’s Executive Opinion Survey 2018 and Global Risks Perception Survey 2018-2019.Global respondents to the latter survey ranked “economic confrontations between major powers” as the greatest risk for 2019, and climate-change-related issues as the leading risk over the next 10 years.Yet the environment was not seen as a big risk by regional executives, despite the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) being home, for example, to numerous coastal ports that would be affected by rising sea levels caused by climate change.“Notably, business leaders in the MENA region who responded to the Executive Opinion Survey did not rank environmental change as a risk to doing business — a potential blind spot given the potential implications of global warming,” the report said.“Instead, business leaders ranked economic and governance-related issues — ‘energy price shocks’ and ‘unemployment or underemployment’ — as well as ‘terrorism’ as the top three risks to doing business in the region.”Mirek Dusek, the deputy head of the Center for Geopolitical and Regional Affairs and a member of the Executive Committee at the World Economic Forum, said that no one country was insulated from global risk factors.“In today’s interconnected world, risks no longer stop at borders on a map or are confined to one industry in an economy,” he said.“Because global risks are shaping regional landscapes and vice versa, it is important to take a ‘glocal’ approach to risk assessment. Our analysis offers a combination of global and local analysis so that stakeholders can gain a better understanding of what is necessary for risk mitigation and resiliency.”The report was released ahead of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa event being held on April 6-7 at the Dead Sea in Jordan.
