Nature is everybody’s business by Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity Dr. David Obura, Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services   Feb. 2026   * In 2023, global public and private finance flows with directly negative impacts on nature, were estimated at $7.3 trillion, of which private finance accounted for $4.9 trillion, with public spending on environmentally harmful subsidies of about $2.4 trillion.   * Less than 1% of publicly reporting companies mention their impacts on biodiversity in their reports.   Every business depends on biodiversity, and every business impacts biodiversity. The growth of the global economy has been at the cost of immense biodiversity loss, which now poses a critical and pervasive systemic risk to the economy, financial stability and human wellbeing. This is a central finding of a landmark new report published today by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).   Even companies that might seem far-removed from nature or that do not see themselves as nature-based rely, directly or indirectly, on material inputs, regulation of environmental conditions. Yet, businesses often bear little or no financial cost for their negative impacts on the environmental conditions we all depend on for life. Businesses are central to halting and reversing biodiversity loss.   The IPBES Business and Biodiversity Assessment report finds that the current conditions in which businesses operate are not compatible with achieving a just and sustainable future, and that these conditions also perpetuate systemic risks.   Businesses often face inadequate or perverse incentives, barriers that hinder efforts to reverse nature’s decline, an institutional environment with insufficient support, enforcement and compliance, as well as significant gaps in data and knowledge. These combine with business models that result in ever-increasing material consumption and an emphasis on reporting quarterly earnings, whilst contributing to the degradation of nature around the world.   The Report makes the point that fundamental change is possible and necessary to create an enabling environment to align what is profitable for business with what is beneficial for biodiversity and people.   “This Report draws on thousands of sources, bringing together years of research and practice into a single integrated framework that shows both the risks of nature loss to business, and the opportunities for business to help reverse this,” said Matt Jones (UK), one of three Co-chairs of the Assessment.   “This is a pivotal moment for businesses and financial institutions, as well as Governments and civil society, to cut through the confusion of countless methods and metrics, and to use the clarity and coherence offered by the Report to take meaningful steps towards transformative change. Businesses and other key actors can either lead the way towards a more sustainable global economy or ultimately risk extinction…both of species in nature, but potentially also their own.”   Business-as-usual incentives are driving nature’s decline and do not support the transformative change necessary to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.   For example, large subsidies that drive losses of biodiversity are directed to business activities with the support of lobbying by businesses and trade associations.   In 2023, global public and private finance flows with directly negative impacts on nature, were estimated at $7.3 trillion, of which private finance accounted for $4.9 trillion, with public spending on environmentally harmful subsidies of about $2.4 trillion.   In contrast, $220 billion in public and private finance flows were directed in 2023 to activities contributing to the conservation and restoration of biodiversity, representing just 3% of the public funds and incentives that encourage harmful business behaviour or prevent behaviour beneficial to biodiversity.   “The loss of biodiversity is among the most serious threats to business”, said Prof. Stephen Polasky (USA), Co-chair of the Assessment. “Yet the twisted reality is that it often seems more profitable to businesses to degrade biodiversity than to protect it. Business as usual may once have seemed profitable in the short term, but impacts across multiple businesses can have cumulative effects, aggregating to global impacts, which can cross ecological tipping points.   The Report shows that business as usual is not inevitable – with the right policies, as well as financial and cultural shifts, what is good for nature is also what is best for profitability. To get there, the Report offers tools for choosing more effective measurements and analysis.”   The Report finds that a wide range of methods, knowledge and data exist for measuring business impacts and dependencies, which can already inform decisions and action. Yet less than 1% of publicly reporting companies mention their impacts on biodiversity in their reports.   The Report makes it clear that all businesses, including financial institutions, have a responsibility to address their impacts and dependencies. The authors point out in their report the many actions that businesses can take now that benefit business and biodiversity.   “Better engagement with nature is not optional for business – it is a necessity”, said Prof. Rueda. “This is vital for their bottom line, long-term prosperity and the transformative change needed for a more just and sustainable future. To avoid greenwashing though, it is essential that businesses have transparent and credible strategies, which clearly demonstrate their actions and how they contribute to biodiversity outcomes and that they publicly disclose their impacts and dependencies as well as their lobbying activities”.   The Report explores both actions that can be taken by businesses themselves and ‘signalling’ actions that can publicly influence and inspire action by others.   Another central message of the Report is that businesses cannot, by themselves, deliver the scale of change needed to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. Collaboration, collective and individual actions are essential to create an enabling environment where businesses contribute to a just and sustainable future.   Five specific components are identified as central to such an enabling environment: policy, legal and regulatory frameworks; economic and financial systems; social values, norms and culture; technology and data; and capacity and knowledge. The Report provides more than 100 specific examples of concrete actions that can be taken, across each of these five components, by businesses, governments, financial actors and civil society.   “Better stewardship of biodiversity is central to managing risk across the whole of the economy and throughout societies – it’s not some distant environmental issue, but a core challenge now in every boardroom and cabinet-room,” said Prof. Polasky.   “We need to move beyond the fallacy of a binary choice between governments and decision-makers being either pro-environment or pro-business. All business depends on nature, so actions that conserve and sustainably use nature can also be those that help businesses thrive in the long-term.   One of the innovations of this Report is that it provides a template for accelerating collaboration and collective actions at all levels among and by governments, financial actors, other actors including civil society, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, consumers, NGOs, international organisations, and academia in addition to the action needed by businesses and financial institutions themselves.”   Speaking about the significance of the Business and Biodiversity Report, Dr. David Obura, Chair of IPBES said: “This IPBES Assessment Report was delivered with urgency, as a vital contribution to efforts by businesses, governments, financial actors and the whole of society to meet the goals and targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change".   "It relates very directly to Target 15 of the Global Biodiversity Framework, which focuses on businesses, but ultimately to all our shared global goals because businesses are at the centre of how our economies, and large parts of our society, depend on and impact nature”.   "Nature is everybody’s business and the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of biodiversity is central to business sustainability and success".   http://www.ipbes.net/business-impact http://www.ipbes.net/node/97532 http://ipbes.canto.de/v/IPBES12Media/ http://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1y/k1yl72cx8w http://www.ipbes.net/nexus-assessment http://www.ipbes.net/media_release/Values_Assessment_Published http://www.ipsnews.net/2026/02/a-business-necessity-align-with-nature-or-risk-collapse-ipbes-report-warns/ http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/biodiversity http://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/biodiversity/   # Biodiversity is the natural world around us, and the variety of all of the different kinds of organisms - the plants, animals, insects and microorganisms that live on our planet. Every one of these live and work together in ecosystems to maintain and support life on earth, and exist in delicate balance. Biodiversity is one of the most precious and important things we have.   Without biological diversity, our entire support system for human, as well as animal life, would collapse. We rely on nature to provide us with food and clean water, for medicines, to prevent flooding and other extreme weather effects. So much is provided by the natural ecosystems around us – they’re truly vital to life on earth. Because biodiversity is so crucial to our future survival, its loss is a crisis on a global scale. Visit the related web page
	Adapting global governance to a world of accelerating risk by Global Challenges Foundation, agencies   Jan. 2025   Global Catastrophic Risks 2026; A system under stress: Adapting global governance to a world of accelerating risk. (Global Challenges Foundation)   Outdated governance, rising geopolitical tensions and fragmented institutions leave humanity exposed.   Addressing escalating systemic threats requires renewed legitimacy, stronger cooperation and a more adaptive, anticipatory global governance architecture capable of managing shared risks.   As the Global Catastrophic Risks 2026 report shows, we are witnessing fundamental shifts in how global risks emerge, expand and interact, spanning climate, ecosystems, technology and security domains.   In the security sphere, states’ drive for technological and strategic advantage is reshaping deterrence and altering pathways of escalation. As Wilfred Wan observes, the deepening entanglement of nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities across domains, such as cyber and outer space, blurs thresholds and increases the risk that misperception or technical failure could trigger unintended — even nuclear — escalation.   In addition, as Denise Garcia notes, diplomatic and regulatory processes remain too slow and fragmented to match the speed of technological change, such as the rapid integration of AI into military command and control. Once embedded, these technologies are extremely difficult to constrain, leaving the world to play catch-up with risks that evolve faster than the rules meant to contain them.   In the environmental sphere, a similar pattern of interconnected fragility applies. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource competition interact in non-linear and cascading ways, creating pressures that destabilise both natural systems and societies.   Today, we stand at what David Obura and others call a bifurcation point. A growing number of ecosystems, from coral reefs and mountain glaciers to freshwater systems, are nearing thresholds of collapse driven by climate change, land-use conversion, and over-extraction.   As Johan Rockstrom and Fatima Denton highlight, seven of the nine safe and just Earth-system boundaries have already been transgressed, creating devastating and unjust socio-economic consequences that quickly outpace our preparedness.   We treat each of these crises as if it were separate: one agency for forests, another for oceans, a third for emissions. Yet the Earth system moves as a whole; the loss of a rainforest or coral reef sends systemic ripples through climate, food, and water systems.   At the same time, rising geopolitical tensions, resurgent nationalism and vested interests drive competition and unilateral action instead of cooperation.   Our collective capacity to mitigate global catastrophic risks and protect both people and planet remains weak at best, while trust in and the legitimacy of the system is eroding.   Even where institutions exist, from the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court to the multilateral environmental regimes, their ability to act is constrained by political gridlock, weak enforcement and chronic underfunding.   Our perception of risk remains uneven, and our governance fragmented. Across most of the domains, the underlying dynamics are the same, including ineffective governance, weak accountability and a lack of multilateral coordination. This leaves humanity and the planet exposed.   The rules written for a stable world no longer fit the one taking shape before us. If the international system cannot evolve to meet both existing and new kinds of global catastrophic risks, how can it maintain legitimacy?   What we need now is a renewed approach to global governance. One that reinforces international law, strengthens shared norms and accelerates action, while simultaneously fostering creativity, innovation and foresight.   It means acting on today’s urgent risks while reimagining the systems that must guide us through what comes next.   We recognise that this work takes place in a deeply challenging political landscape. Change at this scale is hard, slow and rarely linear.   Yet even in this environment, there continues to be space for progress, often in unexpected places. Our task is to help protect what works, support what is emerging and show that renewal of global governance is still possible.   We see three major shifts that can help advance that renewal.   Shift 1: From fragmentation to connection and adaptability   As risks become increasingly interdependent, cooperation remains fragmented and siloed. Financing mechanisms often mirror this fragmentation, producing governance structures that reflect, rather than resolve, global division. States, institutions and funders must work together to build bridges between systems so we can manage global risks as the interconnected challenges they are.   Governance must move from crisis response to anticipatory stewardship, embedding foresight, early warning systems and risk reduction into decision-making.   As Manjana Milkoreit argues in the report, imagination is not an escape from reality but the engine for improved governance. Without it, we drift from crisis to crises; with it, we can orient ourselves toward futures still within reach.   This requires institutional creativity and GCF’s partners are already experimenting with such innovations. For example, the Igarape Institute is exploring a Global Climate and Nature Council, the United Nations University Centre for Policy and Research is advocating for a UN Future Generations Commissioner, and Democracy Without Borders and ISWE Foundation are developing innovative mechanisms for citizen participation. These initiatives demonstrate how creative thinking and practical experimentation can open new pathways for global governance to evolve.   Shift 2: From erosion to legitimacy   How do we defend what works while acknowledging what does not? In a divided world, we must uphold the rules we have created, even as we confront the double standards — particularly the selective respect for international law that has undermined the system’s credibility and trust it depends on.   Strengthening the anchors of global governance — accountability, implementation and international legal frameworks — starts with renewing our commitment to the idea that rules matter, even when inconvenient.   International courts and accountability mechanisms need independence, resources and political backing. States must honour their commitments, defend institutions under pressure and lead by example.   But states cannot do this alone. Civil society plays a crucial role, holding governments accountable, keeping attention on overlooked crises and defending international law, often with shrinking space and resources. Protecting those who defend the rule of law is as vital as safeguarding the institutions themselves.   In addition, the system must evolve, reforming what exists when needed and filling the gaps. This includes modernising international law.   Shift 3: From imbalance to inclusion   Global governance systems still reflect deep historical imbalances. From the veto-weighted structure of the UN Security Council to climate finance arrangements where those least responsible for the crisis are often left most exposed to its consequences.   The experiences and capacities of the Global South are essential for shaping systems that are more adaptive and legitimate, yet its influence remains limited in many key decision-making processes. This imbalance fuels mistrust, weakens ownership and undermines both legitimacy and effectiveness.   Strengthening global governance also means confronting the structural imbalances of power and finance that have long constrained equitable decision-making.   Justice and inclusion must be structural principles; fairness, participation and representation are not moral ideas alone but practical requirements for legitimacy.   As the Global Catastrophic Risks Report 2026 makes clear, the system of global governance built to manage shared risks is under immense strain. Yet it remains indispensable for navigating an increasingly complex and interconnected world.   Rather than turning inward toward nationalism and isolation, we must rebuild trust in the rules, institutions and norms that still hold while modernising them to meet new realities.   Strengthening accountability, reforming international law and giving global systems the capacity to act is essential to restoring legitimacy and effectiveness.   The challenges ahead are significant. However, they also offer an opportunity to rethink how we cooperate on a shared planet and to reimagine a global governance system fit for the risks and realities of our time and those still to come.   http://globalchallenges.org/gcr-2026/ http://globalchallenges.org/gcr-2026/earth-system-stability/ http://wmo.int/news/media-centre/wmo-confirms-2025-was-one-of-warmest-years-record http://climate.copernicus.eu/global-climate-highlights-2025 http://globalchallenges.org/gcr-2026/ecological-collapse-overview/ http://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nature-security-assessment-on-global-biodiversity-loss-ecosystem-collapse-and-national-security http://www.ipbes.net/node/97532 http://www.ipbes.net/business-impact http://www.ipbes.net/nexus-assessment http://earthcommission.org/commissioners-among-authors-of-global-risks-report/ http://carbontracker.org/reports/recalibrating-climate-risk/ http://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-stories/2025-11-04-resilience-science-must-knows-landmark-report-shows-how-decision-makers-can-manage-global-crises.html http://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-stories/2026-01-14-sustainability-scientists-and-environmentalists-must-defend-academic-freedom.html   Jan. 2026   Disorder, Inc. The rules-based order is fraying. What comes next is up for grabs, by Robert Muggah.   Since the end of the Cold War, globalization was sold as a positive-sum game. Trade would bind rivals together, capital would flow freely, technology would shrink distances, and multilateral institutions would police the edges. That story is over. We are back in a spheres-of-influence world —one increasingly divided between the United States, Russia and China—with other powers manoeuvring in the seams.   The world is slipping into an “age of disorder” in which the U.S.-led unipolar order has faded but no stable multipolar equilibrium has taken its place. The current global landscape is increasingly fractured, with overlapping geopolitical, economic, environmental and technological shocks.   Yet gloomy as the headlines are, if governments, firms, and citizens can rethink the rules of interdependence, update institutions and build resilience, a disordered age need not harden into an age of permanent dysfunction.   Has globalization started to turn against itself?   What distinguishes this era from the previous one is not only greater uncertainty and tension, but the weaponization of economic, financial, and even digital interdependence.   The World Economic Forum 2026 Global Risks Report shows that geoeconomic confrontation has become a central organising principle of great-power rivalry.   Sanctions, tariffs, export controls, investment bans, and the weaponization of the financial system now rank among the top three global risks over the next two years, alongside state-based armed conflict and extreme weather.   The aim is no longer simply to maximize welfare in a benignly interdependent world; it is to secure advantage and impose costs in a fragmenting one.   At the root of this shift lies the end of American predominance without the birth of a stable successor order. The U.S. remains powerful, but no longer enjoys uncontested primacy. China has risen; India, the European Union, Gulf monarchies, Brazil and others are more willing to chart their own course. Yet there is no shared design for a cooperative multipolar system.   Indeed, the latest U.S. National Security Strategy charts a radical new direction from the rules-based order Washington once championed. What is emerging instead is a variable geography of overlapping spheres of influence, ad-hoc coalitions and transactional alignments. In this limbo, trust is scarce and the temptation to reach for coercive economic tools is high.   What’s driving fractured governance and fragile societies?   Domestic politics are amplifying these trends. The Forum’s risk report describes what amounts to a rule-of-law and governance recession. Checks and balances weakening in many democracies and autocracies alike, and political polarization making compromise into a dirty word.   Independent media and civil society face mounting pressures. Young people, facing stagnant prospects and feeling excluded from opaque decision-making, are taking to the streets.   From South Asia to Latin America and Africa, “street versus elite” movements have toppled governments or forced abrupt policy reversals. Leaders often respond with violent crackdowns or performative nationalism, trading long-term cohesion for short-term control.   Economic conditions compound the strain. Years of loose monetary policy, followed by an inflation spike and higher interest rates, have left many governments in a fiscal bind. Debt burdens have swollen even as demands on the state - for welfare, defence, climate adaptation and industrial policy - keep rising.   The 2026 Risk Report warns of “supercharged economic tensions” as countries resort to subsidies, export controls and industrial policy to re-shore or “friend-shore” or “near-shore” production. Ageing populations in rich countries and slowing growth in some emerging markets limit the room for manoeuvre. In this environment, subsidy races and protectionist measures feel politically irresistible, even if they undermine the global growth needed to service debts.   Are sanctions and subsidies the new weapons of war?   Climate change and technological upheaval add further uncertainty. AI, quantum computing, advanced robotics and biotechnology are becoming both sources of economic promise and objects of genuine fear.   Controls on high-end chips, quantum hardware and sensitive data are sold as national security necessities but rivals see them as acts of economic warfare.   Digital technologies also make information itself a battlefield as deepfakes, bots, and targeted disinformation campaigns corrode any shared sense of reality turning every election, protest or crisis into a contest over facts.   Meanwhile, extreme weather is disrupting supply chains, straining power grids and worsening food and water insecurity.   Trade and global value chains are undergoing their most significant disruption in decades. The World Trade Organization’s dispute-settlement system has been in crisis since its Appellate Body ceased to function in 2019, leaving many cases in limbo and forcing countries into ad-hoc arrangements. Trade routes that once symbolized mutual gain are increasingly treated as choke points. Repeated Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and threats to Black Sea grain corridors have rerouted vessels, driven up insurance and freight costs, and raised questions about the resilience of maritime trade.   Dependence on a rival for rare earths or semiconductors looks less like comparative advantage and more like a hostage situation. Governments and firms are under pressure to diversify supply chains even when alternatives are costlier. Ports, rail lines and shipping lanes are treated as strategic assets to be courted, fortified or, in extremis, sabotaged.   What happens when financial and digital networks become battlegrounds?   The financial system, too, is becoming a field of struggle. The dominance of the dollar and Western banking infrastructure gives U.S. and its allies enormous leverage. They can freeze central-bank reserves, bar firms from using the global payments system and deter investors with the threat of secondary sanctions. The freezing of hundreds of billions of Russia’s reserves after the invasion of Ukraine illustrates the scale of this power.   These tools have real bite and irresistible appeal. But their repeated use encourages targeted states to seek workarounds, from alternative messaging systems and bilateral swap lines to a rapid expansion of dollar-pegged stablecoins and crypto-assets as well as louder calls for “de-dollarization”. The IMF and Financial Stability Board have warned that widespread adoption of foreign-currency stablecoins in emerging markets can erode monetary sovereignty and complicate macroeconomic management.   Digital interdependence is equally double-edged. On the one hand, undersea cables, cloud providers, and satellites knit economies together, but they are also exquisite vulnerabilities. Across Europe and beyond, cyber attacks on grids, pipelines, hospitals or air-traffic systems are now a routine feature of confrontation. Espionage and sabotage can be deniable and continuous.   Meanwhile, biometric databases and digital identity systems determine who can access jobs, credit and public services. In the wrong hands they become instruments of exclusion and control, especially when fused with AI-enabled surveillance and opaque “social credit” scoring.   Decision-makers are also increasingly concerned that heavy reliance on software, platforms and satellite networks controlled by a handful of powerful states and firms can be leveraged as a geopolitical kill switch, with access to cloud services and critical connectivity threatened or withdrawn if governments refuse to align their policies or sever ties with rival powers.   Can any country manage systemic risk on its own anymore?   The impacts of this intensifying competition are multiplying. In the short term, households and firms feel it through more volatile prices, more frequent disruptions and slower growth. Energy and food markets lurch when pipelines are blown up or grain corridors close. Export controls on critical technologies spur retaliatory measures, sapping investment. Subsidy races divert scarce fiscal resources towards favoured sectors while leaving basic services underfunded. As public debts mount and confidence wobbles, the risk grows that a sudden reassessment of asset values – say, in over-hyped AI stocks or in the opaque world of private credit – could trigger a broader financial shock.   Politically, societies are fraying. The combination of rising populism, economic stress, cultural polarization and organized disinformation make compromise harder, pushing parties towards extremes. Central banks are coming under pressure to finance governments or keep rates low regardless of inflation, raising the spectre of financial repression. Military spending is eclipsing all records.   Citizens, bombarded by conflicting narratives and sensational images of violence, risk becoming desensitized to distant suffering. Conflicts that might once have provoked outrage instead blend into the background noise. That, in turn, lowers the perceived cost of military adventurism.   Over the longer run, structural risks are mounting. Labor markets could face severe dislocation as AI and robotics automate both white- and blue-collar tasks faster than education and training systems can adapt.   Governments are flirting with universal basic income or job-guarantee schemes without resolving how to pay for them in fiscally constrained conditions. Large cohorts of under-employed young men, adrift and resentful, are cannon fodder for populists and war-makers alike.   Artificial general intelligence (AGI) and quantum computing, if and when they mature, threaten to break today’s cryptographic systems (and much more), unsettling trust in everything from online banking to state secrets. A small club of states and firms would wield extraordinary informational and economic power over others.   How do we harden societies without closing them?   Faced with this forbidding landscape, fatalism is tempting. It would also be wrong. The same risk assessments that catalogue the dangers also sketch a set of pragmatic, if politically demanding, responses.   The first is to accept multipolarity while defending multilateralism. A more plural distribution of power need not mean the end of rules; indeed, it makes agreed rules more necessary. That argues for reform rather than abandonment of institutions such as the United Nations, the international financial architecture and regimes governing trade, climate and health.   Rising powers must be better represented; established powers must accept that representation. In parallel, flexible coalitions of willing states can advance cooperation on specific issues from pandemic preparedness to AI safety without requiring universal agreement.   Second, governments need a doctrine of responsible economic statecraft. Sanctions, export controls and industrial policy are sometimes justified. But without guardrails they can become self-defeating. Minimum standards might include clear objectives and exit criteria; coordination with allies, transparency about humanitarian carve-outs, and a presumption in favour of measures that build resilience (such as diversification and stockpiling) over those that simply coerce. The financial and payments infrastructure that underpins global commerce should be treated less as a convenient cudgel and more as a shared utility.   Third, states must invest in anticipatory governance. That means strengthening foresight units, commissioning stress-tests not only for banks but also for infrastructure, supply chains and social systems, and giving statistical agencies and regulators the independence to resist political manipulation.   It calls for serious scenario-planning around AI, crypto-assets, quantum computing and climate tipping-points, so that rules are shaped upstream rather than in panic once a crisis erupts. Central banks, competition authorities and data-protection bodies will increasingly sit at the heart of geopolitical risk management as well as economic stewardship.   Finally, resilience has to be built from the local level up. National strategies and global compacts matter, but shocks are absorbed (or not) in neighbourhoods, towns and cities. Investments in reliable energy grids, water systems, health networks and digital access can reduce the damage of both climate-related disasters and deliberate disruption. Social protection, inclusive education and space for civic organising can blunt the appeal of extremism. Empowering local authorities and communities, while connecting them to international support and knowledge, is one of the few ways to make an age of disorder survivable.   Globalization will not be rewound since too many ties are now sunk into the world’s operating system. But interdependence can be managed more wisely. The choice is not between a nostalgic return to the 1990s and a fatalistic plunge into zero-sum rivalry.   It is between letting the emerging global “system” consolidate as a hard-edged contest of geoeconomic coercion inside overlapping spheres of influence, too often framed by Washington’s renewed embrace of a might-is-right posture, visible in its National Security Strategy and in recent ventures and threats directed at Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Greenland, Canada, Iran and others or using this disordered moment to rebuild constraints, restore bargaining space, and make economic statecraft less incendiary.   The alternative is clear: letting the new age of disorder harden into permanent dysfunction, or using it, arduously, to build a risk-aware, plural and still cooperative order.   * Robert Muggah is a political economist, co-founder of the Igarape Institute, a Brazilian think tank and co-founder of the SecDev Group in Canada.   Jan. 2026   Billionaires’ wealth hits record in 2025, Oxfam warns of of “highly dangerous” political consequences. (AFP, agencies)   The collective wealth of the planet's billionaires soared to a record level in 2025, charity Oxfam reported today, warning of "highly dangerous" political consequences as the global financial elite gathers for the World Economic Forum.   US President Donald Trump's policies in particular spurred the fortunes of the ultra-rich, which jumped 16.2 percent in the first year of his second term to $18.3 trillion, the NGO said in a report released each year ahead of the Davos forum.   "Actions of the Trump presidency including the championing of deregulation and undermining agreements to increase corporate taxation have benefited the richest around the world," Oxfam said.   The world now has more than 3,000 billionaires for the first time, it added, with the top 12 -- led by Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk -- having "more wealth than the poorest half of humanity, or more than four billion people".   Increasingly this money is buying political power, Oxfam said, pointing in particular to tycoons' buying newspapers and other media, such as Musk's takeover of X or the purchase of The Washington Post by Amazon's Jeff Bezos.   "The widening gap between the rich and the rest is at the same time creating a political deficit that is highly dangerous and unsustainable," Oxfam's executive director Amitabh Behar said.   For Oxfam, Washington's decision to exempt US multinationals from an internationally agreed minimum tax rate of 15 percent was a stark example of ignoring growing inequality.   "In country after country, the super-rich have not only accumulated more wealth than could ever be spent, but have also used this wealth to secure the political power to shape the rules that define our economies and govern nations," it said.   "Such power gives billionaires a grasp over all our futures, undermining political freedom and eroding the rights of the many."   http://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-wealth-jumps-three-times-faster-2025-highest-peak-ever http://www.oxfam.org/en/research/resisting-rule-rich   Jan. 2026   World Food Programme calls on business leaders, private sector at Davos to address Global Hunger. (WFP)   The agency estimates that at least 318 million people face crisis levels of hunger or worse this year, with hundreds of thousands already experiencing famine-like conditions.   Current forecasts put WFP’s funding at just under half of its needed USD13 billion budget to reach 110 million people – roughly one-third of the most vulnerable. This funding gap means meals cut, rations reduced, and a deepening hunger crisis that will cost countless lives.   “Hunger drives displacement, conflict, and instability and these not only threaten lives, but disrupt the very markets that businesses depend on,” said Rania Dagash-Kamara, WFP’s Assistant Executive Director for Partnerships and Innovation, who is attending the forum this week. “I’m here to remind everyone that the world cannot build stable markets on a foundation of 318 million hungry people. I come with an intensifying crisis that has a solution in Davos: invest in the global stability your companies need by supporting our proven ability to reduce hunger on the planet.”   "The private sector must keep hunger and food security as a top‑tier priority. We can address hunger at scale and bring economic benefits to local communities everywhere. We know we can,” said Dagash-Kamara. “The question is whether we will have the resources to make it happen. Together we can have unprecedented impact in addressing what is both a humanitarian and economic crisis. The private sector has the resources needed to accelerate our efforts. Now is the time to offer your support.”   http://reliefweb.int/report/world/acute-food-insecurity-2025-global-overview http://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/en http://www.fightfoodcrises.net/hunger-hotspots http://humanitarianaction.info/document/global-humanitarian-overview-2026 http://www.nrc.no/news/2025/december/2026-millions-in-need-will-not-get-aid-unless-global-solidarity-revived http://www.weforum.org/publications/global-risks-report-2026/ http://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/press_releases/?15570966/WWF-responds-to-WEF-Global-Risks-Report-2026 http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/01/davos-dialogue-collective-stand-against-military-economic-diplomatic-bullying/ http://igarape.org.br/en/ Visit the related web page
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