Global Risks Scientists’ Perception survey

Future Earth’s Global Risks Scientists’ Perception (GRSP) survey aims to capture the evolving perceptions of risk within the global change scientific community and help bring these views into international policy dialogues on global risks. The survey draws inspiration from the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2019 as a starting point to broaden community input for dialogue on global risk assessment. Our survey was developed by a team at Future Earth and advised by a Scientific Advisory Committee.

The survey targeted the international global change scientific community which spans the natural, physical and social sciences. The survey was not designed to be representative of the full global change science community, but rather capture perceptions from a range and diversity of participants. Over 200 global change scientists from 52 countries completed the survey. In the survey respondents were asked to:

• Rank the likelihood and impact of the top global risks over the coming decade.
• Identify clusters of interconnected risks that could lead to a global systemic crisis.
• Highlight emerging risks to the global community.
• Identify future risks that we are or have already committed to.

Futures CoLab

Futures CoLab is a network of diverse international experts, a platform for online collaboration, and a process for asynchronous and facilitated dialogue. This forum is run collaboratively with the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence with the goal to enable subject matter experts to collectively explore solutions to global systemic challenges. Within the Global Risks Perceptions Initiative, Futures CoLab exercises have been used to:

• Develop planetary security scenarios of how climate change might affect human security over a 3 to 5-year period with scientists and policy makers at the Planetary Security conference in the Hague in 2017.
• Explore possible futures that may influence philanthropic investments to drive climate change mitigation.