How To Prevent Global Catastrophic Risks
A new approach to global governance is required
There are certain events or scenarios that, should they unfold, would threaten large swaths of humanity across multiple continents. These are often referred to as Global Catastrophic Risks for their potential to disrupt lives and livelihoods on a massive — even planetary — scale.
The consequences of these risks are terrible, involving unimaginable levels of death and destruction. But while these dangers are very real, they are not inevitable. They can be prevented.
Global Dispatches is partnering with the Global Challenges Foundation for a series of episodes examining how to guard against these catastrophic risks. The Foundation is dedicated to raising awareness of global catastrophic risks and strengthening global governance to address them. Global Challenges Foundation’s 2026 Global Catastrophic Risks report outlines five of the biggest risks facing humanity today. You can find this report here.
This is the fifth episode of this series, which has included episodes on specific risks like nuclear weapons, ecological collapse, catastrophic climate change — and even near-Earth asteroids.
In today’s episode, w are joined by the former prime minister of Sweden, Stefan Löfven, and Jens Orback, a strategic advisor to the Global Challenges Foundation, for a wide-ranging conversation about how we can better reform our politics and diplomacy to confront global catastrophic risks.
Managing global catastrophic risks requires systems of global governance, and in this episode we discuss how we can build our common defense against these challenges.
This episode is freely available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Transcript edited for clarity
Mark Leon Goldberg: The Global Challenges Foundation released this report earlier in the year on global catastrophic risks, identifying five specific risks that have the potential to profoundly disrupt humanity. Could you just briefly discuss and describe what those risks were and why they were included in this report?
Jens Orback: Yes, we have concentrated on global catastrophic risks, and I guess later on we will talk about the gaps when it comes to handling them. But we have identified them, first of all, the man-made risks, the risk that we have developed since the Second World War, I would say — it’s the climate change, it’s biodiversity loss, it’s weapons of mass destruction, and it’s also AI coming up, not the least AI in military use. Then we also sometimes mention these more natural disasters, like super volcanoes or asteroids.
But these four that I mentioned are the one that we think are most urgent to handle. You can also divide them in ongoing risks or risks that could suddenly come, like weapons of mass destruction or pandemics. Some of the risks are more threshold characters like climate change and biodiversity, and maybe you need different tools to also handle these risks.
Mark Leon Goldberg: And Stefan, I wanted to ask you, aside from their potential catastrophic impact to life on Earth, what to you binds these distinct risks together?
Stefan Löfven: Well, except for the fifth, the asteroids are all man-made, but they all demand a global cooperation to deal with. And today we have too much of nationalism, too much short-sighted decisions. So, we need to be much more aware. So, this report is a very important task in bringing up these risks because we need to be more aware. Leaders need to be more aware, take more long-term decisions than today. So, man-made and it demands global cooperation.
Mark Leon Goldberg: So, Stefan, I wanted to stick with you. You just identified one of the challenges in getting effective multilateral cooperation around these distinct risks, being that they require long-term thinking. As a former politician, a longtime prime minister of Sweden, presumably you were often having to balance short-term decision-making for immediate political impact versus long-term planning for some eventuality that might occur, but if it occurs, would be devastating. How would you balance those two?
Stefan Löfven: Well, one way is to prepare for catastrophes. We have to prepare the government and the authorities and everybody, we have to exercise in handling catastrophes. That is one thing. But in terms of, let’s say, for example, climate and environment, what needs to be done is to see the long-term effects if we do too little too slow and make sure that the population is aware of that, and that we can deal with it if we cooperate. And that we must make the transformation that is needed on, let’s say, climate must be made visible to people that this is something good. We’re bringing down pollution.
We’re stopping the warming of the planet. And we’re building a new, better society. So, giving people more or feel more comfortable, it’s now being described almost always as something negative, dangerous, costly, difficult. And I think it’s important as leaders to turn that into more of a win-win. Yes, we have to do that. Otherwise, the cost will be much, much, much higher. But as we go along in doing and dealing with these risks, we’re also building a better societies, new technology, new jobs, future welfare. I think that combination is very important.
Mark Leon Goldberg: And Jens, you mentioned earlier you’re a former professional communicator. To what extent do you believe that communicating this to the global public has been challenging thus far, the idea of sort of preparing them for long-term risks and encouraging publics to support decision-making and tough decisions in the here and now to guard against these future risks?
Jens Orback: Well, I think that is a very tough challenge, actually. If you look, for instance, in the period when Stefan was prime minister, and we had this COVID-19, then you could see and you can sense the fear. And they took actions that were so strong, actually saying you cannot meet more than six people, you cannot go in restaurants, you cannot go in collective traffic. But with these long-range risks, the climate change is taking a step at a time, and you cannot really see it, and we have a cold day here in Stockholm for the diversity loss, it’s very tricky to communicate.
We had the same, I think, challenge with smoking. You didn’t see the harm when you were 15 or 20 smoking. And I discussed that with my four kids. So we have to be scorned to see how what we do today will affect us tomorrow. And I think that is a very, very, very big challenge. And going back to your thoughts about how the nation state should act, I think the nation state, except for when Stefan was prime minister, of course, it’s a rather selfish unity. When negotiating with other states, it concerns mostly about its own interests.
I’m looking over the Baltic Sea here, and we have many countries around, but we have a sea in the middle that is actually dying because we cannot agree on how to do it, and that all, maybe, has to offer a little bit. So, I think this selfishness and this short range is a very tough challenge that we have to deal with.
Mark Leon Goldberg: And on that point of balancing kind of national interests with the kind of global good and collective good, Stefan, as you sort of survey the international system, what both strengths and deficiencies do you see that would enable the creation of effective systems of global governance to confront these global catastrophic threats that we’re discussing?
Stefan Löfven: We have to get over this purely nationalistic thinking. And we’re in a time when we need global cooperation more than ever, I would say, not least because of these very serious risks that are presented in this report. But at the same time, it seems as if leaders think that the best message they can bring to the population is that I’m thinking only about this country, and we are the center of the world. We just have to be very selfish. That’s how we get along. And that has been successful in winning elections.
But what we need to do, what we must do, is to present both the real risks. That’s bad enough. But not only pollution and loss of biodiversity, but also the economic losses that we will suffer because we need to tell people, if we reach a warming about, say, three, four degrees, well, that will be the real cost. Today in Sweden, we talk mostly about the price on gasoline and diesel. And I do understand people’s worry, but that can be dealt with supporting people financially. But we have to say, well, if we do nothing now, reducing pollution, the real cost will come in 10, 15, 20 years.
That’s the cost we need to be worried about. So, we can do this, if we do it together within a country, if we do it together, cooperate globally, we can deal with this. And as I said, again, it’s a win-win. We bring down pollution, we save biodiversity, and we’re building a better society with a new job. So, that combination, I think, is crucial for people to see an alternative path.
Mark Leon Goldberg: I suppose a question to you is whether or not that optimism is warranted based in part on your experience as co-chair of the high-level advisory board on effective multilateralism. You and the former president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, co-chaired this advisory board, which is one of the many elements that sort of fed into the UN’s effort to revitalize itself in the context of its 80th anniversary.
What did you learn about our systems of global governance to confront some of these global catastrophic threats and how they might be themselves revised and strengthened?
Stefan Löfven: Well, it was obvious, and it was also called for, not least by the Secretary General, that UN to be reformed. There are too many obstacles within the system. It’s not efficient enough. So that is ongoing. And I was very glad when the General Assembly adopted the Pact for the Future because what it showed was that nations are aware of a serious situation and that we need to reform the United Nations. I hope that really continues. But one of the subjects that we dealt a lot with was the global financial architecture, because it is crucial that we can allocate enough financial resources to do what we need to do to invest in bringing down pollution, for example.
So that awareness, I think, is there. I hope it is ongoing that we need to bring more financial resources into the global financial architecture, meaning, among other things, bringing more of private capital. Some say we don’t have enough financial resources to deal with what we want to do, which that is wrong. The world’s problem is not financial resources. It is the distribution. And we can invest a lot more resources to handle acute crisis, environmental crisis or other crisis, not least to help the developing part of the world to not choose the path that we have taken, the richer part have taken using oil and gas and fossil fuels in general to enrich ourselves. But they need the support to avoid that trap.
We can’t just say, don’t do what we did. That’s not good enough. We need to invest a lot more. So more money, but also more democratic decision-making in the global financial architecture. I think that is a crucial part of the solution.
Mark Leon Goldberg: More money and more investments are often, as you said, a crucial part of the solution. They’re not sufficient, though, in my view, and having covered the UN for many years, you also need that political will as well. And the two tend to work hand in hand, more money and more political will to advance effective multilateral solutions. So, Jens, what sort of opportunities do you see in the coming months or years in which that kind of political will might be catalyzed in ways to help build structures or systems to prevent against things like nuclear risk, like out-of-control AI, like ecological collapse or catastrophic climate change?
Jens Orback: Well, I think often when sometimes it’s successful, it’s not because they are forced, but if there is an interest, and especially if there is a win-win. So I think I think meeting a lot of investors, I think they have an interest of investing. Their capital is restless. So I think investing in what we call the South Fair is actually of a great interest for investors.So, what we can do from a political angle is to maybe have some assurance and try to develop the capital market for these kinds of investments. I think if we can scale that up, there will be self-ridden interest in these kinds of investments.
And I think the return will be very good, actually. And I can also see that the IMF and the World Bank are working with this voluntarily investment instead of trying to take it from the development budget.
Mark Leon Goldberg: It’s interesting that both of you now have identified the global South as the potential place where these kinds of solutions that are guarding against threats that are global in nature may emerge and be catalyzed. Stefan, why do you believe that is?
Stefan Löfven: I mean, it’s quite simple to see that if we can build a world where everybody is well off, let’s say we have, is it some 700, 800 million people living in really extreme poverty, and some are living in not extreme poverty, but still in poverty, and if we can invest, bringing these people also into decent level of living, that would mean a good thing for them, but also for the world economy. Because they would also be able to contribute in the economy, not only the local and the national, but because we’re so integrated around the world between countries and regions, that would mean that the world economy would grow. So, this is a clear win-win situation.
And I think we should be able to visualize it more in numbers so that people see also in the richer countries that, “Hey, this is a good thing. This is really a win-win. It’s not a zero-sum game. It’s a win-win game.” And that is something we need to underline much, much more.
Jens Orback: I think it is also a development on the knowledge we have and about the systems that we are part of. I didn’t know that I was connected to the ice sheet of Greenland, ice or fresh water, or deep sea or forest, and all these kind of parts in our Earth system, our planetary commons that decide how we can live our life here on Earth. But the more I know about it, the more responsibility I think I’m feeling. So, we as humans, we also have to take this science seriously. And sometimes we have a hard time to take it in and to adjust to it because it’s such a big system that we have to learn about.
But it’s very much connected to our daily life, our production, our consumption. And I think the big challenge is, can we adjust again? And humanity seem to be very good at adjusting, but here we have a very big challenge to adjust to. And we have to listen to science. and we are working a lot at the GCF with this science policy interface. So, that is something that I would like to bring to the table here.
Stefan Löfven: I think it’s important to make it visible and comprehensible for people. So, in terms of… now I’m talking climate and biodiversity, and environment. What we did as government and what leaders need to do is to decide on a long-term goal. And then your short term goals, you break it up. So, you see what needs to be done in the transportation sector, in the construction sector, in the industry sector. And then you make it more and more clear, more and more concrete. And then, of course, you have to add a political decision to support all this, be it supporting individuals for a limited time because otherwise the cost would be too high, the cost of living.
So one, you have to have a very clear long-term goal, but then break that up to make it visible. This is what we’re going to do the next five years. But we’re also pointing the whole time at 2040, 2045 or 2050, whatever countries choose. This is the main goal. This is where we’re going. And we’re going there together and we’re helping one another.
Mark Leon Goldberg: I suppose my key question then is how does one reform the multilateral system to be better at using those kind of near-term or medium-term inflection points towards advancing to a long-term goal. For example, I’m talking to you a few blocks from the United Nations right now where they are discussing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. One of the key issues in the report, one of the key risks was nuclear risk. But it appears that delegates to this conference at the UN are too focused in the very short-term crises of the here and now, getting bogged down on the situation in Iran, for example, than kind of having that mindset of adjusting their thinking towards long-term solutions.
Jens Orback: I have a colleague who is the president there at the NPT conference, and it’s not so positive. I still think it’s very important that they meet. But maybe the outcome of some of these ongoing conferences, and then I talk about the COP, the Convention on Climate, we could see then that many, many countries were a little bit fed up that they couldn’t discuss the phase out of fossil fuel, for instance. And so, they decided to meet here in April in Santa Marta in Colombia and came up with different ideas on how to encourage investment in renewables and other things, just to start to talk to them.
So maybe some of these countries are a little bit fed up with having to have anonymously decision-making, and they can be an alliance of the willing. So, I think we can see here that there are countries that would like to go a little bit faster than can be done at the conference like the NPT, for instance.
Mark Leon Goldberg: And Stefan, Jens’ example kind of strikes me as a trend I’ve seen around the UN these past several years, which is the proliferation of mini-lateralism or multilateralisms as opposed to looking towards one big overarching multilateral goal or system or solution to a specific problem. Do you see kind of the proliferation of these kinds of alliances of the willing or coalitions of the willing as one way forward to creating systems to confront these global catastrophic threats?
Stefan Löfven: Yes, I do in the sense that we need both. So, we need a stable, real multilateral system that covers us all because that is needed. But I do believe that regions, be it African Union or European Union or others, can do, and should do more. I also think that we should build more of global alliances of the willing. I mean, today, we have growing mistrust towards the United Nations and the multilateral system. And to a large extent, it has been fed by those who really want to destroy it. But there are also many other countries, many other regions that do want to keep and modernize and reform the United Nations.
So, why don’t we gather all the good forces around the world? Me, as a European, I know that we have good dialogue with Canada, with Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, and others. And so, stabilize as much as we can the good forces and then reform and push the organization forward. So, yes, we can do a lot with alliances, but we don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. We need a United Nation, a changed reform, yes, but we do need a global organization.
Jens Orback: And adding to that, I think one of the purposes of Santa Marta is not to take all the decisions for a long time by themselves, but perhaps coming back to the COP process. Maybe also the European Union can be seen as a very good example. It’s built actually on soft power. You can be a member because you get a lot of benefits when it comes to trade and open borders, and so on. And then some countries can go a little faster. They could have a monetary system together or do something, and then the others come after. So, I don’t want to put one of the solutions against the others.
Mark Leon Goldberg: Is there any other question I didn’t ask or point you wanted to make before we wrap up?
Stefan Löfven: We need to keep on talking about the positive opportunities, not only the dangers. We need to be aware, but we also need to show the other side of it and that we can come out so much stronger. We need to avoid the risks, otherwise, the future for ourselves, but not least our grandchildren or the generations that are not even born. And we want them to say that, at last, our generation understood the risk. We understood what we needed to do and we did it. We don’t want them to say that we didn’t even understand that this was dangerous.
Mark Leon Goldberg: Stefan and Jens, thank you so much for your time. This was really interesting.
Jens Orback: Thank you.
Stefan Löfven: Thank you.