WEF Global Risks Report 2023: Pakistan Needs to Improve the Cybersecurity Measures and Digital Inequality

For the past 17 years, the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Risks Report has warned about deeply interconnected global risks. Global Risks Report 2023 revealed that conflict and geo-economic tensions have triggered a series of deeply interconnected global risks. The Global Risk Report 2023 identified the following top ten risks that pose the biggest threats to Pakistan in the next two years.

WEF Global Risks Report 2023: Pakistan Needs to Improve the Cybersecurity Measures and Digital Inequality

These threats are

1. Digital power concentration and monopolies
2. Failure of cybersecurity measures (including loss of privacy, data fraud or theft, and cyber espionage)
3. Rapid and/or sustained inflation
4. Debt crises
5. State collapse
6. Lack of widespread digital services and digital inequality
7. Interstate conflict
8. Terrestrial biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse
9. Terrorist attacks
10. Employment and livelihood crisis.

The report highlights that the biggest risk that the country is facing is digital power concentration and monopolies. Moreover, the country also failed to complement the cybersecurity measures. The report further revealed that the people in the country faced a lack of privacy and digital fraud. Additionally, there is a lack of widespread of digital services and digital inequality in Pakistan.

The Report identifies that the cost-of-living crisis is the biggest short-term risk while the failure of climate mitigation and climate adaptation is the largest long-term concern. The report further revealed that over 800,000 hectares of farmland have been wiped out by 2022 floods in Pakistan.

This has resulted in increasing commodity prices significantly in a country that is already grappling with record 27% inflation. Water stress is also widespread in Pakistan that particularly impacts women and girls responsible for water collection, with knock-on impacts on health and education outcomes.

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In the face of spreading humanitarian crises and state instability, water infrastructure could continue to be used both as a weapon and target, mirroring past water conflicts and terrorism in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

The report also examined how present and future risks can interact with each other to form a “polycrisis” – a cluster of related global risks with compounding impacts and unpredictable consequences. The report explored “Resource Rivalry”, a potential cluster of interrelated environmental, geopolitical and socioeconomic risks relating to the supply of and demand for natural resources, including food, water, and energy.