When global risks become territorial in an age of competition

May 2026

Every January, the World Economic Forum publishes its Global Risks Report (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre), which the world's risk managers read as a league table. What has moved up? What has fallen? Which category dominates? This year, geoeconomic confrontation tops the two-year ranking for the first time. Last year's leader, misinformation and disinformation, has dropped to second. The league table is read, noted and filed.

However, reading the report spatially tells a different story. It is not just a list of global risks. It is a document about the reorganisation of space, detailing which flows are being rerouted, which infrastructures are becoming contested and which territories will absorb the cumulative effects of risks that are no longer managed collectively. 

The key shift is subtle yet profound: while risks may still be global in origin, they increasingly unfold in a territorial manner.

Two time horizons, one spatial injustice

The 2026 report signals a decisive transition. One of its most important structural features is the dual time horizon used to rank risks: two years and ten years.

In the short term: Geopolitical risks are at the forefront in an age of competition. Geoeconomic confrontation is now considered the most severe short-term risk, surpassing armed conflict, misinformation, and societal polarisation. Trade, finance, technology and infrastructure are increasingly being used as tools in strategic competition. At the same time, multilateral institutions are weakening and a fragmented, multipolar order is emerging. This is not just an additional layer of risk; it is a transformation of the system through which risks propagate.

The report describes an 'age of competition' in which multilateral cooperation is retreating and a fragmented, multipolar order is emerging. Of the 1,300 global leaders and experts surveyed, 68% expect the world political environment in ten years' time to be characterised by great and middle powers contesting, setting and enforcing regional rules and norms. Only 6% expect a reinvigoration of the post-war rules-based international order.

In previous years, risks were often framed as interconnected challenges requiring collective solutions, such as climate change, pandemics and financial instability. Today, however, these same risks are filtered through rivalry, protectionism, and strategic autonomy. Cooperation has become conditional and selective, often taking a back seat to national or regional interests.

In other words, risks are not only interconnected, they are also contested. This is not just a geopolitical shift — it is also a spatial one. Geoeconomic confrontation, now the most prominent short-term risk, operates through geography. Trade restrictions, supply chain restructuring, capital controls, investment screening and technological controls all determine how economic activity is distributed geographically. These factors determine which regions gain access to capital, which lose connectivity, and which become strategically indispensable.

In the medium term, climate change and environmental risks persist. Over a ten-year horizon, environmental risks such as extreme weather, biodiversity loss and systemic climate change clearly prevail. However, these risks have been overshadowed by geopolitical risks.

This creates a structural paradox, exposing the tragedy of time horizons (see the earlier blog post on this topic). Political attention and policy resources are increasingly being absorbed by immediate crises linked to fragmentation and instability. Meanwhile, long-term risks that are potentially more existential are relatively deprioritised in the short term.

This reflects a deeper misalignment in politics and governance: short-term territorial disruptions are crowding out the capacity to act on long-term systemic transformations.

Yet this is not just a temporal mismatch. The question this raises is not simply one of sequencing, but also of geography and fairness. The regions and populations most exposed to long-term environmental risks, such as coastal and delta communities, drought-prone regions and low-income urban peripheries, are not usually the ones driving geoeconomic confrontation. Yet they bear the compounding weight of both short-term disruption and long-term environmental stress, despite having the least institutional capacity to absorb either. The result is a form of spatial injustice embedded within the risk landscape itself.

The territorialisation of risk

Often missing from the global risk narrative is an understanding of how these dynamics play out spatially. Geoeconomic confrontation does not affect all places equally. Regions that rely on exports are more vulnerable to trade disruptions. Regions that depend on specific supply chains or strategic resources are more vulnerable. Infrastructure corridors, ports and energy hubs become both geopolitical assets and potential targets.

Similarly, economic risks are not evenly distributed. Rising debt, inflation, and asset volatility have different regional impacts depending on economic structure, fiscal capacity, and social resilience. The report itself highlights how inequality remains one of the most interconnected risks, fuelling broader instability.

Societal polarisation is also unevenly distributed. It is often concentrated in regions experiencing economic stagnation, declining social mobility or rapid structural change. These territorial divides are further exacerbated by digital ecosystems that reinforce fragmented perceptions of reality.

Even environmental risks, while global in nature, have profoundly localised consequences. Extreme weather events, resource scarcity and infrastructure failures occur in specific areas, often exacerbating existing regional disparities.

Risks do not come so neatly sorted. Global risks are increasingly shaped, amplified, and experienced through territorial structures. Therefore, challenges do not emerge from individual risks, but from their overlap in specific places. These 'convergence zones', where economic fragility, climate exposure, infrastructure vulnerability, and social tensions coincide, are largely invisible in global league tables. Yet it is precisely in these areas that instability is most likely to intensify.

Towards territorial foresight of risks

What follows from this is a need to rethink foresight itself. Much global risk analysis still operates at a high level of abstraction, identifying systemic risks without sufficiently considering how they are spatially differentiated. However, as risks are increasingly manifesting themselves in a territorial manner, foresight must also become more territorially grounded.

This implies several shifts:

• Spatial analysis must be integrated into risk assessment to understand not only what risks exist, but also where and how they are likely to materialise.

• Time horizons must be aligned, with short-term territorial shocks being linked to long-term structural transformations rather than being treated as separate agendas.

• There needs to be a strengthening of multi-level governance to ensure that local, regional, national and international actors are better connected in anticipating and managing risks.

Ultimately, this involves moving from a global narrative of risks to a territorial practice of foresight.

Rethinking resilience in a fragmented world

The 2026 Global Risks Report concludes that the future is not fixed, but is shaped by the decisions we make today. This is undoubtedly true. However, these decisions will increasingly be made – and felt – at the territorial level.

If the defining feature of the current era is fragmentation, then resilience can no longer be understood as a purely global or national concept. It must be territorial.

Therefore, the challenge ahead is not only to better understand global risks, but also to govern their territorial consequences in a world where cooperation is more difficult, disparities are widening and uncertainty is the only constant.

This requires a stronger focus on territorial foresight, not as a niche analytical exercise, but as a core part of how we anticipate, prepare for, and respond to the risks that will shape our future.

by Kai Böhme

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