Global Challenges Foundation – Global Risk Survey

A survey commissioned to gauge perceptions of global risks, including climate change, weapons of mass destruction, and AI.

Across all eight countries, six adults in ten (59%) consider the world to be more insecure today compared with two years ago, the same proportion as said so last year (61%). This perception is highest in Brazil (75%), Russia (69%) and Germany (69%).
Politically motivated violence has risen to become the most concerning risk (88%), driven mostly by rising concern in European countries like Russia (93%) and Germany (90%).This is likely the result of growing instability in the Eurozone, as well as ongoing tension in Syria, Ukraine, and North Korea. Developing countries are mostly insulated from the increase in concern around violent conflict; instead, they tend to be more worried than developed countries by climate change (89% vs 81%) and other large scale environmental damage (86% vs 80%).
China has grown substantially in confidence – it is the only country where more people say that the world is more secure than say it is more insecure than two years ago (39% more secure vs 36% less secure). The increase in confidence is generated almost entirely by millennials, underlining the scale of recent change in the country.
Opinions in the US are increasingly divided between the coastal regions and the American heartlands and by gender, further evidence of US President Donald Trump’s impact on perceptions of global security.

Date Published: 12/07/2018

Categories: International | Politics | Public and communities | Technology & Telecoms

Client: Weber Shandwick on behalf of the Global Challenges Foundation

Methodology

Methodology: An online survey of 10,030 adults aged between 18 and 64 was conducted in Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, the UK, and the US, between 16 April and 27 April 2018. The data were weighted to be nationally representative of the population in each of the countries by age, gender and region.