Participants in an interactive workspace session at the World
Economic Forum on Africa Wednesday discussed ways to mitigate the
impact of global risks that are most salient to Africa.
"It's almost impossible to separate one risk and think of it in
isolation. In a highly interconnected world, these risks manifest
themselves in highly systemic ways," said Sean M. Cleary, managing
director of Strategic Concepts, South Africa.
The 2006 risk landscape is dominated by high impact headline
risks, such as terrorism, oil price shocks, potential pandemics and
climate change, which are increasingly well understood.
The participants devised the potential worst-case scenarios and
proposed ways to mitigate their impact.
Those who focused on terrorism and oil price hike said
improvement of governance and better deployment of oil revenues to
alleviate social conditions would go a long way towards mitigating
this risk.
The consensus from the panel discussion on the topic came to
that government needs to create a policy framework to plan for
climate change while it is the responsibility of business to
respond to it.
The Geneva-based World Economic Forum is an independent
international organization committed to improving the state of the
world by engaging leaders in partnerships for the global public
interest.
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The forum and its partners in the Global Risk Program have
identified core areas where risk mitigation may be improved through
collaboration between the private and public sectors.
(Xinhua News Agency June 1, 2006)
