Summary/TLDR

• Diverse researchers, analysts, and officials gathered at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) in September 2024 to discuss global catastrophic risks and potential solutions.
• Key topics included: emerging risks, the systemic nature of risk, resilience options, comprehensive risk governance, and partnerships for change.
• The conference highlighted the expanding and interdependent nature of global risks, the challenges in managing them, and the need for better international cooperation and coordination in risk assessment and governance.
• Practical solutions included: inclusion of global risks in national risk assessments, new international agreements, national chief risk officers, and on-the-ground solutions to the local manifestations of catastrophe.
• New Zealand needs to improve its preparedness for global catastrophe and consider measures such as ensuring local fuel supply, upgrading critical infrastructure, and developing a publicly facing National Risk Register that includes global catastrophic risks.
• Click the YouTube video above to watch Dr Matt Boyd’s conference presentation.
• For more on these issues, you can read the NZCat Main Report about NZ’s vulnerability and resilience to nuclear war or visit Islands for the Future of Humanity.

The CSER ConferenceOn the 17–18^th Sept 2024 I joined a diverse set of researchers and analysts converging on the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) to contemplate risks that could result in the collapse of civilisation.Alongside catastrophic risk researchers and analysts from the global North and South, attendees included diplomats, representatives from the UN, think tanks, governments such as Singapore, NATO advisors, and students.Tongue-in-cheek dinner speaker Lance Gharavi professed the merits of the comical Centre for Applied Eschatology, however most in attendance had the goal of preventing global catastrophes such as nuclear war, extreme pandemics or technological disasters, and ensuring recovery should these catastrophes ever befall us.Keynote speaker Mami Mizutori, a former Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, talked about four needs in the face of potential global catastrophe:

• Comprehensive risk governance
• Partnerships for change
• Better synergy among global agendas
• Courage to tackle systemic risk

But Mizutori also warned that there is a difficult path ahead with multilateralism and binding agreements being difficult to achieve in 2024.Peter Sogaard Jorgensen spoke about the evolution of the polycrisis we now face, and the structural drivers of risk that have landed the world amid a set of ‘anthropocene traps’. Understanding the evolution of these structural incentives is key to overcoming them.The conference heard grass-roots solutions to major risks including flood resilience in Pakistan (from Sabuhi Essa), and the importance of indigenous knowledge and rights (Elena Kavanagh). We also heard about ‘derailment risks’ (Laurie Laybourn) where solutions to catastrophes such as climate change could become unattainable as our capability to solve them is undermined by the very catastrophe process itself.Emerging risks discussed included biological and other converging technological threats (Margaret Kosal), the risk of space wars and satellite disruption (Joanna Rozpedowski), including the blurred lines between what is a military target vs civilian asset. The audience heard new approaches to risk analysis and mitigation such as ‘impact webs’ (Edward Sparkes) or ‘webs of prevention’ (Catherine Rhodes), as well as the value of a potential UN convention on existential risk (Manfred Kohler).A session on resilience to global catastrophe highlighted solutions such as fuel security for agriculture in NZ (this author: Matt Boyd), resilient foods (Juan Garcia), and the need for government plans. One success reported by Monica Ulloa of the Observatorio de Riesgos Catastróficos Globales, was the government of Argentina including abrupt sunlight reducing scenarios (such as volcanic or nuclear winter) in government risk analysis. Argentina is the first country to do this.I had informative and stimulating conversations ranging from the importance of government Chief Risk Officers to coordinate anticipatory risk governance, through to first-hand accounts about wealthy individuals looking to identify resilient locations to build secure refuges.It’s impossible to give full details of the 50 speakers and dozens of poster presentations here, but the overall picture was one of expanding major global risks (due to rising complexity, interconnectedness and human impacts) some which may be beginning to elude our capacity to manage them, and an international system not up to the task of coordinated risk governance.But solutions are possible, and takeaways included the urgent need for governments to add global catastrophic risks to risk assessment and risk management processes, and perhaps more critically, to cooperate and coordinate on cross-border risks.We have recently seen the UN Member States adopt a Pact for the Future, which explicitly calls out global catastrophic and existential risks and addresses climate, nuclear, biological, and technological risks. These ambitious statements must now be backed through action of Member States individually and collectively. I also had the opportunity to take part in two of Lara Mani’s (CSER) global risk workshops.The first was a creative workshop focused on practical creation and dissemination of risk information and key messages in succinct and accessible forms.In the second, I played the role of UK Minister for Health in a scenario-based workshop contemplating firstly an Indonesian supervolcano eruption, the cascading consequences of which spread to affect the entire world, and secondly, a scenario dealing with the catastrophic collapse of the UK power grid.These exercises in communication and understanding of catastrophic risk were very effective and governments should undertake such exercises regularly.

ReflectionsOn reflection after the conference, I can commend the government of my own country (NZ) for some of its recent initiatives:

• National Fuel Security Study – to investigate the options for ensuring liquid fuel supply, however this study needs to contemplate global catastrophic risks explicitly.
• Draft Critical Minerals List – for public consultation to inform strategic development of essential mineral resources (see our submission that takes a global catastrophe perspective here).
• Draft Resolution on Nuclear War Effects and Scientific Research, announced with Ireland, that proposes an up-to-date international study on the effects of nuclear war (ideally including second order cascading effects).
• National Emergency Management Agency ‘CatPlan’ handbook for hazard agnostic catastrophe management – not released yet. It appears this handbook will discuss catastrophes ‘requiring international support’, however some scenarios need to assume such support is not forthcoming.
• Given the last point, NZ needs to assess its capital stocks and ensure that the available human, natural, physical, and financial capitals are sufficient to provide resilience options in the radically altered context of a true global catastrophe.

As such, the NZ Government can still learn from global examples:

• Argentina’s inclusion of abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios in national risk assessment (ie, nuclear, volcanic, or comet/asteroid winters).
• The Singapore Government’s attendance at the Cambridge Conference on Catastrophic Risk as part of its ongoing foresight capabilities.
• The United Kingdom and other countries’ publicly facing National Risk Registers.
• The United States Global Catastrophic Risk Management Act, which mandated a report on these risks that is due imminently.
• The many global catastrophe scenario exercises being undertaken around the world to understand the needed preparation and management for risks such as: extreme pandemics, nuclear war/winter, supervolcano, asteroid/comet impact, catastrophic electrical grid or communications failure, or catastrophic global food shortage.

NZ needs to deploy a systemic approach to vulnerability and resilience using a global catastrophic risk lens. Key vulnerabilities in NZ include single failure points that must be mitigated as a priority. This includes (among other initiatives):

• Ensuring local supply and production of liquid fuels (eg, biofuels) for critical processes such as agriculture, should fuel imports cease.
• Ensuring reliable and future-proofed Cook Strait ferries, which are currently so critical given NZ remains over-dependent on road truck freight for distribution of food and essential goods.
• Upgrading coastal shipping and rail assets and associated infrastructure to facilitate trade, including with Australia, in the context of a dire global catastrophe.
• Developing a Digital Communications Continuity Plan.

NZ could develop and leverage a publicly facing National Risk Register connected to a set of solution visions, combined with the Infrastructure Commission’s Infrastructure Priorities Programme to ensure the required resilience is developed. I encourage people to submit Stage 1 proposals to the Commission highlighting key national vulnerabilities.