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2025's triple threats — disinformation, climate change and cybercrime

2025's triple threats — disinformation, climate change and cybercrime
Marthinus Botes
By Marthinus Botes
16 Jan 2025
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The rise of online disinformation, climate change and cyber espionage are already considered to be risk factors. Global stakeholders are bracing themselves.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) recently released its 2025 annual global risks report, which highlighted the increasing risks posed by the disastrous effects of climate change, the role of disinformation and misinformation in societal polarisation, and the threat of cybercrime.

The report includes input from 900 experts from academia, government, civil society, international organisations and the private sector to determine what risk factors they anticipate for the medium-term future.

Misinformation and disinformation


The WEF report says misinformation – the spreading of false information without malicious intent – and disinformation, which is false information spread with the intent to deceive, have become a prime concern.

It was voted as the top short-term risk factor for academia, the government and the private sector and was ranked in second and third place for civil society and international organisations respectively.

“Efforts to combat this risk are coming up against a formidable opponent in Generative AI-created false or misleading content that can be produced and distributed at scale,” said the WEF report.

Read more: Disinformation nation — a concerted campaign to destabilise SA post elections

The weaponisation of misinformation and disinformation – or, more broadly, the use of social media to push a political agenda – has already happened in South Africa.

Read more: Misinformation and disinformation infiltrate everyday workings of local government

In 2017, the Guptas hired the disgraced and now defunct UK public relations firm Bell Pottinger to wage a pro-Zuma and pro-Gupta propaganda war on Twitter, writes Seyoung Jeon in a chapter for the book, Digital Disinformation in Africa.

More than 100 fake accounts posted at least 185,000 tweets, employing hashtags such as #Jonasisaliar, which was intended to discredit the then-Deputy Minister of Finance Mcebisi Jonas.

“While much of the content here was again hyper-partisan rather than factually incorrect, there was a notable element of disinformation,” writes Jeon.

Climate risk


Extreme weather events were ranked as the second-most severe risk in the short term. However, when it comes to long-term risk, meaning the most severe risks that can be expected in the next 10 years, the top four risks are environmental – extreme weather events, ecosystem collapse, critical changes to earth systems and natural resource shortages.

“The burden of climate change is becoming more evident every year, as pollution from continued use of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas leads to more frequent and severe extreme weather events,” said the WEF report.

“Heatwaves across parts of Asia; flooding in Brazil, Indonesia and parts of Europe; wildfires in Canada; and hurricanes Helene and Milton in the United States are just some recent examples of such events.”

Read more: EXPLAINED: Seven climate tipping points that could change life as we know it

Allianz risk barometer


The multinational financial firm Allianz presented similar results in its 2025 risk barometer. Among its survey’s participants –businesses from 106 different countries – risk factors such as macroeconomic developments and political violence decreased in perceived danger, whereas threats related to climate change were elevated.

“Growing awareness is driven by the mounting costs firms face from regulatory compliance on disclosing physical climate risks, as well as operational disruptions caused by more extreme weather events and ecosystem degradation,” said the risk barometer report.

“Yet many companies still underestimate the impact of chronic perils (such as drought) because their impact is more gradual.”

Threats to cybersecurity 


Cyber risk is, for the fourth consecutive year, the top risk factor identified by the 2025 Allianz risk barometer. In contrast, it ranked only 10th in 2015.

Read more: Cybersecurity lessons and best practice in the wake of the CrowdStrike outage

“The past year has seen continuing ransomware attacks, which are increasingly targeting sensitive data to increase the financial leverage on companies,” said the risk barometer report.

“Ransomware continues to be the top cause of cyber insurance loss; during the first six months of 2024, it accounted for 58% of the value of large cyber claims.”

Data breaches, ransomware and cyber-attacks on key infrastructure are perceived to be a key threat by businesses in countries such as France, the UK and Germany, and are also on the rise in countries such as Morocco and South Africa, said the risk barometer report. DM

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