|
Running on EXTRA time…
Insights and Updates from the EXTRA InfoHub
to help you keep track of ‘Existential Threats and Risks to All’
|
EXTRA Global Risk Update
September 2026
|
EDITORIAL
|
|
Systemic Solution for Systemic Existential Risk
This issue provides our latest update across the spectrum of risks now coalescing into a polycrisis. Global attention continues to focus on climate change in the wake of catastrophic fires in Europe, a devastating flash flood in Nepal, and grave warnings that overshooting the Paris target is no longer avoidable, only containable. Discussions on AI governance and risks also continue to evolve rapidly, especially relating to recursive self-improvement (RSI) and autonomous weapons.
EXTRA recently hosted Session 11 at the World Academy of Arts and Science's 66th anniversary conference. The aim was to explore solutions in response to the problems of polycrisis and geopolitical fragmentation. Six speakers discussed how to best respond to the convergence of major threats and risks, including alternative financing of mitigation policies. We also presented our latest research on how to establish reliable quality-control measures for the ever-expanding risk-reporting industry itself.
Lorenzo Rodriguez, Editor, EXTRA Newsletter
Prof Thomas Reuter, Editor & Chair, EXTRA Working Group
|
|
|
INTERVIEWS & WEBINARS
|
|
Original, short interviews or discussions with experts and stakeholders on various categories of existential challenges.
|
Navigating Existential Risk in an Age of Global Turbulence: Towards Systemic Intelligence and Resilience
In a period marked by global turbulence across natural and social domains, existential risks can no longer be understood as isolated phenomena; they are emergent properties of deeply interconnected systems. This EXTRA session at the WAAS@66 conference explores how a more systemic, anticipatory approach to risk will lead to better-informed, more integrated decision-making at all levels and across sectors, supporting human security and resilience.
It examines three interrelated key requirements: Continuous risk awareness in a rapidly evolving world; a systemic and holistically integrated understanding of risk; innovative risk mitigation funding; and enhancing the quality of risk information by developing assessment tools to rate the credibility of various risk reports, which can otherwise provide biased, conflicting, or unverifiable information. Speakers: Cristina Popa Tache, Ortwin Renn, Kiriti Prasad Choudhury, Lorenzo Rodriguez, Ana Maria Paraschiv, and Stefan Brunnhuber.
|
 |
|
|
ARTICLES, ESSAYS & IDEAS
|
|
Original articles, op-ed pieces, and more – commissioned by EXTRA.
|
|
|
|
|
The effects of Climate Change Risks on Transport and Supply Chain Organization
Eric Carrey, Director of Audit, French Red Cross
Climate change is no longer a distant risk, but a very current one. In the logistics sector, it is already disrupting infrastructure, logistics flows, and global procurement patterns. Under pressure from extreme events, water stress, carbon regulations and new resilience requirements, companies must fundamentally rethink how they organise their transport and supply chains, mainly around the following six dimensions.
Read More
|
|
|
|
|
The End of the Roman Empire: A Lesson for Our Time
Dr. Pr. Hubert Landier, Secretary General, CIRET (Paris), Vice-President, International Institute of Social Audit (Paris), and member, Institute for Psychanalysis and Management (Paris)
Like the Romans, who could not imagine a world other than the Empire, we struggle to conceive of a future beyond techno-industrial civilization. Today’s crises form a system of “poly-risks”; faced with this paradoxical injunction, the author proposes two paths: to trust personal responsibility rather than institutions, and to prioritize care for people, communities, Humanity, all living beings, and the planet itself.
Read More
|
|
|
|
|
UPCOMING EVENTS
|
|
A selection of events to be aware of that are organized by EXTRA, allies, partners and organizations on our radar.
|
|
|
Global Existential Risk Governance for Human Survival: Chinese Perspectives on Enhancing Cooperation
|
|
Centre for China and Globalisation (CCG) and EXTRA (Existential Threats and Risks to All
In-Person Event & Online | October 15, 2026, 6:30-8:30 CEST @ Beijing International Fortune Center, Beijing, China
|
|
Read More
|
|
|
The Technoprogressive Opportunity: The Future of Ethics and Emerging Technologies
|
|
London Futurists
Conference | September 19, 2026, 9:30–17:00 BST @ London
|
|
Read More
|
|
|
Science Advice for Policy During Turbulent Times
|
|
SAPEA and Academia Europaea
Panel discussion | 14 October 2026, 10:00–11:00 CEST Brussels time @ Budapest, Hungary, and livestream.
|
|
Read More
|
|
|
|
|
REPORTS
|
|
Our latest selection of outstanding reports on Existential Threats and Risks. Beat the info glut by taking a look at our monthly shortlist.
If you have time, take a look at our list of 20 Most Notable Reports or browse the complete EXTRA Risk Directory on our website.
|
|
|
|
The Great Fragmentation
Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP)
June 2025, 62p.
The post-Cold War "Great Fragmentation" marks a systemic shift characterized by declining global peace and dispersed power. Superpower influence is static, and GDP shares of advanced economies have fallen significantly (e.g., Germany's halved). The number of middle powers has nearly doubled (9 in 1991 to 16 in 2024), now collectively holding more material capacity than great powers. Rising middle powers like the UAE, Indonesia, and Türkiye demonstrate "strategic autonomy," leveraging growth for regional assertion without superpower alignment. While creating diplomatic opportunities, this shift complicates global governance, heightens competition, and correlates with a 175% rise in internationalized intrastate conflicts since 2010.
AI and the New Age of Bioweapons: Preparing for a World of Synthetic Pathogens
Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Foreign Affairs
September/October 2026,138–153 pp.
The Director of Harvard's Initiative on Bioconvergence, Biosecurity, and Bioresilience and a former US Deputy National Security Advisor, the author warns that AI is enabling "a growing number of actors" to generate biological capabilities that can be weaponized more easily than ever before. She argues synthetic biology is radically democratizing access to bioweapon-making tools once restricted to a handful of state programs. She fears the current response would be ineffective, risking mass casualties worldwide, and calls for a new system to ward against AI-enabled biological threats.
Governance of the Transition to AGI: Urgent Considerations for the UN General Assembly
Council of Presidents of the UN General Assembly
Fall 2026, 11p.
Chaired by WAAS fellow Jerome Glenn, CEO of The Millennium Project, this brief outlines six ways an eventual transition to artificial general intelligence could reshape humanity's risk landscape: irreversible consequences, weapons-of-mass-destruction potential, critical-infrastructure effects on energy and transportation, worsening global inequality and inequitable power concentration, existential risk from AGI overpowering human control, and the loss of future benefits if governance fails. Glenn describes managing the transition from today's narrow AI to AGI as "the most complex governance challenge humanity has ever faced," building on the Seoul 2024 Declaration and prior high-level input from over 55 global experts including major AI lab leaders. The brief is intended to inform a potential special UN General Assembly session dedicated to AGI governance.
Methodological assessment of the impact and dependence of business on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people
IPBES, Rueda X., Jones M., Polasky S. eds
August 2026, 392 pp.
The report, also referred to as the ‘Business and Biodiversity Assessment’, results from three years of work by 79 experts from 35 countries and synthesizes information from over 5,000 references. The BBS is a vital contribution to global efforts to achieve the goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), the Sustainable Development Goals, and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. It identifies more than 100 concrete actions for governments, financial actors, businesses, indigenous peoples, local communities, and civil society. Calls for immediate efforts to recognise dependencies, reduce impacts, and reshape obsolete systems that still govern economic activity.
Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 2025
Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN)
August 2026, 298 pp.
Coral reefs are at risk of irreversible collapse, according to this landmark assessment built on more than 21 million observations from roughly 90,000 surveys contributed by 600 partners across 120-plus countries and territories. The report warns the planet is on track to lose 70–90% of coral cover at 1.5°C of warming and up to 99% at 2.0°C, with some scientists cautioning that even this dire outlook may understate the severity. Marine heatwaves are compressing the recovery windows reefs need between bleaching events, locking many systems into a "staircase of decline".
Accelerating biomass loss from forest disturbances across Europe Kowalski et al, Nature Geoscience
August 2026, ca. 30 pp.
Satellite data show how drought, wildfire, storms, and insect outbreaks have decimated European forest biomass in recent years, releasing carbon into the atmosphere and reducing carbon storage capacity in a tipping-point effect. The findings highlight the urgent need for climate action to avoid irreversible harm.
|
|
|
|
|
COUNTERMEASURES
|
|
The latest and most important models or targeted recommendations for effective existential risks management, sustainability and human security.
|
|
|
|
Addressing Global Social Turbulence: Sources and Solutions
World Academy of Arts and Science (WAAS)
August 2026, 33pp.
Provides an integrated analysis of the underlying sources of today's global turbulence and outlines a systems-based framework for addressing the interconnected challenges facing humanity. Rather than treating crises in isolation, it emphasizes the need for coordinated strategies that advance peace, human security, sustainable development, effective governance, scientific innovation, and ethical leadership. The World Academy produced this report together with Force for Good, NGIC, ASU, GPOC, AE4RIA, SDSN Global, WUC, UNESCO-MOST Bridges, Millennium Project, and other organizations. More than 100 experts contributed through a series of international forums, workshops, and collaborative dialogues, beginning with the Global Baku Forums in 2025 and 2026, online workshops, and the WAAS@65 conference. The WAAS@66 conference on “Solutions to Global Turbulence: Peace, Prosperity, and Freedom” marks the next stage of this continuing initiative.
Limiting Overshoot: Navigating exceedance of 1.5°C and pathways towards return
UNEP
August 2026, 139 pp.
Since the 2015 Paris Agreement, most nations have tried to limit global warming to 1.5°C, but this report shows it is no longer possible. 1,5 degrees of warming will become the new normal around 2030, and thereafter we will see an overshoot to at least 1.8 degrees. The report frames "futures lost and futures still available," detailing climate impacts in a 1.5°C-overshoot world, the mechanics of warming reversal after peak temperature, and the risks tied to each path. It structures the response around three "compounding choices" — reducing emissions faster, limiting warming while managing unavoidable risks, and sustaining decline and adaptation over decades —, and argues that radical, sustained action across governments, industry and society is the only way to avert cascading heating and ecosystem-collapse scenarios.
Governing Well in the Algorithmic Age: The Foundations of Digital Statecraft
Zeynep Engin et al, DSA Working Paper
August 2026, 27 pp.
This paper introduces digital statecraft as a field of study aimed at improving how states govern in the digital age. Discusses both digital governance tools and the governance of the digital economy. Ten principles of digital statecraft are identified, the absence of which produces structural governance failure: public interest first, human-machine complementarity, governability by design, systemic coherence, hybrid institutions, adaptive governance, human centricity and civic agency, accountable and traceable authority, judgment across time, and the non-delegable core.
Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels: A roadmap powered by renewables, electrification and grid enhancement
IRENA
May 2026, 36 pp.
Argues that the urgently required energy transition is entering a new phase and that the key requirements for accelerated change are: Expanding renewable power generation capacity; electrifying key end-use sectors (transport, industry, buildings); improving energy efficiency; expanding the grid and storage; and scaling up sustainable fuels. The solution pathways are complex but increasingly well understood. For example, improving efficiency will require rapid electrification, so that electricity will account for 35% of global total final energy consumption (TFEC) by 2035 and 50% by 2050.
Building a Defense-in-Depth Biosecurity Strategy for the AI Era
RAND Corporation
August 2026, 77p.
RAND warns that fast-advancing AI tools for biotechnology carry "significant risks arising from misuse," with expert knowledge, lab skill, and lab access —the three traditional barriers to bioweapon creation— all eroding simultaneously. The report proposes nine "priority mitigations," layered together, that manage access to dangerous dual-use information, disrupt materials access, deter nefarious activity, and proactively detect misuse. The authors stress that prevention must evolve beyond access controls alone, requiring complementary detection architectures and deterrence mechanisms to meaningfully reduce the risk of a high-consequence AI-enabled bioattack.
Global Reforestation Opportunities
Reforestation Hub
August 2026
The Reforestation Hub seeks solutions to counter deforestation and associated loss of habitat and environmental services by optimizing reforestation in the US and beyond. This new map shows the vast extent of our global reforestation opportunities and helps us to estimate and locate them.
|
|
|
NEWS from the World Press
|
|
Links to a must-read selection of news sourced from the global media and web for the latest, emerging stories on Existential Threats and Risks.
|
|
The UN and Red Cross Are Calling for Restrictions on AI Drones and Killer Robots. Mike Ludwig, Truthout, 27 August 2026, Open access.
Case studies of autonomous weapons use show growing ethical, humanitarian, and security concerns about machines that select and attack targets without meaningful human control. The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross are calling for restrictions. No international treaty currently governs their development and use.
Commission Starts Enforcing AI Act Rules and New Transparency Requirements on 2 August. European Commission, 31 July 2026, Open access.
This announcement provides an important indication of where AI regulation is heading in the European Union and potentially beyond. The new requirements address transparency for certain AI systems, including obligations concerning chatbots and AI-generated or manipulated content.
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and 100 Other Companies Call for Action to Defend Against Rogue AI. Lucas Ropek, TechCrunch, 27 August 2026, Open access.
A recent open letter reflects the conflicted position of technology companies: They benefit from accelerating competition in AI while also recognizing the risks it creates. This tension undermines confidence in self-regulation and reinforces the case for regulators to establish common safety requirements and a level competitive playing field.
When AI Builds Itself: Our Progress Toward Recursive Self-Improvement, and Its Implications. Marina Favaro and Jack Clark, Anthropic Institute, September 2026, Open access.
Anthropic presents evidence that AI is beginning to accelerate its own development, creating the conditions for a recursive feedback loop in which human engineers could play an increasingly limited role. Claude Opus 4.6 can complete software tasks lasting approximately 12 hours, while autonomous agents can write and execute code and delegate work to other agents. As of May 2026, Claude authored more than 80% of the code merged into Anthropic’s production codebase, and the typical engineer produced eight times more code per day than in 2024.
Inside the U.K.’s Bold Experiment in AI Safety. Billy Perrigo, TIME, 16 January 2025, Open access.
This article profiles the U.K.’s AI Safety Institute and its pioneering government-led effort to identify current and emerging dangers within advanced AI models. By conducting evaluations within a public-interest institution, researchers can investigate biological, chemical, cyber, and autonomy risks away from the commercial conflicts of interest that constrain industry safety teams.
Ecological Collapse in the World’s Largest Mangrove Forest Is a Preview of What’s to Come. The Conversation, 1 September 2026, Open access.
Ecological collapse is already unfolding and reaching an advanced stage in vulnerable ecosystems. The deterioration of the Sundarbans illustrates the interactions at work in a polycrisis: mangroves provide natural protection against cyclones, flooding, and rising seas, but anthropogenic warming weakens that defense as the threats intensify. The resulting damage is already affecting farmers, families, and coastal livelihoods.
Global Income Inequality. Global Inequality, 2026, Open access.
This analysis presents a historical overview of income inequality between countries and argues that the divide between the Global North and Global South is not closing, particularly when China’s advances are excluded from aggregate statistics. It also reports that the richest 1% control 42% of global wealth, while the richest 5% control 69%.
An Invasive Mosquito Is Spreading With Alarming Speed. Stephanie Nolen, The New York Times, 4 August 2026.
An invasive, malaria-carrying mosquito resistant to available insecticides has moved farther and faster across Africa than even pessimistic scientists anticipated. Many public-health experts now believe it may be too late to eliminate or contain the species as it becomes established in densely populated cities where residents have limited immunity. Its spread could transform malaria into a much more serious threat in African megacities.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
