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Addressing the challenges of a changing world Risks associated with natural and human-induced hazards, climate change, violent conflict, epidemics and pandemics, financial systems and food price fluctuations overlay risk drivers related to poverty, inequality (including gender inequality), discrimination and exclusion, extremism, demographic pressures, unplanned urbanization, ecosystem degradation, displacement, weak institutions and declining respect for human rights. There are also risks associated with the less-visible degradation and loss of water, ocean, forest, soil and biodiversity systems. When risks accumulate and interact, they can manifest as crises and unleash cascading impacts on sectors and across systems, causing loss of life and livelihoods and dramatic socio-economic and environmental damages. The COVID-19 pandemic is a stark example, which started as a health emergency with now huge socio-economic knock-on effects that interplay with an unfolding climate and environmental crisis. In addition, the threat of terrorism and the rise of competing powers, alongside an emerging populism and rising nationalism, are challenging the international order needed to manage complex or systemic risks and build long-term resilience. At the same time, human suffering and the socio-economic and environmental impacts of crises are rising, and humanitarian needs are mounting year-on-year as more people are affected by increasingly protracted crises. At the beginning of 2020, nearly 168 million people were predicted to need humanitarian assistance and protection. This represents 1 in about 45 people in the world and is the highest figure in decades. In the context of the unprece-dented impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on all countries, the number of people requiring humanitarian assistance is set to increase significantly, particularly in countries already facing other crises. Additionally, the duration of displacement is growing, with prolonged refugee situations across the globe now lasting an estimated 26 years on average. The scope and scale of armed conflict and violence are evolving. Over the past decade, internal conflicts have contributed to the highest number of conflict-related fatalities since the end of the Cold War. Their proliferation has also reversed the decline in the number of intra-State conflicts between the early 1990s and the early 2010s. In 2016, more countries experienced violent conflict than at any time in nearly 30 years. Much of this violence remains entrenched in low-income countries, yet some of today’s deadliest conflicts are in countries with higher income levels and stronger institutions. At the same time, economic and environmental losses due to disasters are rising rapidly, whilst global data on the impacts of events does not take account of many small-scale events that cause cumulative impacts and are a constant reality for many communities. Alone from 2005 to 2015, disasters in today’s world, the nature of risks and of their interrelations is changing. Progress towards sustainable development and peaceful societies in which no one is left behind is undermined by multiple and intersecting threats that are intensified by several persistent risk drivers with cumulative effects.