Press release: World Risk Poll 2024 report
In the context of our changing world, the resilience of individuals, communities and countries has never been more important. Resilience helps people to live safely and to feel safe, and it is Lloyd’s Register Foundation’s mission to engineer a safer world. In 2022 we released our first World Risk Poll Resilience Index, a global tool that allows policymakers and researchers to understand resilience from the perspectives of individuals, communities and countries, across the diverse demographics and regions the Poll covers.
In this report – Resilience in a Changing World – we present the second iteration of this Resilience Index, which, for the first time, shows how resilience is changing in the face of today’s challenges. We want this report and the associated data to increase shared understanding and lead to meaningful improvements in the way resilience is nurtured and strengthened around the world – ultimately keeping people safe from harm.
Key findings in the report:
- While overall resilience was stable at a global level from 2021 to 2023, resilience at the individual level fell, with significant drops in almost a third (42) of countries measured in the Index in both years. This decline was driven by a global increase, from 36% to 43%, in the number of people who say they can do nothing to protect themselves and their families in a disaster, suggesting a global loss of agency;
- The proportion of the global population that has experienced a disaster related to a natural hazard in the past five years has increased by 3 percentage points from 2021 to 2023, from 27% to 30%, primarily driven by increased experience of flooding;
- 30% of people globally who experienced a disaster in the past five years received no warning, with rural, less educated and less financially resilient populations significantly less likely to be warned. However, over three-quarters (77%) of those not warned own a mobile phone, presenting an important opportunity for investment in mobile/cell-broadcast early warning systems.