Organisations working on multiple Global Catastrophic risks
It is not uncommon to find organisations working, directly or indirectly, on a single Global Catastrophic Risk (GCR). For instance, the World Health Organization does much work to prevent pandemics, as part of its remit.
It is rarer for organisations to focus on multiple GCRs—for a start, this involves them having the concept akin to GCR, which is not often the case. In a report I’m preparing with Dennis Pamlin of the Global Challenges Foundation, here is a list of organisations focusing on multiple GCRs (note that it is not necessarily an endorsement of their quality). Let me know if there are any organisations missing, and I’ll add them:
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Brookings |
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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists |
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CSER |
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Center for International Security and Cooperation |
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Club of Rome |
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Council on Foreign Relations |
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Federation of American Scientists |
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Future of Humanity Institute |
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Global Catastrophic Risk Institute |
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Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses |
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International Risk Governance Council |
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Lifeboat Foundation |
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Nuclear Threat Initiative |
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Saving Humanity from Homo Sapiens |
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Skoll Global Threats Fund |
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Stimson Center |
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Risk Response Network |
http://forumblog.org/communities/risk-response-network/ |
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World Economic Forum |
http://www.weforum.org/reports/global-risks-2014-report |
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Tower Watson |
What kind of GCRs are being worked on? This can be seen in the following graph; AI is not as badly situated as I would initially have expected:
- The Bittersweetness of Replaceability by (EA Forum; 11 Jul 2015 23:44 UTC; 18 points)
- The map of organizations, sites and people involved in x-risks prevention by (7 Oct 2016 12:04 UTC; 10 points)
- The map of organizations, sites and people involved in x-risks prevention by (EA Forum; 7 Oct 2016 12:17 UTC; 9 points)
I don’t suppose your report will include an estimate of the funding amount going toward studying/mitigating each risk (from these organizations alone)?
Nope! That would be a good subject for another report.
What exactly is a Global Catastrophic Risk?
Seeing how “chemical weapons” or “poverty” made the list, I am quite confused about the scope of this concept.
Poverty is on the list for complicated reasons that aren’t all that interesting. Some people do define chemical weapons as having catastrophic potentials; I don’t agree with that, but I can’t reject it out of hand.
I’d love a general introduction to what you’re targeting and general methodology, because this post leaves me with a lot of questions.
What is “Phase Transition” and “Reject Procreation”? How is climate change different from biogeochem and ocean acidification? Is poverty really a catastrophic risk? How were the zero-organization GCR’s chosen?
There will be a write up of the methodology in respectable terms in the final report, but it’s essentially knowledge+google search+checking links on various sites (such as those found by the above processes, and some of the effective altruism sites that have looked into this).
This collective blog is about runaway global warming and possible human extinction—a lot of good info graphic http://arctic-news.blogspot.ru/
About different seismic catastrophes - while not so scientifically based, it sometimes has some interesting news http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/author/theextinctionprotocol/
All doom oriented conspiracy theorists are here. Fast news discussion and all possible gossips. Useless but addictive. http://www.godlikeproductions.com/
Now semiclosed blog about Peak oil and Peak everything—a lot of good analisys http://www.theoildrum.com/
This blog is orientated on economic collapse and war http://www.zerohedge.com/