Be prepared for "a unique, uncertain and turbulent decade to come", warns the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report 2023.
We are used to an "uncertain" and "turbulent" world, but why "unique"? Because this decade, in WEF's scenario planning, will be 10 years of "polycrisis", a world where one crisis causes another and yet another.
The GRR 2023 maps 32 risks in all, though many could have been collapsed into one. For example, climate change appears as four risks under different names when it is, in essence, one threat, big though it is.
But GRR 2023's point is that this decade is going to test the international community's magnanimity to act as one global family, with the next two months of this year and the following 12 months being very challenging.
Inflation, the cost-of-living crisis, trade wars, social unrest, geopolitical confrontations and spectre of nuclear warfare make the GRR 2023 list.
Coming up with scenarios is one thing, but getting the world ready to meet the risks head on is another. As it is, the world is not ready to act together.
Here are at least four reasons why it is not. First is the world's response to Covid-19. It was a mess with the developed nations keeping vaccines to themselves until it was too late. And that, too, after pleas from India, Africa and Pacific island states.
The International Monetary Fund, being a global voice for the national interests of developed nations, had a different story. To it, nations came together from diagnosing the problem to curing it.
Really? Well, maybe among the developed nations. Where was the IMF when developed nations were hoarding vaccines and tens of thousands were dying elsewhere?
Second is the developed nations' response to climate change. Here is a replay of the Covid-19 fiasco. All these nations top the list of greenhouse gas emitters, yet they are reluctant to wean themselves off fossil fuels.
On the contrary, some, like Britain, are exploring for more. To them, net zero is for distant lands such as Bhutan, a carbon-negative country, and Malaysia, whose global share of carbon emissions is only 0.69 per cent.
Third is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We said before and we say it again: the invasion should not have happened. Neither should it be allowed to continue. But warmongers in the West aren't interested in giving peace a chance. A war between two has now become one between one and many.
Fourth, the latest flare-up in Palestine and the West's response to it suggest that the world is moving from one crisis to another unchanged. No lessons learned here in this more than 70-year crisis.
Here is a world where the persecuted becomes the persecutor, and vice versa. The Palestinian uprising is not a war but a prison uprising, as one journalist described it.
Can a world that can't solve a single crisis solve 32 crises? The quick answer is no. But it must. Such a polycrisis needs a world that is together.
Sure, it is "together" in a West versus East way. This is not the way to solve crises, let alone polycrisis. Divide-and-rule is an imperial formula unsuited to the post-colonial world.
This is something the West must discard for a new pair of spectacles. Justice demands this. Only a just world can put the world in order.