This is a link-post to results of a recent survey.
In an election year, there is a huge opportunity for New Zealand political parties to clearly state their policies for ensuring a safe and secure New Zealand in the face of long-term and global catastrophic risks, which plausibly harbour almost all the actual risk to the country.
Do the main parties support a US-style Global Catastrophic Risk Management Act? Or perhaps a systematic national risk assessment? A publicly facing National Risk Register? A Parliamentary Commissioner for Extreme Risks? A UK-style National Government Resilience Framework? What is the plan for keeping New Zealanders safe?
A recent survey and blog authored by members of the NZCat team, suggests that most parties may not have even considered these critical national issues.
The UK has just published a new improved National Risk Register covering 89 major threats, including key global risks like massive (VEI7+) volcanic eruption, emerging infectious disease, and nuclear ‘miscalculation’.
NZ has just published a National Security Strategy that focuses on 12 ‘core issues’.
The comprehensive nature of the UK Risk Register highlights the siloed and disconnected nature of NZ’s risk analysis and management environment.
NZ can learn from the inclusion of critical global catastrophes in the UK National Risk Register – scenarios which potentially contain most of the actual risk
NZ could use the plans for ‘system reform’ articulated in the National Security Strategy to ensure broad, high-level, coordinated governance of national risks.
Two recent risk assessments
In this post I briefly discuss two recent government publications on risk, these are:
On 4 August the UK released its 2023 UK NRR. This document is publicly facing, though aimed at practitioners, businesses and academics, and highlights 89 threats that are detailed in the UK National Security Risk Assessment (a classified work).
The UK NRR comprehensively maps the risks to the UK, including impacts to safety, security, and critical systems at a national level. It was informed by the UK Government Resilience Framework, a House of Lords Inquiry into ‘Risk Assessment and Risk Planning Preparing for Extreme Risks’, and the 2023 UK NRR now presents a risk assessment that looks five years ahead rather than the previous two.
The 2023 version of the UK NRR is a very much improved compared with previous editions. Apparently gone are the days of keeping significant and extreme risks ‘classified’. The Government’s assessment of likelihood and potential consequences across the 89 risks is now published for all to see. This transparency can only aid prevention and resilience work.
Examples of risks contemplated include the failure of all transatlantic communications cables, disruption of global oil trade, and human pandemics.
But for the first time this year, the publicly facing UK NRR includes risks derived from the major classes of ‘global catastrophic risks’ (GCRs). These include:
VEI7+ (very major) volcanic eruption somewhere in the world – The UK NRR states that this hazard could lead to a ‘humanitarian crisis’, ‘major disruptions to supply chain’ and ‘hazardous weather.’ I agree, and my colleagues and I have previously published research detailing how the 1815 Mt Tambora eruption impacted global climate and food supply, noting particularly the impact on island nations like New Zealand.
Emerging infectious disease – A previous iteration of the UK NRR had estimated an emerging infectious disease might kill ‘up to 100’ UK citizens – and then COVID-19 appeared and killed over 200,000. In this edition, the UK NRR now contemplates an emerging disease with a 25% case fatality, it notes the potential need for ‘border measures’, and very widespread contact tracing and isolation potentially of hundreds of thousands of people.
Nuclear miscalculation (nuclear war not involving UK). The UK NRR puts the likelihood of conflict with nuclear weapons at between 5–25% in next 5 years (ie, 1–5% per year). It states the impact of this would likely be ‘significant’ but notes a ‘catastrophic’ impact is possible and that the climate effects of nuclear soot could lead to global famine (no doubt supply chain impacts would be at least as significant as for VEI7+ eruption above).
Global catastrophic risks are important in national risk assessment
Global catastrophes such as those just listed probably contain most of the risk the world faces. Rare but devastating events tend to harm more people that most ‘ordinary’ risks combined. We saw this as the Covid-19 pandemic accounted for 95% of all ‘disaster’ deaths to date in the 21st Century. All natural hazards combined kill tens of thousands of people per year on average, while Covid-19 has killed many millions. A super volcano or nuclear war could kill even more.
It is good to see some recognition of the importance of GCRs, some of which may well be unbearable, now included in a key national risk assessment. Threats of nuclear war, novel biothreats, and massive volcanic eruptions are plausibly the most serious risks facing the world. Along with climate change impacts (which the UK NRR considers as a ‘chronic’ risk, and so treats differently), and emerging technological risks, such as those possible in the future due to advanced AI, these form a ‘big five’ of risks for humanity.
The NZ National Security Strategy
New Zealand’s new National Security Strategy provides a vision, structure and vocabulary for addressing potential security risks. It includes a newfound focus on anticipation and resilience. The Strategy was preceded by two Cabinet papers in 2022, which I previously critiqued here.
The NZ NSS is a significant improvement on the Cabinet papers. It dispenses with phrases like ‘actively protecting Aotearoa New Zealand from malicious threats to our national security interests, from those who would do us harm’ (which restricted the set of risks to those where (a) there is a malicious actor, and (b) NZ is the intended target. Note that none of the GCRs I highlighted from the UK NRR would fall under this previous definition).
The improved new wording is merely ‘threats that would do us harm’.
I had also criticised the dearth of reference to future generations in the Cabinet papers, so it is great to see that the NZ NSS now mentions that the vision for national security is ‘positive and intergenerational’.
The Strategy also acknowledges that a ‘more informed’ public means a more resilient society and hopefully this foreshadows the publication of more risk assessment information in NZ over time.
However, risk assessment and mitigation in New Zealand appears too fragmented. The NZ NSS focuses on 12 particular ‘core issues’ that are allegedly the ‘greatest national security threats’, although nowhere is this quantified (and we have argued elsewhere, with quantification, that GCRs are the greatest threats, see our peer-reviewed paper on National Risk Assessments, and our NZ nuclear war hazard profile).
Gaps in NZ’s national approach to risk
In addition to the NZ NSS, New Zealand has the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), which does great work, largely focusing on the response to New Zealand-originating natural hazards.
But, there are other risks that don’t appear to fall into the remit of NEMA or the NSS. Some of these are listed on DPMC’s website and collectively known as Nationally Significant Risks. These have been allocated to various agencies, and sometimes there is a link to a work programme. Yet, there are still gaps. For example:
Which national entity in NZ is tasked with analysing the impact of a massive volcanic eruption in Indonesia on New Zealand’s climate, crop yields, agricultural economy, and ability to sustain export food to areas potentially falling into famine due to volcanic winter?
Which national entity in NZ is tasked with analysing the impact of a Northern Hemisphere nuclear war on global trade, diesel fuel supply to New Zealand and determining how much diesel is needed for agriculture to feed even just New Zealanders, and therefore how much biofuel we need to be capable of producing so we don’t see starvation in New Zealand? (Iceland, another remote island dependent on trade, has been calculating this – yet NZ’s National Fuel Plan doesn’t even mention business as usual quantities for critical customers)
The list of global catastrophes goes on, and each should be taken seriously by New Zealand risk assessments, because such scenarios plausibly contain most of the actual risk. NZ can bear the impact of floods and earthquakes, it has before, many times. But some global catastrophes may simply be unbearable to a trade-dependent island without planning and a focus on resilience.
I’ve blogged about this before and compiled the following diagram to illustrate how key risks are neglected. I’ve suggested how there could be a catch-all for extreme risk such as a Parliamentary Commissioner for Extreme Risks (or perhaps a Chief Risk Officer) to ensure all risk is addressed and advise on solutions:
NZ needs a systematic and comprehensive approach to risk
The NZ NSS includes the aim of system reform, and an overarching national intelligence and security agency is apparently ‘not far off’. But this proposal stems from recommendations of the Royal Inquiry into the Christchurch domestic terror attacks in 2019. This Inquiry was not at the time concerning itself with GCRs.
NEMA does great work. The National Security Strategy is a good vision, some other nationally significant risks are listed on DPMC’s website. But until there is a systematic and comprehensive, publicly facing assessment that canvasses the entire breadth of the national risk landscape (GCRs included, as per the UK NRR), then the public cannot easily be sure that the structural arrangements of the NZ Government address the majority of risk to New Zealanders.
What is needed is overarching analysis and governance of all risk to NZ. A comprehensive National Risk Assessment is needed, and it could be disseminated as a publicly facing National Risk Register (the UK NRR shows us how). This register could then be used to start a public discussion about risks, expected harm, investment trade-offs, resilience options, and to crowdsource further solutions.
In isolation, every risk looks important (local natural hazards, national security risks, global catastrophe). But it is only when the full risk landscape is presented at once that we can truly debate how to move forwards.
Broad high-level, independent risk governance
I have previously argued that the relevant overarching governance needs to be divorced from DPMC, and it should be more risk inclusive than even the National Security System and NEMA in combination. The governing entity needs to be anticipatory, central/aggregating, coordinating, apolitical, transparent, adaptive and accountable. It also needs to be well-resourced.
Possible structures include a Parliamentary Commissioner for Extreme Risks supporting a bipartisan Parliamentary Committee, or a NZ Chief Risk Officer, responsible for overseeing a National Risk Assessment and Risk Register, NEMA, National Security Risks, Critical Infrastructure and Critical National Strategies and Plans to ensure basic food, energy, transport, and communications can be supplied in case of global catastrophe (indeed this entity should collaborate with their Australian equivalent to ensure the Australia-NZ dyad can cooperate in extreme global risk scenarios).
Overall, the UK is getting on with things and has provided a comprehensive set of risk information to the public (along with impressive new structures such as a new UK Biological Security Strategy. New Zealand’s National Security Strategy and the National Security Long-term Insights Briefing that preceded it both articulate this aim, and the NZ NSS is clear that ‘this is just the beginning’, but it remains to be seen what form risk information and the approach to risk management will ultimately take here in NZ.
Adapt Research Ltd 