When the world's economic, industrial, and political leaders gather at Davos every year, the World Economic Forum asks them to rank humanity's principal risks. In their most recent meeting last January, they were not optimistic.

Only 9 percent of the 1,500 surveyed leaders said they expect the world to be stable or calm in the next 10 years. The majority expected world affairs to be turbulent and stormy.

Why? Their top four reasons were extreme weather, critical changes in the Earth's climate, biodiversity loss/ecosystem collapse, and natural resource shortages, in that order. Pollution also made the top 10 list.

However, the most significant risk—the one that underlies all the others—didn't make the list. It's the international community's unwillingness to confront these problems with action. The global community has created hundreds of agreements to protect the environment—nearly 3,800 by one count—yet critical, even existential, environmental risks persist. Even when nations agree on what to do, they aren't doing it.

This has been another year that nations talked a lot but acted little. In November, COP-29—the 29th international negotiating session on global climate change—was a major disappointment with wealthy countries refusing to provide developing countries with the financial assistance they need for carbon-free economic progress. Analysts forecast that climate-altering carbon pollution will set a record this year, 90 percent of it from burning fossil fuels. The planet's land-based carbon sinks declined more than 40 percent in 2023. Geologists report that human activity has already caused the planet's temperature to rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the aspirational goal of the Paris climate agreement.

On our current emissions trajectory, the planet's average surface temperature will far exceed 2 degrees, the upper limit of the Paris pact, which will produce catastrophic impacts on the Earth and its species, including ours. Also, in November, nations met but failed to agree on what to do about plastic pollution. One estimate is that there are 51 trillion pieces of microscopic plastic on the planet, equivalent in weight to 1,345 blue whales and 500 times more than the number of stars in our galaxy.

Plastic wastes are not only strangling sea animals that mistake it for food. Little bits of the stuff can be found in people's blood, brains, hearts, livers, kidneys, lungs, and testicles, as well as in placentas and breast milk. We ingest them from fruits and vegetables, water, water bottles, seafood, cosmetics, household dust, and the air. Plastics are everywhere, including places they're not supposed to be.

Regarding biodiversity, the World Wildlife Fund reports that the average size of the wildlife populations it monitors has declined 73 percent since 1970. Countries have just concluded their latest meeting on plastics pollution, trying to comply with a United Nations challenge to finalize a binding agreement by year's end. Newly published research concludes that limiting plastic production is "the only rational strategy for tackling plastic pollution." However, many countries, including the U.S., prefer voluntary programs and market signals to reduce waste.

Unfortunately, as other treaties, including the Paris Agreement, prove, voluntary targets rarely work. Without hard caps on production and consumption, the plastic problem will only grow worse. The global demand for plastic has nearly doubled since 2000; it's growing exponentially, and less than 10 percent of plastic waste is recycled.

Biodiversity? In October, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) issued its annual Living Planet Report based on monitoring nearly 35,000 population trends of 5,495 species. It documented a "catastrophic decline of 73 percent in wildlife populations over the last 50 years." The decline is "a clear indication that our planet's biodiversity is under immense threat, with severe consequences for ecosystems and human survival."

"When ecosystems are degraded, they become more vulnerable to tipping points—thresholds beyond which they may undergo irreversible changes," the WWF explained. "Current trends indicate that several global tipping points, many in the Arctic, are fast approaching, with potentially catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet."

More than 2,000 international leaders met in Columbia during October and November to discuss the Convention on Biological Diversity and its goal to halt and reverse species loss by 2030. Countries have developed multilateral programs and protocols since 150 governments signed the Convention in 1992.

While the meeting reportedly made some headway, it ended without important agreements on how to pay for efforts to halt biodiversity loss and how to measure progress. Countries reportedly have yet to meet a single target of their various commitments.

Regarding resource shortagesanother of the high-risk issues cited at Davos—investigators report that powerful corporations and governments are buying land and water worldwide in anticipation of food crises, disappearing supplies of fresh water, and rising demand for biofuels.

A documentary film this year found that a "global land rush" is "sowing the seeds for future global conflict." Based on seven years of research, the film details how powerful corporations, sometimes with the backing of governments, are buying tillable land where water is available, including untitled ancestral lands in Africa and cropland in the United States to grow feed for cattle in Saudi Arabia.

The" land and water grab" has been underway for several years. It surged between 2005 and 2009 after a global spike in food prices. In 2013, researchers found that investors from the U.S., the UAE, India, the UK, Egypt, China, and Israel were responsible for 60 percent of global water acquisitions. These purchases secured about 5 percent of the world's annual water consumption.

Corporations execute many land purchases without consulting with or compensating local populations. In 2011, the United Nations issued voluntary guidelines that urge investors to honor the rights and needs of the Indigenous people who rely on the land for subsistence, but the guidelines are toothless.

If there is a common denominator in these crises, it's fossil fuels, especially big oil companies. They have deployed thousands of lobbyists to the annual conferences on climate change and have effectively blocked international agreement on how or when to retire oil from the global economy.

As an environmental organization, Earthjustice emphasizes, "At every stage of their life cycle, fossil fuels directly contribute to biodiversity loss by causing pollution, planet-warming carbon emissions, and the destruction of critical habitats."

Petrochemicals make nearly all plastics. Analysts say oil companies like ExxonMobil plan to increase plastic manufacturing as petroleum demand declines in transportation and other sectors. The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that plastic production will drive nearly half of the growth in oil demand by mid-century. The UN projects that carbon emissions from fossil-fuel-based plastics production will grow to almost 20 percent of the global carbon budget by 2040.

The risks cited at Davos will grow until nations get serious about enforcing their commitments in environmental agreements. Every country should guarantee the rights of nature and future generations, aggressively enforce the polluter pays principle, and extend the Public Trust Doctrine—the obligation of governments to protect the commons for future generations—to the atmosphere, clean air and water, and fertile lands.

Governments must limit the power of corporations to influence environmental policies and require that companies adopt and enforce their own social, economic, and environmental rules. Too many companies still operate on the "greed is good" ethic that making profits is their only obligation.

As environmental entrepreneur Paul Hawken has said, "The more corporations are in control, the more the world goes out of control.''