A poll of more than 1,000 business, government and academic leaders found only one in six optimistic about the world outlook, with only one in 10 World Economic Forum members surveyed saying the global recovery will accelerate over the next three years.
According to the WEF's annual risk report on Tuesday, climate change was seen as the number one danger, while erosion of social cohesion, livelihood crises and mental health deterioration were identified as the risks that had increased the most since the start of the COVID-19 epidemic.
Global leaders must come together and adopt a coordinated multi-stakeholder approach to tackle unrelenting global challenges and build resilience ahead of the next crisis, said Saadia Zahidi, WEF managing director.
Extreme weather was considered the world's biggest risk in the short term and a failure of climate action in the medium and long term - two to 10 years, according to the survey.
Many of the nearly 200 nations wanted to leave the conference in Glasgow, despite the U.N. COP 26 climate conference in November last year.
Climate change is already seen as a cause of more extreme weather patterns.
Peter Giger, group chief risk officer at Zurich Insurance, said that if we don't act on climate change, the global GDP could shrink by one-sixth and the commitments taken at COP 26 are still not enough to reach the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal.
The report also highlighted four areas of emerging risk- cybersecurity, a disorderly climate transition, migration pressures and competition in space.
The prospect of 70,000 satellite launches in the next decades raises the risks of collisions and increasing debris in space, as well as a lack of regulation.
In the report, Carolina Klint, Risk Management Leader for Continental Europe at insurance broker Marsh, also contributed to the report.
The report is published each year ahead of the annual WEF meeting in Davos. The January event was put off by the Geneva-based WEF last month due to the spread of the Omicron coronaviruses variant.
The report was produced together with the universities of Oxford and Pennsylvania, the National University of Singapore, and Zurich, Marsh McLennan and South Korea's SK Group.