Global shocks. Common response.
No country can manage global catastrophic risk alone. Multilateral institutions, especially the United Nations, NATO and the European Union, set the rules and build the systems countries rely on when shocks cross borders. Those shocks range from pandemics and conflict to disasters that hit critical infrastructure.
Global Shield works with these institutions to strengthen how the world prepares for and responds to complex global shocks. At the UN, we push for a standing mechanism to coordinate the response when a crisis hits, and we support the analysis behind the UN Global Risk Report.
At NATO and in the EU, we work with governments and critical infrastructure operators so resilience commitments deliver real capability.
Global Shield works with NATO, Allied governments and Europe’s critical infrastructure operators so the Alliance’s resilience commitments become real capability.
In September 2026, NATO published its updated Baseline Requirements for Resilience for the first time. They set the standard every Ally should meet, from energy and communications to food, water and health. At the 2025 Hague Summit, Allies also pledged up to 1.5% of GDP a year by 2035 to protect critical infrastructure, defend our networks, ensure our civil preparedness and resilience, unleash innovation, and strengthen our defence industrial base. What’s still missing is a common way to measure whether that money delivers real capability.
Most critical infrastructure is privately owned. In July 2026, Global Shield coordinated a joint statement on the 1.5% commitment from Connect Europe, Eurelectric, EurEau and HOPE. In September, we brought infrastructure associations together with NATO’s Resilience Committee. We also push for NATO’s work to reinforce the EU’s own preparedness rules.
Read the joint statement | Read NATO’s Baseline Requirements
In September 2026, Global Shield published Governance of Complex Global Shocks, a new Position Paper examining the structural gaps in the UN’s current crisis architecture and setting out recommendations for the Secretary-General, UN entities, Member States, and civil society as the leadership transition approaches. Alongside the paper, we launched a dedicated campaign website tracking this action through the transition, including a Member State support tracker.
The Pact for the Future is a transformational agreement on how the United Nations intends to reform itself for future challenges, warning that “we are confronted by rising catastrophic and existential risks… If we do not change course, we risk tipping into a future of persistent crisis and breakdown.”
Member states recognized “the need for a more coherent, cooperative, coordinated and multidimensional international response to complex global shocks and the central role of the United Nations,” and requested that the UN Secretary-General consider ways to strengthen this coordination. Global Shield continues to engage stakeholders on this action, building on our earlier advocacy for the “emergency platforms” concept.
Existential and global catastrophic risk is appearing as a major consideration in a range of new surveys, polls, analyses, and reports on global risk. These reports are being conducted by a wide range of governmental and non-government organizations, including the UN, which released its second Global Risk Report in September 2026. It found growing concern about large-scale war and AI, and that weak coordination is the main barrier to managing global risks.
Global Shield believes that global risk reports, especially the UN Global Risk Report, must consider the growing global catastrophic risk from all hazards. Policymakers must acknowledge and understand the insights from these reports, compare the results to their own risk and capability assessments, and resolve critical policy gaps.
As a result, Global Shield is convening a diverse group of organizations that produce these risk reports, supported the Secretary-General’s office on the 2026 UN Global Risk Report, and is developing policy reports and conducting public and policy engagement around the integration of global catastrophic risk into the “global risk” report ecosystem
