Australia's Resilience in the Face of Global Catastrophe

Australia could be one of the safest places on Earth if a global catastrophe strikes. New research has found the country's isolation, self-sufficiency, and political stability mean it can withstand most crises.

The catastrophe could be anything from nuclear winter to asteroid strikes, or even a technological doomsday. But researchers warn no country would escape unscathed, and resilience may depend as much on local communities as national borders.

What is a global catastrophic risk?

By some definitions, any event that puts 10 per cent of human lives under threat is considered a global catastrophic risk. These risks generally fall into three broad categories: abrupt sunlight reduction, catastrophic infrastructure loss, or global biological threats.

Matt Boyd, who co-authored the research, said such scenarios were not simply the stuff of science fiction.

"In fact, some of them have happened before, and some of them are guaranteed to happen," he said. "Large magnitude volcanic eruptions have caused severe famines and even dynastic collapses, and they will happen again."

And while COVID didn't meet the definition of global catastrophic risk as they've been studying it, it overwhelmed the capacities of the world.

Dr Boyd is also the executive director of Islands for the Future of Humanity, a resilience charity. His home country, along with Australia, ranked among the safest places in the world in many catastrophic scenarios.

Both are isolated, democratic island nations with the potential to be largely self-sufficient in food production, energy, transport, and communications.

Vulnerability in cities

A key finding is that densely populated cities may be particularly vulnerable to global catastrophic risks.

"There's such a large population density that requires a continuous supply of resources, water, food, electricity, and so forth," Dr Boyd said. "If you start to lose one of those, because of the interconnected nature of all those systems, you start to lose all of them."

That means smaller communities and regional areas could be better positioned to adapt in some crisis scenarios.

Regional Australia's strengths

The COVID pandemic offered a glimpse of how people respond to perceived vulnerability in major cities, with many Australians relocating to regional areas.

Kate Sollis was one of them, moving from Canberra to the Bega Valley on the far south coast of New South Wales.

"There's really something special about the Bega Valley that brings people in, and it makes them stay as well," Ms Sollis said. "It's a place where you can easily tap into networks and rely on other people."

And what she hears anecdotally is the more socially cohesive a community is before a disaster, the easier it is to recover following a disaster.

Preparing for the future

When asked what gives him hope in the face of a potential global catastrophe, Dr Boyd pointed to both institutions and ordinary people willing to plan for the future.

"Plans are cheap, and we've previously suggested things like a parliamentary commissioner for catastrophic risk," he said. "But even things like local deliberative democracy, citizens' assemblies in local regions or towns, can come up with a plan if something should happen."

For Dr Boyd, preparing for catastrophic risk is ultimately about balancing efficiency with resilience.

"To what degree do we want to focus on protecting profit?" he said. "Instead of focusing just on the efficiency of things, we could start to focus a bit more on the resilience and redundancy of systems to protect us longer term and to protect future generations."

The central conclusion of the research is that no country would be spared from the impacts of a global catastrophe. How well communities, governments and nations prepare may ultimately determine how resilient they prove to be in an uncertain future.