Global risks are becoming ever more interconnected, and governments must engage the private sector to help them tackle the most serious threats to economies and populations, according to a panel of experts at the launch of a report on 2013's biggest global risks.

Governments should continue to appoint country risk officers and, in some cases, must act more like insurance companies in their response to disasters, said the panelists at the launch in London last week.

The WEF Global Risks 2013 report, which will be presented at the World Economic Forum meeting of global leaders Jan. 23-27 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, identified 50 global risks facing companies and governments.

The report is the result of a survey of 1,234 respondents from business, academia, nongovernmental organizations, international organizations and the public sector, among other bodies, and was developed with contributions from Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc., Swiss Re Ltd., Zurich Insurance Co. Ltd., the Oxford Martin School of the University of Oxford, the National University of Singapore and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Center for Risk Management.

One of the biggest challenges facing companies and countries is the interconnected nature of risks, the panelists said.

“Risks don't stop at your factory door,” said Axel P. Lehmann, chief risk officer at Zurich. “And risks don't stop at national borders,” he said.

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Countries need to strengthen their risk management approaches, he added.

Governments need to invest more in risk management and adopt a multidisciplinary ap-proach to addressing risks, said John Drzik, CEO of Oliver Wyman Group, part of Marsh.

If all countries had country risk managers, they would be more able to cooperate to tackle risks internationally, he added.

Among the biggest threats posed by interconnected risks is the rising incidence and severity of severe weather events coupled with a huge increase in people living and working in coastal areas that are prone to such events, the panelists said.

This increases the vulnerability of economies to severe weather events and multiplies economic and insured losses, said David Cole, chief risk officer at Swiss Re Ltd.

Governments and businesses should work together to improve the infrastructure of those regions, Mr. Cole said.

Two big risks — an environmental storm and an economic storm — are “on a collision course,” according to Mr. Drzik.

Governments increasingly are shouldering a lot of the economic relief efforts after natural disasters, he said, and this, in turn, creates an expectation from the public that governments will provide a backstop when environmental catastrophes occur, he said.

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Governments, however, face fiscal constraints and, therefore, have less capacity to respond to such events, he said.

To address this issue, Mr. Drzik said, governments should behave more like insurance companies and build insurance-type capacity into their funds.

Governments also should look to transfer some of that risk to the insurance industry or capital markets or to create a disaster-risk financing solution supported by insurance or capital market tools, he said.

Other ways to address these risks include offering counter-incentives to dissuade people from moving to coastal areas, Mr. Drzik said.