Avoiding catastrophe

 Martin Rees writes about risk and the UK Government's approach:

The Covid-19 pandemic has been a wake-up call. We now have a choice: carry on as before or find a way to ensure we are better prepared for extreme risks. ... The government’s main tool for evaluating risk is the National Risk Register, which rated any pandemic other than influenza as unlikely to cause more than a few hundred deaths. It needs a total overhaul. Astonishingly, the register only has a two-year time horizon. Many threats cannot be neatly anticipated and prepared for within such a narrow window. After Covid, Britain must learn to plan properly for extreme risk, Martin Rees, 'Financial Times', 21 February

Lord Rees goes on to say that the Register, as well as being too short term in its focus, is excessively secretive and highly centralised. I think these deficiencies bedevil any single conventional organisation dealing with complex, long-term social or environmental problems. The optimal mix of solutions, and in this instance, the problems themselves, cannot be anticipated by any such organisation. People working in these organisations are paid for their activity, not their success in achieving what should be their overall objective: reducing the numbers of people killed or suffering as a consequence of an adverse event. 

Disaster Prevention Bonds would use the Social Policy Bond concept to reward the absence of catastrophic risk to national (or global) populations. The UK government, for instance, could raise funds that would be used to redeem the bonds once such an absence had occurred over a sustained period. This period could be several decades. A new type of organisation would probably arise, comprising bondholders, whose every activity would be subordinated to the goal of ensuring the absence of catastrophic adverse events affecting the UK population over that period. It would have a protean composition and structure that would not be determined by government, but would instead be optimised for success. The important point is that everyone charged with anticipating and avoiding potential catastrophe would have incentives  to be efficient and effective in all steps necessary to prevent disaster.