U.S. President Donald Trump attends a bilateral meeting with China's President Xi Jinping during the G-20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan, June 29, 2019.

A unilateral world of "great power rivalries" is likely to threaten an urgent need for action on key global priorities, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The group's warning comes as policymakers, business leaders and investors prepare to travel to Davos, Switzerland for the forum's annual conference.

The January get-together kicks off on Monday, with those in attendance scheduled to focus on the intensifying climate crisis.

Ahead of the meeting, the forum's latest Global Risks Report 2020, published Wednesday, said collaboration between world leaders and business leaders would be needed "more than ever" to stop severe threats to the climate.

It also warned that political inaction could endanger public health and technology systems.

Speaking at the launch of the report in London, Mirek Dusek, deputy head of the center for geopolitical and regional affairs at WEF, said an increasingly unsettled world was the "super-risk" to much-needed action.

A more polarized and competitive world, in which states are increasingly viewing opportunities through unilateral lenses, would most likely as a "drag" on us being able to tackle global issues, Dusek said.