SMART agriculture, clean water and poverty alleviation are some areas billionaires are looking at when it comes to making an impact, said UBS in its billionaire ambitions report on Thursday (Dec 8).

Education and talent development are also some areas billionaires see opportunities to make a difference.

Notably, when it comes to commercial and investment opportunities, billionaires have the most positive outlook on the energy sector and Asia economies for the next five years.

Almost half of those surveyed have utilised their business capital to address some of these challenges. Meanwhile, more than a third do it through investing and around the same proportion did so via philanthropy.

Enhancing food security is viewed as a natural problem to address for many of the billionaires polled, as they own tracts of farmland. Companies associated with billionaires are trialling ways to reduce herbicide use through targeted spraying. They are also developing smart rice farming technology.

These billionaires particularly see great potential for agricultural technology to boost productivity and reduce environmental damage.

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UBS polled 28 billionaires in Switzerland, Europe, Singapore, Hong Kong and the US online between Jun and Sep 2022. It also gathered views from 22 billionaires during an event which took place in end-Oct 2022.

The survey also found “exceptional” fluctuations in the billionaire population this year, noting a slight overall decline. There were 2,668 billionaires as at March 2022, compared with 2,755 billionaires in the year-ago period.

Total billionaire wealth slid to US$12.7 trillion in 2022, compared with US$13.1 trillion in 2021. UBS estimates the total wealth and number of billionaires to have fallen further since March 2022 due to declines in asset prices.

Billionaires in the finance and investments and technology sectors experienced the greatest rates of change. Although 50 new billionaires were created in the finance and investments sector, 30 disappeared. There were also 41 new tech billionaires, although 57 no longer were billionaires.

The Asia-Pacific region continued to see the largest number of billionaires, although that number has fallen to 1,084, down by 59 from the year-ago period. Total wealth in the region tumbled nearly 10 per cent US$4.2 trillion.