by Jacob Bornstein & Mesa Sebree in Mediators Foundation…Historically, the leading causes of mass disruption across the world can be boiled down to the following threats: disease, economic mismanagement, environmental changes (natural and human-made), and violence (typically in relation to authoritarianism or fascism).
Implications of the polycrisis for resilience in humanitarian action
Cascade Institute presents Thomas Homer-Dixon…Implications of the polycrisis for resilience in humanitarian action. A Forum for European and Central Asia National Society Leaders.
A logic for the future: International relations in the age of turbulence
by Stephen Heintz in the Rockefellerl Brothers Fund…Many of the causes and consequences of present-day turmoil are transnational or even global in nature. These conflicts have no regard for borders and are not responsive to solutions devised and implemented by individual nation-states or the existing ecosystem of multilateral institutions.
A philanthropic theory of systems transformation for advancing equity in the polycrisis
by Michael Quinn Patton & Ruth Richardson in The Foundation Review…Intervening to mitigate and reverse the effects of the polycrisis challenges change agents, program designers, foundations, and evaluators to move beyond traditional
project-level thinking and autonomous foundation grantmaking to engage in
collaborative, principles-driven systems transformation.
Chartbook 330: Africa & absolute poverty in an era of polycrisis.
by Adam Tooze in Chartbook….Since 2015, the push to raise the world’s population out of the direst deprivation, has stagnated. As the World Bank authors acknowledge, we are “facing a lost decade in the fight against global poverty”.
Our polycrisis demands a radically new approach to risk management
By Ruth Richardson in Open Access Government…A fundamental part of the problem is that our current tools and strategies aren’t designed to assess the types of systemic risks that we face: risks that manifest as extreme global shocks, interconnect with one another, and turn into long-term crises. More often than not, risk assessment is siloed or focused only narrowly on certain issues or “known” problems.
More in this category
New paper: Polycrisis Research & Action Roadmap
by the Cascade Institute, et al….The authors define the core characteristics of polycrisis
(emergent harms, multiple causes, deep uncertainty, systemic context, and new knowledge and action) and
identify gaps, opportunities, and priorities across four dimensions (theoretical foundations, empirical
research, practical applications, community building).
‘Polycrisis’ threatens planetary health; UN calls for innovative solutions
by Sean Mowbray in Mongabay…Environmental, technological and social challenges are colliding to create a global polycrisis. This confluence of issues is in turn placing increased pressure on the already existing environmental challenges of rapid climate change, rampant pollution and biodiversity loss — ultimately threatening planetary health and human well-being.
Are journalists reporting the global polycrisis?
by Gabi Mocatta in Earth Journalism …This study clearly
establishes that
the term ‘global polycrisis’
is not widely recognized,
or used by journalists.
Second Renaissance: A time of civilizational crisis and awakening
by Sylvie Barbier, et al. in the whitepaper, The Second Renaissance is both a period and a movement: a “time between worlds”, and a growing movement of people working to build shared understanding towards a radically wiser
future.
The new hot wars
by Jeremy Brecher in Znetwork…The most blatant marker of the polycrisis is the burgeoning of war and preparation for war.
Positive Pathways report
by Michael Lawrence and Megan Shipman …..The Cascade Institute’s analysis on positive pathways through polycrisis
The view from Nairobi-Washington
by Tim Sahay and Kate Mackenzie in Phenomenal World…It is good for Southern elites to win such technology investments. But while the New Washington Consensus delivers full employment and trillions in deficit-financed welfarism and public investments in the North, the Nairobi-Washington vision for which Ruto is a stand-in is insufficient for fostering prosperity across the South—where debt-stressed countries with soaring joblessness are imposing class war austerity and privatization, amid Western intransigence in delivering touted financial architecture reforms.
The disruption nexus
by Roman Krznaric in aeon.com….Polycrisis. Metacrisis. Omnicrisis. Permacrisis. Call it what you like. We are immersed in an age of extreme turbulence and interconnected global threats. The system is starting to flicker – chronic droughts, melting glaciers, far-Right extremism, AI risk, bioweapons, rising food and energy prices, rampant viruses, cyberattacks.
Are we doomed? Here’s how to think about it
by Rivka Galchen in The New Yorker…..Climate change, artificial intelligence, nuclear annihilation, biological warfare—the field of existential risk is a way to reason through the dizzying, terrifying headlines.
A review of ‘navigating the polycrisis’: A map of collapse, utopia, and the many paths in between
by Ben Shread-Hewitt in Resilience.org…The Polycrisis is the breakdown of our future.
Biden and the spectre of polycrisis
by Edward Luce in Financial Times….So many crises assail the world that their spilling into each other and merging is a genuine risk
Dancing with a permanent emergency
by Jonathan Rowson in The Joyous Struggle….The climate crisis is still there, and it is a moral imperative to address it and it matters perhaps more than any other single issue matters. And yet, because we are so profoundly stuck, I think our best chance, perhaps our only chance, is to see the climate challenge through the prism of the metacrisis, with all that follows for educational and spiritual innovation, which is why that has become my professional focus. Once we realise that there is no way to act on climate change with the requisite skill, insight, legitimacy, and resolve without contending with the metacrisis, our sense of priority should change. There is, as they say, no way round but through.
History’s crisis detectives: How we’re using maths and data to reveal why societies collapse – and clues about the future
by Daniel Hoyer in The Conversation….Our goal is to find out what drove these societies into crisis, and then what factors seem to have determined whether people could course-correct to stave off devastation.
Global collaboration of scientists needed to solve polycrisis
in Cambridge University Press….“Above all else, the polycrisis concept emphasises that crises interact with one another in highly consequential ways that are grossly underappreciated by academic and policymaking institutions that study those crises individually, in separate silos.”
Polycrisis in the anthropocene: An invitation to contributions and debates
by Michael Lawrence in Cambridge University Press…The popularity of the term polycrisis suggests a growing demand for new thinking
about the world’s intersecting crises, but loose and haphazard uses of the concept impede knowledge
generation. The special issue, “Polycrisis in the Anthropocene,” aims to close the gap.