Multiple global crises are worsening one another to produce what many policymakers, scholars, and commentators call a “polycrisis.” This website is a hub that helps this emerging community better understand and address the intersecting crises affecting humanity.

LATEST RESOURCES

March 6 2025

What is this era of calamity we’re in? Some say ‘polycrisis’ captures it

This article examines the concept of polycrisis, explaining how interconnected crises heighten global instability. It highlights the Cascade Institute’s efforts to identify high-leverage intervention points — strategic areas where targeted actions can drive meaningful change. ...

March 4 2025

Fossil Fuels as the Cause of the Global Polycrisis

This article argues how fossil fuels are both the main driver of the polycrisis and a significant barrier to effective climate action. It highlights how the global economy's dependence on oil, gas, and coal not ...

February 25 2025

Planetary Boundaries, Polycrisis and Politics in the Anthropocene: Climate Pathways, Tipping Cascades and Transition to Sustainable Peace in Integrative Geography

This chapter explores the impacts of the "great acceleration" in human development and its impact on planetary boundaries and the polycrisis in the Anthropocene. Using an Integrative Geography perspective, it links human-nature relationships, growth limits, ...

February 19 2025

Systemic Risk and the Polycrisis

The author explores the concepts of systemic risk, polycrisis, and catastrophic risk, explaining how interconnected failures can cascade across diverse systems, threatening global stability. He emphasizes how systemic risk and polycrisis expose both the vulnerabilities ...

February 18 2025

The Polycrisis and the Uncertainty Possibility Space

The authors explore the polycrisis concept as the interaction of multiple global crises, arguing that focusing solely on causal links does not fully capture the politics of knowledge about the polycrisis. They highlight the challenge ...

February 18 2025

Navigating Systemic Risks in Low-Carbon Energy Transitions in an Era of Global Polycrisis

The authors discuss factors influencing the stability and resilience of low-carbon energy transitions over extended time-frames, emphasising that while these transitions are essential for global sustainability, they are also vulnerable to systemic risks that could ...

February 16 2025

The Global Polycrisis and Health Inequalities

The authors use the polycrisis lens to examine how interconnected global crises—economic, environmental, health, and political—intensify health inequalities. They argue that polycrisis amplify these inequalities and suggest strategies to mitigate their impacts, outlining pathways for ...

February 12 2025

Critical Approaches to Polycrisis: Discourses of Conflict, Migration, Risk, and Climate

This book examines how polycrisis is framed and interpreted in contemporary European discourse, bringing together researchers in discourse studies to explore interconnected challenges such as climate change, conflict, democracy, Brexit, COVID-19, migration, and economic instability.

February 11 2025

Human Behavioural Traits and the Polycrisis: A Systematic Review

The authors examine polycrisis as a defining challenge of the Anthropocene, identifying human behavioral traits—particularly maladaptations—as fundamental drivers. Through a systematic literature review, they highlight warfare, resource overexploitation, and cognitive biases as key contributors. By ...

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February 16 2025

The Global Polycrisis and Health Inequalities

The authors use the polycrisis lens to examine how interconnected global crises—economic, environmental, health, and political—intensify health inequalities. They argue that polycrisis amplify these inequalities and suggest strategies to mitigate their impacts, outlining pathways for ...

September 25 2024

Navigating Systemic Risks: Governance of and for Systemic Risks

The authors explore the emergence of systemic risks in modern societies by examining how tightly coupled dynamic systems in the Anthropocene can lead to cascading failures. They argue that traditional risk governance approaches are insufficient ...

September 5 2024

Understanding the Climate Crisis in an Era of Polycrisis

The author examines the climate crisis through the lens of polycrisis, highlighting how climate change exacerbates environmental degradation and intensifies interconnected crises such as infrastructure failures, biodiversity loss, pandemics, supply chain disruptions, and civil unrest. ...

Try our guided tour of essential themes in the polycrisis discussion and key texts in the Polycrisis Resource Library.

This map charts the emerging community of scholars and practitioners working on polycrisis and closely related topics.

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