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

September 13 2023

Mitigating Global Warming is Not Our Only Problem: Are We “Sleepwalking” Towards a Global Polycrisis?

William White argues that climate policy around the world is lacking in dimensions of “should” (clear analysis of what must be done), “could” (the power to implement solutions), and “would” (the actual use of that ...

September 3 2023

The Great Disruption has Begun

Paul Gilding argues that the world has reached "a multi-system tipping point" that will bring "the Great Disruption": "a destabilisation of the global climate system at a scale that is so chaotic, unpredictable and costly, ...

August 24 2023

Hawaii Wildfires Expose Need for Resilience in a Polycrisis World

Joseph Fiskel argues that the Maui wildfire reveals just how unprepared communities are to face polycrises. In response, he advocates systems thinking and greater resilience: “Rather than simply ‘bouncing back’ from crises, a resilient organization will ...

August 19 2023

Let’s Avoid ‘Trigger Fixation’

The authors argue that a trigger event can’t start a crisis by itself; some underlying stress or stresses must also be operating. They contend that leaders should pay far more attention to these stresses, because ...

August 17 2023

The Polycrisis

Ville Lähde explores various considerations involved in the coining of new terms and concepts, such as polycrisis. He highlights in particular the difference between those who speak of the polycrisis as a totalizing description of ...

August 11 2023

The Human Ecology of Overshoot: Why a Major ‘Population Correction’ is Inevitable

Using an evolutionary ecology perspective, William E. Rees argues that modern techno-industrial society is in a state of advanced ecological overshoot. Fossil fuels have enabled a massive expansion of humanity that constitutes the most globally ...

June 30 2023

Polycrisis or Crises of Capitalist Social Reproduction

Kanishka Jayasuriya argues that polycrisis is a helpful descriptive term for the novel, intersecting crises of the 21st century, but it should be understood as a political crisis arising from the contradiction between capital accumulation ...

June 19 2023

What a ‘Polycrisis’ is and What it Means for Business

The article reports on a presentation by Dr. Alan Dupont, chief executive of Cognoscenti, at the Australasia Investor Relations Association's 2023 annual convention. Dupont argued that, in an era of polycrisis, geopolitical risk should become ...

June 18 2023

Global Polycrisis: The Causal Mechanisms of Crisis Entanglement

The authors translate polycrisis from a loose concept into a research agenda by providing the concept with a substantive definition, highlighting its value-added in comparison to related concepts, and developing a theoretical framework to explain ...

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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