Prepared for the Polycrisis? The Need for Complexity Science and Systems Thinking to Address Global and National Evidence Gaps

The authors argue that inadequate national and global level data prevent us from understanding the complex interactions of the polycrisis and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. They propose that applied systems thinking can address this gap by helping to hypothesize, model, visualize, and test system properties, especially if it uses participatory processes that “assist stakeholders in defining system boundaries and behaviors.”