Polycrisis Resource Library

The Polycrisis Resource Library is a growing collection of media that help to understand polycrisis, develop strategies to address polycrisis, and build a field of polycrisis analysis.

Digital Degrowth: Technology in the Age of Survival

Michael Kwet

Michael Kwet offers a critical perspective on the future of digital society, integrating concepts from degrowth and a global critique of the high-tech economy.

A Horizon Scan of Global Catastrophic Risks

Giuseppe Dal Prá, Christopher Chan, Timur Burkhanov, Constantin W. Arnscheidt, Roger Cremades, Carla Zoe Cremer, Victor Galaz, Ajay Gambhir, Katie Heikkinen, Michael Hinge, Daniel Hoyer, Florian U. Jehn, Paul Larcey, Luke Kemp, Patrick W. Keys, Emad Kiyaei, Steven J. Lade, David Manheim, David A. McKay, Divya Pandey, Tom Pegram, Viktoria Spaiser, Kolfinna Tómasdóttir, Peter Turchin, Saskia E. Werners, Mark Workman, Nico Wunderling, Hiromi Yamashita and William Sutherland.

The authors examine global catastrophic risks, prioritizing those with the highest cascade potential. Through a horizon scan, they identify 15 key risks, highlighting themes like cascading failures, threat interactions, flawed…

Report: 10 new insights in climate science 2024/2025

Future Earth, The Earth League and the World Climate Research Programme

The report provides an overview of recent advancements in climate change research, highlighting key issues such as rising methane emissions, and the interconnected risks posed by climate change. It emphasizes…

Polycrisis: A Framework for Understanding Multiple Crises in the Metacoupled World

Jia, Nan and Li, Yinshuai and Cheng, Jie and Jiang, Zhimeng and Ma, Tianwu and Zheng, Lilin and Xia, Zilong and Wang, Ru and Zhang, Zhan and Yin, Chenglong and chen, ruishan and Liu, Jack (Jianguo).

The authors propose a Polycrisis framework combined with the meta-coupling framework to understand and assess the interdependence of multiple global crises in an interactive world. They apply this framework to…

A Philanthropic Theory of Systems Transformation for Advancing Equity in the Polycrisis

Michael Quinn Patton and Ruth Richardson

This article argues “that 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…

Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report: Pathways Out of the Polycrisis

World Bank

“This report offers the first post-pandemic assessment of global progress toward” the “interlinked goals” of “ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity on a livable planet.” It “explores potential pathways…

AXA Future Risks Report 2024

AXA

The Future Risks Report explores the emerging risks we may face in the future. The report highlights the growing complexity of managing risks, making decisions, and tackling challenges in a…

Navigating the Polycrisis: Assessing the Adequacy of Adaptive and Transformative Capacities for Addressing Anthropocene Traps

Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Louis Delannoy, Sofia Maniatakou, Carl Folke, Michele-Lee Moore and Per Olsson

The authors examine the adequacy of adaptive and transformative capacities for navigating the polycrisis and propose five unifying processes as an organizing framework for considering other sustainability and crisis capacities.

Scenarios 2075: The Cascading Risks Study

Trond Arne Undheim

In the Cascading Risks Study, author Trond Undheim seeks to create five scenarios (Climate cataclysm by 2075; World war by 2075; Growth and collapse by 2075; Runaway AI by 2075;…

The Spectrum of (Poly)Crisis: Exploring Polycrises of the Past to Better Understand our Current and Future Risks

Samantha Louise Holder, Rachel Ainsworth, Daniel Aldrich, James S Bennett, Gary Feinman, Sienna Mark, Georg Orlandi, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Jenny Reddish, Rod Schoonover, Peter Turchin and Daniel Hoyer

The authors explore the concept of polycrises by examining historical examples from late 1st-millennium CE Mesoamerica, Late Medieval Eurasia, and the Early Modern Northern Hemisphere to illustrate how these periods…

About the Resource Library

The Polycrisis Resource Library includes resources that:

  • Comment on the polycrisis as a concept and as a present global reality
  • Undertake similar analysis using different—but related—concepts
  • Analyze crisis interactions among multiple global systems

Though not exhaustive, the Library strives to present a diverse representation of views on different aspects of the polycrisis discussion, and will be updated as that discussion evolves. Search for resources with the keyword search bar, or by using the drop-down menus to filter for type of resource, global systems addressed, and key themes.

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