A Year in Crises
Tim Sahay
Tim Sahay surveys the many crises covered in The Polycrisis newsletter over the last year and identifies four key shifts: northern countries are increasingly concerned with their own economic resilience…
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.
You Say You Want a Revolution: Dreaming of New Futures in the Polycrisis
James Gustave Speth
James Gustave Speth argues that the polycrisis has undermined earlier hopes for steady, gradual, progressive change, but is also stimulating new and unconventional visions for transformative change that should not…
GAR Special Report 2023: Mapping Resilience for the Sustainable Development Goals
Jenty Kirsch-Wood, Angelika Planitz and Matthew Brubacher
This report explores the critical role of resilience in achieving sustainable development within the context of an increasingly complex set of threats resulting from the deepening climate crisis and other…
Evolution of the Polycrisis: Anthropocene Traps that Challenge Global Sustainability
Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Raf E. V. Jansen, Daniel I. Avila Ortega, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Jonathan F. Donges, Henrik Österblom, Per Olsson, Magnus Nyström, Steven J. Lade, Thomas Hahn, Carl Folke, Garry D. Peterson and Anne-Sophie Crépin
In this article, the authors, inspired by the polycrisis, identify and explore potential 14 traps affecting humanity in the global human context, brought about by the trajectory of our increasing…
Evolution of the polycrisis: Anthropocene traps that challenge global sustainability
Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Raf E. V. Jansen, Daniel I. Avila Ortega, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Jonathan F. Donges, Henrik Österblom, Per Olsson, Magnus Nyström, Steven J. Lade, Thomas Hahn, Carl Folke, Garry D. Peterson and Anne-Sophie Crépin
Using expert solicitation, the authors identify 14 “evolutionary traps” (global, technological, and structural) that risk locking humanity into unfavorable (maladaptive) trajectories that seriously restrict its ability to adapt to the…
Navigating the polycrisis—governing for transformation: The 2024 agenda for the systems community
Louis Klein, Pamela Buckle, Nam Nguyen, Rika Preiser, Ray Ison
In this article, the authors argue that the polycrisis is the manifestation of challenges outlined by the earlier scholarship of the “global problematique,” a set of systemically related factors including…
Navigating the Polycrisis – Governing for Transformation: The 2024 Agenda for the Systems Community
Louis Klein, Pamela Buckle, Nam Nguyen, Rika Preiser, and Ray Ison
The authors argue that the concept of the “global problematique” introduced by the Club of Rome over 50 years ago anticipated what we now call polycrisis by presenting a cybersystemic…
AXA Future Risks Report 2023: A World in Polycrisis
AXA
This tenth edition of insurance company AXA’s Future Risks Report surveyed 3,500 experts in 50 countries and a representative sample of 20,000 members of the general population in 15 countries….
Why So Much is Going Wrong at the Same Time
Thomas Homer-Dixon
Addressing critiques of the polycrisis concept from the political right and left, Thomas Homer-Dixon argues that the world is in a polycrisis generated by novel and unprecedented conditions, as measured…
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.
The Terrible Twenties? The Assholocene? What to Call Our Chaotic Era
Kyle Chayka
Kyle Chayka considers different possible labels for “our chaotic historical moment, a term that we can use when we want to evoke the panicky incoherence of our lives of late.”…