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.

Taking Strategic Initiative to Prevent and Defuse Major Risks

Chen Yixin

Melanie Hart, Jordan Link, and Ngor Luong of the Center for American Progress translate and discuss Chinese Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission Secretary-General Chen Yixin’s effort to explain President…

The Age of Sustainability: Just Transitions in a Complex World

Mark Swilling

Mark Swilling proposes that “we need to understand the dynamics of the current global polycrisis as the emergent outcome of intersections between four dimensions of transition: socio-metabolic transition, techno-economic transition,…

Cascading Regime Shifts Within and Across Scales

Juan C. Rocha, Garry Peterson, Örjan Bodin, and Simon Levin

Where regime shifts (also known as critical transitions) are generally studied within a single ecosystem, the authors explore cascading regimes shifts across multiple ecosystems. Drawing on the Regime Shifts Database…

Compound, Cascading, or Complex Disasters: What’s in a Name?

Susan L. Cutter

Susan Cutter traces the etymology of the multiple, overlapping terms used to describe “types of situations where there is a single triggering hazardous event resulting in large-scale impacts to lives…

Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene

Will Steffen, Johan Rockström, Katherine Richardson, and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber

The paper proposes that reinforcing feedbacks could push the earth system toward a planetary threshold past which lies an irreversible “Hothouse Earth” scenario that catastrophically disrupts ecosystems, societies, and economies….

Speech at the Opening Plenary Session at the Ideas Lab 2018 “Europe – Back on Track” of the Centre for European Policy Studies (Brussels)

Jean-Claude Juncker

In this speech, then President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Junker uses the term polycrisis (albeit only once) to refer to the combined migration, financial, and Brexit crises facing Europe….

Towards and Integrated Assessment of Global Catastrophic Risk

Seth D. Baum and Anthony M. Barrett

Seth D. Baum and Anthony M. Barrett argue that there are underappreciated systemic interactions between catastrophic risks. Actions taken to mitigate one catastrophic risk may increase or reduce another catastrophic…

A History of Possible Futures: Multipath Forecasting of Social Breakdown, Recovery, and Resilience

Peter Turchin, Nina Witoszek, Stefan Thurner, David Garcia, Roger Griffin, Daniel Hoyer, Atle Midttun, James Bennett, Knut Myrum Næss, and Sergey Gavrilets

Peter Turchin and his colleagues explain their design of a computational method to predict social collapse: multipath forecasting. By incorporating quantitative data (i.e. demography) as well as qualitative data (i.e….

Things are Different Today: The Challenge of Global Systemic Risks

Ortwin Renn, Klaus Lucas, Armin Haas and Carlo Jaeger

The authors clarify the systemic risk concept using the Global Financial Crisis as an example. They explain how global systems involve micro and macro-dynamics interacting with each other and their…

Global Catastrophic Biological Risks: Toward a Working Definition

Monica Schoch-Spana, Anita Cicero, Amesh Adalja, Gigi Gronvall, Tara Kirk Sell, Diane Meyer, Jennifer B. Nuzzo, Sanjana Ravi, Matthew P. Shearer, Eric Toner, Crystal Watson, Matthew Watson, and Tom Inglesby

Global catastrophic biological risks (GCBRs) are hazards caused by biological agents that result in massive disruptions to society. The authors analyze historical GCBRs, such as H1N1 and the Black Death,…

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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