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.

Year in a Word: Polycrisis

Jonathan Derbyshire

Jonathan Derbyshire characterizes the year 2022 as a polycrisis, discusses the origins of the term, and provides the definition: “Noun: collective term for interlocking and simultaneous crises of an environmental,…

Global Warming Overshoots Increase Risks of Climate Tipping Cascades in a Network Model

Nico Wunderling, Ricarda Winkelmann, Johan Rockström, Sina Loriani, David I. Armstrong McKay, Paul D. L. Ritchie, Boris Sakschewski, and Jonathan F. Donges

The research examines the risk of climate tipping under various temperature overshoot scenarios using a simplified network model. It shows that temporary overshoots can increase the tipping risks up to…

Polycrisis may Lead to Polycentric World Order

Hugo Dixon

Hugo Dixon argues that the present polycrisis need not lead to a new Cold War or bifurcated world order, but could instead produce a polycentric order made up of multiple…

Why the impacts of climate change may make us less likely to reduce emissions

Joel Millward-Hopkins

While increased climate warming may motivate ambitious actions that remediate the climate crisis, Millward-Hopkins proposes that it may have the opposite effect. He argues that the indirect impacts of warming,…

Our ‘Permacrisis of Polycrisis’

Mosharraf Zaidi

Mosharraf Zaidi argues that Pakistan has for decades experienced a polycrisis composed of abject poverty, gender inequality, insecurity of life and property, risk of mass killing, and threat of sovereign…

Notes on the Polycrisis

Policy Tensor

The author depicts “polycrisis as a wake-up call for siloed technocratic elites to peer out of the silos at the interaction term” – as a reaction to our tendency to…

Perspectives on Public Policy in Societal-Environmental Crises

Adam Izdebski, John Haldon and Piotr Filipkowski (eds.)

The book presents a collection of papers from two 2020 seminars held at Princeton University and at the Berlin Centre for Historical Research of the Polish Academy of Science. The…

How to Think about Policy in a Polycrisis

Martin Wolf

Wolf argues that we cannot think about and address the many problems facing the world separately from one another. “The alternative of thinking about the interactions among [macroeconomics, finance, politics,…

Understanding human psychology during the polycrisis

Colin Strong

Strong explores the impacts of polycrisis on the way people think, feel, and behave, highlighting several psychological responses to polycrisis: existential fear, the search for safety and protection, connection to…

Beating Around the Bush: Polycrisis, Overlapping Emergencies, and Capitalism

Güney Işikara

Güney Işikara argues that “obscure jargon” like ‘overlapping emergencies’ and polycrisis “serve, with or without intention, to conceal the culprit, namely the totality of capitalist relations” as the fundamental source…

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.

Scroll to Top