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.

WTW Research Network Risk & Resilience Review: Emerging Risks from Geopolitical Shifts

WTW Research Network

This report by the WTW Research Network “introduces research and opinions that provide new perspectives to support risk management and resilience.” In particular, this report focuses on WTW’s work in…

Five New Roles for Think Tanks in the Age of Polycrisis

Ivan Filippov

In this article, author Ivan Filippov discusses how think tanks can assist in navigating the polycrisis by outlining 5 potential roles for them to play, elaborating on each role, and…

Global Tipping Points Report 2023

Timothy M Lenton, David I Armstrong Mckay, Sina Loriani, Jesse F Abrams, Steven J Lade, et al.

Global Tipping Points is a report, led by the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute and funded by the Bezos Earth Fund, that identifies negative and positive tipping points with…

A Polycrisis Q&A with Malte Brosig

Malte Brosig

In an interview with CIVIS (Europe’s Civic University Alliance), University of the Witwatersrand International Relations Professor Malte Brosig shares his definition of polycrisis (“multiple interlinked crises, which condition each other…

Economic Globalization’s Polycrisis

Eric Helleiner

Eric Helleiner defines polycrisis as “a cluster of distinct crises that interact in ways that they and/or their effects tend to reinforce each other” and argues that economic globalization is…

‘Pre-Polycrisis’ Hazard Mitigation

Nick King

Nick King argues that industrial civilization has created many persistent and severe hazards (such as nuclear waste, methane leaking hydrocarbon infrastructure, contaminated sites, landfills, and deforested land), polycrises in the…

Transition and Climate Crisis with Sabrina Fernandes at the University of Bath

Sabrina Fernandes

In this video, Dr. Sabrina Fernandes discusses how to rethink the Polycrisis from an internationalist Global South perspective and how it relates to transition and climate justice. Fernandes begins by…

All Crises are Unhappy in their Own Way: The role of societal instability in shaping the past

Daniel Hoyer, Samantha Louise Holder, James S Bennett, Pieter François, Harvey Whitehouse, Alan Covey, Gary Feinman, Andrey Korotayev, Vadim Vustiuzhanin, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Kathryn Bard, Jill Levine, Jenny Reddish, Georg Orlandi, Rachel Ainsworth, and Peter Turchin

The authors argue that the current body of research into societal crises—defined here as “periods of turmoil and destabilization in socio-cultural, political, economic, and other systems, often accompanied by varying…

How useful is the concept of polycrisis? Lessons from the development of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit during the COVID-19 pandemic

Shannon Dinan, Daniel Béland, and Michael Howlett

The authors examine domestic policymaking processes amidst polycrisis by tracing the Canadian government’s development of its Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) during the Covid-19 pandemic. They argue that the process…

Polycrisis in the Anthropocene: An Invitation to Contributions and Debates

Michael Lawrence

This commentary introduces “Polycrisis in the Anthropocene,” a special issue of Global Sustainability journal. It elaborates upon three major contributions of the issue’s lead article, “Global Polycrisis: The Causal Mechanisms…

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