Investing in the Age of Polycrisis
Sunil Krishnan
This article by the Head of Multi-Asset Funds proposes that the UK economy and global equities are potential losers of the polycrisis, while equities in healthcare, energy, and raw materials…
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.
This is Why ‘Polycrisis’ is a Useful Way of Looking at the World Right Now
Adam Tooze, Kate Whiting, and HyoJin Park
World Economic Forum Agenda writer Kate Whiting interviews Columbia University historian Adam Tooze about the polycrisis at the WEF’s 2023 Summit in Davos, covering such topics as the history of…
Transformation in the Poly-Crisis Age
Sandrine Dixson-Declève et al.
This policy brief recommends that the European Union must shift from short-term crises responses to the long term systemic transformations required by a polycrisis era. It argues: “Today’s challenges require…
On the ‘Polycrisis’ Part II: Philosophies of History & Crises in Political Thought
Bo Harvey
Building on an earlier post, Bo Harvey begins with the question “what might the popularity of [the term] polycrisis say about the weaknesses of current critical analyses of capitalism?” and…
Why the World Feels so Unstable Right Now
Tim Palmer
Tim Palmer discusses the challenges of predicting events in nonlinear systems that, by nature, experience intermittent instabilities, as in the famous “butterfly effect”. Today, continued emissions are increasing the instabilities…
Is ‘Polycrisis’ the Right Word for Our Times?
Asher Miller
Asher Miller of the Post-Carbon Institute critiques Dan Drezner’s dismissal of the term polycrisis and his worry that it promotes fatalism and inaction. Miller counterargues that “only in understanding the…
A New World Disorder? Navigating a Polycrisis: Global Trends 2023
IPSOS
This market research report surveys public opinion on many current topics including technology, climate change, globalization, inequality, political splintering, and more. It frames its findings in the context of the…
Three Ways to Read the ‘Deglobalisation’ Debate
Adam Tooze
Adam Tooze argues that there are three ways to reconcile “the feverish talk of deglobalisation and decoupling” with statistics that “show an inertial continuity in trade and investment patterns: business…
Response Diversity as a Sustainability Strategy
Brian Walker, Anne-Sophie Crépin, Magnus Nyström, John M. Anderies, Erik Andersson, Thomas Elmqvist, Cibele Queiroz, Scott Barrett, Elena Bennett, Juan Camilo Cardenas, Stephen R. Carpenter, F. Stuart Chapin III, Aart de Zeeuw, Joern Fischer, Carl Folke, Simon Levin, Karine Nyborg, Stephen Polasky, Kathleen Segerson, Karen C. Seto, Marten Scheffer, Jason F. Shogren, Alessandro Tavoni, Jeroen van den Bergh, Elke U. Weber, and Jeffrey R. Vincent
The authors argue that the most effective way to build general resilience in an increasingly volatile and uncertain world is to foster “response diversity… a system’s variety of responses to…
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.
Dismissing the Term ‘Polycrisis’ has One Inevitable Consequence – Reality Always Bites
Thomas Homer-Dixon, Michael Lawrence, and Scott Janzwood
The authors respond to criticism of the use of the word “polycrisis”, arguing that the world’s current crises are in many ways unprecedented and thus merit a new word and…