Learning resource Archives

Polycrisis, Energy, and Climate Change

In this webinar hosted by the European Banking Institute in collaboration with e-axes forum, Ortwin Renn, AJ Gambir, and Jo Paisley explore how systemic risks emerge from complex interdependencies, non-linear dynamics, and cascading effects that challenge established governance, regulatory, and analytical frameworks. The panel examines why traditional risk assessment tools struggle under deep uncertainty and […]

Polycrisis, Energy, and Climate Change Read More »

The Financial System is a Giant Polycrisis Waiting to Happen

The author argues that today’s financial system faces a polycrisis characterized by multiple vulnerabilities including highly leveraged Treasury basis trades, record sovereign debt levels, commercial real estate refinancing pressures, growing exposure within opaque non-bank financial institutions, dangerously concentrated AI-driven equity markets, and destabilizing geopolitical pressures from conflicts involving Iran and Russia. Unlike 2008, where stress

The Financial System is a Giant Polycrisis Waiting to Happen Read More »

The 2026 Global Report on Food Crises

The 2026 Global Report on Food Crises finds that 266 million people across 47 countries faced high levels of acute food insecurity in 2025 — with famine confirmed simultaneously in parts of the Gaza Strip and Sudan. Conflict remained the primary driver, affecting over 147 million people, while humanitarian and development financing collapsed to decade-low

The 2026 Global Report on Food Crises Read More »

Mental Health in the Time of Polycrisis: Geopolitical Determinants and Modern Psychiatry

The authors advance geopsychiatry as a framework for understanding how the compounding pressures of today’s polycrisis are reshaping psychiatric vulnerabilities across communities and societies. Focusing on the emblematic and mutually reinforcing domains of wars, climate breakdown, and mass forced displacement, the authors show how geopolitical instability generates direct mental health burdens through proximal mechanisms such

Mental Health in the Time of Polycrisis: Geopolitical Determinants and Modern Psychiatry Read More »

Three Global Threats Stand Out in a More Uncertain and Insecure World

In this publication, GlobeScan presents the results of its latest global urgent problems survey. Results show that war and conflict, climate change, and extreme poverty form a distinct top tier of perceived urgency. Together, these concerns capture a broader sense of insecurity spanning safety, environmental stability, and basic economic well-being, reflecting a world where multiple

Three Global Threats Stand Out in a More Uncertain and Insecure World Read More »

The Urgency of Building Systemic Risk Capacity in a Polycrisis World

The authors argue that the world urgently needs to build systemic risk capacity to address an unprecedented polycrisis. They explain that modern crises are unprecedented in their scale, speed, and global interconnectedness, amplified by inequality, environmental degradation, and advanced technologies. Because cascading and compounding risks now routinely overwhelm existing institutions, the authors call for a

The Urgency of Building Systemic Risk Capacity in a Polycrisis World Read More »

The Geopolitical Transformation of the EU in the Era of Polycrisis: Hybrid Adaptation of a Compound Polity After 2022

This article examines the geopolitical transformation of the European Union within the context of polycrisis, explaining how interconnected pressures are reshaping European governance, its adaptive capacity, and its patterns of legitimation. The analysis demonstrates that the EU has not evolved into a coherent, sovereign geopolitical actor, but rather into a more strategically adaptive and selectively

The Geopolitical Transformation of the EU in the Era of Polycrisis: Hybrid Adaptation of a Compound Polity After 2022 Read More »

The End of Easy Globalisation

This report provides an outlook of the current global context, arguing that the period of easy globalisation is over and that the 2020s constitute a fourth systemic crisis — a “crisis of global integration” — driven by three mutually reinforcing forces: the return of multipolarity under nuclear constraint, a structural shift from commodity abundance to

The End of Easy Globalisation Read More »

Sky-High Oil Prices. A Fertilizer Shortage. Now Add a “Super El Niño.”

This article argues that the war involving Iran, particularly through the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, has driven up oil and fertilizer prices, triggering supply shortages that threaten global agricultural production just as climate pressures intensify. The anticipated arrival of a strong or “super” El Niño is expected to further disrupt weather patterns, compounding

Sky-High Oil Prices. A Fertilizer Shortage. Now Add a “Super El Niño.” Read More »