Learning resource Archives

Polycrisis and Global Production Networks: A Framework for Understanding Industry Dynamics in Times of Accumulated Uncertainty

The authors develop a framework for understanding how overlapping crises reshape global production networks and accumulate uncertainty for suppliers and workers. Using Bangladesh’s apparel industry as a case study, they analyse how historical trade shifts, the Covid-19 pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, and domestic political-economic crises influence European lead firms’ sourcing decisions. The findings show that lead

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Mapping Technological Civilization in State Space: From Planetary Vital Signs to Multidimensional Risk Configurations

The author examines how global systemic risks can be understood as properties of multidimensional configurations rather than through conventional lists and rankings. The paper proposes a state-space framework in which current problems correspond to occupied regions, emerging threats to regions the system may move towards, and systemic risks to regions where perturbations are amplified rather

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Building Resilient Global Governance for an Era of Recurring Crises

This policy brief examines how global governance arrangements can be made resilient amid increasingly frequent transnational crises that simultaneously demand and undermine international cooperation. Drawing on the concept of hybrid institutional complexes, the authors argue that resilience depends not on individual institutions but on interconnected networks of diverse governance arrangements capable of absorbing shocks, adapting

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From Frameworks to Implementation: Addressing Systemic Risk in the Real World

The authors examine how to bridge the gap between growing scientific understanding of systemic risks and the practical implementation of effective responses. They argue that although research has advanced in identifying how risks interact, compound, and cascade within and across systems, approaches to assessing and responding to these dynamics remain insufficiently applied. Drawing on the

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Limiting Overshoot – Navigating Exceedance of 1.5°C and Pathways Towards Return

UNEP’s Limiting Overshoot report examines global warming’s exceedance of 1.5°C, which is now expected across central estimates, and argues that the magnitude and duration of this overshoot are not predetermined. The report finds that every additional fraction of a degree and year above 1.5°C increases exposure to climate hazards and the likelihood of irreversible loss.

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The Polycrisis and Emerging-Market Resilience: Climate Shocks, Financial Volatility, and Geopolitical Fragmentation as Simultaneous Stressors – Building Adaptive Macroeconomic Frameworks for Compounding Risks

This report examines how climate shocks, financial volatility, sovereign debt pressures, and geopolitical fragmentation interact to create compounding macroeconomic risks for emerging and developing economies. It argues that these interconnected stressors can produce non-linear effects, including capital flight, currency depreciation, food and energy inflation, shrinking fiscal space, and sovereign debt distress, making conventional approaches designed

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Polycrisis Exploration Workshop

This guidance document provides detailed instructions on how to run the Joint Research Centre’s Polycrisis Exploration Workshop and use the resulting insights in policymaking. Based on the foresight study Risks on the Horizon, the workshop is designed to facilitate strategic conversations about increasingly interconnected risks, disasters, and potential polycrises. It guides participants through three activities:

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World Economic Forum: Time to Retire “Polycrisis” for “Polytunity”

This edited conversation from the World Economic Forum’s 2026 Summer Davos examines Yuen Yuen Ang’s proposal to reframe “polycrisis” as “polytunity”, emphasising the opportunities for transformation that can emerge when multiple global systems experience disruption simultaneously. Yuen Yuen Ang argues that the concept of polycrisis can encourage a fear-driven and paralysing view of interconnected threats,

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Leaders Should Plan for Colliding Risks, Not Isolated Crises. Here’s Why

This article argues that businesses must move beyond managing individual threats and prepare for the cascading, compounding, and colliding effects of interconnected global risks. It highlights geopolitics, climate change, and artificial intelligence as systemic risk multipliers that can interact through concentrated supply chains, critical infrastructure, energy systems, and digital networks, while traditional shock absorbers such

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