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Polycrisis and Systemic Risk: Assessment, Governance, and Communication

In this article Huan Liu and Ortwin Renn examine the concepts of polycrisis and systemic risk. They outline key commonalities and differences and develop a joint understanding to inform risk assessment, governance, and communication. The authors argue that traditional, siloed approaches are no longer adequate in a world marked by cascading, interconnected crises. Drawing on […]

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Critical Responses to Global Systemic Risk in an Era of Polycrisis

In this paper, Ruth Richardson argues that the global polycrisis demands a transformative shift in how systemic risks are assessed and addressed. Traditional, siloed approaches to risk management are no longer sufficient to confront the cascading and compounding nature of today’s interconnected challenges. She emphasizes the need for integrated, transdisciplinary methods that draw on diverse

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Conflict, Climate and Inequalities

This book offers a holistic framework for understanding the complex global transformations defining the current historical moment. Centred on three major themes, international relations, climate change, and inequality, it integrates insights from physics, complexity science, political economy, and development studies. The authors argue that the growing and seemingly unstoppable centralization of capital undermines national democracies,

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Ten Principles for Transforming Economics in a Time of Global Crises

The authors present a qualitative analysis of 238 sources spanning 38 alternative economic approaches and identify ten shared principles for transforming economics in response to the global polycrisis. These principles include social–ecological embeddedness, limits to growth, equity, and post-capitalist thinking, and span ecological, social, political economy and holistic domains. Seeking to bring coherence to a

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Polycrisis Patterns: Applying System Archetypes to Crisis Interactions

This paper illustrates the potential of systems thinking by applying system archetypes to advance the conceptual understanding of the polycrisis. It explores three archetypes adapted to the study of polycrises: Converging Constraints (based on the Limits to Growth archetype), Deepening Divides (from Success to the Successful), and Crisis Deferral (from Policy Resistance). By mapping feedback

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Polycrisis in the Anthropocene – A Global Sustainability Webinar

One year after the call for papers for the Polycrisis in the Anthropocene special issue, 13 articles have been published, with more contributions forthcoming. This webinar features five authors from the first set of papers in the Global Sustainability special issue “Polycrisis in the Anthropocene.” It explores a range of efforts to deepen our understanding

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Artificial Intelligence in the Polycrisis: Fueling or Fighting Flames?

The authors explore how artificial intelligence is increasingly entangled with the polycrisis. Using the Anthropocene Traps framework, they examine 14 self-reinforcing structural dynamics to reveal how artificial intelligence can both exacerbate and help address these crises. While artificial intelligence supports data collection, efficiency, and ecological research, it also fuels unsustainable growth imperatives, infrastructure lock-ins, and

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World Economic Outlook : A Critical Juncture amid Policy Shifts

The April 2025 World Economic Outlook presents a global economy navigating a complex web of interrelated shocks and policy shifts. Following years of disruption, growth remains subdued and vulnerable to escalating trade tensions, particularly after the United States imposed near-universal tariffs, prompting widespread countermeasures. These developments have triggered systemic effects across trade, inflation, investment, and

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How Do Crises Spread? The Polycrisis and Crisis Transmission

Malte Brosig examines the conditions under which crises may transmit across systems, presenting a conceptual analysis that draws on a diverse set of theoretical frameworks, including neofunctionalism, rational choice, complexity theory, assemblage theory, and epidemiology. He argues that crisis transmission is not automatic but may be shaped by factors such as stressor similarity, functional interdependencies,

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Polycrisis and the Thucydides Trap. In: War and the World Economy

In this chapter, William Jefferies examines polycrisis as a framework for understanding the interconnected and compounding challenges facing the contemporary world—including environmental degradation, economic inequality, geopolitical tensions, and democratic backsliding. Situating these developments in the post-Cold War era, the chapter critically engages with the ideological legacy of Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” thesis and the

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