Check here if no resource theme is available
This press release for the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Global Risks Report summarizes its key findings and highlights its use of the term polycrisis.
We’re on the Brink of a ‘Polycrisis’-How Worried Should We Be? Read More »
George Soros argues that there are three main sources of the polycrisis (in order of importance): artificial intelligence, climate change, and Russia’s war on Ukraine. AI poses a “mortal threat” to open societies via disinformation, and it provides closed societies new instruments of surveillance and control; climate change threatens to make large areas uninhabitable; but
Can Democracy Survive the Polycrisis? Read More »
Asher Miller and Richard Heinberg define polycrisis as “the tangles of global environmental and social dilemmas that are accumulating, mutually interacting, and worsening” and argue that the present polycrisis indicates humanity is entering “the Great Unravelling” in which compounding crises threaten the vital systems of human civilization. Unravelling environmental threads include global warming, biodiversity and
David Henig and Daniel M. Knight argue that anthropology has much to offer in the conceptualization and study of polycrisis, drawing on a disciplinary “toolkit that includes historicity, temporality, scalarity and intersectionality, which adds much needed texture to the polycrisis theory” (p. 4). The authors consider the nature of crisis as an abrupt disruption versus
Polycrisis: Prompts for an Emerging Worldview Read More »
The article considers the novelty and utility of the polycrisis concept, alongside the difficulties of addressing the polycrisis. It concludes that “the growing use of the term polycrisis is in itself encouraging. It demonstrates that, although the problems that form the current polycrisis are neither new nor surprising, our perception of them is changing. A
The Good News Hidden inside Today’s ‘Polycrisis’ Read More »
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 may be poised as winners, where polycrisis has spurred innovation and demand. It then considers the uncertain prospects for Japan’s monetary policy and its zero-inflation
Investing in the Age of Polycrisis Read More »
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 the term; the origins of the present polycrisis in the economic shocks of the 70s and 2000s alongside concurrent problems in politics, geopolitics, environment, and
This is Why ‘Polycrisis’ is a Useful Way of Looking at the World Right Now Read More »
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 require new forms of analysis. They argue, “the past isn’t a good guide to our present and future. Too many basic parameters – such as
Dismissing the Term ‘Polycrisis’ has One Inevitable Consequence – Reality Always Bites Read More »
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 true nature of our predicament and accepting the need for systemic shifts in virtually all aspects of the modern world can we find the agency
Is ‘Polycrisis’ the Right Word for Our Times? Read More »
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 polycrisis, asserting that the three major challenges facing all markets are economic crisis, globalization vs. local priorities, and the climate crisis. “We’re entering a ‘new
A New World Disorder? Navigating a Polycrisis: Global Trends 2023 Read More »
