Sustainability and Transition

Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report: Pathways Out of the Polycrisis

“This report offers the first post-pandemic assessment of global progress toward” the “interlinked goals” of “ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity on a livable planet.” It “explores potential pathways out of today’s polycrisis – an environment where multiple and interconnected challenges are impacting the world simultaneously.” It finds that global “poverty reduction and improvements […]

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FuturePod Interview with Drs. Megan Shipman and Michael Lawrence

In this episode of FuturePod, host Dr. Peter Hayward speaks with Drs. Megan Shipman and Michael Lawrence of the Cascade Institute about the current global polycrisis, and their recently published Positive Pathways report and accompanying workshop. Shipman, Lawrence, and Hayward discuss the four key factors proposed by Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon that define today’s polycrisis, provide

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Positive Pathways report

This Cascade Institute report explores how to translate an understanding of polycrises into actionable strategies to alleviate them. It suggests ways in which polycrisis analysis can build on existing approaches to systemic change to help chart positive pathways to better futures, by examining multiple factors — the sorts of systems changes required to avoid, mitigate

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The Disruption Nexus

Roman Krznaric explores the conditions in which crises lead to transformative societal change. He finds that transformative responses are most common in conditions of war, disaster, revolution, and disruption. The latter refers to “a moment of system instability that provides opportunities for rapid transformation” which is created by the “disruption nexus” of crisis events (typically

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Transition and Climate Crisis with Sabrina Fernandes at the University of Bath

In this video, Dr. Sabrina Fernandes discusses how to rethink the Polycrisis from an internationalist Global South perspective and how it relates to transition and climate justice. Fernandes begins by using an aerial photograph as an illustration of the influences human actions have on nature and the climate crisis. Fernandes then touches on topics such

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Evolution of the polycrisis: Anthropocene traps that challenge global sustainability

Using expert solicitation, the authors identify 14 “evolutionary traps” (global, technological, and structural) that risk locking humanity into unfavorable (maladaptive) trajectories that seriously restrict its ability to adapt to the Anthropocene. These traps develop over four phases: initiation, scaling, masking (of harmful interactions), and trapping. The fourth phase involves one of five trapping mechanisms: constraints,

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Understanding Polycrisis: Definitions, Applications, and Responses

This paper compares conceptualizations of the term “polycrisis,” raising questions about the key aspects of different definitions while stressing a convergence in critical features. It conceives a polycrisis as a state in which multiple, macroregional, ecologically embedded, and inexorably interconnected systems face high – and advancing – risk across socioeconomic, political, and other dimensions. After

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Let’s Avoid ‘Trigger Fixation’

The authors argue that a trigger event can’t start a crisis by itself; some underlying stress or stresses must also be operating. They contend that leaders should pay far more attention to these stresses, because they’re ultimately far more important. The original title of the article was “Let’s Avoid ‘Trigger Fixation.” The Globe and Mail

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Global Polycrisis as a Pathway to Economic Transition

In this report for the Strategic Innovation Unit of the United Nations Development Programme, Zack Walsh argues that the underlying driver of the polycrisis is our unsustainable and unjust economic systems, and the polycrisis opens opportunities to transform those systems. Additional drivers include overshoot, inequality, complexity, and uniformity and interconnectedness. The article then considers two

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