Economy

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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Navigating the polycrisis—governing for transformation: The 2024 agenda for the systems community

In this article, the authors argue that the polycrisis is the manifestation of challenges outlined by the earlier scholarship of the “global problematique,” a set of systemically related factors including political, social, and ecological challenges such as pollution, resource depletion, and population growth. The polycrisis is recognized as the outcome of profound governance crises that

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Mitigating Global Warming is Not Our Only Problem: Are We “Sleepwalking” Towards a Global Polycrisis?

William White argues that climate policy around the world is lacking in dimensions of “should” (clear analysis of what must be done), “could” (the power to implement solutions), and “would” (the actual use of that power to address the problem). The even greater challenge, however, is that climate change is not the only global systemic

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The Great Disruption has Begun

Paul Gilding argues that the world has reached “a multi-system tipping point” that will bring “the Great Disruption”: “a destabilisation of the global climate system at a scale that is so chaotic, unpredictable and costly, it will trigger cascading disruptive change in the global economy, national politics, investment markets and geopolitical security.” Gilding predicts that

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Polycrisis or Crises of Capitalist Social Reproduction

Kanishka Jayasuriya argues that polycrisis is a helpful descriptive term for the novel, intersecting crises of the 21st century, but it should be understood as a political crisis arising from the contradiction between capital accumulation and the social reproduction (the conditions of life) on which capitalism depends. Established political frameworks are unable to manage the

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Global Polycrisis: The Causal Mechanisms of Crisis Entanglement

The authors translate polycrisis from a loose concept into a research agenda by providing the concept with a substantive definition, highlighting its value-added in comparison to related concepts, and developing a theoretical framework to explain the causal mechanisms currently entangling many of the world’s crises. In this framework, a global crisis arises when one or

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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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Investing in the Age of Polycrisis

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

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