Ian Bremmer and Cliff Kupchan present their top ten geopolitical risks for 2023: an increasingly rogue and reckless Russia; an increasingly powerful and unconstrained Xi Jinping; the weaponization of artificial intelligence; shockwaves of global inflation; Iran backed into a corner; higher energy prices; reversals of development; political divisions in the United States; the disruptive digital […]
The report provides an overview of several catastrophic risks that are potentially global in scope: weapons of mass destruction, pandemics, artificial intelligence, asteroids, climate change, super-volcanic eruptions, ecological collapse, population growth, and climate tipping points. For each risk, it explores the key factors that affect the risk levels and the extant governance frameworks that address
Global Catastrophic Risks 2022: A Year of Colliding Consequences Read More »
This article examines network models to better predict tipping points, defined as “a critical threshold (tipping point) at which a tiny perturbation can qualitatively alter the state or development of the subsystem.” By using moisture measures in the Amazon rainforest as a model system, the authors determine that “clustering and spatial organization increase the vulnerability
Dynamics of Tipping Cascades on Complex Networks Read More »
This longitudinal case study applies collapse theory to the Piura Basin of Peru, a region subject to extreme El Niño weather events, that has previously seen societal collapse in the ancient Moche civilization. By examining factors from the Robustness Framework such as centralized governance, system interconnectedness, and central elites, the researchers examined the interactions of
Integrating Collapse Theories to Understand Socio-Ecological Systems Resilience Read More »
The authors argue that the worldwide production and distribution of food, fuel, and fibre has created a “global production ecosystem” subject to immense simplification, intensification, and control by humans attempting to maximize efficiency. The resulting system is homogenous, highly connected, and has weak feedbacks – “features [that] converge to yield high and predictable supplies of
Anatomy and Resilience of the Global Production Ecosystem Read More »
Where regime shifts (also known as critical transitions) are generally studied within a single ecosystem, the authors explore cascading regimes shifts across multiple ecosystems. Drawing on the Regime Shifts Database of over thirty well-documented regime shifts, they identify three causal pathways by which a regime shift in one ecosystem relates causally to a regime shift
Cascading Regime Shifts Within and Across Scales Read More »
After reviewing different definitions of collapse across several fields, Graeme Cumming and Garry Peterson outline specific criteria with which to assess collapse and apply them to historical and ecological examples. They emphasize the need for standard, testable, definitions and a baseline measurement, or “identity,” of a system to better understand if it has collapsed. “It
Unifying Research on Socio-Ecological Resilience and Collapse Read More »
William E. Rees asserts that humanity is heading to a critical ecological situation that diminishes the prospect of continued civilized existence, and considers why, despite the magnitude of the threat, the world community is not acting sensibly. He further explains how social inequality and the current political agenda obstruct effective action.
Staving Off the Coming Global Collapse Read More »
The authors survey the development of the adaptive governance concept, which they define as “A range of interactions between actors, networks, organizations, and institutions emerging in pursuit of a desired state for social-ecological systems” (p. 6). Flexible, polycentric networks of diverse stakeholders can better address the uncertainty and complexity of change in social-ecological systems than
A Decade of Adaptive Governance Scholarship: Synthesis and Future Directions Read More »
Ian Goldin and Mike Mariathasan argue that systemic risk is endemic to globalization that cannot be removed. “It is a process to be managed rather than a problem to be solved” (p. xiii). But rather than retreat from globalization and forfeit its considerable benefits, the authors argue that systemic risk requires global governance reforms to
The Butterfly Defect: How Globalization Creates Systemic Risks, and What to Do about it Read More »
