The authors examine the layering and succession of social and environmental crises—including a catastrophic typhoon, the COVID-19 pandemic, and economic inflation—and their impacts on food security in Capiz, Philippines. The authors investigate how these crises manifest in poor coastal communities and how vulnerable populations navigate such challenges.
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
FuturePod Interview with Drs. Megan Shipman and Michael Lawrence Read More »
The Swiss Re Institute, the research arm of Swiss Re Reinsurance, harnesses their risk knowledge in re/insurance to produce data driven research with partner organizations, shared via publications such as SONAR. SONAR is an annual publication that focuses on outlining emerging risks based on early signals gathered throughout the year. The 2024 SONAR report features
SONAR 2024: New Emerging Risk Insights Read More »
The author explores the interdisciplinary nature of systemic risks arising from economic, technological, sociopolitical, and ecological factors. He aims to establish a foundation for an integrated approach to systemic risks, highlighting the need to align risk factors and terminology to strengthen global resilience against cascading threats.
An interdisciplinary review of systemic risk factors leading up to existential risks Read More »
This paper presents exploratory findings concerning the susceptibility of young adults to the impact of stress and increased risk on experiencing poorer mental health when confronted by the ongoing polycrisis.
Eric Helleiner defines polycrisis as “a cluster of distinct crises that interact in ways that they and/or their effects tend to reinforce each other” and argues that economic globalization is experiencing a polycrisis made up of five constituent crises: the deepening trade war between the United States and China; the move towards national self-sufficiency in
Economic Globalization’s Polycrisis Read More »
The authors examine domestic policymaking processes amidst polycrisis by tracing the Canadian government’s development of its Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) during the Covid-19 pandemic. They argue that the process embodied three key best practices for national-level policy design in a crisis—policy integration, learning, and agility—and show how these elements evade capture by the polycrisis
In this chapter, the author examines the ongoing unsustainability crisis, connecting various dimensions of sustainability while linking planetary health with inequality and cooperation. Environmental crises such as climate change, ecosystem degradation, and biodiversity loss are shown to significantly degrade human health. The widening gap in both domestic and global inequality over the past four decades
Predicament: Our Intertwined Crises. In: Toward Social-Ecological Well-Being Read More »
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
Let’s Avoid ‘Trigger Fixation’ Read More »
Tim Palmer discusses the challenges of predicting events in nonlinear systems that, by nature, experience intermittent instabilities, as in the famous “butterfly effect”. Today, continued emissions are increasing the instabilities and uncertainties of climate change, while the economy and global health exhibit similar non-linearities. To deal with such uncertainties, he advocates ensemble prediction systems that
Why the World Feels so Unstable Right Now Read More »
