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Prepared for the Polycrisis? The Need for Complexity Science and Systems Thinking to Address Global and National Evidence Gaps

The authors argue that inadequate national and global level data prevent us from understanding the complex interactions of the polycrisis and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. They propose that applied systems thinking can address this gap by helping to hypothesize, model, visualize, and test system properties, especially if it uses participatory processes that “assist stakeholders […]

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Evaluation in the Polycrisis Epoch

Michael Quinn Patton argues that good public policy evaluation is crucial for addressing the global polycrisis, but requires an informed citizenry. It is thus presently “engaged in a battle against misinformation, politicized knowledge, irrational decision-making, and authoritarian governments. Framing his analysis with Ancient Greek philosophy, Patton proposes that evaluation is really about critical thinking and

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Our polycrisis demands a radically new approach to risk management

Ruth Richardson, the Executive Director of the Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment, argues that the “escalating global polycrisis demands an urgent and transformative shift in how we assess, anticipate, and mitigate systemic risks.” She then suggests a range of practical actions governments could take to better contend with polycrisis, such as creating a Minister for

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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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Polycrisis in the Anthropocene as a Key Research Agenda for Geography: Ontological Delineation and the Shift to a Postdisciplinary Approach

Motivated by a desire to strengthen the social relevance of geography in the quest for global sustainability, Matlovic and Matlovicova discuss how the subdisciplines of geography and the rich heritage they present, as well as other related disciplines, can be integrated into the geographical study of polycrisis in the Anthropocene epoch. The authors identify polycrisis

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A Polycrisis Q&A with Malte Brosig

In an interview with CIVIS (Europe’s Civic University Alliance), University of the Witwatersrand International Relations Professor Malte Brosig shares his definition of polycrisis (“multiple interlinked crises, which condition each other creating a system in their own right. A strong emphasis is placed on crisis interconnection cross cutting many spaces and policy fields”) and responds to

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‘Pre-Polycrisis’ Hazard Mitigation

Nick King argues that industrial civilization has created many persistent and severe hazards (such as nuclear waste, methane leaking hydrocarbon infrastructure, contaminated sites, landfills, and deforested land), polycrises in the near future may significantly constrict humanity’s ability to manage these hazards, and therefore societies should prioritize long-term remedial actions now, while they still have the

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Polycrisis in the Anthropocene: An Invitation to Contributions and Debates

This commentary introduces “Polycrisis in the Anthropocene,” a special issue of Global Sustainability journal. It elaborates upon three major contributions of the issue’s lead article, “Global Polycrisis: The Causal Mechanisms of Crisis Entanglement,” and it explores three key debates surrounding the polycrisis concept: Are we in a polycrisis, at risk of a polycrisis, or neither?

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The Terrible Twenties? The Assholocene? What to Call Our Chaotic Era

Kyle Chayka considers different possible labels for “our chaotic historical moment, a term that we can use when we want to evoke the panicky incoherence of our lives of late.” Contenders include artist and author James Biddle’s “New Dark Age,” which emphasizes the dangers and disappointments of the internet era; social strategist Liz Lenkinski’s “Age

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