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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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Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2024. Forensic Insights for Future Resilience: Learning from Past Disasters

The GAR 2024 report examines current and emerging trends through forensic analysis of ten recent disasters, identifying key drivers of vulnerability such as poverty, inequality, unplanned urbanization, and weak enforcement of environmental and safety standards. It underscores the urgent need to shift from reactive responses to proactive, long-term, and risk-informed strategies. The report calls for

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A Dynamic Network Model of Societal Complexity and Resilience Inspired by Tainter’s Theory of Collapse

This study examines the dynamics of societal collapse based on Joseph Tainter’s theory of the “collapse of complex societies.” It explores how rising societal complexity influences productivity and the likelihood of collapse. The findings show that increasing complexity, driven by external stresses, increases the risk of collapse, highlighting the direct link between complexity and vulnerability

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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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Flourishing Urban Futures to Overcome Polycrises – Roadmap for Resilience 2050

This report presents the outcomes of two Millennium Project Special Sessions held at the 2022 and 2023 FFRC Futures Conferences in Turku, Finland. Through participatory Futures Cliniques, the sessions explored how cities can build resilience in the face of polycrises. The report documents both the results and the methods used, offering valuable insights for students,

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Navigating the Polycrisis – Governing for Transformation: The 2024 Agenda for the Systems Community

The authors argue that the concept of the “global problematique” introduced by the Club of Rome over 50 years ago anticipated what we now call polycrisis by presenting a cybersystemic perspective on the linkages between multiple challenges. They warn that the polycrisis concept could suffer the same fate as global problematique by changing discourse but

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Why So Much is Going Wrong at the Same Time

Addressing critiques of the polycrisis concept from the political right and left, Thomas Homer-Dixon argues that the world is in a polycrisis generated by novel and unprecedented conditions, as measured by total human energy consumption, Earth’s energy imbalance, the human population’s total biomass, and global connectivity. He then highlights the interconnected nature of contemporary problems

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