Social Order and Governance

The Hard Right and Climate Change are Intimately Linked

George Monbiot argues that a vicious cycle is emerging between the rise of the political right, roll-backs of environmental policy and protections, increased migration, and worsening discrimination against refugees. “As millions are driven from their homes by climate disasters, the extreme right exploits their misery to extend its reach. As the extreme right gains power, […]

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Navigating Polycrisis: Long-Run Socio-Cultural Factors Shape Response to Changing Climate

Societies throughout history have faced polycrises, but the outcomes range widely from collapse to positive adaptation. The authors have developed a Crisis Database of 150 past societal crises and find that three pressures make societies especially vulnerable to environmental stresses (and consequent polycrises) by impeding collective action: popular immiseration, elite overproduction and conflict, and state

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World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023

Global Risks Report 2023

This 18th edition of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report is based on a risk perceptions survey of 1200 experts on the likelihood, severity, and interconnections between 37 global risks. It finds that the biggest risk in the next two years is the cost of living crisis, and the biggest risk in the next

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Top Risks 2023

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

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Politics Urgently Needs More Imagination. Competence Alone Will not Save us from this ‘Polycrisis’

Geoff Mulgan argues that the United Kingdom suffers from an “imagination gap” that impedes its ability to navigate multiple crises, manifest in short-sighted policies and over-reliance on past solutions. He explains how politics, financing, and academia contribute to the gap and provides historical examples where imaginative experimentation helped solve crises. Mulgan concludes that “it is

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Megathreats: Ten Dangerous Trends that Imperil Our Future and How to Survive Them

The author defines megathreats as “severe problems that could cause vast damage and misery and cannot be solved quickly or easily” (p. 4). “We are facing megathreats unlike anything we have faced before… [and] they overlap and reinforce one another” (p. 5). Roubini explores ten megathreats: debt accumulation and debt traps; easy money and financial crises;

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An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity

Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen confront the ecological and social crises shaping humanity’s future, arguing that survival depends on contraction rather than expansion. They explore how geographic determinism has influenced history, leading to social injustice, consumerism, and high-energy dystopias. The authors propose a realistic, collective path forward, grounded in secular interpretations of theological concepts, to

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Polycrisis and Long-Term Thinking

Polycrisis and Long-Term Thinking: Reimagining Development in Asia and the Pacific Foresight Brief

This Foresight Brief argues that conventional risk management frameworks cannot grapple with the growing number of systemic and existential risks generated by decades of globalization. Instead, these risks require more long-term thinking – “intentional consideration of what might happen in the future, the choices for influencing it and the consequences of those choices” (p. 10).

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