Noting that the world is failing to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this report explores six key solution areas to bridge the gap, encompassing policy, public sector activity, technology, infrastructure, private industry, and financial services. It proposes the emergence of a new global system as past “certainties” come to an end, leading to a […]
Capital as Force for Good: Solutions to Close the SDG Gap Read More »
Kanishka Jayasuriya argues that polycrisis is a helpful descriptive term for the novel, intersecting crises of the 21st century, but it should be understood as a political crisis arising from the contradiction between capital accumulation and the social reproduction (the conditions of life) on which capitalism depends. Established political frameworks are unable to manage the
Polycrisis or Crises of Capitalist Social Reproduction Read More »
The authors translate polycrisis from a loose concept into a research agenda by providing the concept with a substantive definition, highlighting its value-added in comparison to related concepts, and developing a theoretical framework to explain the causal mechanisms currently entangling many of the world’s crises. In this framework, a global crisis arises when one or
Global Polycrisis: The Causal Mechanisms of Crisis Entanglement Read More »
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,
The Hard Right and Climate Change are Intimately Linked Read More »
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
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
Global Risks Report 2023 Read More »
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 highlights the distinctive harms for children and future generations of eight global trends that are part of the polycrisis: continued impacts of the pandemic, inflation, food insecurity, energy shortages, underinvestment in children, threats to democratic rights, international factionalism, and internet inequality.
Prospects for Children in the Polycrisis: A 2023 Global Outlook Read More »
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
Highlighting the connections between economic and non-economic shocks to the world, Adam Tooze proposes that “A problem becomes a crisis when it challenges our ability to cope and thus threatens our identity. In the polycrisis the shocks are disparate, but they interact so that the whole is even more overwhelming than the sum of the
Welcome to the World of the Polycrisis Read More »
