Social Order and Governance

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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Chartbook

Adam Tooze frequently discusses various aspects of the polycrisis in his blog posts. Notable entries include: “Defining polycrisis – from crisis pictures to the crisis matrix” (24 June 2022) “Calibrating the polycrisis – with the help of the International Bank of Settlements” (26 June 2022) “Polycrisis – Thinking on the Tightrope” (29 October 2022) “Haiti

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The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats – And Our Response – Will Change the World

Ian Bremmer argues that the world faces three major crises—pandemics, climate change, and disruptive technologies (AI, lethal autonomous weapons, cyberwarfare, and biotechnology)—but our ability to respond effectively is hampered by broken American politics and the worsening rivalry between the United States and China. The three crises, however, present an opportunity and the necessary impetus for

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Integrating Collapse Theories to Understand Socio-Ecological Systems Resilience

This longitudinal case study applies collapse theory to the Piura Basin of Peru, a region subject to extreme El Niño weather events, that has previously seen societal collapse in the ancient Moche civilization. By examining factors from the Robustness Framework such as centralized governance, system interconnectedness, and central elites, the researchers examined the interactions of

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