The Cascade Institute’s Polycrisis program tracks global systemic stresses that weaken the resilience of critical global systems. These stresses enable trigger events to more easily push these systems into crisis (as proposed in the stress-trigger-crisis model described in Lawrence et al.'s Introduction to Polycrisis Analysis).
Below is a preliminary list of 12 global systemic stresses visible in the world today, which create systemic risks, contribute to the present polycrisis, and are likely to generate additional crises in the near future.
Twelve global systemic stresses
Climate heating: Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are increasing the average surface temperature of the planet, which is on track to rise to about 3°C above pre-industrial temperatures.
Key features of this stress include:
- More frequent and severe weather events, including droughts, floods, storms, and wildfires.
- Shifts in in global climate patterns, potentially in abrupt and non-linear ways if climate heating activates one or more interconnected “tipping elements” in the climate system.
- Limits on human capabilities due to hotter temperatures, including the expansion of uninhabitable areas (of wet-bulb temperatures of 35°C and above).
- Scarcities of key ecological resources, including water, arable land and pastures (due to drought and desertification), as well as waterfront land and islands (due to sea-level rise and flooding).
Zoonotic viral diseases: The encroachment of human settlement and activity into animal habitats is expanding the zone of contact and viral transfer between humans and animals—and especially from animals that have not previously had much contact with humans.
Important aspects of this stress include:
- The globalization of disease transmission vectors along dense, rapid, and circumplanetary networks of travel and trade.
- The weakening of healthcare systems due to pandemics such as COVID-19, including shortages of resources and personnel.
- Limited and declining international capacity to identify, monitor, and respond to new and recurrent diseases.
- The increasing drug resistance of pathogens.
Biodiversity loss and ecological degradation: Human activities (including resource extraction, pollution, agriculture, and urbanization) have disrupted ecosystems worldwide and gravely accelerated biodiversity loss and species extinction.
Key features of this stress include:
- The decline (and perhaps extinction) of critical keystone species, such as pollinators.
- Gradual or abrupt changes in ecosystem functions and ecological conditions (including ecological collapse or critical transition, such as the collapse of fisheries or the possible flip of the Amazon rainforest from carbon sink to carbon source).
- The reduction or loss of key ecosystem services, such as water recycling, nitrogen fixation, carbon sequestration, and nutrient regeneration.
Demographic divergence: The composition of the human population is changing profoundly around the world but moving in different directions in the global north and the global south.
This stress involves several trends:
- The aging populations of wealthy countries will place increasing demands on healthcare, pension funds, and social services while reducing the active workforce (which ultimately pays for those services).
- Population growth is concentrated in poor and vulnerable parts of the world that lack opportunities and could therefore host bulges of frustrated and disenfranchised youth.
- The combination of these demographic and economic divergences (especially when worsened by the impacts of climate change) will likely propel significant formal and informal migration from the global south to the global north, where it will provoke hostile reactions.
- The total human population will peak in the coming decades at somewhere between 8 and 11 billion people (and then possibly decline).
Vulnerability of global food supply: The global food system features high uniformity (of species produced, industrial methods, ownership, and ecosystem simplification through monocropping) and dense interconnectivity (global supply chains of inputs and products, integration with speculative financial markets, and intensive production methods), a combination known to enable cascading failures and non-linear change.
Other sources of vulnerability in the global food system include:
- Continued dependence on fossil fuels for fertilizers, industrial machinery, and global distribution.
- Declining productivity due to climate change, ecological degradation, and land exhaustion.
- Narrow national food production specializations that foster dependence on food imports (i.e., the lack of local self-sufficiency).
Energy transition: The transition from high quality energy sources (high EROI/density fossil fuels) to lower quality sources (fossil fuels and clean energy of lower EROI/density) may render more expensive (in both monetary and energetic terms) the most basic input of economic production and everyday life and leave less energy available per capita.
This stress includes:
- Our continued dependence on fossil fuels (and the lack of green alternatives at scale) for the production of steel, plastic, cement, and ammonia, and for long-distance transportation.
- The high energy (fossil fuel) requirements of building green energy infrastructure and making a transition away from fossil fuels.
- Possible bottlenecks (and consequent geopolitical competition) in the supply of critical materials (e.g., lithium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earth minerals) required for the green energy transition.
Vulnerability of the global financial system: Like the global food system, the global financial system features a high degree of uniformity (in financial instruments, rules, and practices) and connectivity (through instantaneous global networks) that enable recurring, cascading crises, especially given the speculative and capricious nature of financial markets.
This stress includes:
- Economic dislocations and disruptions to livelihoods due to recurring financial volatility.
- The opacity of financial instruments and flows, alongside their ambiguous relationship to the “real” economy of goods and services.
Dysfunctions in the global economy: The neoliberal global economic order, in its pursuit of open markets, global integration, and fiscal austerity, suffers a core contradiction in which it has produced and externalized massive social and ecological harms that undermine the very stability on which the order depends.
This stress is, consequently, pushing several crucial limits:
- Stagflation and economic headwinds that are reducing economic growth.
- Debt overhang (public and private) and debt-trapped countries.
- Economic insecurity and dislocation, especially in the global south and for the working class, alongside increasing costs of living.
- The resultant backlash against globalization, and the return of protectionism and industrial nationalism.
Ideological polarization and epistemic fragmentation: With the growth of social media, the spread of dis-/mis- information, and the destabilization of identity, people are increasingly divided into ideological silos, stubbornly disagree on basic facts, and no longer share a single reality.
As facets of this stress:
- Established political institutions are losing legitimacy in ways that impede their ability to carry out public policy and manage conflict non-violently.
- Public and private organizations are increasingly expected to declare their stance on social issues, so that ideological fragmentation has spread into the marketplace and the public sphere.
- Various strains of political extremism (e.g., fascism, racism, vigilantism, etc.) have moved from the fringes to the political mainstream, deepening polarization.
Expansion of populist authoritarian governance: The growing use and popular approval of political leadership that supersedes the rule of law, skirts established institutions, violates rights and entitlements, demonizes outsiders, and deploys coercion widely.
Aspects of this stress include:
- Widespread disenfranchisement with democratic processes.
- Increasing use of—and support for—extraordinary measures (the state of exception), alongside efforts to weaken the rule of law.
- Increasing allegiance to cults of personality rather than rules and institutions.
- Hardening divisions of in-group and outgroup (self and other), with basic protections and humanity afforded only to the former.
Great power hegemonic transition: With the rise of China and the resurgence of an imperial Russia, world order is shifting from the unipolarity of the Pax Americana into an unstable multipolarity in which the basic rules are contested, geopolitics has returned to the fore, and the risk of a catastrophic great power war is at its highest in decades.
This stress includes:
- Shifts in the nature and location of global power.
- Contestation of basic rules of international order, including the prohibition of aggression.
- The balkanization of global supply chains among geopolitical camps.
- Declining international cooperation and ineffective global governance.
- Increasing international tensions, militarized disputes, and military confrontations.
Propagation of large language model artificial intelligence: Next-generation artificial intelligence is advancing rapidly, outpacing efforts to anticipate and regulate its growth, and promising significant (yet uncertain) changes to work, information, and security.
Still nascent aspects of this stress include:
- Transformation of the workforce through the dislocation of both white- and blue- collar jobs.
- The risks posed by non-aligned AI and “normal accidents” in the automation of critical systems.
- Intensified cyberattacks (sabotage and espionage), disinformation campaigns, and surveillance.
