POLYCRISIS

Polycrisis Project

Humanity faces an array of grave, long-term challenges, now often labeled “global systemic risks.” They include climate change, biodiversity loss, pandemics, widening economic inequalities, financial system instability, ideological extremism, pernicious social impacts of digitalization, mounting social and political unrest, large-scale forced migrations, and an escalating danger of nuclear war. Compared to humanity’s situation even two decades ago, most of these risks appear to be increasing in severity and at an accelerating rate, while the crises they generate seem to be occurring more often simultaneously.

These systemic risks are converging into a “global polycrisis” with its own emergent dynamics. But the community of people dedicated to understanding, mitigating, and governing the polycrisis remains fragmented. The study of the polycrisis is a nascent field that lacks shared concepts, a clear research agenda, and practical strategies for turning knowledge into action. Communication between community members is still sparse, with little accumulation of research and practice. Discussion is also substantially focused on how the polycrisis might cause societal collapse, even though the polycrisis could also create possibilities for positive outcomes. The relative neglect of these positive possibilities arises partly because we don’t adequately understand how today’s multiple crises are linked, and especially how their rising severity is synchronizing.

How do crises synchronize?

It is increasingly apparent that superficially separate global crises are synchronizing—occurring at the same time or in quick succession. Their combined impacts are both greater than and different from the sum of the harms they would create in isolation, were they not so deeply interconnected. Yet the causal mechanisms that produce this synchronization remain opaque and underexplored. Scientific knowledge of individual systemic risks is often deep, but our grasp of the causal links among these risks remains weak, and we urgently need a clearer understanding of these links if we are to prevent such risks from exacerbating one another.

Working closely with researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, Institute researchers are investigating systemic risk synchronization.

For instance, we are currently examining how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is interacting with ongoing systemic stresses (such as climate change, the legacy of the Global Financial Crisis, the volatility of energy markets, and government responses to the covid-19 pandemic) to have immediate knock-on effects in global food, energy, and economic systems. Going forward, we will consider how these effects might interact with other factors such as widespread ideological polarization, weakening government institutions, and shortfalls of international cooperation in ways that could create “positive” (self-reinforcing) feedbacks that ultimately worsen violent conflict and the climate crisis. (See the two figures below.)

Project Objectives:

To understand extend and expand existing polycrisis research to focus, first, on mechanisms of crisis synchronization and, second, on positive pathways that the polycrisis may open up.
To work with polycrisis researchers, policymakers, and civil society groups to share knowledge, build a common research program focusing on polycrisis research and action, and strengthen the polycrisis community.

Polycrisis Diagrams