Polycrisis


2024

A project by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay

The Polycrisis

Focused on today’s intersecting crises and the political economy of climate change.

+

April 2024 | Lydia Marsden, Josh Ryan-Collins, Jesse F Abrams, and Timothy M Lenton

Ecosystem Tipping Points: Understanding Risks to the Economy and Financial System

Stable natural ecosystems underpin all economic activity. Ecosystems provide the natural resources needed for production; regulate climate change and global rainfall patterns; and provide resilience against natural disasters and the extremes brought on by global warming.

+

January 2024 | Michael Lawrence, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Scott Janzwood, Johan Rockstöm, Ortwin Renn and Jonathan F. Donges

Global Polycrisis: the Causal Mechanisms of Crisis Entanglement

Multiple global crises – including the pandemic, climate change, and Russia's war on Ukraine – have recently linked together in ways that are significant in scope, devastating in effect, but poorly understood. A growing number of scholars and policymakers characterize the situation as a ‘polycrisis’. Yet this neologism remains poorly defined. We provide the concept with a substantive definition, highlight its value-added in comparison to related concepts, and develop a theoretical framework to explain the causal mechanisms currently entangling many of the world's crises.


2019

2019 | Kate Raworth

Three Horizons Framework - a Quick Introduction

I find the Three Horizons Framework, created by Bill Sharpe, a very useful tool for sharing with groups thinking about transformative change, so I made this 7 minute video as a summary introduction to the framework, including some questions that it helps to raise.