Global Polycrisis

Is Polycrisis the new buzz word of 2023? No it has been around for decades. What is global polycrisis and how does it differ from systemic risk?

Polycrisis can occur at any scale that hosts multiple interacting systems—local, national, regional, or global. However for purposes of this discussion let’s focus on the largest scale, global polycrisis. The interacting crises affecting the future of humanity and the planet as a whole.

A ‘global polycrisis’ occurs when crises in multiple global systems become causally entangled in ways that generate exponential crises in the global economy. These interacting crises produce harms greater than the sum of those the crises would produce in isolation, were their host systems not so deeply interconnected.

It produces a necessary and productive framework from which to study and understand major problems affecting humanity today as we do not live in isolation.

The global community is so interrelated that the effects from each of the moving parts compounds and exacerbates effects in the other moving parts in an exponential, compounded effect to humanity’s detriment. We do not exist in a bubble or vacuum. The ramifications of our actions affect all other parts of the global community. Some recent examples include the Ukraine/Russia war disrupting global food and energy sources and supply chains, reigniting NATO alliances, and more. Systemic risks are not confined to the regional systems from where they originate but have shock waves to the entire global community whether intended or not. The second and third order consequences are inevitable. Thus, enter polycrisis.

Therefore, what may appear to be separate crises in different global systems in fact interact, exacerbate, and reshape one another to form a conjoined “polycrisis” that must be understood and addressed as a whole. The causal linkages by which one global crisis triggers or exacerbates another represent a growing danger to humanity.

The core concern of the concept is that a crisis in one global system (systemic risk) has compounding effects that overflow into other global systems, creating or worsening crises there. Global crises happen less and less in isolation; they interact with one another so that one crisis makes a second more likely and deepens their overall harms. The polycrisis concept thus highlights the causal interaction of crises across global systems.

First it begins as risks. Then as these risks are elevated and intensified, these ‘risks’ turn into higher probabilities that harm will occur in the future. When potential turns to actual we have a crisis like the recent ‘energy crisis’. Therefore it begins as systemic risk in the originating system but then those risks spread to other systems thus causing multi-system risks. Polycrisis is formed from the ‘causal entanglement’ in multiple systems from all the interrelated parts among the systems. When these different, separate systems evolve interrelated and interdependent at all levels the compounded risks are not just a summation of the risks, rather they are compounded with multiplying effects. Exponential.

Risks do not occur in isolation. Once one risk occurs it can exacerbate another risk occurring which increases the likelihood that other risks occur like a domino effect. Therefore understanding the interconnections between the global systems and risks is key.

Awareness and feedback loops are methods that can attempt to minimize its spread and prevalence. (Similar to my discussions in decision making processes)

Source: Cascade Institute