Global polycrisis: the causal mechanisms of crisis entanglement

Abstract 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. In this framework, a global crisis arises when one or more fast-moving trigger events combine with slow-moving stresses to push a…

• VK
  V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation
• BF
  Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung

  Award: 01LS2001A
• ER
  European Research Council

  Award: ERC-2016-ADG-743080