The Problem: We are living in a Polycrisis
Polycrisis and Just Transition – Part 1
Image description: The Earth as seen from space—land with clusters of lights and some cloud cover, receding toward a curved horizon. Photo by NASA on Unsplash.
Polycrisis is a term that has been coined to describe our times—an era when multiple crises accelerate each other. Climate change, rising wealth inequality, and war are examples of global crises that impact and amplify each other. The Cascade Institute, a research centre in British Columbia, defines polycrisis this way:
A global polycrisis occurs when crises in multiple global systems become causally entangled in ways that significantly degrade humanity’s prospects. 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.
The polycrisis is the reason it is so hard for me to read the news these days. The litany of small and large, interconnected, and avoidable disasters is overwhelming. I try to strike a balance between being informed and being paralyzed by grief and outrage.
What can we do in the face of the polycrisis?
The key question is what to do. The first challenge is to see clearly what is happening, but it is difficult to grasp the impacts and interactions of multiple global systems, and more difficult still to hold bad actors accountable for their role in this gigantic, disastrous mess. Large-scale solutions require understanding the different complex systems and how they interact. It also requires shifting people’s worldviews, a difficult undertaking. There is a whole field of research dedicated to advancing our understanding of what we are experiencing and how it can be addressed, and you can learn more about the key thinkers via the polycrisis learning journey. I’m glad that people are working at this level and to have an inkling of what they are doing, and I have decided that this is the work of others, and I will make a different contribution.
I’m interested in acknowledging the deep and difficult nature of the time we are living in, and in finding ways to live joyfully and to do what we can from where we are to turn the metaphorical ship. Fortunately, the polycrisis researchers believe that we can “trigger virtuous cascades” and the systems thinking work of Donella Meadows indicates that there are “leverage points”—places in complex systems where “a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.”
My remaining posts in the coming week will delve into more specific actions we can take as individuals and local organizations to counter the damaging effects of the polycrisis and spark more virtuous cycles. I will also be tying the work back to nonprofits and their role in building a just world. Just as crises impact and amplify each other, positive actions can also build grassroots momentum and hope for the changes we need to sustain ourselves and our planet.