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AI Summary:
Image source
Image source: The interconnectedness of world problems (based on Lester Brown, Plan B, 2008).
Source: “The coronavirus pandemic has brought the interconnectedness and fragility of global systems into stark relief. In this way the pandemic is a warning from the future – a future in which the growing consequences of the climate and broader ecological emergency are expected to increasingly destabilize societies around the world. These consequences will impact societies already suffering from a host of social and economic problems, from high levels of inequality and political fragmentation to economic instability and the ongoing shock of the pandemic. Just as we must contend with feedback loops in natural systems, so too must we reckon with the prospect of environmental breakdown driving cascading destabilization in critical economic, energy, food, and socio-political systems, and vice versa. Through a series of pre-recorded interviews and a live panel discussion with some of the world’s pre-eminent experts on these topics, ‘The Great Unraveling?’ explores some of the key drivers of destabilization and how they may interact with one another.”
Images source: “Recent global crises reveal an emerging pattern of causation that could increasingly characterize the birth and progress of future global crises. A conceptual framework identifies this pattern’s deep causes, intermediate processes, and ultimate outcomes. The framework shows how multiple stresses can interact within a single social-ecological system to cause a shift in that system’s behavior, how simultaneous shifts of this kind in several largely discrete social-ecological systems can interact to cause a far larger intersystemic crisis, and how such a larger crisis can then rapidly propagate across multiple system boundaries to the global scale. Case studies of the 2008-2009 financial-energy and food-energy crises illustrate the framework. Suggestions are offered for future research to explore further the framework’s propositions.”
Image source: “[This is a] provisional and highly debatable matrix of interactions between the different macroscopic risks facing us over the next 6-18 months. The question that the table asks is how do the risks listed in each row of column 1, affect the risks laid out from left to right across the table. For sake of clarity I have divided the stagflation risk into a risk of recession and a risk of accelerating inflation. What this matrix helps us to do is to distinguish types of risk by the degree and type of their interconnectedness. The risk of nuclear escalation stands out for the fact that it is not significantly affected by any of the other risks. It will be decided by the logic of the war and decision-making in Moscow and Washington. A food crisis does not make a nuclear escalation any more, or less likely. On the other hand, a nuclear escalation would, to say the least, dramatically escalate several of the other risks. Continuing inflation will likely function as a driver of several other risks, but those risks in turn (COVID, recession, EZ sov debt crisis) will likely deescalate the risk of inflation. I would not say that this is a forecast, but it does bias me towards thinking that inflation will be transitory. Most of the big shocks that we may expect, tend to be deflationary in their impact. Conversely, a recession seems ever more likely in part because the effect of most of the bad shocks we may expect - from COVID, mounting inflation, or a fiscal deadlock in Congress - point in that direction. The obvious next step is to ask whether the feedback loops in the matrix are positive or negative. So, for instance, a recession makes a Eurozone sovereign debt crisis more likely, which in turns would unleash serious deflationary pressures across Europe. Conversely, inflation in fact seems self-calming. The effects it produces tend rather the dampen inflation than to feed an acceleration. At least as I have specified the matrix here. A global hunger crisis seems alarmingly likely in part because all the other major risks will exacerbate that problem. A hunger crisis, however, will largely affect poor and powerless people in low-income countries, so it is unlikely to feedback in exacerbating any of the other major crises… our conclusions of its likely impact would be different if we add in the question of migration… This is not inevitable, this is not a prophecy of doom. But it is an assessment of multiple and compounding risks… A polycrisis is not just a situation where you face multiple crises. It is a situation like that mapped in the risk matrix, where the whole is even more dangerous than the sum of the parts.” See also this.
Source: “…in addition to the measurable geophysical parameters of the polycrisis, there are a wide range of measurable social indicators that can fruitfully be studied. The polycrisis itself is an ‘unbounded’ reality—the metamorphosis of the entire biosphere including humanity. But unbounded questions cannot be studied in their entirety. The more we identify the best sets of indicators to look at any specific set of questions we pose, the more informed our perceptions will be… ‘In planning and policy, a wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. It refers to an idea or problem that cannot be fixed, where there is no single solution to the problem; and ‘wicked’ denotes resistance to resolution, rather than evil. Another definition is ‘a problem whose social complexity means that it has no determinable stopping point.’ Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems.’ While it may certainly be useful to see the polycrisis as a wicked problem, there actually do seem to be policies and practices that would mitigate it. Limiting climate change, increasing equity, preserving biodiversity, building a global security system that lowered defense expenditures, reversing the toxification of the biosphere, and agreeing to core human values to guide our shared future are a few examples. Working toward these great goals would mitigate the polycrisis—but only if even the most successful efforts in one sector did not worsen things in another sector. For example, increasing incomes for the lowest third of the world population could increase consumption and degrade biodiversity unless consumption among higher income groups comparably decreased—or unless we massively greened the consumption cycle…
If we ignore the reality of the global polycrisis, many of our personal and collective strategies will sink under both known and unforeseen future shocks. If we give up hope, and do not fight and work for a better future, the outcomes will almost certainly be even worse… We may or may not be able to change the arc of the global polycrisis significantly as a species. Yet each day we are given countless small opportunities to alleviate suffering… We have countless small ways to make a difference for the people, critters and conditions we can affect. Living this way imbues us with a sense of hope. Whatever the outcome in the long run, in our time we align ourselves with the forces of life… The ultimate question for each of us is not to determine how the world will go. We cannot control it. We cannot know. The ultimate question for each of us is how we live our lives. In the face of the reality of the polycrisis, do we choose ways of seeing ourselves and others that leads us to anguish, cynicism, resignation and despair? Or do we discover a way of seeing and living that leads us to lives of courage, service, gratitude, compassion and peace?”
Source: “Tipping points in complex systems may imply risks of unwanted collapse, but also opportunities for positive change. Our capacity to navigate such risks and opportunities can be boosted by combining emerging insights from two unconnected fields of research. One line of work is revealing fundamental architectural features that may cause ecological networks, financial markets, and other complex systems to have tipping points. Another field of research is uncovering generic empirical indicators of the proximity to such critical thresholds. Although sudden shifts in complex systems will inevitably continue to surprise us, work at the crossroads of these emerging fields offers new approaches for anticipating critical transitions.”