Navigating the Polycrisis and What It Means for Humanity and the Planet

What does the term “polycrisis” refer to? If I told you humanity and the planet face a polycrisis today, you may try to infer what I mean, but if you cannot, let me help you by pointing to a January 17, 2024 article appearing in the journal Global Sustainability. It defines polycrisis as:

“Entangled global crises occurring within the same timeframe.”

The 2024 Polycrisis as Defined in the Article

The polycrisis of 2024 involved the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and the Russia-Ukraine conflict. It linked them together, showing the feedback loops generated by the three. Each amplified the other and, potentially, all three seeded the subsequent crises we describe later in this article.

Defining the Commonality

The term polycrisis was introduced by two complexity theorists, Edgar Morin and Anne Brigitte Kern, in 1999 in Homeland Earth: A Manifesto for the New Millennium.

Rather than the three crises mentioned in the Global Sustainability article as standalone silos, the authors argued there was synchronicity to these crises that connected all three.

So how did any one of the three trigger the others? The commonality for all three is shared vulnerability involving food and energy security, health logistics and finance with stresses on governments, and climate change already disrupting the natural environment through droughts, floods, vector-borne disease spread, and more.  Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered even more disruptions to which the other two were contributors.

The 2024 Polycrisis Fallout

Back during the height of the Cold War, American foreign policy strategists talked about the Domino Effect, referring to Communist and totalitarian anti-democratic regime expansion into Southeast Asia as falling dominoes.

The polycrisis of 2024 could equally be described in a similar fashion. The falling dominoes of that era, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, led to American involvement and the Vietnam War.

In 2024, the ongoing climate change crisis affected food supplies, freshwater, energy and geopolitical security. COVID-19, whether originating from food or geopolitical insecurity, affected health, labour, logistics and global governments and their finances. The Russia-Ukraine war arose out of political distraction and insecurity and disrupted food, energy, finances, and the welfare of populations already impacted by the prior two crises.

The nexus for all three: food-energy-finance. Mapping the polycrisis of 2024 goes like this:

1. Climate change impacts food and freshwater security, making populations more vulnerable to disease and raising military and security spending.
2. COVID-19 emerges to impact the world, causing nations to heighten border and internal security, temporarily shutting down economies, and overstretching finances, leading to geopolitical insecurity.
3. Geopolitical insecurity produces opportunity for Russia to invade Ukraine, which subsequently causes food and food-growing inputs, and energy costs to rise, and disrupts global trade to countries suffering from climate-change-induced food insecurity.
4. Energy cost increases make producing and distributing food more expensive, causing global prices to rise, contributing to further economic and financial insecurity. Food inflation worsens poverty and increases political unrest.
5. Financial stresses weaken national economies and the capacity of governments to address climate, health, energy and security shocks.

In summary, the feedback loops for the 2024 polycrisis conjoin:

• The Climate-to-conflict loop,
• The Pandemic-to-weakened-institutions-and-governments loop,
• The War-to-climate loop,
• The Food-to-health loop.

Expanding the 2024 Polycrisis to the Present

Lo and behold, since 2024, the global polycrisis has been joined by the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel, the U.S.-Iran war, Donald Trump’s second term with disruptive health, tariff and military policies impacting trade and post-World War II multilateralism, and now, the current El Niño, which is exacerbating and contributing to accelerated climate disruptions.

Defining the 2026 Polycrisis

Here is the narrative of events for the extended polycrisis of 2026.

1. Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack causes Israel to exact revenge on Gaza, creating an escalating Middle East regional conflict.
2. The escalation draws Iran and the U.S. into the conflict, which inevitably deepens the crisis into the present-day U.S.-Iran off-again-on-again war.
3. U.S. military and trade policies through Donald Trump’s “America First” tariffs and threats to NATO allies’ sovereignty weaken multilateral economic and geopolitical solidarity and, as a result, do little to solve the Russia-Ukraine conflict while leading to new wars and the continued expansion of military-industrial capacity and spending, and the production of items only suitable for wars while ignoring what needs fixing on a global scale.
4. U.S. health and foreign aid policies delegitimize the science of vaccinations and defund medical programs in aid of Global South countries, leading to increasing mortality, along with a rising threat of epidemics for diseases once considered eradicated, like measles, and likely fan the flames for future global pandemics.
5. Higher energy and food prices from war disruptions to Persian Gulf production and trading in fossil fuels and fertilizers lead to rising agricultural production insecurity and other economic shocks from increasing costs for heating, living, transportation, logistics, and manufacturing.
6. Securing fossil fuel supplies causes governments and industry to weaken climate change electrification transition policies to meet current needs while ignoring the implications and costs to people and infrastructure associated with increasing extreme weather events.
7. El Niño alterations to atmospheric circulation intensify heatwaves, precipitation and other weather events, adding to climate change and economic impacts, food insecurity, vector-borne disease spread, migration pressures and political instability.

Feedback Loops for the 2026 Polycrisis

Here is the feedback loop chain of events summary:

$$\text{Oct. 7 escalation }\to \text{U.S.-Iran war}\to \text{Hormuz disruption.}$$

Hormuz disruption → energy and food inflation → political pressure.

Political pressure leads to change $$\to$$ Trump’s 2nd term and policies like tariffs, health cuts, and unilateralism → weaker buffers and less global cooperation. $$\to \; existing\; conflicts\; remain\; unresolved\; while\; new\; ones\; begin.$$

El $$\to \; economic\; shocks\; and\; increasing\; global\; political\; instability$$

All shocks together → compounded inflation, insecurity, geopolitical strains and wars. $$\to \; polycrisis.$$

Each of the aforementioned has weakened the collective capacity to manage the others, with the combined effect exceeding the sum of its parts, a classic polycrisis.