A polycrisis is a (ecological, social, political, economic) crisis that consists of multiple causally entangled, mutually reinforcing crises.
A global polycrisis occurs when crises in multiple global systems become causally entangled in ways that significantly degrade humanity’s prospects.Lawrence, Janzwood & Homer-Dixon (2022), 2
Effective action in a polycrisis requires treating it as a highly integrated Complex System.
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.ibid.
References
- Lawrence, Janzwood & Homer-Dixon (2022): “What Is a Global Polycrisis?”