- Rapidly converging environmental, technological and social changes at the global level indicate the world has entered a “polycrisis,” according to a new U.N. Environmental Programme (UNEP) report. The polycrisis has major implications for Earth’s climate, biodiversity, pollution and health, according to the authors.
- Eight major shifts — including competition for natural resources, the rapid advance of new technologies such as AI, mass forced displacement and growing inequalities — are overlapping and synchronizing, intensifying the polycrisis.
- The U.N. report also identifies 18 “signals of change” on the near horizon that need to be monitored closely, many of which could cause major disruptions that would impact planetary health.
- These looming issues include new infectious diseases linked to climate change, deployment of climate-altering geoengineering technologies and an increase in “uninhabitable places.” The report underlines the need for monitoring, rapid response and inclusive decision-making to deploy a range of innovative solutions.
Environmental, technological and social challenges are colliding to create a global polycrisis. This confluence of issues is in turn placing increased pressure on the already existing environmental challenges of rapid climate change, rampant pollution and biodiversity loss — ultimately threatening planetary health and human well-being.
That’s according to the recently published global foresight report by U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Science Council. The document underscores multiple threats that lie over the near horizon, ranging from the deployment of geoengineering technology to the public’s diminishing trust in science, all of which could deepen the polycrisis.
“The main message coming out of this report is that we have interconnected issues that we need to look at,” says Andrea Hinwood, UNEP’s chief scientist and a report lead author. “We need to ensure that we are integrating the way we’re approaching these problems.”
The document identifies eight “critical shifts” — emerging issues and potential threats that could amplify, accelerate and synchronize the polycrisis. These disruptive changes include the ongoing devastation of the natural world, competition for global resources, misinformation and diminishing trust in institutions, widening inequalities, mass forced displacement and the rapid advance of AI.
This foresight exercise was built on the views of hundreds of experts, regional stakeholders and youth worldwide. Out of 280 “signals of change” identified by experts, the report highlights 18 that could have dramatic effects (both negative and positive) in the near and distant future on planetary health and human well-being. These 18 signals hold the potential to cause major environmental and societal upheavals beyond those we see today and should be closely monitored, Hinwood says.
“It’s heartening to see more and more organizations engage seriously with the concept of polycrisis,” says Michael Lawrence, a polycrisis research fellow at the Cascade Institute, a Canadian research center. Citing reports by the World Economic Forum and others, Lawrence and colleagues have developed a clear definition and framework for the polycrisis to help prevent its being co-opted as a meaningless buzzword.
Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre who was not involved in the report, welcomes the precautionary approach taken by the foresight report. “The rapid changes we have been and will be living through, with complex sets of interconnected environmental, social and technological challenges, call for these sorts of exercises as we need to be able to anticipate their impacts, interactions and ways to navigate them,” he says.
Signals of change
One of the 18 examples highlighted in the report is the link between rapidly thawing Artic permafrost — due to climate change — and the release of potentially harmful microbes. “We know that thawing permafrost will release more methane,” Hinwood says, which will add to global warming. But a big unknown is whether this thaw will set free potentially pathogenic microbes. A case in point: Increased permafrost melt is the leading hypothesized cause behind a 2016 outbreak of anthrax in Siberia.
“This is a potential signal of change that could significantly impact human health, the environment and agriculture,” Hinwood says.
Three of the identified signals — including permafrost melt, the potential emergence of new zoonotic diseases and antimicrobial resistance — could directly trigger the spread of disease. But the convergence of multiple polycrisis problems could also have major unforeseen human health implications.
“There’s a big assessment deficit for how these crises will interact to impact human health,” Jørgensen notes. And, “We’re not prepared as [a scientific community] to assess how multiple crises interact to affect human health.”
Another potential problem on the horizon arises out of the possible deployment of solar radiation management, a suite of controversial and still largely untested geoengineering techniques to block the sun’s rays (including stratospheric aerosol injection and marine cloud brightening) to shield the world from the worst climate change impacts. If launched at planetary scale, these interventions pose “substantial environmental and social risks and impacts” that are still poorly understood, the report states.
The geoengineering signal is deserving of “particular attention,” argues Salvatore Aricò, CEO of the International Science Council, because even though it is considered “weak” and unlikely to be deployed in the eyes of experts consulted, the consequences could be severe.
“Essentially, there is no framework in place” to govern geoengineering use, Aricò explains. This lack of standards and oversight is especially worrisome in light of the public’s current lack of acceptance and resistance to such interventions. In his view: “It’s a weak signal, but it’s becoming stronger and stronger, not necessarily from the point of view of the evidence needed for us to implement those solutions. But paradoxically, from the point of view of public acceptance.”
Other near-future disruptions include the real possibility of vast tracts of land becoming uninhabitable due to climate change, sea level rise, war and civil unrest; detachment of decision-making from science; the uninhibited rises in fossil fuel subsidies; and the unknown risks of chemical pollution.
As terrifying as these near-future scenarios may be, there are some positives within them, the authors emphasize. One such is the increasing resilience of local communities and cities as they innovate to navigate polycrisis challenges.
Looking to the future, as this report does, offers humanity a road map for identifying unfolding crises, says Hinwood, enabling action now to ensure the worst doesn’t come to pass. For example, she says, “If we address climate change, we will stop the thawing of the permafrost and potentially avoid [the risk of polar microbe releases].”
Future solutions to avoid future shock
Aggressively tackling climate change now is just one example of how a large-scale solution implemented now could help blunt a variety of societal and environmental disruptions in the future.
The report underlines the necessity for a “new social contract” based on a transformed human relationship with nature that values well-being along with economic growth, and which includes voices and views from local communities, Indigenous peoples and youth as a means to co-designing solutions, Hinwood and Aricò say. Both also emphasize the need to monitor upcoming challenges by gathering and freely sharing data globally.
“Agile and adaptive governance” is considered a game changer. To face the rapidly evolving polycrisis, policymakers must nimbly assert “shorter-term time-bound targets” and place a new emphasis on human well-being metrics rather than measuring growth with GDP alone, the report states.
Hinwood again cites tackling climate change as an example: States have set 2050 emission reduction targets, which are trending in the wrong direction — a failure that is locking in devastating planetary heating, she says. “Maybe what we need to do is set shorter-term targets for the next two years.” Those goals might be quickly reached by slashing methane emissions from oil, gas and agriculture.
“We have to be agile; we have to be flexible, and we have to have the data in place to enable us [to assess progress,]” she says.
In Jørgensen’s view, the report does not go far enough in naming another important solution strategy. “We need to more explicitly identify the responsibility of those key actors that have extraordinary power to rapidly influence the trajectory of the future, whether [they be] nation states, or businesses and multinational companies, [so we can] take action for the common global good.”
He agrees that UNEP’s foresight exercise offers a “good start” for dealing with looming challenges, particularly those impacting the environment. But what’s missing, he says, is “a U.N. coordination group [to evaluate] how crises are interacting, preferably with scientific support to help inform [them].”
The governance measures called for by the report are “all worthwhile, important and on the mark,” according to Lawrence. However, he adds, “The real challenge is developing practical programs that can achieve these recommendations at local, national, regional and international scales. Such actions will necessarily be diverse, context-specific and beset by myriad challenges.”
A planetwide polycrisis, marked by 18 destabilizing “signals of change” can feel overwhelming, like looking into a crystal ball forecasting gloom heaped on doom. But there is a bright side: While one interlinked worsening problem can amplify others, the opposite is also true. Solving one interconnected problem can also help solve others. In Hinwood’s view, “that is a very positive thing.”
Banner image: Patients from riverside communities along the Rio Negro, in Brazil’s Amazonas, once again receiving care after two months of absence in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Global pandemics are becoming more frequent, with zoonotic diseases on the rise as humanity degrades the natural world and transgresses the safe limits of the nine planetary boundaries. Image by Gustavo Basso via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
The nine boundaries humanity must respect to keep the planet habitable
Citations:
Navigating New Horizons: A global foresight report on planetary health and human wellbeing. (2024). Retrieved from United Nations Environment Programme website: https://wedocs.unep.org/handle/20.500.11822/45890
Stella, E., Mari, L., Gabrieli, J., Barbante, C., & Bertuzzo, E. (2020). Permafrost dynamics and the risk of anthrax transmission: A modelling study. Scientific Reports, 10(1). doi:10.1038/s41598-020-72440-6
Ezhova, E., Orlov, D., Suhonen, E., Kaverin, D., Mahura, A., Gennadinik, V., … Kulmala, M. (2021). Climatic factors influencing the anthrax outbreak of 2016 in Siberia, Russia. EcoHealth, 18(2), 217-228. doi:10.1007/s10393-021-01549-5
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