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A short definition of the polycrisis, including global environmental, geopolitical, and economic aspects.

Added complexity allows an economy to grow, even as resource limits are reached. But at some point, the complexity itself becomes a problem.

Over the past 50 years, humans have extracted the Earth’s groundwater stocks at a steep rate, largely to fuel global agro-economic development. Given society’s growing reliance on groundwater, we explore ‘peak water limits’ to investigate whether, when and where humanity might reach peak groundwater extraction. Using an integrated global model of the coupled human–Earth system, we simulate groundwater withdrawals across 235 water basins under 900 future scenarios of global change over the twenty-first century. Here we find that global non-renewable groundwater withdrawals exhibit a distinct peak-and-decline signature, comparable to historical observations of other depletable resources (for example, minerals), in nearly all (98%) scenarios, peaking on average at 625 km3 yr−1 around mid-century, followed by a decline through 2100. The peak and decline occur in about one-third (82) of basins, including 21 that may have already peaked, exposing about half (44%) of the global population to groundwater stress. Most

Global projections of macroeconomic climate-change damages typically consider impacts from average annual and national temperatures over long time horizons1–6. Here we use recent empirical findings from more than 1,600 regions worldwide over the past 40 years to project sub-national damages from temperature and precipitation, including daily variability and extremes7,8. Using an empirical approach that provides a robust lower bound on the persistence of impacts on economic growth, we find that the world economy is committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years independent of future emission choices (relative to a baseline without climate impacts, likely range of 11–29% accounting for physical climate and empirical uncertainty). These damages already outweigh the mitigation costs required to limit global warming to 2 °C by sixfold over this near-term time frame and thereafter diverge strongly dependent on emission choices. Committed damages arise predominantly through changes in average tempe

Evidence shows a continuing increase in the frequency and severity of global heatwaves1,2, raising concerns about the future impacts of climate change and the associated socioeconomic costs3,4. Here we develop a disaster footprint analytical framework by integrating climate, epidemiological and hybrid input–output and computable general equilibrium global trade models to estimate the midcentury socioeconomic impacts of heat stress. We consider health costs related to heat exposure, the value of heat-induced labour productivity loss and indirect losses due to economic disruptions cascading through supply chains. Here we show that the global annual incremental gross domestic product loss increases exponentially from 0.03 ± 0.01 (SSP 245)–0.05 ± 0.03 (SSP 585) percentage points during 2030–2040 to 0.05 ± 0.01–0.15 ± 0.04 percentage points during 2050–2060. By 2060, the expected global economic losses reach a total of 0.6–4.6% with losses attributed to health loss (37–45%), labour productivity loss (18–37%) and i

Belangrijkste les van het Wereld Economisch Forum? De klimaatproblematiek en het verlies aan natuur zijn een enorme bedreiging voor de bedrijfswereld. Heel wat CEO’s zijn zich daar intussen van bewust, maar de politiek moet nu het juiste kader scheppen, schrijft Julie Vandenberghe van WWF-België.

This report written by the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Oliver Wyman, provides an in-depth economic analysis of how climate change will reshape health landscapes over the next two decades. It highlights increased risks from new pathogens, pollution and extreme weather events and shows how these will exacerbate current health inequities, disproportionately impacting the most vulnerable populations.

Catastrophic climate change and the collapse of human societies By Josep Peñuelas, Sandra Nogué National Science Review, Volume 10, Issue 6, June 2023 The scientific community has focused the agend…

Lancet study finds 'green growth' policies fall far short of what's needed to prevent dangerous change…

The CEO of one of Infosys' other major clients, Shell, also joined Rishi Sunak's new business council two weeks ago.

This paper catalogues current efforts to address climate change within multilateral economic and financial institutions and related organizations. It also proposes a minimum set of policy measures that need to be prioritized by such institutions to support climate change mitigation and adaptation. The proposals include expanding public climate finance via multilateral development banks, doing more to mobilize private investment, mainstreaming climate considerations across institutional operations, making climate disclosures mandatory, and addressing sovereign debt distress to unlock private climate finance.

The damage functions in the models, which relate GDP to temperature and sea-level rise, account for impacts on agriculture, forestry, fisheries, floods, road infrastructure, energy supply and demand, and labor productivity. Using this novel approach, the researchers estimate that the avoided damages are 1.5-3.9 times higher than the costs of climate mitigation. In other words, one euro invested in climate solutions saves the world about 1.5 to 4 euros in effects from climate change.

Misguided policies are hurting the poorest in society; our focus should be on reducing inequality not increasing GDP

Letters: I risked prison to stand up against an system that will lead to ecological and societal collapse – we must look for alternative economic models, writes Zoe Cohen

We face so many concurrent threats that commentators have argued that we now face an unprecedented "polycrisis" – where multiple interacting global crises produce greater harms to the planet and humanity than those crises would produce in isolation. The Wellbeing Economy Alliance has argued that the current economic design is at the root cause of this polycrisis, and with good reason.

This full length briefing explains what Non-Economic Loss and Damage (NELD) is, why and how it happens, where it happens, who is most affected, and importantly how it can be addressed. Featuring case studies from both the Global North and South, the brief captures the latest thinking on NELD all in one place whilst acting as an accessible introduction for those new to the topic.

As Nobel laureate Solow said to Congress when criticizingeconomicmodelsforfailingtoanticipatethe“GreatReces-sion,” “Every proposition has to pass a smell test: Does itreally make sense?” (2). The methods and conclusions inDietzetal.(1)donotmakesense. ...

The 1972 book "The Limits to Growth" shared a somber message for humanity: the Earth's resources are finite and probably cannot support current rates of economic and population growth to the end of the 21st century, even with advanced technology. Although disparaged by economists at the time, it turns out that, 50 years later, the message still deserves our attention.

Degrowth is a radical economic theory born in the 1970s. It broadly means shrinking rather than growing economies, to use less of the world’s dwindling resources. Detractors of degrowth say economic growth has given the world everything from cancer treatments to indoor plumbing. Supporters argue that degrowth doesn’t mean “living in caves with candles” – but just living a bit more simply.

Human activity is putting the Earth on a trajectory towards environmental collapse. The SDGs were adopted in2015 to reconcile human activity with planetary boundaries. So far, the SDGs have not lived up to their promise in European Union member states. Most EU countries have seen socioeconomic development alongside environmental degradation. Progress towards environmental sustainability only occurs in countries with slow or negative socioeconomic trends.

Food supply expert paints grim global picture hunger 05.23.2022 By Arvin Donley NEW YORK, NEW YORK, US — Global wheat inventories currently stand at about 10 weeks of global consumption, a food supply expert said during a special meeting of the United Nations Security Council on May 19. Sara Menker, chief executive officer of Gro Intelligence, an organization that gathers and analyzes global food and agricultural data, said she disputes official government agency estimates that put global wheat inventories at 33% of annual consumption, countering inventories are closer to 20%. “It is important to note that the lowest grain inventory levels the world has ever seen are now occurring while access to fertilizers is highly constrained, and drought in wheat growing regions around the world is the most extreme it’s been in over 20 years,” Menker said. “Similar inventory concerns also apply to corn and other grains. Government estimates are not adding up.” Menker told the security council that while much of the blame

The IPBES #PandemicsReport is one of the most scientifically robust examinations of the evidence and knowledge about links between pandemic risk and nature since the COVID-19 pandemic began - with 22 of the world's leading experts from fields as diverse as epidemiology, zoology, public health, disease ecology, comparative pathology, veterinary medicine, pharmacology, wildlife health, mathematical modelling, economics, law, and public policy as authors of the report. The expertise of the 22 authors was further augmented by contributions and knowledge resources from the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, and the World Health Organization - as well as a peer review process.

Capitalism isn’t what it used to be. Since 2008, critics of the world’s dominant economic system have been lamenting its imperviousness to change. And for good reason. In earlier epochs, financial crises and pandemics wrought economic transformation. In our own, they seem to have yielded more of the same. Before the 2008 crash, global capitalism was characterized by organized labor’s weakness, rising inequality within nations, and a growth model that offset mediocre wage gains with asset-price appreciation. All of these have remained features of the world’s economic order.

Researchers must try to resolve a dispute on the best way to use and care for Earth’s resources. Fifty years ago this month, the System Dynamics group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge had a stark message for the world: continued economic and population growth would deplete Earth’s resources and lead to global economic collapse by 2070. This finding was from their 200-page book The Limits to Growth, one of the first modelling studies to forecast the environmental and social impacts of industrialization.

At the beginning of nearly every war including the current one in Ukraine, there are those who loudly declare that it will be over shortly and then business-as-usual can resume. They are rarely right. While no one can say for certain what the trajectory of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict will be, the economic warfare that is going on alongside it is very likely to destroy the current global trading system.

The inventor of the Brics acronym says sanctions against Russia have exposed nations’ dependence on the western economic system

We must do what we can to contain Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. But we also need to be clear-eyed about it, and face the costs. Economics can’t be separated from politics, and neither can be separated from history. Here are eight sobering realities:

Experten wereldwijd zijn meer bezorgd over een gebrek aan klimaatactie, extreem weer en het verlies van biodiversiteit dan over de pandemie. Dat blijkt uit het laatste rapport van het World Economic Forum.

De coronapandemie mag dan wel het nieuws domineren, experten wereldwijd zijn meer bezorgd over een gebrek aan klimaatactie, over extreem weer en over het verlies van biodiversiteit. Dat blijkt uit het laatste rapport van het World Economic Forum, dat gisteren werd gepubliceerd.

L’Institut de l’économie pour le climat ( I4CE – Institute for climate economics) est une association experte de l’économie et de la finance dont la mission est de faire avancer l’action contre les changements climatiques.

Researchers examined the economic cost of the climate crisis and found it would cut about 37% from global GDP this century, more than twice the drop experienced in the Great Depression. For every tonne of carbon dioxide emitted, the global economy would be $3,000 worse off by the end of the century, they estimated.

The second draft of the IPCC Group III report, focused on mitigation strategies, states that we must move away from the current capitalist model to avoid surpassing planetary boundaries and climate and ecological catastrophe). It also confirms our previous reports, covered by CTXT and The Guardian, that “greenhouse gas emissions must peak in the next four years”. The new leak acknowledges that there is little or no room for further economic growth.

As an economist who has studied the effects of weather and climate change, I have examined a large body of work that links heat to economic outcomes. Here are four ways extreme heat hurts the economy – and a little good news.

Et si l’Europe en attendait trop de ses forêts ? Selon un récent rapport du cabinet de conseil Material Economics, en pointe sur les sujets liés à la durabilité et l’économie, l’Union européenne "surestime de loin l’offre de biomasse d’origine végétale et forestière potentiellement disponible".

A 1972 MIT study predicted that rapid economic growth would lead to societal collapse in the mid 21st century. A new paper shows we’re unfortunately right on schedule.

Meeting human needs at sustainable levels of energy use is fundamental for avoiding catastrophic climate change and securing the well-being of all people. In the current political-economic regime, no country does so. Here, we assess which socio-economic conditions might enable societies to satisfy human needs at low energy use, to reconcile human well-being with climate mitigation.

After a century of wielding extraordinary economic and political power, America’s petroleum giants face a reckoning for driving the greatest existential threat of our lifetimes. An unprecedented wave of lawsuits, filed by cities and states across the US, aim to hold the oil and gas industry to account for the environmental devastation caused by fossil fuels – and covering up what they knew along the way.

Even “sustainable” technologies such as electric vehicles and wind turbines face unbreachable physical limits and exact grave environmental costs

New research suggests social transformations that prompt “degrowth” could cut humanity’s climate footprint in time to meet the Paris climate agreement target.

the court found that one million of today’s Australian children are expected to be hospitalised because of a heat-stress episode, that substantial economic loss will be experienced, and that the Great Barrier Reef and most of Australia’s eucalypt forest won’t exist when they grow up. It found this harm is real, catastrophic, and – importantly from a legal perspective – “reasonably foreseeable”.

Comment les économistes abordent le changement climatique et quelles sont les solutions prônées pour y faire face ? Est-ce que leur approche joue un rôle dans notre incapacité à limiter les émissions de gaz à effet de serre ?

Under a “climate lockdown,” governments would limit private-vehicle use, ban consumption of red meat, and impose extreme energy-saving measures, while fossil-fuel companies would have to stop drilling. To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structures and do capitalism differently. Many think of the climate crisis as distinct from the health and economic crises caused by the pandemic. But the three crises – and their solutions – are interconnected.

How is it possible to own land? The current pattern of ownership and control of land lies at the heart of many of our biggest dysfunctions: the collapse of wildlife and ecosystems, the exclusion and marginalization of so many people, the lack of housing in many cities—indeed, in many parts of the world—the lack of public space in cities, our exclusion from the countryside. The pattern of land ownership underlies all of these massive issues, and indeed of many more. Yet we rarely question it.

Human activities are threatening to push the Earth system beyond its planetary boundaries, risking catastrophic and irreversible global environmental change. Action is urgently needed, yet well-intentioned policies designed to reduce pressure on a single boundary can lead, through economic linkages, to aggravation of other pressures. In particular, the potential policy spillovers from an increase in the global carbon price onto other critical Earth system processes has received little attention to date. To this end, we explore the global environmental effects of pricing carbon, beyond its effect on carbon emissions. We find that the case for carbon pricing globally becomes even stronger in a multi-boundary world, since it can ameliorate many other planetary pressures. It does however exacerbate certain planetary pressures, largely by stimulating additional biofuel production. When carbon pricing is allied with a biofuel policy, however, it can alleviate all planetary pressures. In the light of nine Earth Syst

While climate scientists warn that climate change could be catastrophic, economists such as 2018 Nobel prize winner William Nordhaus assert that it will be nowhere near as damaging. In a 2018 paper published after he was awarded the prize, Nordhaus claimed that 3°C of warming would reduce global GDP by just 2.1%, compared to what it would be in the total absence of climate change.

Based on preliminary analysis, the global average atmospheric carbon dioxide in 2020 was 412.5 parts per million (ppm for short), setting a new record high amount despite the economic slowdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, the jump of 2.6 ppm over 2019 levels was the fifth-highest annual increase in NOAA's 63-year record. Since 2000, the global atmospheric carbon dioxide amount has grown by 43.5 ppm, an increase of 12 percent.

CCS - Carbon Capture and Storage: A research brief published by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) concludes that the abrupt recent shutdown of the Petra Nova coal-fired carbon capture plant in Texas should be seen as a strong signal for investors to avoid such projects.

Today, the average global temperature has increased by more than 1°C compared to pre-industrial values (Figure 1-1); atmospheric CO2 concentrations have risen from 280 to more than 400 ppm. At the current pace of emissions, the carbon budget that is left for staying below the 2°C target of the Paris Agreement will be depleted in a few tens of years. For the 1.5°C target, this budget will be exhausted before the decade is out.

The growing threat of abrupt and irreversible climate changes must compel political and economic action on emissions.

Le Référendum d’initiative citoyenne (RIC) ne répond pas seulement au désir légitime des citoyens d’être plus souvent consultés : il leur donne à la fois le choix des réponses et celui des questions. En ce sens, il accomplit pleinement le rêve d’une démocratie directe reconnue en droit depuis la Révolution, mais toujours savamment corsetée, voire empêchée. Les risques associés à cette procédure sont cependant nombreux et doivent être pris en compte : affaiblissement des autorités démocratiquement élues, multiplication de consultations aux effets potentiellement incontrôlables et contradictoires, manque de délibération préparatoire au vote, forte exposition à toutes sortes de manœuvres démagogiques...

Humans will cause so many mammal species to go extinct in the next 50 years that the planet's evolutionary diversity won't recover for 3 to 5 million years, a team of researchers has found.

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Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak — sooner than you think.

While the element phosphorus is not scarce in the earth’s upper crust, the amount that can be accessed for productive use in food production is orders of magnitude smaller due to a wide range of bottlenecks including physical, economic, technical, geopolitical, legal, ecological and environmental constraints. From a food security and sustainability perspective, the most important quantity is not the total amount of phosphate rock in the ground but the fraction that is available to be accessed by farmers and applied to agricultural fields for food production.