Seminar Two:
A Systemic Approach to Polycrisis
Speaker:
Dr Michael Lawrence, Polycrisis Research Fellow at the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University in Victoria, Canada.
The global polycrisis entangles crises among multiple global systems. To respond effectively, we need to work across disciplinary silos using systems thinking. This seminar introduces a distinctly systemic understanding of crisis as the product of slow-moving systemic stresses and fast-moving trigger events that push a system out of equilibrium in a way that creates human harms. This Stress-Trigger-Crisis model offers a helpful tool to track crisis interactions between global systems; but it also reveals a dilemma between responses intended to improve systemic resilience and those pursuing systemic transformation. By exploring these dynamics, this seminar advocates better systems thinking for an era of global polycrisis.