Synchronous failure: the emerging causal architecture of global crisis
(2015) Ecology and Society : a journal of integrative science for resilience and sustainability — Vol. 20, n° 3, p. 6 (2015)
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- Abstract
- Recent global crises reveal an emerging pattern of causation that could increasingly characterize the birth and progress of future global crises. A conceptual framework identifies this pattern’s deep causes, intermediate processes, and ultimate outcomes. The framework shows how multiple stresses can interact within a single social-ecological system to cause a shift in that system’s behavior, how simultaneous shifts of this kind in several largely discrete social-ecological systems can interact to cause a far larger intersystemic crisis, and how such a larger crisis can then rapidly propagate across multiple system boundaries to the global scale. Case studies of the 2008-2009 financial-energy and food-energy crises illustrate the framework. Suggestions are offered for future research to explore further the framework’s propositions.
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Homer-Dixon, T., Walker, B., Biggs, R., Crépin, A.-S., Folke, C., Lambin, E., Peterson, G. D., Rockström, J., Scheffer, M., Steffen, W., & Troell, M. (2015). Synchronous failure: the emerging causal architecture of global crisis. Ecology and Society : a journal of integrative science for resilience and sustainability, 20(3), 6. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-07681-200306 (Original work published 2015)