The climate emergency. Inequality and homelessness. The housing crisis. Social disorder, disinformation, and the erosion of norms. Worsening inequality and mass homelessness. The conservative slide into authoritarianism and fascism. America’s instability and war.
The interaction between these crises and others, and their emergent harms, has been termed polycrisis and can lead to cascading tipping points and collapses.
These points have been raised in some of my coffee chats and elsewhere (see links below). For those interested, I’m holding a coffee chat to further explore ideas on this topic. Please feel free to attend – no special knowledge is required. I’m certainly no expert, but I’m interested in what others have to say.
I’m particularly interested in the role of local government – Victoria and CRD – in the face of polycrisis, and I welcome ideas and input. (Other levels of government will have other roles, and none can afford to just say “it’s someone else’s problem.”) Our institutions have created the polycrisis; what would local governance look like if it were working to address the polycrisis?
If you are interested in more information, here are a few starter links that are local to the region.
- Trevor Hancock op-ed “A polycrisis is greater than the sum of its parts” https://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/trevor-hancock-a-polycrisis-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts-7343793
- Cascade Institute, Royal Roads University, “Polycrisis” https://cascadeinstitute.org/polycrisis/
- Thomas Homer Dixon, Hope in the PolyCrisis – a talk in the Changemakers Speaker Series, RRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PZhsd6HfCg
This website has links to a number of organizations and researchers around the world: https://polycrisis.org/community-map/
Update – Council’s “lane”
A side-conversation has popped up on social media, regarding whether the elements of the polycrisis are in City Council’s “lane”, i.e. relevant topics for Council members to consider.
This is an old chestnut: there aren’t actually neat, sharp “lanes” when it comes to most things being addressed by Canada’s various levels of government.
To pick one element of the polycrisis, climate change and increasing free-thaw and flood-drought conditions are already making it more expensive to do basic City tasks like pothole repair and road maintenance, keeping sidewalks walkable when they heave, and maintaining infrastructure like stormwater sewers and retaining walls. At the same time, urban infrastructure needs new investment to accommodate changes residents are making, such as increasingly using low-carbon transportation to get around.
Online disinformation and conspiracy theories are affecting the work of municipal governments, and even some of the foundations of local democracy (e.g. an informed electorate). The US Republican party’s transformation into a personality cult, and its sweeping away of checks and balances and the division of powers, is affecting tourism, export industries, and other local businesses.
The housing shortage and homelessness crisis are taking an immense human toll, creating conditions for addiction and crime, and impacting the housed and the unhoused.
Old models for federal, provincial and municipal governments (including the 1867 Constitution’s division of powers, and early 20th Century municipal statutes) didn’t anticipate and don’t expressly cover the range of challenges governments face in the 21st Century. And the gap between historical silos and modern needs will continue to grow.
There just isn’t a neat and tidy division of “lanes” between different levels of government, like paint on a road. A more apt metaphor may be core and penumbra. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penumbra_(law)
In any event, the reality is that the polycrisis is already here in Victoria, it’s already affecting residents and businesses, and all levels of government are already addressing its various elements. We need to plan to do better.