Synchronous failure: the emerging causal architecture of global crisis
Date
2015
Authors
Homer-Dixon, Thomas
Walker, Brian
Biggs, Reinette
Crepin, Anne-Sophie
Folke, Carl
Lambin, Eric F
Peterson, Garry
Rockstrom, Johan
Scheffer, Marten
Steffen, Will
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Volume Title
Publisher
Resilience Alliance
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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Source
Ecology and Society
Type
Journal article
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Access Statement
Open Access