Humanity is faced with an unprecedented entanglement of complex problems commonly referred to as a “polycrisis” or “metacrisis”. Many of these crises arise from humans’ attempts to solve past and existing challenges with new ideas and technologies. Throughout history, this process has led to increasing levels of complexity – but all previous regional civilisations have waxed and then waned in sophistication. In many instances, societies sowed the seeds of their own destruction by depleting local resources and changing local climates; in others, rampant inequality led to social fragmentation. 

As global human civilisation has recently entered the “Anthropocene” era, we are now facing several interlocking crises at a planetary scale for the first time. These challenges include the collapse of global biodiversity; depletion of finite natural resources like fossil fuels and minerals; over-use of renewable resources like soils and forests; pollution of air, fresh water, oceans and land; economic and financial instability; social inequality, polarisation and cultural clashes; seemingly perpetual wars and conflict; sweeping demographic changes and growing migration pressures; a crisis of meaning and purpose; and accelerating technological developments such as Artificial Intelligence and biotechnology that could escape humanity’s control and threaten our very survival as a species.