Global Systemic Risk

The different drivers of global catastrophic risk (GCR), such as AI, biotechnology, climate change, and nuclear war, are typically studied separately. Yet global society — and thus the global risk landscape — is highly interconnected. This means that risk can emerge in complex ways: risk drivers can interact with each other, smaller localised shocks can lead to cascading nonlinear impacts, and slow long-term stresses can erode the global system’s resilience to catastrophe. 

Broadly speaking, such behaviour is captured by the term “systemic risk” (as well as related ideas like polycrisis). Existing work on GCR has made only limited connections to systemic risk, and systemic risk engages only rarely with worst-case outcomes. Our work seeks to change this. 

Our contributions

CSER researchers led early contributions to this field, including: 

• Identifying the important role of critical infrastructure “pinch points” in global volcanic risk
• Mapping the potentially complex pathways via which climate change contributes to the risk of global catastrophe
• Outlining the multiple pressures felt in some geographies connecting climate impacts, state fragility, and other sources of global catastrophic risk 
• Assessing the characteristics of societal collapse (1, 2) and the prospects for recovery.

We are actively collaborating with the United Nations Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment (ASRA), recently contributed to a United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) report on hazards with (global) escalation potential, and are  working with the G20 on the global governance of systemic risk (including on the prospects of a post-2030 global disaster risk regime). We have also been involved in building the research community around global systemic risk and polycrisis, most recently in collaboration with the Cascade Institute, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and the Research Institute for Sustainability.