Author: John N. Lavis, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Evidence-Support Systems, McMaster University

Housing, climate, cost of living, health — the multitude of interconnected crises the world is facing has spawned a new term: “polycrisis.” The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks 2023 report defines this as a situation “where disparate crises interact such that the overall impact far exceeds the sum of each part.” The report describes the cost of living crisis as the most immediate global risk, and the climate crisis as the greatest future threat the world is facing. When one adds growing social and political polarization (increasingly fuelled by misinformation and disinformation campaigns) to this, as well as depleting food…