Polycrisis Observatory
Polycrisis pathway

Strand 4 · Timescales and mechanisms

A long crisis, a brief shock, and effects that spread

Crises unfold at different speeds. An underlying pressure can build over decades, while a local hazard unfolds within hours. When it meets vulnerabilities, it can activate latent crises and change the situation.

Distinguish the clocks

Long timescale

The underlying pressure

Climate change unfolds across generations. Its effects interact with changing ecosystems, infrastructure, and living conditions.

Short timescale

The hazard or trigger

A heatwave, flood, outage, or decision can concentrate effects in a particular place and moment.

Before and after the shock

Vulnerabilities and latent crises

Here, a latent crisis means a tension or fragility that has not yet taken the form of an observable acute crisis. This hypothesis needs evidence about indicators, actors, and mechanisms.

After the trigger

Propagation and transformation

Effects can spread across sectors, intensify, ease, or change the nature of a crisis. Their mechanisms and duration matter.

A timescale example: CO₂ emissions and concentration in 2020

According to the Global Carbon Budget 2021, global fossil CO₂ emissions fell by 5.4% in 2020 compared with 2019. Atmospheric concentration nevertheless rose by 2.37 ± 0.08 ppm that year.

Emissions are an annual flow; atmospheric concentration is an accumulating stock. The report estimates that the decrease in fossil and land-use-change emissions reduced the rise in concentration by about 0.18 ppm compared with a scenario without that decrease. Concentration continued to grow, but a little more slowly than in that scenario.

This example shows how a brief shock can temporarily alter a long-term pressure. On its own, it does not establish that the pandemic and climate crisis formed a polycrisis: relevant interactions, their scale, and their effects need to be demonstrated.

A short guide to analysing a case

  1. Which underlying pressure is building, and over what timescale?
  2. Which hazard or decision acts as a trigger?
  3. Which people, infrastructures, or institutions are exposed and vulnerable?
  4. Which latent crises become visible or activate?
  5. Through which mechanisms do effects spread, slow, or transform?
  6. At what scales, and for how long, do the effects persist?

This guide connects interaction analysis with framework comparison: see Morin, Cascade, and Polycrise Mondiale. The crossbow metaphor and the term wēijī are treated separately on the Words and languages page.

Conditions can meet; several outcomes remain possible

Underlying pressureCO₂ accumulation and warming over a long period
Exposure and vulnerabilitiesPeople, infrastructure, dependencies, and regulation involved
Hazard or decisionA brief event whose effects depend on context

These factors can combine in different ways and at different times. The diagram places them side by side without imposing a causal sequence. A hazard does not necessarily produce a crisis, and a latent crisis requires observable evidence.

  • AbsorptionProtection and response capacity limit the effects.
  • ActivationTensions that had been contained become an acute crisis.
  • Propagation or easingEffects spread, slow, or transform the situation. They may then alter vulnerabilities and underlying pressures.

The crossbow metaphor

In Mikael Mesnil Duprat’s proposal, accumulated tension evokes constraints, the trigger evokes release, and propagation evokes a trajectory. This is an image for analysing some risks, not a causal law or prediction. Each relation needs evidence from the case.

Data and sources

  • Global Carbon Budget 2021: global fossil CO₂ emissions fell by 5.4% in 2020; atmospheric concentration rose by 2.37 ± 0.08 ppm; its rise was about 0.18 ppm lower than the scenario without the decrease in fossil and land-use-change emissions.