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https://finbio.org/the-shock-tracker/

Realization of the global assemblage of human-created buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and other artifacts—the “technosphere”—has been achieved at the cost of significant degradation of the biosphere. Consequences are increasingly evident in the form of crises—climate change, biodiversity loss, geopolitical conflicts, etc.—that interact and reinforce one another to form a global “polycrisis”. At the core of these dynamics lie dominant economic institutions and schools of thought that have historically prioritized growth and efficiency over sustainability and resilience. Responding to polycrisis calls for a transformation of economic knowledge itself.
Crises is an ambivalent concept. From its conception in ancient Greek as a moment of decision in an uncertain context, it now refers to prolonged and volatile turmoil unfolding across multiple scales and dimensions. From a social-ecological systems viewpoint, a crisis can be decomposed into two interlinked processes: shocks and creeping changes. Shocks are abrupt, often nonlinear events with noticeable impacts that disrupt the structure or functioning of a system—examples include wildfires, pandemics, or market crashes. They act as exogenous disturbances that can catalyze systemic reorganization. Creeping changes, by contrast, are gradual, cumulative processes that unfold over extended periods, typically lacking a clear onset. These processes—such as democratic backsliding, antimicrobial resistance, etc.—can degrade the stability and adaptive capacity of a system through altering its internal configuration and increasing sensitivity to external perturbations.

Shocks and creeping changes interact through dynamic feedbacks that altogether undermine a system's resilience (i.e., the capacity to deal with change, through persistence, adaptation or transformation).

To understand the context of the polycrisis and its ramifications for human life. To think about shocks and creeping changes as constantly occuring events that are interconnected and present in our lives. Understanding compounding, cascading and multi-hazard events will be a key elements of investigation. Students will describe shock events from their own lived experiences and add them to a global database.

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