Beyond the Buzzword: The Evolving Meaning of Polycrisis

(Feb 2025) I did not coin the term polycrisis. I was likely the first spiritual leader of color to critically take this eurocentric construct and bend it to create a trauma- and race- informed narrative that feels more wholesome to many across the world.

The word ‘Polycrisis’ was coined and popularized primarily by European scholars: often described as a cluster of interconnected global crises that create a compounding effect, making their overall impact far greater than the sum of their parts.

When I first encountered it, I noticed that its available definitions lacked perspectives of people of color (i.e., people of global majority). The available defnitions failed to integrate the ongoing impacts of colonization, slavery, and land theft on our collective and planetary well-being. These old definitions did not acknowledge racial, gender, class, or geographical inequities as essential parts of the polycrisis. Additionally, while some definitions mentioned the “mental health crisis” as part of the polycrisis, the analysis felt superficial to me. Western hyper-individualistic models of psychological health overlook how personal well-being is deeply intertwined with community or ecosystem health and, according to Eastern traditions, spiritual well-being. Because of these omissions, mainstream frameworks for addressing the polycrisis often felt very reductionist, fragmented, incoherent and overwhelming to me.

My understanding: In brief

Polycrisis extends beyond frequent and devastating climate-related disasters or ecological issues like water shortages, biodiversity loss, and air or soil pollution. It also includes growing economic insecurities, declining trust in institutions and the rise of fascist authoritarianism, volatile food and energy markets, rising ideological and religious extremism, refugee crises and genocidal violence from geopolitical conflicts. I agree that this phenomenon of polycrisis significantly threatens humanity’s survival and well-being. But, for me, it is crucial to include the following in the definition of polycrisis:

  1. Widening economic disparities across racial, religion, caste and countries

  2. Separation of Indigenous ecological wisdom keepers from their lands

  3. A worsening mental health crisis driven by unresolved layers of trauma

I offer more details below. But let us first look at the history of this term!

History of the term

In the late 1990s, complexity researchers Edgar Morin and Anne Brigitte Kern introduced "polycrisis" in their book Homeland Earth, arguing that the world faces not a single crisis but multiple, interwoven crises. Sociologist Mark Swilling later described polycrisis as a “nested set of globally interactive socio-economic, ecological, and cultural-institutional crises” that cannot be reduced to a single cause.

Between 2016 and 2018, Jean-Claude Juncker, then-President of the European Commission, used the term to describe Europe’s intertwined migration, financial, and Brexit crises. This led the philanthropic community in the U.S. and Europe to adopt the term. In 2022, the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation (VKRF) hosted a "Navigating the Polycrisis" conference in Denmark, attended by my dear friend and Zen Buddhist teacher Kaira Jewel Lingo, who first introduced me to the term.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, scholar-practitioners such as Adam Tooze used “polycrisis” to describe the interplay between the pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and the climate emergency. The Cascade Institute launched a research program on the polycrisis and published a discussion paper in 2022. A newsletter titled The Polycrisis, edited by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahey, now explores these ideas regularly.

Some argue that the term gained mainstream attention when it became a buzzword at the 2023 World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos. Since then, international aid organizations, businesses, investors, and philanthropists—including UNICEF, the UN Development Programme (UNDP), George Soros, and economists like Lawrence Summers—have incorporated "polycrisis" into their analyses.

I approached the term polycrisis through four lenses:

  1. As a climate scientist who has been studying the role of Indigenous spiritualities in protecting biodiversity and ecosystem health worldwide.

  2. As a teacher of meditation, Ecodharma and Zen Buddhism, a non-dual spiritual tradition rooted in South Asia.

  3. As a practitioner of Gandhian-Kingian Nonviolence who supports young people involved in climate and justice movements.

  4. As a grief-rage ceremony leader who supports trauma healing in the context of a loving community

My race- and trauma-informed contribution

Trauma: an integral part of polycrisis

Trauma both contributes to and is worsened by other aspects of polycrisis. In my workshops and writings, I explore how personal traumas—including those related to childhood, race, religion, gender, and ability—interact with the global economic, ecological, and climate traumas. When left unaddressed, these traumas create fertile ground for oppressive systems to persist. We cannot confront the polycrisis of climate collapse, economic injustice, genocide, and widening inequality without also addressing spiritual and psychological wounds.

Colonization and White Supremacy Culture

Many people view polycrisis as a web of multiple crises with no single cause or solution. While this is partly true, I believe that failing to recognize colonization and white supremacy culture as central drivers of polycrisis leads to shallow analysis. The roots of this crisis lie in the trifecta of the Divine Right of Kings, the Doctrine of Discovery, and Manifest Destiny—doctrines that justified land theft, racial hierarchies, and extractive economies.

Heteropatriarchal white supremacy is not just root cause of the climate crisis—it is a driving force behind the entire polycrisis. Acknowledging this helps us move beyond fragmented solutions toward systemic transformation.

Re-Indigenizing: A Path Toward Healing and Thriving

In response to the polycrisis, I propose a framework I call “Re-Indigenizing.” I have written about the role empowered Indigenous cultures play in protecting multiple species here. This involves:

  • Reconnecting our bodies, hearts and minds to place based ancestral shamanic and animist wisdom

  • Re-Indigenizing communities, organizations, and ecosystems to restore balance, reciprocity, justice, biodiversity and ecological resilience.

I have been writing a book on this topic for the past two years, tentatively titled “Islands of Belonging in a Sea of Chaos.” It explores the urgency of rematriating lands and ecosystems, reclaiming ancestral practices, and resisting extractive capitalism. 

The Future: Fierce womxn leaders expanding the conversation

I introduced the term "polycrisis" to participants in Sarah Durham Wilson’s Mother to Maiden teacher training in late 2023. Since then, Sarah and others in that cohort have reshaped the concept, infusing it with feminine and queer perspectives—perspectives often excluded from mainstream economic and policy discussions. I am excited to see how others continue evolving this term, using it to envision pathways to belonging, healing, and kinship with all life.

Summary

To everyone reading this article, please let the meaning evolve the way you like but please see if you can acknowledge who handed over this framework to you. Let’s define polycrisis when we use it because different people understand it to mean different things. My framework is rooted in seeing polycrisis as a result of land theft and colonization, it weaves in the role of spiritual and psychological trauma in creating and sustaining other aspects of polycrisis. And my framework includes a "reindigenizing" pathway out of polycrisis. I am seeing a lot of use of the word polycrisis but I am not always 100% sure people understand the depth of ecological/climate crisis or depth of trauma caused by hetero-patriarchal, capitalist, and colonial culture on their own bodies or mind.