Polycrisis

A polycrisis is a cluster of disparate crises and shocks that interact, entangle and mutually re-inforce one another. It typically leads to more drastic effects than the sum of the parts. The concept was coined in the 1990s but became popular in the 2020s to refer to the effects of the pandemic, war, inflation, climate change, energy shortages and democratic backsliding.

Critics of the term have characterized it as a buzzword or a distraction from more concrete causes of the crises.