Washington DC – Conflicts, trade wars, inequality and democratic decline are in the headlines today. Each crisis seems to fuel the next, and it can feel like the world is collapsing. Western leaders and thinkers have adopted a single word to describe this tangle of threats: “multiple crisis.”
Adam Toozethe Columbia University historian who helped popularize the term, He summed up his appeal in 2023: “This is your fear, this is the thing that mainly bothers you. That’s what it might be called.” But when fear becomes the main theme, the result is nothing but pain and paralysis I noticed Mark Leonard after the 2024 Davos World Economic Forum.
But crises are not necessarily followed by collapse. Indeed, turmoil often paved the way for renewal, but only for those who were willing to abandon the old order.
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With this in mind, I see the same moment from a different perspective: as multiplicity, a term I coined in Project Syndicate suspended as of November 2024 Which I later developed in United Nations Development Programme. The idea is simple: Co-occurring disorders provide a unique opportunity In a generation of profound transformation of global institutions and ideas. When everything seems to fall apart at once, we are forced to move beyond piecemeal solutions and redesign systems from the ground up.
First we must realize that Multiple crises It is a Western novel masquerading as a global image. Two European theorists coined the term in 1993while It was recently published by another European expert. The top Western-based elites gave this term a Distinctive platformWhich led to its viral spread through Western media, research centers and academics.
Despite the stability Elegy for the “apocalyptic future”The debate on multiple crises rarely acknowledges the power of the non-Western world, which is what it is called a metaphor today “Global South”– Nor the solutions you provided. Although some theorists They advocate “renewed humanity.”They fail to confront the reality of a structurally unequal system and the growing frustration it generates. Western dominance of international finance and institutions continues, while non-Western ideas and voices remain marginalized in supposed global norms.
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Foundation Polycrisis language privileges because It hides the root causes of global collapsesPresenting them as natural disasters. In fact, the current overlapping crises can be traced back to the colonial industrial model that has prevailed since the Industrial Revolution, a worldview that defined progress as control: mechanical control over nature and Western control over the rest of the world.
There is no doubt that this chapter is an update It achieved tremendous material and social progress. But it also planted the seeds of our current situation. Global warming, the defining crisis of our time, is the result of an extractive industrial model, supported by a trading system in which workers in poor countries manufacture what consumers in rich countries buy at low wages.
The colonial industrial model has ended in a highly complex and multipolar world. We need a new mindset Which I call AIM (Adaptive, inclusive and ethical political economy). Adaptation means governing societies not as primitive machines, but as living networks that learn and evolve. Inclusivity means recognizing this progress It depends on what use you haveThis means mobilizing local creativity instead of imitating the models of the rich and powerful. Being ethical means recognizing that ideas are shaped by power, and correcting this imbalance.
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Over decades of research, I have studied China, as well as other countries, from the perspective of AIM. In my book How China escaped the poverty trapI tracked Development is not as a linear path, but as a co-evolutionary process, It is characterized by a recursive (adaptive) feedback loop. This analysis has shown that strategies that create new markets can differ radically from the usual prescriptions of “good” (inclusive) enterprise. Then in China’s golden age, Questioned the Orientalist assumption about “Chinese exceptionalism.”Which reveals that China’s path reflects forgotten Western stories, not the mythical versions taught in textbooks (ethics).
AIM offers a A compass for thinking and policy making In an era where global majoritarianism is increasingly assumed Responsibility for their own development, Instead of following Western formulas or waiting for relief from poverty through aid.
Consider, for example, that China, India, and Saudi Arabia are investing heavily in clean energy, while countries in sub-Saharan Africa are experimenting with clean energy. Energy growth accelerates. As US tariffs reduce export options to high-income markets for late developing countries such as Vietnam and Ethiopia, South-South trade exceeds North-South trade in volume.
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On an intellectual level, the experts most qualified to teach the subject of the “political economy of justice” and the “circular economy” are not philosophers or consultants from Europe or North America, but Indigenous groups with protected ecosystems For a long time, despite centuries of deprivation.
Pluralism is not a call for naive optimism in the face of existential threats. Rather, it represents a purposeful realism that relies on the creativity of a truly global community, not a single region or distinct class. It also does not promote clichés or sentiments. the Pluralism is a constructive agenda with an empirical basis. Applied correctly and seriously, it should change the way we study and face various challenges Especially development.
What we are witnessing is not the end of progress, but rather the end of the industrial colonial model and the beginning of another model, if we have the conviction to develop it.