 Five challenges to humanity: Learning from pattern/repeat failures in past disasters?Michael Quinlan The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 2020, vol. 31, issue 3, 444-466 Abstract: Human civilisation faces a series of existential threats from the combination of five global and human-engineered challenges, namely climate change, resource depletion, environmental degradation, overpopulation and rising social inequality. These challenges are arguably being manifested in both an increased likelihood and magnified impact of catastrophes like forest fires, prolonged droughts, pandemics and social dislocation/upheaval. This article argues that in understanding and addressing these challenges, important lessons can be drawn from what has repeatedly caused organisational failures. It applies the ‘Ten Pathways to Disaster’ model to a series of disasters/catastrophic events and then argues this model is salient to understanding inadequate responses to the five threats to civilisation. The article argues that because these challenges interact in mutually reinforcing ways, it is critical to address them simultaneously not in isolation. JEL Codes: H12, I14, I31, J11, Q01 Keywords: Climate change; crisis; disaster management; environmental degradation; inequality; latent system failure; pandemics; population; resource depletion; social dislocation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecolab:v:31:y:2020:i:3:p:444-466 Access Statistics for this article More articles in The Economic and Labour Relations Review |
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