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Human societies and ecological systems face increasingly severe risks, stemming from crossing planetary boundaries, worsening inequality, rising geo-political tensions, and new technologies. In an interconnected world, these risks can exacerbate each-other, creating systemic risks, which must be thoroughly assessed and responded to. Recent years have seen the emergence of analytical frameworks designed specifically for, or applicable to, systemic risk assessment, adding to the multitude of tools and models for analysing and simulating different systems. By assessing two recent global food and energy systemic crises, we propose a methodological framework applicable to assessing systemic risks in a polycrisis context, drawing from and building on existing approaches. Our framework’s polycrisis-specific features include: exploring system architectures including their objectives and political economy; consideration of transformational responses away from risks; and cross-cutting practices including consideration of non-human life, trans-disciplinarity, and diversity, transparency and communication of uncertainty around data, evidence and methods. This paper proposes a framework to assess systemic risks that compound and cascade within and between systems. This emphasizes political economy and transformations, as well as trans-disciplinarity and diverse participation, evidence and methods.

In the bars and bazaars of Kyrgyzstan, the Akayevs have been a source of marvel and complaint. They, their extended family and close associates, own or have a stake in almost every major business in the republic, including most of the mass media. Stories of their reputed gambling problems, profligacy, malfeasance and sometimes menace abound. On occasion I have comes across Aidar, the president's son and now a newly elected MP, in Bishkek nightspots, his disgruntled arrogance and band of armed, aggressive heavies reinforcing the brutal point of power. Everyone stays well clear. This system of running government has a long history in central Asia and it is not a system that will be easily changed, whoever leads the country. It will involve grappling with the contradictions between national, tribal and regional political structures. The states of central Asia were created by decree between 1924 and 1936 out of the Muslim region of the Russian Imperium. They were given an invented past, an ethnic history, even a national language. This was done as part of Stalin's strategy to divide and control a region that until the late 19th century had been filled with stateless nomads, city-states and fluctuating regional powers.