Polycrisis Resilience in the Global South

Abstract

Polycrisis Resilience is the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, economies, societies, and interconnected systems to anticipate, withstand, adapt to, recover from, and reduce their vulnerability to multiple interacting crises. This report applies the H Heuristics Polycrisis Resilience Framework to 131 low- and middle-income economies, arguing that the future severity of global polycrisis depends not only on the magnitude of hazards such as climate change, pollution, poverty, infrastructure deficits, and political instability, but also on the vulnerability of the populations and systems exposed to them. Drawing on public data from the World Bank, United Nations, World Health Organization, and INFORM Risk Index, the report examines seven overlapping vulnerabilities and demonstrates that development itself can function as long-term risk reduction. Evidence shows strong relationships between development indicators and resilience-related outcomes such as electricity access, clean cooking, sanitation, internet connectivity, and child survival, while highlighting the limits of development when growth follows environmentally harmful pathways. The report identifies six mutually reinforcing priorities: clean energy and technological convergence, climate adaptation and infrastructure resilience, clean industrialization and economic development, human development and environmental health, technology diffusion and digital connectivity, and institutional and adaptive capacity. The analysis finds that vulnerability is concentrated geographically, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia, where multiple challenges frequently overlap. Scenario analysis to 2100 suggests that accelerating progress toward basic services and resilience-building could substantially reduce deprivation, mortality, and long-term human vulnerability. The report proposes a five-stage implementation cycle, regional adaptation strategies, and an eight-dimension measurement framework as foundations for a future Polycrisis Resilience Index. It concludes that reducing vulnerability through integrated development pathways represents one of the most powerful and practical opportunities for improving human and systemic resilience across the Global South during the twenty-first century.

Key findings

1. Vulnerability, not only hazard, sets the outcome. Across the Global South, the services that protect people (electricity, clean cooking, sanitation, health care) are strongly tied to national income, with correlations of 0.73 to 0.85, while air pollution is barely related to income at all. Threats arrive regardless; vulnerability is what development can change.
2. Progress since 2000 has been large. Electricity access rose from 73% to 90%, clean cooking from 36% to 70%, sanitation from 45% to 79%, internet use from 1% to 67%, and under-five mortality fell from 69 to 29 per 1,000 births. The gaps with high-income countries are still large: 6 times higher child mortality and 2.9 times more polluted air.
3. The burden is concentrated. Sub-Saharan Africa holds 88% of the Global South's people without electricity and half of those without clean cooking; South Asia holds most of the rest of the cooking gap and the most polluted air. On seven challenges, 41 countries and 1.4 billion people are in the worst fifth on four or more.
4. Six development priorities work on several vulnerabilities at once. Clean energy, climate adaptation, clean industrialization, human development and environmental health, technology diffusion, and institutional capacity form one mutually reinforcing strategy rather than six separate programmes.
5. Regions need different mixes. The same framework points to electricity and clean cooking in Sub-Saharan Africa, heat and air quality in South Asia, coasts and industry in Southeast Asia, inequality and urban infrastructure in Latin America, and coastal adaptation and resilient power in the small island states.
6. The century-long gap between paths is large. At today's pace 1.7 billion people would still lack clean cooking in 2100; at the pace of the best-performing tenth of comparable countries the number would be 84 million. Cumulative child deaths in 2025–2100 would be about 209 million at current pace and 92 million at best-peer pace. These are scenarios, not forecasts.
7. Prevention is usually cheaper than response, but not guaranteed to pay everywhere. Benefit-cost ratios of 2:1 to more than 10:1 are reported for adaptation and resilient infrastructure. Each claim still has to be tested country by country.
8. Progress can be measured. A dashboard of eight dimensions, with exposure, vulnerability and capacity kept separate, ranks regions in a stable order and points to the next step: a transparent Polycrisis Resilience Index.

Contents

1. Executive SummaryThe severity of the coming polycrisis depends on vulnerability as well as threatsp. 4
2. 1The Global South as the Central Arena of Polycrisis Resiliencep. 6
3. 2Where the Burden Falls: The Evidence Basep. 9
4. 3The Development–Vulnerability Relationshipp. 13
5. 4The H Heuristics Polycrisis Resilience Frameworkp. 17
6. 5Regional Applicationsp. 21
7. 6The Importance of the 2025–2100 Timeframep. 25
8. 7Economic Implications and the Value of Preventionp. 30
9. 8Measuring Progressp. 33
10. 9Conclusion and Prioritiesp. 36
11. Referencesp. 38

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How to cite

@techreport{hughes2026polycrisis,
  title = {Polycrisis Resilience in the Global South: Reducing human and systemic vulnerability through development, technology diffusion, and integrated risk reduction},
  author = {Hughes, Hunter},
  institution = {H Heuristics},
  type = {Research Report},
  series = {H Heuristics Polycrisis Resilience Series},
  number = {8},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  doi = {10.6084/m9.figshare.34942756},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.34942756},
  copyright = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
  keywords = {polycrisis resilience, Global South, vulnerability reduction, development as risk reduction, technology diffusion, clean energy access, clean cooking, climate adaptation, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, small island developing states, scenarios to 2100, Polycrisis Resilience Index, H Heuristics Polycrisis Resilience Framework}
}

Download citation: BibTeX (.bib) · RIS (.ris) · https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.34942756

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