In Bilbao, Eduardo Gudynas reflects on the term polycrisis and the growing complexity of current times

According to Uruguayan researcher and writer Eduardo Gudynas, we currently find ourselves in an era characterised by increasing complexity. An era in which multiple crises are developing and overlapping, advancing at different rates and having a number of dimensions, giving rise to the concept of polycrisis.

That is one of the main ideas which the author of works such as Amazonía. Transiciones y alternativas antes del colapso (2024) spoke about at the “Crisis and Polycrisis” seminar held on February 19 in the auditorium of the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).

The speaker defined the concept of crisis as a change or collapse situated in a specific time and place and which can be measured or quantified by indicators.  That was one of the two key concepts that the speaker tried to analyse before an audience of more than sixty people, including undergraduate and master’s students, doctoral students, and teaching and research staff.

Eduardo Gudynas has always acted as a model for the work undertaken at Hegoa. This is evidenced by the great number of works by this author available in the Documentation Centre, such as Ecología, mercado y desarrollo, políticas ambientales, libre mercado y alternativas (1996), his first work, as well as the book El mandato ecológico: derechos de la naturaleza y políticas ambientales en la nueva constitución (2009) and a number of scholarly articles published in journals like Ecología Política and Papeles de Relaciones Ecosociales y Cambio Global, amongst others.

This activity is part of a series of seminars organised by Hegoa and the University of the Basque Country in the context of the Globalisation and Development and Development and International Cooperation university master's programmes.