The International Science Council and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have published a new report “Navigating New Horizons – A Global Foresight Report on Planetary Health and Human Wellbeing” which identifies eight critical global shifts that are accelerating the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste.

The shifts include humanity’s degradation of the natural world, the rapid development of technologies such as AI, competition for natural resources, widening inequalities and declining trust in institutions. These shifts are creating a polycrisis, in which global crises are amplifying, accelerating and synchronizing – with huge implications for human and planetary wellbeing.

The report was produced as part of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) UNEP – UN Environment Programme and features eighteen accompanying signals of change – identified by hundreds of global experts through regional and stakeholder consultations that included youth – offer a deeper glimpse into potential disruptions, both positive and negative, that the world must prepare for.