Perspectives on Crises

What if the next global crisis is already here—and we’re still tackling it with yesterday’s tools? This book confronts this question head-on, offering a bold, multidimensional rethinking of how humanity can navigate overlapping emergencies—pandemics, climate collapse, deepening inequality—without sacrificing sovereignty or dignity. Drawing on original contributions from leading scholars and activists across five continents, this book delivers an in-depth, comparative analysis of real-world legal, political, and community responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and the worsening global crisis. The chapters trace how crises magnify structural vulnerabilities, expose failures in governance, and simultaneously reveal unexpected spaces for resistance and innovation—from Indigenous legal activism in Brazil and civic water-protection initiatives in India and Costa Rica, to evolving greenhouse-gas regulation in the United States and Brazil, and the still-unrealised potential of cooperation within the BRICS countries. The approach used is deliberately multidimensional: no single discipline’s or nation-state’s perspective dominates. Instead, the authors weave together legal theory, political philosophy, environmental justice, and on-the-ground empirical insights to challenge unidimensional thinking and propose practical pathways toward coordinated pluralism. Particular attention is given to the tension between sovereignty and shared responsibility, the relational nature of dignity in times of triage and scarcity, and the urgent need for multiscalar governance that learns across borders rather than replicating national silos. This book will be of considerable interest to researchers and scholars of international law, climate justice, human rights, global governance, and political theory—and to activists, policymakers, and practitioners seeking intellectually rigorous yet actionable responses to the polycrisis we already find ourselves in. Perspectives on Crises does not offer easy answers. Rather, it equips readers with more precise questions—and more honest tools—to help them face what comes next.