In September 2018, the OECD’s New Approaches to Economic Challenges (NAEC) initiative organised a conference on lessons to be drawn from the 2008 financial crisis. The conference delegates concluded that a new crisis could emerge suddenly, from many different sources, and with potentially harmful effects. Moreover, while policymakers generally focus on how to harden components of vital systems affected by specific threats, such approaches do not often address cascading effects. This analysis led NAEC to organise another conference a year later, on averting systemic collapse.
Within a few months, the mechanisms discussed at these conferences as features and possibilities of our global systems had manifested themselves. A local outbreak of a coronavirus infection in Wuhan led to global consequences, first for health systems, then the economy and society as a whole. The work summarised in this publication has its roots in the pre-pandemic analyses as well as a number of conferences, papers and research collaborations instigated since, including with the Health Division of the Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Directorate, and the Environment Directorate as part of the Horizontal Project on Building Economic and Climate Resilience.
William Hynes, Head of the NAEC Unit, led the project. Igor Linkov of the US Army Corps of Engineers and Carnegie Mellon University inspired the work on resilience that underpins many of the findings. Harris Eyre, William Hynes, Michael Jacobs, Igor Linkov, Patrick Love and Benjamin Trump were contributing authors. The authors would like to thank Alan Kirman and Frans Lammersen for their comments and suggestions on the draft chapters. Former Ambassadors to the OECD Irena Sodin of Slovenia and Erdem Başçı of Turkey offered unfailing support and invaluable guidance to NAEC. Patrick Love and Angela Stuart provided editorial assistance.