Introduction

The specter of societal collapse, once confined to academic debates and dystopian fiction, has surged into a visceral, unfolding reality in the early 21st century with the convergence of record-breaking heatwaves, vanishing biodiversity, and escalating resource conflicts. The 2023 IPCC report underscores this shift, warning that global warming is now “unequivocally” human-driven and that even immediate, radical emissions cuts may not avert catastrophic tipping points. Against this backdrop, three pivotal studies—A Dynamic Collapse Concept for Climate Change, How We Could Survive in a Post-Collapse World, and Marine Ecosystem Role in Setting Up Preindustrial and Future Climate—offer critical insights into the mechanisms of collapse, its historical echoes, and pathways for resilience. Together, they form a mosaic of understanding that bridges ecological science, sociopolitical theory, and survival pragmatism.

This essay synthesizes their insights, weaving ecological data, historical analysis, and sociopolitical frameworks to explore how climate change amplifies collapse risks, the role of ecosystems in modulating these risks, and strategies for adaptation. The Dynamic Collapse Concept reframes collapse as a systemic unraveling of societal capacities, challenging simplistic notions of apocalypse. How We Could Survive draws lessons from the Roman Empire’s decline, Syria’s civil war, and other case studies to map survival strategies in destabilized worlds. The Marine Ecosystem study, meanwhile, reveals oceans as unsung climate regulators, whose degradation will accelerate atmospheric chaos. At its core, this analysis underscores a sobering truth: the stability of human societies is inextricably tied to the health of planetary systems. Modern civilization, for all its technological prowess, remains tethered to ancient ecological balances—balances now fraying under the weight of industrial exploitation.

The urgency of this synthesis cannot be overstated. As the Arctic melts, coral reefs bleach, and forests burn, humanity confronts a defining contradiction: the very systems that fueled its ascent—fossil fuels, industrial agriculture, globalized trade—now accelerate its undoing. The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the fragility of interconnected systems, rupturing supply chains and exposing brittle governance. Climate change, however, dwarfs these disruptions—a runaway crisis immune to vaccines or short-term fixes. Societies are irrevocably tethered to Earth’s life-support systems: groundwater basins replenished over millennia, soils nurtured by ancient microbial networks, and climatic equilibria shaped across epochs. No algorithm, geoengineering ploy, or AI can revive drained aquifers, rebuild lost topsoil, or recalibrate a destabilized atmosphere once tipping points cascade. This is the Anthropocene’s reckoning: our survival hinges on systems we are eroding through relentless extraction, even as we pretend our techno-fixes can outpace collapse.

Redefining Collapse: A Dynamic Framework

Traditional definitions of societal collapse have long fixated on dramatic, visible markers: the fall of political empires, the disintegration of centralized governance, or the erosion of cultural complexity. For centuries, historians framed collapse through events like the Roman Empire’s fragmentation or the Maya civilization’s abandonment of monumental cities, interpreting these as failures of centralized control or cultural decline. Such narratives, however, often overlook the intricate web of interdependencies that sustain societies. The study A Dynamic Collapse Concept for Climate Change disrupts these narrow views by proposing a model centered on collective capacity—the ability of interconnected systems to provide basic human needs like food, security, and shelter. Collapse, in this framework, is not merely a political or cultural transition but a pervasive and irreversible erosion of functionality that cascades across societal subsystems, amplifying vulnerabilities until recovery becomes impossible.

Consider Florida’s property insurance crisis, a modern microcosm of this dynamic. As climate-driven hurricanes intensify, insurers flee the state, deeming risks unmanageable. This exodus destabilizes real estate markets, leaving homeowners uninsured and municipalities unable to fund recovery. Local governments, reliant on property taxes, face revenue shortfalls, crippling public services like schools and infrastructure maintenance. The crisis ripples outward: construction jobs vanish, banks tighten mortgage lending, and displaced residents migrate, straining neighboring states. What begins as an environmental shock spirals into economic and governance failures, illustrating how collapse propagates through interconnected systems. This perspective shifts the focus from isolated events—a hurricane, a market crash—to systemic interdependencies, revealing how fragility in one sector (e.g., climate-vulnerable insurance) can unravel entire societies.

Critically, the study distinguishes collapse from necessary societal transformations. The shift from extractive industrial agriculture to regenerative, soil-centric farming, for instance, disrupts entrenched power structures and commodified food systems—yet this upheaval does not inherently signal collapse unless it destabilizes access to nutrition, farmer livelihoods, or ecological knowledge. The distinction is vital in debates about sustainability, where agribusiness interests often frame agroecology as a threat to “efficiency.” The real peril lies not in abandoning pesticides or monocultures but in systemic failures: corporate land grabs, intellectual property hoarding of seeds, and policy frameworks that prioritize profit over soil health. For example, if governments or corporations mandate regenerative practices—such as crop rotation or agroforestry—without engaging local farmers in decision-making, smallholders may face land dispossession or unaffordable transitions, worsening food insecurity by undermining local food production and livelihoods, but a democratized transition—centered on locally rooted land stewardship, open-source seed banks, and fair crop pricing—could restore ecosystems while nourishing communities. Collapse stems not from transforming destructive systems, but from allowing extractive hierarchies to co-opt the change.

The framework also illuminates feedback loops between societal and environmental systems. Small Island Developing States (SIDS) like Kiribati and Tuvalu face existential threats from sea-level rise. As saltwater infiltrates freshwater reserves and erodes coastlines, governance systems strain under the logistical and financial burdens of adaptation. When states fail to provide clean water or housing, mass migration ensues, spilling into host nations like Australia or New Zealand. These host regions, already grappling with housing shortages and political polarization, may respond with restrictive policies, fueling xenophobia and conflict. Environmental collapse thus triggers sociopolitical instability, which in turn exacerbates ecological neglect—a vicious cycle that transcends borders.

This dynamic model challenges reductionist views of collapse, such as Jared Diamond’s environmental determinism, by integrating societal, economic, and ecological layers. It reveals that collapse is not a singular event but a web of cascading failures, demanding analysis through the lens of interconnected systems. For instance, deforestation in the Amazon—driven by agricultural expansion—reduces rainfall, crippling hydropower-dependent energy grids. Power shortages disrupt industries, spurring unemployment and social unrest, which weakens governance and accelerates further deforestation. The interplay of these systems defies simplistic explanations, underscoring the need for holistic solutions that address root vulnerabilities. Ultimately, the dynamic framework redefines collapse as a process of eroding collective capacity, where failures in governance, economy, social cohesion, and ecology compound one another.

Ecological Foundations of Collapse: The Role of Marine Ecosystems

The study Marine Ecosystem Role in Setting Up Preindustrial and Future Climate unveils a critical yet underappreciated axis of collapse: the ocean’s role as Earth’s climate regulator. Marine ecosystems function as a planetary life-support system, with the biological carbon pump (BCP) acting as a linchpin in global carbon cycling. Phytoplankton, microscopic algae that form the base of the marine food web, absorb atmospheric CO₂ through photosynthesis. When these organisms die, they sink to the ocean floor, sequestering carbon in deep-sea sediments for millennia. This natural process removes roughly 30% of human-emitted CO₂ annually, buffering the worst impacts of climate change. However, simulations reveal that eliminating marine biology would spike preindustrial CO₂ levels by 163 ppm—equivalent to a 1.6°C temperature rise—by dismantling this vital carbon sink. In high-emission scenarios like SSP5-8.5 (a pathway of unchecked fossil fuel use), an ocean stripped of life would absorb 26% less anthropogenic carbon by 2100, leaving up to 83% of emissions in the atmosphere. These findings expose a dire feedback loop: as marine ecosystems degrade, their capacity to mitigate warming diminishes, accelerating climate chaos.

The repercussions extend far beyond atmospheric chemistry. Ocean acidification, driven by excess CO₂ absorption, dissolves calcium carbonate structures, crippling shellfish, coral reefs, and plankton species. Coral reefs, often termed the “rainforests of the sea,” support 25% of marine biodiversity and provide coastal protection from storms. Their collapse would devastate fisheries, leaving half a billion people who rely on reef-derived protein facing food insecurity. Simultaneously, warming waters disrupt fish migration patterns, decimating global catches—a catastrophe for the 3 billion people dependent on seafood as a primary protein source. Coastal economies, from small-scale fishers in Indonesia to industrial fleets in Norway, would unravel, triggering unemployment and social unrest.

A 10% decline in phytoplankton populations—a plausible outcome under current warming trends—would have profound consequences for Earth’s climate and ecosystems. These microorganisms play a critical role in regulating atmospheric CO₂, absorbing roughly 10 billion metric tons annually and producing about half of the planet’s oxygen. A reduction of this scale could leave an additional 10 ppm of CO₂ in the atmosphere, accelerating warming and disrupting marine food webs that millions depend on for protein. Even moderate declines in marine productivity—not just extreme scenarios—have measurable impacts on carbon cycling and climate. The ripple effects would extend beyond ecology. Warmer, more stratified oceans could reduce nutrient availability for remaining phytoplankton, creating a feedback cycle that further weakens their carbon sequestration capacity. This would compound existing pressures, such as permafrost thaw and deforestation, pushing global CO₂ levels closer to thresholds that destabilize ice sheets, monsoons, and agricultural systems.

The societal implications are equally significant. Declining fisheries, already strained by overharvesting, could intensify competition over dwindling resources—a dynamic already visible in regions like the South China Sea, where coastal states clash over fishing rights. Similarly, Arctic nations are scrambling to control newly accessible shipping lanes and fossil fuel reserves as ice retreats, raising tensions in a region once defined by cooperation. While dire, this scenario is not inevitable. It underscores the urgency of protecting marine ecosystems and transitioning to sustainable practices—not as a panacea, but as a buffer against compounding risks. The 10% threshold is less a guaranteed tipping point than a warning: incremental losses in natural systems can amplify vulnerabilities in ways that defy easy solutions.

The study bridges ecological and societal collapse, illustrating that marine preservation is not a niche environmental goal but a cornerstone of collective capacity. Coastal communities, from Bangladesh to Louisiana, rely on mangrove forests and wetlands for flood defense; their degradation leaves millions exposed to climate-driven disasters. Meanwhile, the loss of oceanic carbon sinks amplifies heatwaves, droughts, and crop failures inland, destabilizing food and water systems globally. The 2022 Pakistan floods, which submerged a third of the country, offer a grim preview of how ocean-atmosphere interactions can unleash terrestrial havoc.

Ultimately, the study underscores a stark truth: ecological health is foundational to human survival. Marine ecosystems are not passive backdrops but active participants in sustaining civilization. Their decline erodes the planet’s ability to buffer human excess, pushing societies toward collapse through intertwined food, economic, and climate crises. Preserving these systems demands more than marine protected areas; it requires dismantling extractive practices like deep-sea mining, overfishing, and fossil fuel dependence. In the Anthropocene, the fate of human societies is irrevocably tied to the vitality of the oceans—a truth as inescapable as the rising seas themselves.

Historical and Modern Precedents: Lessons from Collapse

The study How We Could Survive in a Post-Collapse World examines historical and contemporary collapses to distill patterns of vulnerability and resilience, revealing a sobering truth: collapse is rarely sudden, but a slow unraveling where environmental, economic, and political failures converge. The Roman Empire’s decline, for instance, was not a singular event but a centuries-long erosion fueled by intertwined crises. Political corruption and elite hoarding of wealth exacerbated economic inequality, while soil depletion from unsustainable farming practices—such as over-reliance on slave-driven latifundia estates—degraded agricultural productivity. Compounding these pressures, the “Late Antique Little Ice Age” (536–660 CE) brought erratic cooling, crop failures, and famine, weakening the empire’s capacity to sustain its military and infrastructure. Rome’s overextension—maintaining vast borders while battling Germanic invasions and internal revolts—mirrors modern nations’ struggles to address climate migration, resource scarcity, and militarized borders simultaneously. This slow-motion collapse underscores how societies crumble when elites prioritize short-term gains over systemic resilience.

Similarly, the Maya civilization’s collapse in the 9th century CE illustrates the interplay of environmental stress and societal adaptation. Prolonged droughts, exacerbated by deforestation for urban construction and agriculture, crippled water supplies and corn yields. Yet the Maya did not vanish; they transformed. As grand cities like Tikal and Calakmul were abandoned, communities decentralized, migrating to wetlands and highlands where they diversified crops (e.g., cultivating drought-resistant cassava) and revived traditional rainwater harvesting. This shift from monumental complexity to localized simplicity allowed Maya culture to endure, preserved through oral histories and agrarian practices. Their story challenges the myth of “disappearance,” showing that collapse often entails not extinction but radical simplification—a lesson for modern societies clinging to unsustainable growth paradigms.

Modern collapses mirror these dynamics with alarming fidelity. Syria’s civil war, often reductively blamed on sectarian strife, was ignited by a climate-fueled drought (2006–2010) that the UN called “the worst in 900 years.” Over 1.5 million farmers, their livelihoods destroyed by crop failures and groundwater depletion, fled to cities like Aleppo and Damascus, where overcrowding and unemployment stoked unrest. The Assad regime’s brutal suppression of protests, coupled with its decades of mismanaging water resources (e.g., subsidizing water-intensive cotton farming), transformed ecological stress into full-blown conflict. Yet amid the chaos, survival strategies emerged: displaced communities formed informal barter networks, repurposed abandoned buildings into collective shelters, and relied on cross-border aid from NGOs. These efforts echo the Maya’s decentralized adaptation, proving that even in collapse, human ingenuity persists.

Venezuela’s collapse, driven by oil dependency and kleptocratic governance, offers another stark lesson. As global oil prices plummeted in 2014, the state’s refusal to diversify its economy triggered hyperinflation (reaching 130,000% annually by 2018), collapsing healthcare, and mass malnutrition. Yet citizens forged resilience through ollas comunitarias—community kitchens where neighbors pooled scarce ingredients to feed hundreds daily—and a shadow economy fueled by cryptocurrency and cross-border smuggling. Meanwhile, grassroots engineers resurrected broken infrastructure, jury-rigging water pumps and solar panels to bypass failed state systems. Venezuela’s crisis underscores how corruption and resource monocultures breed vulnerability, but also how collective action can fill governance voids.

Yemen’s ongoing collapse, intensified by climate change and Saudi-led bombings, reveals the deadly synergy of environmental and political failures. Chronic water scarcity—exacerbated by unsustainable groundwater extraction and climate-driven drought—has left 18 million people without clean water, forcing families to trek hours for contaminated wells. The Houthi-Saudi conflict has weaponized scarcity, with blockades strangling food and fuel imports. Yet Yemenis have adapted: solar panels now power 80% of rural homes, bypassing destroyed grids, while farmers terrace mountainsides to capture rainwater and grow drought-resistant sorghum. Even in besieged cities, black markets for fuel and medicine operate with labyrinthine efficiency, sustained by tribal networks that predate the modern state.

These cases reveal a universal truth: collapse emerges not from single causes but from synergistic failures in environmental stewardship, economic equity, and governance. Yet within the rubble lie seeds of resilience. The Roman Empire’s fall birthed feudal networks that localized power; the Maya’s urban collapse preserved agrarian wisdom; Syria’s war forged community solidarity; Venezuela’s crisis revived barter traditions; Yemen’s conflict spurred solar innovation. These examples reject fatalism, showing that societal breakdown can catalyze reinvention.

The lesson for the Anthropocene is clear: resilience in the face of polycrisis demands more than incremental reforms—it requires dismantling the very systems that engineered this fragility. Modern industrial civilization, with its globalized supply chains, extractive economies, and centralized power structures, is uniquely vulnerable to the cascading failures of climate chaos, resource depletion, and geopolitical fracture. Decentralizing energy, food, and governance is not optional but existential, as seen in Yemen’s solar resilience and Syria’s community networks. Yet decentralization alone cannot suffice. Diversification must extend beyond Norway’s oil-funded hedging to confront the root drivers of collapse: the growth-obsessed economic models that prioritize profit over planetary boundaries.

Preserving Indigenous and local knowledge—like Maya agroforestry or Sahelian water harvesting—offers not just adaptation tools but a radical critique of modernity’s exploitative ethos. However, these practices must be scaled within a framework of reparative justice, acknowledging that the communities least responsible for the polycrisis are often those with the deepest resilience wisdom. Meanwhile, industrialized nations must reckon with their complicity in ecological unraveling, from fossil fuel subsidies to neocolonial resource extraction.

Collapse is not a distant specter but an unfolding process, visible in Miami’s sinking suburbs, Syria’s climate-fueled war, and the Global South’s debt-for-climate swaps. The polycrisis will not wait for consensus or technological miracles. It demands immediate, inequitable sacrifice: the Global North must decarbonize rapidly while financing Global South adaptation, even as vested interests—oil conglomerates, authoritarian regimes, financial elites—cling to the status quo.

History shows that societies can adapt, but never without trauma. The Maya decentralized, the Romans fragmented, and the Soviets bartered—but all endured profound suffering. Today’s polycrisis, however, is planetary in scale, leaving no “remote wilderness” for retreat. Survival hinges on a dual reckoning: embracing sufficiency over growth, and forging transnational solidarity to dismantle the systems accelerating collapse. This is not idealism but pragmatism. In the narrowing window between denial and disaster, the choice is stark—transform voluntarily through equity and ecological stewardship, or face involuntary simplification through scarcity and strife. The fraying world demands not just survival manuals, but a collective rewrite of civilization’s operating system.

Synthesis: Toward an Integrated Approach

The interplay between ecological and societal systems emerges as the linchpin of survival across all three studies, revealing a truth often obscured by modernity’s fragmentation: human societies are not merely dependent on ecosystems but exist as expressions of them. The fact that oceans sequester 30% of anthropogenic CO₂ underscores that the health of the environment is an active lifeline to humanity, not a passive backdrop. Coral reefs, for instance, sustain half a billion people through fisheries and coastal protection, yet their bleaching under rising temperatures threatens not just biodiversity but entire economies. When Indonesian fishing communities lose coral ecosystems, unemployment and migration surge, straining urban centers and fueling social unrest. This ecological fragility is compounded by societal failures: governments that prioritize short-term industrial gains over sustainable fishing quotas, or global markets that incentivize exploitative practices like bottom trawling. The result is a vicious cycle—ecological decline begets economic desperation, which accelerates environmental degradation.

Historically, this dynamic has played out in civilizations that mistook resource extraction for progress. The Roman Empire’s reliance on slave labor to sustain its latifundia estates stripped Mediterranean soils of fertility, driving agricultural collapse and reliance on grain imports from Egypt—a dependency that left Rome vulnerable to supply shocks and political upheaval. Similarly, the Soviet Union’s fossil fuel addiction, designed to fuel industrial might, locked it into a brittle economy that crumbled when oil prices plummeted, exposing systemic corruption and inefficiency. These collapses were not mere “environmental” or “political” failures but the inevitable result of systems that severed human activity from ecological limits.

In stark contrast, societies that harmonized with ecological realities demonstrated remarkable resilience. The Maya, facing prolonged drought, abandoned monumental cities but preserved cultural continuity through decentralized agrarian communities. By diversifying crops (e.g., cultivating drought-resistant ramón nuts) and reviving ancestral water management techniques, they transformed collapse into adaptation. Modern Yemen mirrors this ingenuity: amid war and water scarcity, farmers have revived ancient terracing and adopted solar-powered irrigation, turning barren slopes into fertile plots. These examples illuminate a path forward: durability arises not from domination of nature, but from dialogue with it.

The IPCC’s 2023 report crystallizes the stakes, warning that surpassing 1.5°C warming will render regions like the Sahel, the Indus Valley, and Central America’s “Dry Corridor” uninhabitable, displacing 200 million by 2050. Yet the global response has been paradoxically self-sabotaging. Wealthy nations, while pledging emissions cuts, exploit loopholes to expand fossil fuel projects—Australia’s coal exports, Canada’s tar sands, and the U.S.’s liquefied natural gas boom exemplify this hypocrisy. Meanwhile, “climate authoritarianism” is rising: China secures lithium mines in Africa for its green tech industry, Europe outsources deforestation to the Global South through biofuel imports, and Gulf states hoard water rights while draining shared aquifers. These actions replicate colonial patterns, treating the polycrisis as a scramble for resources rather than a call for systemic change.

The path forward demands dismantling this false dichotomy between ecological and societal health. Radical emission reductions must be paired with reparative justice—divesting from fossil fuels while funding Global South adaptation and debt relief. Equitable resilience requires decentralized energy grids, land reforms that empower locally rooted land stewardship, and trade policies that prioritize local food sovereignty over corporate profit. Community-led initiatives, like Kerala’s participatory water governance or Bolivia’s Law of Mother Earth, model this integration, legally enshrining nature’s rights while addressing poverty.

Ultimately, the lesson is unequivocal: ecological and societal systems are co-constitutive. A forest is not just a carbon sink but a web of relationships—mycorrhizal networks, Indigenous knowledge, sustainable livelihoods—that sustain both ecosystems and communities. To navigate the Anthropocene, we must cultivate societies that mirror this interdependence, recognizing that every policy, innovation, and cultural norm must answer a single question: Does this deepen our kinship with the living world, or sever it? The answer will determine whether collapse becomes a gateway to regeneration—or an epitaph for industrial civilization.

Conclusion: The Abysmal Truth

The Anthropocene has laid bare humanity’s precarious dance with planetary limits. The evidence is visceral. The hydrologic cycle, once a reliable distributor of freshwater, now veers into extremes of 1,000 year floods and droughts. Political gridlock, armed with lobbyist cash and nationalist rhetoric, blocks even modest climate legislation, as seen in the U.S.’s failed Green New Deal and Brazil’s Amazon deforestation surge under Bolsonaro. Meanwhile, humanity’s addiction to extraction—deep-sea mining, fracking, and rainforest clear-cutting—continues unabated, as if the biosphere’s convulsions are a distant rumor.

As the web of life unravels, the question shifts from how to avoid collapse to what fragments of civilization can endure. History’s lessons offer scant solace. The Maya and Yemenis adapted, yes—but their worlds were local, their crises contained. Today’s polycrisis is planetary, indifferent to borders. Decentralized solar grids and community kitchens, while vital, cannot alone offset the collapse of oceanic carbon sinks or the acidification of soils. The dynamic collapse model’s emphasis on collective capacity clashes with a global order where 1% of the population hoards wealth equivalent to 60% of humanity, and corporations like ExxonMobil post record profits while coastlines sink.

Humanity’s survival now hinges on a paradox: interdependence must be forged in a world fracturing into resource wars and climate apartheid. The ocean’s biological pump, once a silent ally, weakens as phytoplankton die-offs escalate. Droughts in the Horn of Africa displace millions, while flooded slums in Dhaka birth climate refugees no nation will welcome. The tools for renewal exist—agroecology, degrowth economics, Indigenous stewardship—but they are smothered by the inertia of a system that conflates growth with survival.

The coming decades will not be defined by prevention but by triage. Even if all emissions ceased tomorrow, feedback loops—permafrost belching methane, ice sheets hemorrhaging into rising seas—are already locking in cascading disruptions. The IPCC’s “best-case” scenarios now demand magical thinking: assuming trillion-ton carbon removal technologies that don’t exist, or global cooperation between nations fragmenting into water wars and xenophobic fortresses. The truth is uglier: civilization has likely blown past 1.5°C of warming, and the 2°C threshold is a flickering mirage. What remains is a brutal arithmetic of loss—deciding which ecosystems, species, and human communities are sacrificed to the furnace of industrial inertia.

The myth of human exceptionalism crumbles here. For all our ingenuity, we remain bound by the same laws of overshoot and collapse that toppled Easter Island and the Roman Empire—just at planetary scale. The tools we cling to—carbon credits, green growth, eco-modernism—are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Agroecology cannot resurrect topsoil stripped by monocultures fast enough to feed 8 billion on a destabilizing climate. Degrowth remains a whisper against the roar of extractive capitalism, where ExxonMobil’s $56 billion profits in 2023 funded more drilling, not reparations. Indigenous stewardship, though vital, is outgunned by the legalized violence of land grabs and militarized borders. Survival, for a fraction of humanity, will demand a reckoning with our fragility: not as masters of Earth, but as scavengers on its ashes.

References:

1. Marine Ecosystem Study
   Tijputra, Jerry F., Damien Cousspel, and Richard Sanders. “Marine Ecosystem Role in Setting Up Preindustrial and Future Climate.” Nature Communications 16, no. 2206 (2025). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-57371-y

2. Dynamic Collapse Concept Study
   Steel, Daniel, Giulia Belotti, Ross Mittiga, and Kian Mintz-Woo. “A Dynamic Collapse Concept for Climate Change.” Environmental Values 33, no. 6 (2024): 609–625. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/09632719241255857

3. Post-Collapse Survival Study
   Rost, Stephanie. “How We Could Survive in a Post-Collapse World.” Discover Global Society 3, no. 21 (2025). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44282-025-00160-1