New Zealand has a geographic advantage that could be a strategic liability. Our isolation protects us from many regional and global threats, but makes us uniquely vulnerable to the one consequence nearly all global catastrophes share: the collapse of international trade and supply chains.

This paradox sits at the heart of our new paper in peer-reviewed journal Policy Quarterly, which examines how New Zealand’s current approach to long-term resilience, while commendable in many ways, exemplifies broader blind spots that could leave this island country dangerously unprepared for 21st century risks. In this post we summarise the key points and recommendations from our research.

TLDR/Summary

• The DPMC’s 2025 draft long-term insights briefing on hazard resilience represents a welcome shift toward anticipatory governance and long-term thinking
• However, current publicly facing frameworks tend to focus on familiar local natural hazards while systematically excluding global catastrophic risks like nuclear war, bioengineered pandemics, extreme volcanic eruptions, severe solar storms, and catastrophic AI failures
• For an island nation dependent on global trade, supply chain collapse represents our primary threat vector regardless of what triggers it
• Understanding global systemic risk and “polycrisis”, manifested through at least 14 global systemic stresses that interact to create cascading failures, is essential for effective resilience planning
• Moving forward requires transparent public engagement with comprehensive risk information, not technocratic approaches that limit disclosure for fear of “scaring the public”
• NZ needs publicly facing risk assessment work that facilitates informed democratic dialogue about resilience options and their costs – enabling citizens to make collective choices about investing in our shared future

Strengths and limitations of current thinking

We previously noted that discussion documents like the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s draft Long-Term Insights Briefing deserve credit for several important advances. Such work explicitly connects resilience with long-term prosperity, rejecting the false economy of austerity followed by repeated disaster-rebuild cycles. It acknowledges that hazards may have catastrophic consequences and that abrupt crises can occur. And crucially, it represents a fundamental shift from reactive emergency response toward proactive resilience-building.

These are genuine achievements that move New Zealand’s risk discourse in the right direction.

But the briefing, and much public sector risk thinking, remains trapped within frameworks addressing symptoms rather than systemic forces, focusing primarily on familiar natural hazards and incremental climate risks while missing an entire category of global catastrophic risks that could trigger the isolation and supply chain collapse we’re most vulnerable to.

Consider what’s systematically excluded from many current resilience frameworks:

• Nuclear war and electromagnetic pulse attacks causing global agricultural failures and cascading infrastructure collapse
• Bioengineered pandemics potentially far more severe than Covid-19
• Large volcanic eruptions comparable to Tambora 1815, particularly those affecting critical global supply chain pinch points or altering the climate
• Severe solar storms capable of disabling electrical grids for weeks or months across regions of the world
• Catastrophic AI failures in interconnected infrastructure
• Global food system failures from synchronous breadbasket failures severely impacting food supply and trade relations

These risks share critical characteristics that distinguish them from conventional hazards: they typically originate elsewhere yet spread via cascading impacts to cause global catastrophe; external assistance may be unavailable when needed most; and they could threaten global critical infrastructure destruction rather than mere disruption.

While individually unlikely in any given year, collectively these risks represent high-probability problems over decades, with some, like severe solar storms and large volcanic eruptions, being practically inevitable.

Understanding the polycrisis

Beyond discrete catastrophic events lies an even more fundamental challenge: the world faces rising systemic risk driven by interconnected global stresses.

Working with frameworks developed by institutions like the Cascade Institute, we identify at least 14 major chronic systemic stresses simultaneously pushing human systems toward dangerous disequilibrium. These range from great-power hegemonic transition and climate heating to ideological fragmentation, concentrated industrial food production, and the propagation of artificial intelligence.

These stresses interact through what researchers term the “stress-trigger-crisis” model. Any major trigger event – whether a volcanic eruption blanketing Southeast Asian ports with ash, catastrophic electricity loss disabling GPS and shipping, or nuclear conflict over Taiwan – could tip already-stressed global systems into cascading failure.

Our new peer reviewed paper illustrates how each of these global stresses creates specific vulnerabilities for New Zealand, from liquid fuel import disruption to digital payment system collapse to synchronous failure of global breadbaskets.

For New Zealand, this creates a stark reality: while our geography, natural resources and social systems position us relatively well to weather various global storms (think Covid-19), our greatest vulnerability lies precisely in trade and supply chain collapse – the downstream consequence of virtually all global catastrophic risk.

Breakdown in the supply of goods and services is both the cause and consequence of virtually all past civilisation collapse.

Need for improved risk and resilience tools

New Zealand’s approach to national risk assessment lacks analytical outputs that have become standard practice among comparable nations grappling with complex risk landscapes.

The United Kingdom maintains a detailed, publicly accessible National Risk Register, alongside comprehensive chronic risks analysis, substantial parliamentary inquiry reports, and a National Resilience Action Plan. The United States has commissioned RAND Corporation assessments of global catastrophic risks, enacted the Global Catastrophic Risk Management Act 2022, and established dedicated institutional frameworks for extreme risks.

Even when such comprehensive approaches exist, significant methodological problems persist. But at minimum, these nations have recognised that transparent, systematic assessment of the full spectrum of risks – including low-probability, high-impact events – represents a fundamental democratic necessity.

New Zealand’s current approach (both nationally and regionally) not only lacks this scope and transparency, but also exhibits the methodological shortcomings we identified in previous research including: insufficient justification of foundational assumptions, systematic omission of largest-scale risks, and limited stakeholder engagement to legitimise key choices.

The democratic imperative for transparency

This brings us to one of the most critical gaps: the absence of transparent, detailed, publicly-facing risk assessment that enables and can be used to stimulate informed democratic dialogue.

The 2021 UK House of Lords’ report on extreme risks included a presumption toward publication of security information, stating that “only through transparency and a healthy culture of challenge can we provide society with a reliable foundation to respond to emerging risks.”

The institutional aversion to “scaring the public” must be overcome. Citizens require access to comprehensive risk information spanning the full spectrum from conventional hazards to global catastrophic and systemic threats, supported by government-facilitated forums enabling structured public deliberation.

But more importantly, information sharing needs to be solutions-focused, including transparent information about resilience investment options, their costs, benefits and trade-offs across different time frames and scenarios.

This approach empowers rather than alarms populations. It enables discourse over the “tough decisions” the draft briefing acknowledges while ensuring democratic legitimacy for long-term resilience investments. And it recognizes that New Zealanders are adults capable of engaging with difficult realities and making informed choices about their collective future.

New Zealand’s strategic position

Here’s the opportunity: New Zealand possesses substantial advantages that current frameworks underutilise.

Our geographic isolation, low urban density, plentiful food production capacity, abundant renewable energy potential, relatively strong democratic institutions, and established social capital position us uniquely well – if properly leveraged through anticipatory planning.

Regional cooperation with Australia and Pacific neighbours offers additional strategic opportunities. Initiatives like shared vaccine manufacturing capacity, cooperation on shipping resilience, and coordinated resilience planning could strengthen collective preparedness for global catastrophic risks that are inherently cross-border in nature.

Research shows that egalitarian institutions and transparent governance structures demonstrate superior adaptive capacity compared with hierarchical alternatives. This suggests that democratic deepening through citizens’ assemblies and deliberative forums represents both a values commitment and a pragmatic resilience strategy.

Pathways forward

Our new paper outlines several concrete recommendations:

Expand hazard coverage to include global catastrophic risks that traditional frameworks systematically exclude. International precedents demonstrate this is slowly becoming standard practice among comparable nations.

Adopt systemic analytical frameworks that recognise interdependencies, cascade pathways, and stress-trigger-crisis dynamics rather than treating hazards as discrete events.

Strengthen resilience factors such as geographical advantages, institutions, and social capital through deliberate cultivation rather than focusing exclusively on risk drivers.

Implement institutional reforms including dedicated risk officers or a parliamentary commissioner for catastrophic risks, cross-sector collaboration mandates, and three-lines-of-defence approaches.

Ensure basic needs continuity through both strengthened existing systems and alternative “Plan B” infrastructure capable of functioning at a minimum when primary systems fail.

Finance using intergenerationally fair methods through approaches that avoid disadvantaging current populations while preventing unfair burden-shifting to future generations.

Our recent research found majority public support (56-63%) across the political spectrum for institutional reforms to manage global catastrophic risk. New Zealanders are ready for this conversation.

Conclusion: An opportunity for leadership

Our critique extends far beyond the DPMC briefing toward establishing principles applicable across all public sector risk and resilience thinking.

By embedding systemic thinking, expanding considered hazards, ensuring transparency, and implementing institutional reforms oriented toward anticipatory governance, New Zealand can establish itself as a global leader in building resilience to 21st-century challenges through genuine democratic engagement.

The alternative of continuing reactive approaches that address symptoms while global stresses accumulate will ensure that risks will continue emerging faster than interventions can manage them.

The result of getting this right would benefit not just New Zealanders, but populations depending on our food exports and humanity generally, should catastrophe ever threaten global collapse. Our isolation could become our greatest strategic asset but only if we invest in resilience with eyes wide open to the full spectrum of threats we face.

The choice is ours: genuine anticipatory governance through transparent democratic engagement, or reactive crisis management that addresses symptoms while root causes remain unchanged.

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Read the full paper: Boyd, M. and Wilson, N. (2025) “From Disaster Response to Anticipatory Governance: why Aotearoa New Zealand’s long-term resilience thinking must address global catastrophic risk and systemic vulnerabilities,” Policy Quarterly, 21(4), pp.61-71.

Read our original submission: Response to DPMC Draft Long-term Insights Briefing (PDF, 12 pages)

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