Derailment risk

The label is specialist and the jargon score reflects that -- most people outside strategic climate risk circles will not have encountered it. But the concept it names is too important to lose to plainer language: it captures a specific causal mechanism (climate shocks consume the resources needed for decarbonisation, which worsens the climate, which produces worse shocks) that 'doom loop' or 'vicious cycle' gesture at without pinning down. An original contribution from strategic climate risk research that has shifted how the humanitarian and climate communities understand their interdependence. A doom loop where climate shocks lead to societal destabilisation, then less decarbonisation, then worse climate change, then worse shocks.

Connects to the political backlash dynamic where disaster-hit communities vote against climate action rather than for it. Reframes humanitarian response as climate strategy -- every community supported through a shock is a community less likely to fall into the derailment spiral. This reframing matters because it gives humanitarian actors a seat at the climate policy table they have not traditionally occupied

Climate disasters making climate change worse, in a vicious circle