The world faces a multiplicity of global catastrophic risks (GCRs), whose functionality as individual and collective complex adaptive networks (CANs) poses unique problems for governance in a world that itself comprises an intricately interlinked set of CANs. Here we examine necessary conditions for new approaches to governance that consider the known properties of CANs-especially that small changes in one part of the system can cascade and amplify throughout the system and that the system as a whole can also undergo rapid, dramatic, and often unpredictable change with little or no warning.

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The Stockholm-based Global Challenges "New Shape" competition, which attracted 2,702 entrants from 122 countries, aimed to promote new ideas for the governance of global catastrophic risks. Here I tell the story of my role as one of 14 eventual finalists. It is a story of ideas -ideas that formed the background, ideas that emerged in the course of the finals, and ideas about how we might take things forward in the future. As Sir William Bragg put it in his famous introduction to The Double Helix (Watson 1967), this is not a history, but an autobiographical contribution to the history that may someday be written.

With today's world dominated by science, it's vital that politicians understand its inherently imperfect nature. Len Fisher and John Tesh argue, however, that scientists must also understand the imperfect nature of politics – and offer 12 practical tips for communicating science advice to politicians.

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