Building Climate-Resilient Societies: Reconciling Complexity in Environmental Policy

Abstract

In 1966, Boulding referenced a change from the illimitable plane to the closed sphere. Acceptance of that concept brought with it resignation that resources are finite and, accordingly, that environmental problems are inescapable. Boulding contended that deterioration of the natural environment was coupled with disintegration of social structure. Climate change emphasizes how closely these problems are related.

Since the time the term “global warming” was introduced into the public realm in the 1990s, researchers have learned that the intrinsic problems associated with greenhouse gas emissions are inherently complex. These problems represent environmental matters and also the moral, political, and psychological planes that Boulding references.

It is necessary to reconcile with complexity in regard to climate change policy. Doing so eliminates naïve beliefs that climate problems should be easy to solve. In addition, this reconciliation decreases the likelihood that policy makers will perform perfunctory and ineffectual actions, especially when problems associated with climate change require profound contemplation and immediate action.

Resiliency in climate change policy depends upon complexity being built into perceptions of and solutions for climate change. This chapter examines various research related to “wicked problems” and “super wicked problems.” The work broadens relationships between path-dependent policy and solutions to climate change. It is suggested here that policy processes themselves generate multifaceted solutions to complex problems and that there are multiple policy paths to progress and resolution. In other words, it is the journey through the processes, teeming with both accomplishment and imperfection, which propels pertinent solutions in policy making.