How to deal with the uncertainties associated with Earth system research, especially policy-relevant areas?

In addition to climate change uncertainties, we are still lack of knowledge about interactions of land-atmosphere, Atmosphere-sea, aerosol-climate, chemistry-climate, and more importantly human-environment relationships.

3 comments

1. psr says:

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   in the developing world context we are dealing with a huge mass of traditional rural communities – in the Indian context alone we are dealing with 1/4 very traditional rather insulated communities and another 1/2 less traditional communities who are still far away from the modern societies. to deal with the concern of such a huge population, we need to get more involved with traditional ecological knowledge and appropriately link the same with the text-book based formal knowledge to have community-participatory ‘hybrid technologies’ in the area of sustainable management of natural resources.
   Still we are only giving only lip-service to this important aspect that is critical for addressing sustainability issues!!!
   PS Ramakrishnan
2. carlbruch says:

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   This is a central question. Even as we are studying the potential impacts of climate change, it is increasingly imperative that governments, communities, and others take measures to adapt. We do not have the luxury of waiting until we have complete scientific understanding — and it is likely that there would always be questions.

   If we accept the premise that we must take measures to adapt now, then the next question is how to adapt. That is where this question managing in light of uncertainty gains prominence, if not preeminence. In many cases, the assessments of projected impacts are too broad and uncertain to give significant guidance: the specific details of which impacts will be felt with which severity, when, and where are sorely lacking. And the uncertainty is even greater for secondary impacts, such as increased wildland fires or invasive species.

   Adaptive management is the primary conceptual and operational framework for managing in uncertain situations. While natural resource managers have been developing and applying adaptive management techniques for the last couple decades, this is not reflected in the legal or policy frameworks. In most cases, environmental laws and regulations assume an environmental status quo, perhaps with variability around the status quo. The objective of these laws is to manage our environment and natural resources to stay within the realm of the status quo. Such legal and policy frameworks need to be adapted to adapt.

   There is little experience in adaptive legal and policy frameworks. In many instances, the law (and lawyers) seek certainty. So, how to construct legal and policy frameworks to be adaptive, to manage for the uncertainties of climate change (and the uncertainties of the effectiveness of our response measures)?

   I’m not certain if this is included in what xuefuecui intended as the scope of this proposal. If not, then perhaps another research question is merited.
3. wmfhall says:

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   Each area of uncertainty impacts the viability of any policy response to climate change. Earth system and social-ecological system models need to evolve to a stage where the major interactions among the factors that you mention can be evaluated, or at least be bounded.