Beyond Wickedness: Managing Complex Systems and Climate Change

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan M. Gilligan ◽  
Michael P. Vandenbergh
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shann Turnbull

This paper indicates how the knowledge of complex systems can be put into practice to counter climate change. A contribution of the paper is to show how individual behaviour, institutional analysis, political science and management can be grounded and integrated into the complexity of natural systems to introduce mutual sustainability. Bytes are used as the unit of analysis to explain how nature governs complexity on a more reliable and comprehensive basis than can be achieved by humans using markets and hierarchies. Tax incentives are described to increase revenues while encouraging organisations to adopt elements of ecological governance found in nature and in some social organisations identified by Ostrom and the author. Ecological corporations provide benefits for all stakeholders. This makes them a common good to promote global common goods like enriching democracy from the bottom up while countering: climate change, pollution, and inequalities in power, wealth and income.


Author(s):  
Mar a Polgovsky Ezcurra

Argentine Rolando García was one of the earliest world-leading specialists on climate change. Forced to leave his country after the 1966 military coup, García became a nomadic thinker, living in various countries and moving from the study of the atmosphere to addressing larger questions of epistemology. In collaboration with Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, García developed a “theory of complex systems” (TCS) to model and understand social behaviours in uncertain, nonlinear milieus. This chapter discusses García’s TCS as not just an epistemological but also an ontological turning point in the production of knowledge in Latin America. It also describes García’s role in the rise of socio-cybernetic research, an arguably post-humanist area of study and practice that effectively imagines new “modes of existence” on the basis of an ecological and non-empiricist theory of knowledge.


2018 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wan Nurul Mardiah Wan Mohd Rani

Our environment today is changing because of the rapid urbanization and this scenario has intensified as we face the climate change affect. The challenges and issues that we experience today are more complex, multifaceted and are becoming more visible and frequent. Cities are vulnerable and at the same time have to play significant roles in tackling climate change through various actions of preparedness, mitigation and adaptations. Cities are complex systems combining spatial and non-spatial elements. A system, which consists of interconnected and interdependent elements, can only function well if these elements interact with each other. These elements comprise physical environment, social, infrastructure and economy. The interaction among the elements enable the city to function as a whole. In this context, to achieve a sustainable and resilient city requires a collaborative effort from various disciplines and interrelated expertise to address each element. The increase on the awareness and interest in the related research areas have witness the upsurge on the efforts towards achieving sustainable and resilient cities. Every day new studies and findings emerged from scientists, researchers, academics and scholars deliberating on ways to mitigate, prevent and prepare for the future risks that may pose impact to our cities either physically, socially or economically.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Bracken ◽  
Jacky Croke

<p>The concept of connectivity has found great traction in understanding the movement of fluxes across the surface of the earth through disciplinary perspectives including hydrology, geomorphology and ecology (Bracken and Croke, 2007; Bracken et al 2013;2015). Connectivity-based approaches have also generated new understanding of structural-functional relationships that characterise complex systems, for instance in computational neuroscience, social network science and systems biology (Turnbull et al., 2018). Whilst the concept of hydrological connectivity has been used widely, at all scales and with respect to fluxes of both water and sediment, critique and development of the concept is less frequent in the literature. In this paper we revisit the existing body of work around hydrological connectivity to examine whether the concept has been used to it’s full potential and explore further ways in which the concept of hydrological connectivity could be expanded to continue to drive geomorphological research. One potential avenue for research is to learn from complex systems and use the concept of connectivity to embrace human dynamics (through managing the landscape and guiding policy and regulation) on one hand and climate change (which drives system inputs) on the other.  This opportunity is explored here using the water sector as a case study where planning, and managing for, water security under growing population pressures and future climate change are explored through this broader interpretation of connectivity. We see this wider coupling between humans and system inputs playing a significant role in shaping earth surface processes and sediment dynamics and a widening of definition may enable hydrologists and geomorphologists to better integrate socio-ecological systems into our research.</p>


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