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Governance in the Face of Extreme Events: Lessons from Evolutionary Processes for Structuring Interventions, and the Need to Go Beyond

The increasing frequency of extreme events, exogenous and endogenous, poses challenges for our societies. The current pandemic is a case in point; but "once-in-a-century" weather events are also becoming more common, leading to erosion, wildfire and even volcanic events that change ecosyst...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Levin, Simon A., Anderies, John M., Adger, Neil, Barrett, Scott, Bennett, Elena M., Cardenas, Juan Camilo, Carpenter, Stephen R., Crépin, Anne-Sophie, Ehrlich, Paul, Fischer, Joern, Folke, Carl, Kautsky, Nils, Kling, Catherine, Nyborg, Karine, Polasky, Stephen, Scheffer, Marten, Segerson, Kathleen, Shogren, Jason, van den Bergh, Jeroen, Walker, Brian, Weber, Elke U., Wilen, James
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8422834/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34512142
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10021-021-00680-2
Descripción
Sumario:The increasing frequency of extreme events, exogenous and endogenous, poses challenges for our societies. The current pandemic is a case in point; but "once-in-a-century" weather events are also becoming more common, leading to erosion, wildfire and even volcanic events that change ecosystems and disturbance regimes, threaten the sustainability of our life-support systems, and challenge the robustness and resilience of societies. Dealing with extremes will require new approaches and large-scale collective action. Preemptive measures can increase general resilience, a first line of protection, while more specific reactive responses are developed. Preemptive measures also can minimize the negative effects of events that cannot be avoided. In this paper, we first explore approaches to prevention, mitigation and adaptation, drawing inspiration from how evolutionary challenges have made biological systems robust and resilient, and from the general theory of complex adaptive systems. We argue further that proactive steps that go beyond will be necessary to reduce unacceptable consequences.