Systemic Perspective Needed for Effective Climate Risk Assessments and Adaptation Strategies

The recently published Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on influences, adaptation, and vulnerability acknowledges that climate modification effects and dangers are becoming increasingly complex and more challenging to manage. Multiple weather dangers will happen together, and multiple climatic and non-climatic dangers will interact, resulting in worsening overall threats and dangers cascading across regions and sectors.

Complexity is our “new normal,” and the dynamic nature of danger and its factors is one essential dimension of complexity, complex systems, and associated systemic dangers, claimed Jana Sillmann, professor at the Hamburg University, Germany, and CICERO Center for International Climate Research.

Sillmann guided the writing of the Systemic Risk Briefing Note that was released on 10 March 2022 by the International Science Council (ISC), the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), and the Knowledge Action Network on Emergent Risks and Extreme Events (Risk KAN).

Interconnected Difficulties

The Briefing Note highlights that contemporary challenges, such as weather modification, biodiversity loss, or the COVID-19 pandemic, are all interconnected, interdependent and need systems thinking and transdisciplinary strategies.

“This signifies that we need to bring everyone, including scientists, politicians, practitioners, and citizens to the table to bring solutions for such intricate problems,” continued Sillmann and highlighted one excellent example of this technique; Klimathons (hackathons), that for instance happened in Bergen and online.

The Briefing Note makes explicit an increased focus on systemic risk, both from researchers and institutional actors, over time related to several happenings such as the global financial crisis, cyberattacks and lately COVID 19, which have led to knock-on effects across sectors and geographical areas, stated Ingrid Christensen, a researcher at CICERO and co-author of the Briefing Note. Christensen is currently running on her Ph.D., focusing on collaborative governance in the transition to a circular economy.

Manners to Administer Systemic Risks

The Briefing Note argues that climate risk evaluations and adaptation approaches that concentrate on nations and sectors, attending to detected risks, actors and alternatives to reduce risk are insufficient to handle systemic risks such as weather change or the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the Briefing Note, governments, public and private sectors, and civil society institutions trying to anticipate future disruption should take a systemic approach when designing policies or procedures to decrease and manage these risks. Lowering underlying susceptibilities would put the planet in a better position to reduce the systemic risks triggered by climate change and other challenges.

“While quantitative information plays a vital duty in the advancement of designs and concepts, it will never be sufficient to comprehend the full extension and intricacy of systemic risk. Merely by considering the dynamic relationships among the parts of the system, we can better comprehend and handle systemic risks,” stated Sillmann.

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