University of California, Davis - Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics
Date Written: April 12, 2021
Abstract
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 impacts 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.
Levin, Simon and Anderies, John M. and Adger, W. Neil and Barrett, Scott and Bennett, Elena M. and Cárdenas, Juan-Camilo and Carpenter, Stephen R. and Crepin, Anne-Sophie and Ehrlich, Paul and Fischer, Joern and Folke, Carl and Kautsky, Nils and Kling, Catherine and Nyborg, Karine and Polasky, Stephen and Scheffer, Marten and Segerson, Kathleen and Shogren, Jason F. and van den Bergh, Jeroen C.J.M. and Walker, Brian and Weber, Elke U. and Wilen, James, Governance in the Face of Extreme Events: Lessons from Evolutionary Processes for Structuring Interventions, and the Need to Go Beyond (April 12, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3824954 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3824954
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