Is the sky or the earth the limit? Risk, uncertainty and nature

Abstract

Dealing with uncertainty has become a matter of great concern for policy makers and scientific research in a world facing global, epochal and complex changes. But in essence, you cannot entirely predict the future. This article aims at conceptualizing the limits to anticipate the futureor what is often referred as the substitution of risk for uncertainty. In contrast to most theories examining risk and uncertainty, we start from the assumption that there are limits in the substitution of risk for uncertainty and that distinguishing between ontological and epistemic levels of analysis helps clarify such limits. The paper makes two arguments: first, most approaches see no ontological and/or epistemic limit in the substitution of risk for uncertainty; second, the pluralization of science is the only way to cope with limits in substituting risk for uncertainty. This second argument draws on the assumption that accounting for the uncertainty of the future depends on knowledge production processes able to overcome disciplinary boundaries and better include lay and expert knowledge. In times of great concerns regarding mitigation and adaptation to the ecological crisis, we illustrate our arguments with insights from global environmental governance.

Editorial: Models in population, community and ecosystem dynamics

“…Hooker et al start from an extensive dataset to disentangle the drivers of synchrony -and asynchrony-between two species, showing that trophic interactions and Coincidence or not, we live in times that are perceived by an increasing number of people as uncertain. Incoming challenges are numerous and their complexity hard to fully grasp: the advances of artificial intelligence (Weiser and Von Krogh, 2023), global security challenges (Booth and Wheeler, 2023), pandemics (Batty, 2020), the impending climate breakdown (Barnett, 2023), the absence of clearcut political projects and effective policies (Turk, 2022), the looming prospect of a biodiversity collapse (Maechler and Graz, 2022), economic volatility (Ahir et al, 2022), etc.…”

Enterprise risk management for automation in correctional facilities with pandemic and other stressors

“…They are only as accurate or holistic as the scenarios and weights input by the user. Limits of imagination (Maechler & Graz, 2022), unknown knowns (Baissac, 2020), errors of commission (Ayoub et al., 2020), errors of omission (Caboral‐Stevens et al., 2020), and failure of sustained attention (Jun et al., 2021), among others are all sources of limitation to a human centric methodology such as a risk register.…”

Blue uncertainty: Warding off systemic risks in the Anthropocene—Lessons from COVID-19

“…Firstly, those approaches might be too sophisticated for current policy making pursuing sustainable development, which is largely siloed ( OECD 2019 ), and based on the prescription of blueprint, panacea solutions to highly complex social-ecological problems ( Ostrom 2007 ). Secondly, the reductionist views from conventional economics still deeply influence economic and environmental policy making ( Foxon 2013 , Thornton 2018 , Maechler and Graz 2020 ), hindering the entry of complexity-based approaches into the mainstream. Thirdly, it is unlikely that far-reaching policies aimed at stimulating post-pandemic economic development can be steered through radically innovative approaches that remain untested—and even less when decisions seem to have already been made and there don’t seem to be international concerted action on systemic risk assessment.…”