Proactive, Reactive, and Inactive Pathways for Scientists in a Changing World

Abstract

As atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise so too does the risk of severe impacts. Scientists clearly have an important role to play in preparing for and responding to climate change impacts; however, calls by scientists for global action have not led to the required changes. It is timely, therefore, for scientists to critically consider their own approach toward climate change research, particularly if we are to ameliorate or adapt to unwanted outcomes. Here we present three different pathways that allow scientists and scientific institutions to conceptualize the implications of their responses to climate change scenarios. These pathways are illustrated via three plausible futures for the marine environment under climate change. This approach allows future responsibilities, outcomes, and implication to be explored within and across pathways and can be applied to different scenarios for scientists and scientific institutions to anticipate and better prepare to contribute effectively to the future.

Growing Into Poverty: Reconstructing Peruvian Small-Scale Fishing Effort Between 1950 and 2018

“…Although this section falls beyond the scope of this paper, we present some recommendations for the Peruvian governmentrooted in robust social and fisheries science -aimed at improving small-scale fisher's wellbeing in Peru: (i) strengthen social capital within fishers' assemblies and fishing communities (Nakandakari et al, 2017;López de la Lama et al, 2018); (ii) increase fishers' involvement in research, as well as in the design, implementation and evaluation of fisheries policies and regulations (Punt et al, 2016;Chuenpagdee and Jentoft, 2019;McDonald et al, 2019); (iii) support successful, yet informal, self-governance arrangements currently in effect within fishing communities (Salas et al, 2007;Nakandakari et al, 2017;Chuenpagdee and Jentoft, 2019); (iv) reinforce local transdisciplinary research capacities aimed at improving and incorporating small-scale fisheries related knowledge into management (Pauly, 2006;Hilborn et al, 2015;Chuenpagdee and Jentoft, 2019); (v) promote investments for developing alternative sources of income within small-scale fishing communities (Sueiro and De la Puente, 2015); and (vi) enhance PRODUCE's and regional governments' enforcement capacities by increasing their budgets and modifying the legal tools at their disposal for discouraging illegal behaviors (Pajuelo and Sueiro, 2019;SPDA, 2019).…”

Quantitative Foresighting as a Means of Improving Anticipatory Scientific Capacity and Strategic Planning

“…8 There is an increasing need for science that can underpin decision making to support societal wellbeing in the face of change, especially anticipatory science that can imagine change that is not obvious now. 9 Scientists also need to ''expect the unexpected'' to inform decision making associated with important topics such as tipping points, 10 planetary boundaries, 11,12 and desirable trajectories. 13 One way to prepare for the future is to plan ahead.…”

“…16,17 Faced with change of the magnitude that has been suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, 1,18 the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, 19,20 and organizations such as the Food and Agriculture Organization 21 and the World Economic Forum, 22 it is essential to implement methods that allow investigation of the unexpected using more proactive approaches that are capable of anticipating plausible changes. 9 McDonald et al 9 illustrate a spectrum of po-tential responses by scientists to the challenges from climate change that range from inactive and reactive to proactive. This in turn illustrates a range of advantages expected in proactive compared to reactive approaches.…”

“…24,25 Foresighting has been defined and used in a variety of ways in the literature but usually aims to confront decision-makers with a set of contrasting, alternative, plausible, and coherent future scenarios that are intended to challenge assumptions that the future will be much like the present or follow a ''business as usual'' trajectory. 9 We contrast foresighting with related concepts in Table 1. Foresighting is concerned with futures that are usually at least 5À10 years away and is action oriented.…”

Full-spectrum sustainability: an alternative to fisheries management panaceas

“…Although the emergence of new approaches and fields such as sustainability science over the last two decades have begun to develop frameworks cutting across natural and social sciences and coconstructing knowledge with scientific communities and society (Kates et al 2001), preparing the next generation of sustainability scientists requires better attention to the broader and fundamental social structures often overlooked in the field, including interests, power, and social change and overcoming practical challenges of university training, the development of team-science skills, and effectively integrating diverse stakeholder perspectives into research (Breslow et al 2016, Killion et al 2018, Olsson and Ness 2019. Creatively, collaboratively and proactively addressing diverse social-ecological challenges will become even more challenging https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol25/iss2/art1/ in the future because of climate and ocean change (McDonald et al 2019). Indeed, the United Nations has declared a Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) to gather ocean stakeholders worldwide behind a common framework that will ensure ocean science can reverse declines in ocean health, improve conditions for sustainable management of the ocean, and facilitate adaptation to ecosystem change (UNESCO 2019).…”