Corridors of Clarity: Four Principles to Overcome Uncertainty Paralysis in the Anthropocene

Stephen Polasky; Anne-Sophie Crépin; Reinette Oonsie Biggs; Stephen R Carpenter; Carl Folke; Garry Peterson; Marten Scheffer; Scott Barrett; Gretchen Daily; Paul Ehrlich; Richard B Howarth; Terry Hughes; Simon A Levin; Jason F Shogren; Max Troell; Brian Walker; Anastasios Xepapadeas

doi:10.1093/biosci/biaa115

Corridors of Clarity: Four Principles to Overcome Uncertainty Paralysis in the Anthropocene

Bioscience. 2020 Oct 28;70(12):1139-1144. doi: 10.1093/biosci/biaa115. eCollection 2020 Dec.

Authors

Stephen Polasky¹, Anne-Sophie Crépin², Reinette Oonsie Biggs³, Stephen R Carpenter⁴, Carl Folke¹, Garry Peterson⁵, Marten Scheffer⁶, Scott Barrett⁷, Gretchen Daily⁸, Paul Ehrlich⁸, Richard B Howarth⁹, Terry Hughes¹⁰, Simon A Levin¹¹, Jason F Shogren¹², Max Troell¹, Brian Walker¹³, Anastasios Xepapadeas¹⁴

Affiliations

¹ Departments of Applied Economics and Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
² Deputy director, Carl Folke is the director, and Max Troell is a researcher, Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, Stockholm, Sweden.
³ codirector of the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition and holds a chair in social-ecological systems and resilience, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
⁴ Limnology, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
⁵ Sustainability science, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
⁶ Environmental sciences, Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands.
⁷ Natural resource economics, Columbia University, New York, New York.
⁸ Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, California.
⁹ Environmental studies, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.
¹⁰ James Cook University, Townsville, North Queensland, Australia.
¹¹ Ecology and evolutionary biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey.
¹² Economics, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming.
¹³ Ecology, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Canberra, Australia.
¹⁴ Economics, Athens University of Economics and Business, Athens, Greece, and at the University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.

Abstract

Global environmental change challenges humanity because of its broad scale, long-lasting, and potentially irreversible consequences. Key to an effective response is to use an appropriate scientific lens to peer through the mist of uncertainty that threatens timely and appropriate decisions surrounding these complex issues. Identifying such corridors of clarity could help understanding critical phenomena or causal pathways sufficiently well to justify taking policy action. To this end, we suggest four principles: Follow the strongest and most direct path between policy decisions on outcomes, focus on finding sufficient evidence for policy purpose, prioritize no-regrets policies by avoiding options with controversial, uncertain, or immeasurable benefits, aim for getting the big picture roughly right rather than focusing on details.

Keywords: global environmental change; science–policy interface; sufficient evidence; uncertainty.