Assessing the human-environment relationship: a complex-systems methodology to modelling climate change

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine M. Banks ◽  
John A. Sokolowski
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Complex Systems ◽  
Systems Methodology ◽  
Human Environment

scholarly journals Elaborating a systems methodology for cascading climate change impacts and implications

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
NA Cradock-Henry ◽  
J Connolly ◽  
P Blackett ◽  
Judith Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Expert Elicitation ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Visual Aids ◽  
Systems Methodology ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
New Research

New research is drawing attention to the potential for climate change to generate cascading impacts and implications across linked human-environment systems, requiring closer accounting of these interactions to anticipate the emergence of surprises and feedbacks. However, there is little practical guidance for those interested in characterising, identifying or assessing cascades, and few empirical examples. In this paper, we elaborate a systems-based methodology to identify and evaluate cascading climate change impacts and implications. We illustrate its application using the case of a participatory process with urban infrastructure managers, facing the legacy effects of damaging earthquakes and the prospect of future climate change. The results show the proposed approach and visualisation of cascades as causal diagrams provides a robust and flexible analytical framework. The use of systems thinking, visual aids, interactive discussion and expert elicitation generated valuable information about potential cascades, their interactions across domains of interest, and the implications for management. The process can provide a basis for further empirical application and advance methodological and conceptual development. Specifically, the systems methodology: • Identifies interdependencies and interconnections which may serve as transmission pathways for climate-related impacts; • Enhanced stakeholders’ understanding of multiple causes and effects of climate change; and • Produced a useful visual aid for stakeholders to explore cascading impacts and implications, and opportunities for intervention.

scholarly journals Elaborating a systems methodology for cascading climate change impacts and implications

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
NA Cradock-Henry ◽  
J Connolly ◽  
P Blackett ◽  
Judith Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Expert Elicitation ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Visual Aids ◽  
Systems Methodology ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
New Research

New research is drawing attention to the potential for climate change to generate cascading impacts and implications across linked human-environment systems, requiring closer accounting of these interactions to anticipate the emergence of surprises and feedbacks. However, there is little practical guidance for those interested in characterising, identifying or assessing cascades, and few empirical examples. In this paper, we elaborate a systems-based methodology to identify and evaluate cascading climate change impacts and implications. We illustrate its application using the case of a participatory process with urban infrastructure managers, facing the legacy effects of damaging earthquakes and the prospect of future climate change. The results show the proposed approach and visualisation of cascades as causal diagrams provides a robust and flexible analytical framework. The use of systems thinking, visual aids, interactive discussion and expert elicitation generated valuable information about potential cascades, their interactions across domains of interest, and the implications for management. The process can provide a basis for further empirical application and advance methodological and conceptual development. Specifically, the systems methodology: • Identifies interdependencies and interconnections which may serve as transmission pathways for climate-related impacts; • Enhanced stakeholders’ understanding of multiple causes and effects of climate change; and • Produced a useful visual aid for stakeholders to explore cascading impacts and implications, and opportunities for intervention.

Beyond Wickedness: Managing Complex Systems and Climate Change

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan M. Gilligan ◽  
Michael P. Vandenbergh
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Complex Systems

scholarly journals Managing the Complexity of Climate Change

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shann Turnbull
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Complex Systems ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Institutional Analysis ◽  
Tax Incentives ◽  
Individual Behaviour ◽  
Unit Of Analysis ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Ecological Governance

This paper indicates how the knowledge of complex systems can be put into practice to counter climate change. A contribution of the paper is to show how individual behaviour, institutional analysis, political science and management can be grounded and integrated into the complexity of natural systems to introduce mutual sustainability. Bytes are used as the unit of analysis to explain how nature governs complexity on a more reliable and comprehensive basis than can be achieved by humans using markets and hierarchies. Tax incentives are described to increase revenues while encouraging organisations to adopt elements of ecological governance found in nature and in some social organisations identified by Ostrom and the author. Ecological corporations provide benefits for all stakeholders. This makes them a common good to promote global common goods like enriching democracy from the bottom up while countering: climate change, pollution, and inequalities in power, wealth and income.

scholarly journals Los sistemas complejos como herramienta para la sustentabilidad. Una visión desde la perspectiva de la Teoría Crítica.

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-27
Author(s):  
Salvador Peniche Camps ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Complex Systems ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Systems Methodology

The objective of the essay presented is to discuss the nature of the complex systems methodology as a useful tool for the analysis and management of sustainability. It is concluded that the construction of a model of complex socially sensitive systems is a pending and urgent objective to face the environmental collapse suffered by contemporary society.

scholarly journals Integrating Strategic Environmental Assessment to Climate Change Adaption in the Chao Phraya River Basin: Case Study Flood Management Plans in Ayutthaya

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. p55
Author(s):  
Wilawan Boonsri Prathaithep ◽  
Vilas Nitivattananon
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Environmental Assessment ◽  
Flood Risk ◽  
Assessment Tool ◽  
Flood Management ◽  
Integrated System ◽  
Strategic Environmental Assessment ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

Traditionally, flood management has concentrated on providing protection against floods using technical measures, but there is currently an international shift towards a more integrated system of flood risk management, whereby flood risk is defined as the probability of flooding multiplied by the potential consequences. Climate change is a great challenge to sustainable development and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Thailand. The main purpose of this paper is to highlight the challenges associated with the current situation and projected impacts of climate change on the disasters and the human environment in Thailand, to review and explore the potential of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), and to propose SEA in making informed decisions relevant to the implementation of the new adaptation framework in a flood management plan. Thus, current measures on how Thailand is responding to the recent impacts of climate change in river basin planning are presented. It is imperative that an appropriate environmental assessment tool, such as SEA be employed in making rational decisions regarding adaptation frameworks. SEA offers a structured and proactive environmental tool for integrating of climate change adaption into formulating Policies, Plans, and Programs (PPPs) among relevant sectors.

scholarly journals Archaeoecology. The Application of Palaeoenvironmental Sciences for the Reconstruction of Human–Environment Interactions

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (18) ◽  
pp. 8782
Author(s):  
Jordi Revelles
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sea Level Rise ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Societal Challenges ◽  
Exponential Increase

The study of human–environment interactions is one of the mainstream topics in archaeological research, with increasing interest in the context of current societal challenges concerning environmental shifts related to climate change, sea-level rise, extreme natural events and also the exponential increase in anthropisation in recent decades [...]

Buddhist Environmental Ethics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Kaza
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Human History ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
Moral Dimensions ◽  
Ethical Response ◽  
Promising Avenue

Global pressures on human–environment systems are higher than ever before in human history, generating broad ethical engagement in many quarters. Citizen calls for moral response from world religious and political leaders have grown more urgent as pressures mount. Buddhist philosophy contains a wealth of insight and moral guidance regarding human–environment relations, offering a promising avenue for ethical response. This chapter reviews work to date in Buddhist environmental ethics, noting influences from and on Western ethics and areas of tension in current thinking. Arguments are made for complementary development of both individual virtue ethics and constructivist social ethics. Moral dimensions of consumerism and climate change are examined as case studies, drawing on Buddhist values such as non-harming, compassion, meditative awareness, and skilful means.

scholarly journals Late Holocene droughts and cave ice harvesting by Ancestral Puebloans

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bogdan P. Onac ◽  
Steven M. Baumann ◽  
Dylan S. Parmenter ◽  
Eric Weaver ◽  
Tiberiu B. Sava
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
New Mexico ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Water Availability ◽  
Late Holocene ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Climate Conditions ◽  
Ancestral Puebloan ◽  
Ancestral Puebloans ◽  
Marginal Environment

AbstractWater availability for Native Americans in the southwestern United States during periods of prolonged droughts is poorly understood as regional hydroclimate records are scant or contradicting. Here, we show that radiocarbon-dated charcoal recovered from an ice deposit accumulated in Cave 29, western New Mexico, provide unambiguous evidence for five drought events that impacted the Ancestral Puebloan society between ~ AD 150 and 950. The presence of abundant charred material in this cave indicates that they periodically obtained drinking water by using fire to melt cave ice, and sheds light on one of many human–environment interactions in the Southwest in a context when climate change forced growing Ancestral Puebloan populations to exploit water resources in unexpected locations. The melting of cave ice under current climate conditions is both uncovering and threatening a fragile source of paleoenvironmental and archaeological evidence of human adaptations to a seemingly marginal environment.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document