On Thresholds and Trigger Mechanisms

Complex systems are subject to changes that are nonlinear, commonly hard to anticipate, often abrupt, and sometimes transformative. In recent years, these phenomena have become a focus of considerable interest among natural scientists who speak about thresholds or boundaries (often characterized as tipping points), trigger mechanisms, and state changes. Similar phenomena occur in social systems involving shifts from peace to war and back, the collapse and replacement of political systems, and fluctuations between periods of economic growth and depression. In this context, it is helpful to differentiate among explosions, cascades, and inflections. The dynamics of such transitions are determined by the fragility of the relevant systems and the intensity of the trigger mechanisms. Building on analyses of tipping points and trigger mechanisms in biophysical systems and socioeconomic systems leads to a consideration of similar phenomena in socioecological systems of the sort that are central to the pursuit of sustainability in the Anthropocene. In considering the role of governance in such settings, it is important to bear in mind that governance systems, too, are complex and dynamic.

Conclusion: Science, Policy, and the Governance of Complex Systems

Success in efforts to achieve sustainability in the Anthropocene requires overcoming the influence of business as usual in thinking about governance strategies and guarding against path dependence as a barrier to creating and implementing innovative governance systems to deal with the challenges of complex systems. Research opportunities in this setting involve an examination of ways to transcend the regulatory paradigm, to improve understanding of the relationships between institutions and organizations, to devise strategies for combining nimbleness and durability, to think about methods for making choices under uncertainty, and to develop a methodological toolkit including both qualitative and quantitative modes of analysis. Lessons for policymakers center on the need to rethink orthodox preferences regarding governance systems, expand the repertoire of practices, make maximum use of decision support tools, and take advantage of new technologies allowing for dramatic improvements in the ability to monitor complex systems. Some observers have pointed to the need for fundamental changes required to address the challenges of the Anthropocene and stressed the danger that analysts who seek to engage with the policy community will suffer from cooptation. While this is a legitimate concern, there is a strong case for strengthening the science/policy collaboration in building social capital for the Anthropocene. Both the science community and the policy community have comparative advantages that can be harnessed to achieve success in addressing the novel challenges of governing complex systems in the Anthropocene.

The Sustainability Transition

There is a growing gap between the complexity of major socioecological systems and the assumptions embedded in mainstream models of the dynamics of biophysical and socioeconomic systems. Whereas the models typically assume that changes will be linear and gradual, real-world systems often feature changes that are nonlinear and abrupt. A particularly striking feature of socioecological systems is that they are reflexive. As the case of self-fulfilling prophecies makes clear, however, reflexivity can turn out to be a problem in efforts to govern complex systems. Achieving sustainability in such settings calls for efforts to harness reflexivity, enhance adaptability, and cope with increased uncertainty. Dealing with reflexivity requires the creation of negative feedback mechanisms that kick in when systems move toward a tipping point or point of no return. Enhancing adaptation involves the development of effective monitoring and early warning procedures that can provide a basis for instituting adaptive changes. Coping with uncertainty encompasses creative uses of scientific assessments, simulations, and scenarios. None of these methods allows policymakers to benefit from accurate predictions regarding the benefits and costs of available options. But they do provide decision support tools that allow policymakers to think systematically about the relative merits of the options available to them.

Determinants of Effective Problem-Solving

Adopting a problem-solving perspective on governance leads to a focus on the determinants of success or failure in efforts to solve specific problems like the thinning of the stratospheric ozone layer or the onset of climate change. In this regard, it is helpful to begin by distinguishing among outputs, outcomes, and impacts. Outputs are the administrative apparatus and compliance mechanisms created to move governance systems from paper to practice. Outcomes are the behavioral changes brought about by the operation of governance systems. Impacts are the effects of such systems on the alleviation of the problems that motivate their creation. While it is easier to establish causal connections in analyzing the outputs of governance systems, interest in the operation of governance systems arises ultimately from the effectiveness of such systems in solving problems. Qualitative and quantitative research on international regimes has led to the conclusion that these arrangements do make a difference with regard to problem solving. But this is a realm of complex causality in which numerous other factors play a role, and there is significant variation in the effectiveness of governance systems both across regimes and across time with regard to specific regimes.

Goal-Setting as a Governance Strategy

Mainstream thinking about governance focuses on rule-making and directs attention to the challenges of developing rules, promulgating implementing regulations, and dealing with matters of compliance and enforcement. But this is not the only method for meeting needs for governance in complex systems. An alternative strategy centers of goal-setting and features the establishment of clearcut priorities, the allocation of resources to address these priorities, the development of effective teams with a mandate to pursue goals, and the introduction of metrics to measure progress toward goal fulfillment. While goal-setting is more familiar to those working at subnational and even local levels, cases like the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals indicate that this strategy is usable in largescale settings as well. In some cases (e.g. the regime created under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change), rule-making and goal-setting are joined together in a single governance system. But goal-setting is a distinct governance strategy with a logic of its own. It makes sense in a variety of settings to compare and contrast the relative merits of goal-setting and other governance strategies in devising arrangements likely to prove effective in solving specific problems.

Environmental Governance as a Point of Departure

Governance is a social function centered on steering societies away from collectively undesirable outcomes and toward collectively desirable outcomes. Governance systems (often referred to as regimes) are social institutions that arise to respond to needs for governance. Conventional thinking about governance assumes that governments will take the lead in addressing needs for governance. But the presence of a government is not sufficient to ensure that such needs are fulfilled; governance failure is a common phenomenon in most social settings. Even more important, the presence of a government in the conventional sense is not necessary to meet needs for governance in many settings. This opens up the topic of governance without government as an important subject for research. Many studies have shown that smallscale societies are able to devise regimes to meet needs for governance to avoid problems like the tragedy of the commons. Now, we need to analyze whether governance without government is feasible in largescale settings like international society. Cases such as the successful effort to devise a regime to phase out ozone depleting substances provide a basis for hope in this realm. But problems like avoiding climate change and minimizing the loss of biological diversity pose more serious challenges to the search for governance without government.

The Contributions of Good Governance

While the idea of good governance has becomes popular in writings on international governance, there is a good deal of confusion about the meaning of this phrase. In some cases, effectiveness is treated as part of the definition of good governance. This makes it impossible to direct attention to the links between good governance and the effectiveness of governance systems in solving problems. A more interesting approach is to think of good governance in process terms and then to focus on the links between good governance and effectiveness in problem solving. Among the most interesting processes in this regard are participation, transparency, and accountability (the PTA variables). The key point regarding participation, for example, is that actors who feel they have had an opportunity to participate actively in decisionmaking are more likely to accept the results and abide by them than those who feel frustrated regarding participation. The challenge here is to apply this type of reasoning to largescale settings in which the actors are states or major interest groups. The widespread use of consensus rules at the international level means that states can expect to participate actively in the negotiation of agreements they are expected to implement within their own jurisdictions. But this gives rise to what are known as two-level games, since individuals, corporations, and interest groups within states may be reluctant to comply with or conform to the terms of agreements negotiated by their governments in the absence opportunities to voice their opinions in advance.

Principled Governance

Another governance strategy features the development of principles and the coalescence of sets of principles into ethical systems (e.g. medical ethics, legal ethics). Principles provide normative guidance meant to be applied thoughtfully to the complexities of specific situations rather than to be treated as fixed prescriptions to be complied with regardless of the circumstances at hand. A series of international conferences, starting with the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment and running through the 2012 UN Conference on Environment and Development, have contributed to the development of a system of international environmental ethics. Prominent elements of this system include the polluter pays principle, the precautionary principle, and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. Principled governance is not meant to replace rule-making as the dominant approach to governance in largescale settings. But it has attractions as an approach to governance in complex systems where there is a compelling need to respond nimbly or agilely to changes that are nonlinear, often abrupt, and frequently irreversible.

Introduction: The Age of Complexity

The Earth is moving into a new era, frequently referred to as the Anthropocene, in which anthropogenic drivers have become major determinants of the trajectory of the Earth system. Compared to the Holocene, a relatively benign era from the perspective of human well-being, the Anthropocene is emerging as a more turbulent era featuring processes of change that are often nonlinear, frequently abrupt, typically surprising, and generally challenging from a human perspective. Our basic understanding of governance, derived from the effort to solve largescale environmental problems like the depletion of stratospheric ozone remains relevant in this setting. But now we must supplement this understanding with new perspectives on meeting needs for governance that will augment the social capital available to those responsible for creating and implementing governance systems that will prove effective in addressing problems like climate change and the loss of biological diversity.