Courtesy of the Times Colonist
Photo: An image of Earth taken by NASA’s Artemis II astronaut commander Reid Wiseman inside the Orion capsule on April 3. The Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University identifies 14 global systemic stresses that create systemic risk “wicked” problems that must be addressed, says Trevor Hancock. NASA
We live in an era of polycrisis — defined as a situation in which “crises in multiple global systems become causally entangled in ways that cause major human harm,” according to the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University.
The institute identifies 14 global systemic stresses that create systemic risk, including “climate change, biodiversity loss, widening inequalities, pandemics, financial instability, political unrest — all influenced by long-running demographic trends.”
These stresses constitute wicked problems, a “complex issue that defies complete definition, for which there can be no final solution, since any resolution generates further issues, and where solutions are not true or false or good or bad, but the best that can be done at the time,” as defined by Rittel and Webber in 1973.
These wicked problems were very much on the agenda this past week at the Victoria Forum, an annual gathering jointly hosted by the Senate of Canada, the University of Victoria and Royal Roads University.
The forum “brings people together from across Canada and around the world to … explore the complex tapestry of challenges facing our world and search for solutions to them.”
Monday’s opening plenary featured Thomas Homer-Dixon, founder and executive director of the Cascade Institute, and Dr. Courtney Howard, chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance and a leading advocate in Canada for a wellbeing society.
Homer-Dixon began by laying out his institute’s latest thinking on the polycrisis. The institute is developing “a new, complexity-informed approach to policymaking: one that anticipates cascading failures across interconnected systems and integrates the best available knowledge about both known and emerging risks.”
Their work has enabled them to explore plausible futures for the planet in 2040. The bad news is that of the 10 stable global scenarios they found, eight are as bad as or worse than today, with the most likely outcome being deterioration — which is where “business as usual” is headed — and the second most likely being collapse.
Of the two more positive futures, one is not so attractive because it would be a high-tech autocracy.
But the good news is that there is one plausible outcome they call the Hope Scenario.
This is not simply a speculative or aspirational future, said Homer-Dixon, but “a scientifically grounded basis for honest hope.”
Such a future would involve a cleantech breakthrough in energy and in the agri-food sector, a managed roll out of AI, “guided” pro-social and pro-environmental economic growth and a strong democracy, and would result in a low burden of disease.
So how do we get there? In a speech at an international conference on urban health in 2014, I suggested wicked problems need virtuous solutions.
By virtuous, I meant solutions that move us towards a more sustainable, just and healthy world, solutions that are rooted in a commitment to the public good. Howard’s presentation focused on that.
Her key message was that we have focused on money as the measurement of progress and success, but people and communities understand that wellbeing is about much more than that.
They know it is about our level of human capability, our social relationships and the quality of our environment, as well as the quality of our institutions and our financial status.
But by focusing on the last of these, we have destabilized the other key elements of our wellbeing. So we need to measure these societal foundations and manage them to optimize for wellbeing.
In the words of the World Health Organization, we need to become a Wellbeing society, “committed to achieving equitable health now and for future generations without breaching ecological limits.”
In the following plenary, Dr. James Orbinski, a highly respected leader of the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders and now Master of Massey College, put it simply: “We have choice … We must make the right choice,” while Lord John Alderdice stressed we solve problems by coming together and by committing to a positive future.
In short, to address the wicked problems of the polycrisis, we need to commit to working together to find virtuous solutions rooted in the common good.
In my next column, I will discuss some of the solutions discussed at the Victoria Forum.
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Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy.