Impacts and Risks of Global Change - Impact of Global Changes on Mountains: Responses and Adaptation - page 65

and the political and institutional instability of the higher levels of the public
organizations fail to ensure a strengthening process of the democracies as a
political regime (mistrust of the institutions linked to political power, such
as the judiciary, parties and the congress). This state of affairs facilitates
and fosters the development of organized crime, corruption, infl uence
peddling (also known as 'infl uence traffi cking') and a lack of transparency
(Transparency International 2009).
The elements discussed above reveal themselves most strikingly in
urban centres as these are a refl ection of social processes engendered by
the various strategic actors and their exercise of power. There seems to be
evidence that uncontrolled urbanization combined with weak institutions
greatly erodes social trust and promotes the increase of violence, creating
a lack of confi dence in cities.
Open risk concept
Risk research provides the conceptual framework for investigating uncertain
impacts of climate change on the environment and society on regional and
local scales (Schneider et al. 2007, UNEP 2007), whatever consequences,
negative or positive, may occur. As a consequence, risk has to be understood
as an indicator for an open and uncertain future bearing options for both
positive and negative outcomes. Thus the often negatively connoted concept
of risk is superseded by a neutral understanding allowing for both good
risk, i.e., an opportunity to be grasped, and bad risk in the classical sense of
a negative option to be avoided (Campbell and Vuolteenaho 2004, Stötter
and Coy 2008). Since risk analysis helps to understand the likelihood of
occurrence as well as the magnitude of an anticipated impact it constitutes
the primary decision-making tool for development and deployment of
adequate adaptation measures as highlighted in the research concept of
the alpS-Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Technologies.
There may be many different attitudes towards risk, but without doubt
common to all defi nitions are the core aspects of: i) future-orientation, and
ii) uncertainty. In Global Change research risk has to be understood as an
open and uncertain future bearing both options of positive and negative
outcome, thus interpreted as good risk and bad risk (Stötter and Coy 2008).
All future climate change driven developments of human-environment
systems in mountain regions may generally be understood as pointing in
one of two directions, which means either an improvement or a deterioration
of the accustomed situation. Consequently all adaptation activities have
to aim in both directions, either to moderate specifi c harm or to exploit
beneficial opportunities, thus corresponding to the principle idea of
minimizing bad risks and optimizing good risks.