The sustainability transition - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 92

will continue to be, a central feature of the policymaking process (Kahneman
and Tversky 2000).
What are the practical implications of this conclusion? As uncertainty rises,
the value of adopting a precautionary approach to matters of policy becomes
more apparent. Partly, this is a matter of taking error bars seriously, consider-
ing outcomes that may seem relatively unlikely but that would have highly
disruptive or costly consequences should they occur. Thinking carefully about
the consequences of rapid climate change events is a case in point. It is not
necessary to attach a high probability to their occurrence to take such events
seriously. The argument here is much like the rationale underlying the use of
worst-case analysis in the realm of national security. In part, this lesson has
to do with maintaining a clear understanding of the gap between policies on
paper and policies in practice (Ostrom 1990). Policies are often implemented
selectively, if at all. Subjects frequently misinterpret rules or simply refuse
to comply with inconvenient requirements. Unforeseen and unintended side
effects occur with great regularity. Under the circumstances, it is essential to
think carefully about uncertainties relating to the anthropogenic side as well
as to the biophysical side of socio-ecological systems.
Take long-term consequences seriously
It is easy - some would say perfectly defensible - to devote little attention to
or even to ignore the longer-term consequences of individual policy options.
The familiar procedure of discounting in benefit/cost calculations exemplifies
this proposition. Even moderate discount rates suggest that it makes sense to
dismiss consequences occurring beyond a couple of decades into the future.
And the incentives to focus on the short term arising from the pressures of
electoral cycles and other political processes are well known. The need to
win the next election is a political imperative that can and often does have
profound impacts on the policymaking process. Investments today that may
produce enormous benefits in the long run are often avoided on the grounds
that voters have a low tolerance for accepting burdens that will not produce
short-term gains and that may, in some cases, produce benefits accruing
largely to members of future generations.
Yet socio-ecological systems are path dependent. Not only is it difficult
- sometimes impossible - to reverse course once we start down a particular
path, but also what might have been easy and inexpensive to alter at an ear-
lier stage can become prohibitively expensive to change later on. Residential
patterns and associated transportation systems in the United States provide
a dramatic example of the power of path dependence. A disbursed pattern of
single-family homes coupled with a reliance on private automobiles as the pre-
ferred mode of transportation has long seemed attractive to many Americans.
But no one foresaw the environmental implications of this developmental
path during the middle decades of the twentieth century. And the costs of