The sustainability transition - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 95

shifts in their efforts to understand what is happening in this large marine
ecosystem. Both examples feature changes unfolding over short periods of
time. Yet our understanding of these crises is limited. We regularly fail to
anticipate fundamental and fast-paced changes in both social systems and bio-
physical systems. Even after the fact, we are often left with more questions
than answers regarding the causal mechanisms that trigger crises and produce
regime shifts.
Yet crises are also periods of opportunity. They can break logjams that arise
from path dependence built up over long periods of time, creating the con-
ditions needed to restructure prevailing governance systems in fundamental
ways in contrast to making small adjustments at the margin. The result-
ant windows offer opportunities to tackle major problems, but they seldom
remain open for long. The lesson here centres on the importance of devoting
time and energy in advance to thinking through the pros and cons of alterna-
tive governance systems. As the case of the former Soviet Union makes clear,
a failure to understand important features of changes (e.g. the introduction of
Western-style markets) can prove immensely costly. Actors playing impor-
tant roles in socio-ecological systems often find their resources stretched thin
in the effort to cope with day-to-day challenges. But the advantages of think-
ing about the pros and cons of alternative arrangements before crises erupt
will become increasingly evident as experience with the dynamics of socio-
ecological systems grows.
From science to solutions
The argument sketched in this chapter has several implications for the science-
policy interface. To achieve relevance in dealing with socio-ecological systems
science must accept certain compromises, reducing its reliance on reductionist
techniques of analysis and devoting more attention to complex systems that are
turbulent, prone to regime shifts and likely to give rise to irreversible changes.
Success in this endeavour will almost certainly go to teams of natural scien-
tists and social scientists who find ways to overcome prejudices and conceptual
barriers that often thwart efforts to foster the collaboration needed to deepen
our knowledge of socio-ecological systems. This is a huge challenge; many
efforts to come to grips with it are likely to fail. Even so, there are grounds
for optimism. The work of the Earth System Science Partnership in launch-
ing crosscutting projects dealing with large-scale, socio-ecological systems is
promising in this regard. To take a single example, the Global Carbon Project,
guided by a steering committee including a mix of individuals with expertise
in atmospheric, oceanic, social and terrestrial systems, has launched a number
of promising initiatives (Global Carbon Project 2003). If this project makes
breakthroughs in efforts to understand the carbon cycle as a coupled human/
natural system, it will immediately assume a prominent role in the quest for
progress towards the sustainability transition.