Understanding the Warning Process Through the Lens of Practice: Emancipation as a Condition of Action–Some Lessons from France - Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems for Climate Change - page 226

all, you can drown in models! (…) You can drown because… You can go and look at the
Chinese models, the Japanese models, the whatsit models…You can look at everything.
But ultimately, is there any point in looking at 50 models? Not necessarily!

Later, he explains that the more models you include, the more their outcomes and
scenarios are likely to diverge. Interpreting and deciding on the meaning of the situ-
ation then become virtually impossible.
So while, in theory, the warning process can only benefi t from having the maxi-
mum amount of information on the maximum number of entities, a practical per-
spective in which the purpose is to provide a basis for action somewhat changes the
terms of the problem.

12.4 How to Deal with This Proliferation? Through

the Detour Strategy, Emancipation Practices

The challenge therefore becomes to respond to these two imperatives: (1) the need
to incorporate more and more realities into the action environment and (2) the need
to decide on a course of action, which at some stage requires at least a temporary
suspension of the process of assessing the environment/situation. These two demands
are diffi cult to reconcile and, indeed, according to some actors, are incompatible.
Nevertheless, I observed practices that allow the actors to provide a warning 'all
the same', despite the diffi culty caused by the proliferation of entities. Although
related to my specifi c case study, these practices and strategies could constitute a
reservoir of ideas and resources to enhance the effi cacy of EWS elsewhere.
Especially if we consider that this problem of 'proliferation' goes well beyond this
particular case and is likely to accelerate and spread in the coming years.
Through the analysis of an ideal-typical example - the detour strategy - this section
describes what I call emancipation practices and their advantages from the point of
view of the warning process.

12.4.1 The Need for Emancipation

In the context of action where the parties involved have to take account of a growing
number of entities, there is a big risk that action may be constantly postponed.
In order to act, the stakeholders have to make choices, concentrate on 'what matters'.
This is the essence of emancipation practices, which entail the temporary sidelining
of entities that are less crucial than others. The whole art, therefore, lies in the pri-
oritisation of entities in relation to the context of action and the timeframe of events:
certain entities may be fundamental at one point, then less important, then become
essential again. This fl uctuation is accentuated by the respective timeframes of
the entities: a weather forecast is updated every 6 h, removing the need to check it
during this time, on the assumption that the most recent forecast will remain stable.