The Wickedness and Complexity of Decision Making in Geoengineering

Challenges

Yanzhu Zhang¹  Alfred Posch¹ 

[1] Institute of Systems Sciences, Innovation and Sustainability Research, University of Graz, Graz 8010, Austria; E-Mail:

关键词: geoengineering;    earth system;    human-environment system;    interventions;    feedback loops;    wickedness;    complexity;    decision making;   

DOI  :  10.3390/challe5020390

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Geoengineering, the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment to counteract anthropogenic climate change, has been more widely considered as an accompanying strategy to conventional climate change mitigation measures to combat global warming. However, this approach is far from achieving agreements from different institutional domains. Geoengineering, intended to be deployed on a planetary scale, would cause fundamental interventions to the human-environment system and create new risks and problems with high uncertainty and uneven distribution around the globe. Apart from the physical effects, conflicting attitudes appear from social, economic, and environmental worldviews in the international community. The intertwined sociotechnical complexity and conflicting attitudes make geoengineering a wicked and complex issue. This article elaborates the wickedness and complexity from a system perspective, primarily for an interdisciplinary, policy-oriented audience.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.