Climate Change, Humanitarian Action and Complexity
There are two ways to view Climate Change one is via classic science which attempts to predict what climate change will do to weather patterns and from this river flows, sea level rise, ecologies and the like, and thence on to predict the effects on coastal urban areas, rain-fed agriculture etc. I.e. it is essentially a linear model.
Its strength lies in the power of evidence and logic, allowing us to say very certain things about specific changes. Its weaknesses are two fold.
First, rolling the model out at the geographical level most humanitarians work at, i.e. sub-country, requires an immense amount of calculation and, in many instances, the data needed to feed these calculations, has not yet been collected on the ground.
Second, in classical economics mode, the approach assumes “all other things being equal”, which of course, as we all know, they never are.
Thus, where we are asking the models to make predictions within the limits of their power and we ensure we do not over interpret them, and we understand their limitations, this approach is useful.
It tells us for instance that sea-level rise at a rate faster than we have previously witnessed in history, is a given. That this means greater susceptibility to urban coastal flooding, more frequent destructive storm surges and most sea water inundation of river deltas with consequent ecological changes and greater and more frequent river flood risk as flood waters back up inland of the higher sea levels.
It tells us that decreased and more seasonal rainfall will lead to less river flow and less ground water recharge in Africa, leading to a possible 75-250 million people across Africa facing water shortages by 2020
It predicts that increased rainfall and higher temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels could allow for a 20% increase in crop yields in East and Southeast Asia,
And so on.
So, from this approach we can take away
- Coastal flooding, particularly urban flooding is going to be more prevalent. We therefore need to promote more flood mitigation measures, changing in planning codes to move new development to higher ground and changes in taxation and insurance regimes to help families and businesses cope with the extra stress of more frequent flood losses.
- In Africa, agro-pastoralist economies, all other things being equal, are going to be hard hit. Left unchecked, this will lead to more frequent seasons of food insecurity and thus to a greater propensity to tip into famine. If this happens over large contiguous areas, the present use of market mechanism to affect food availability, may cease to work and directly affecting food supply via food aid may once again become a prime response.
- Outside of the narrow tropics, water stress, in terms of water available for human use, is going to increase particularly in urban areas, and quasi-urban environments like refugee camps. This in turn may drive more diarrheal and communicable diseases. In refugee and IDP camps, the present high water use for food gardens and animals will come under stress, directly affecting survival livelihoods.
There is a second way to view climate change which derives both from observation and theory: the observation that climate is not the only rapid global change going on, and the theory of complexity which says that complex systems and networks behave inherently differently from linear systems.
Complexity for climate change has a number of consequences. First, it recognizes that not only is the climate changing, with global and local consequences, but at the same time our global economy is rapidly changing, with global and local consequences. Our global communications ability, particularly through mobile phones, is also changing rapidly. Our investment in communal and social support structures, from health care to education and road networks, is rapidly decreasing in some countries and rapidly increasing in others, thus affecting the way we respond to crisis. High killing power small arms are becoming more globally available and affordable and feeding a more violent response to crisis.
Second, complexity allows us to look for interactions between these global change systems, some positive some less hopeful. Mobile phones are allowing grain traders in West Africa to better play the geographical and seasonal variation of grain production and market sales. The intelligent use of WTO regulations potentially always African countries with large cattle herds to increase the economic productively of pastoral systems. On the down side, climate change allows parasitic diseases to increase in range into new areas, which, when combined with cut backs in health services, turns an ecological phenomena into a health crisis.
Thirdly, complexity tells us that we cannot predict many of the changes that will happen. The spread of cell phone technology and the uses to which it is now being put, to move remittances, warn of attacks, smooth market fluctuations and create awareness of human rights violations, were totally unpredicted and unpredictable.
What we take away for this is: 1. It simply is not enough to try to predict what climate change will do, especially when trying to understand human systems. We need to look at globalization, communications, arms trade, social services and governance issues all at the same time. We are beginning to model this at local levels, particularly the connections between environmental stress and recourse to violence. 2. Some of this complexity can dampen down the more dire predictions of linear models. China’s growing economy made possible through globalization, will allow it to mitigate the worst effects of sea level rise on its coastal cities in a way we would not have predicted 20 years ago. 3. Positive feed back within complex systems will accentuate problems predicted in linear models. In Darfur and Northeast Uganda climate change is stressing the delicate agro-pastoral social and economic systems. Recourse to violence, fueled in part by easier access to small arms, is vastly accentuating the effects of these changes, causing pastoral economies to nose dive much more so that climate change alone would predict. 4. Complexity will produce unforeseen and unforeseeable changes. This suggests that social, political and economic systems need to adapt to be much more nimble, much more able to change mid course, much more able to reassess data, re plan and re work operations.