TY - JOUR

T1 - Governance in the Face of Extreme Events

T2 - Lessons from Evolutionary Processes for Structuring Interventions, and the Need to Go Beyond

AU - Levin, Simon A.

AU - Anderies, John M.

AU - Adger, Neil

AU - Barrett, Scott

AU - Bennett, Elena M.

AU - Cardenas, Juan Camilo

AU - Carpenter, Stephen R.

AU - Crépin, Anne Sophie

AU - Ehrlich, Paul

AU - Fischer, Joern

AU - Folke, Carl

AU - Kautsky, Nils

AU - Kling, Catherine

AU - Nyborg, Karine

AU - Polasky, Stephen

AU - Scheffer, Marten

AU - Segerson, Kathleen

AU - Shogren, Jason

AU - van den Bergh, Jeroen

AU - Walker, Brian

AU - Weber, Elke U.

AU - Wilen, James

N1 - Funding Information: The authors would like to thank The Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Publisher Copyright: © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

PY - 2022/4/1

Y1 - 2022/4/1

N2 - The increasing frequency of extreme events, exogenous and endogenous, poses challenges for our societies. The current pandemic is a case in point; but "once-in-a-century" weather events are also becoming more common, leading to erosion, wildfire and even volcanic events that change ecosystems and disturbance regimes, threaten the sustainability of our life-support systems, and challenge the robustness and resilience of societies. Dealing with extremes will require new approaches and large-scale collective action. Preemptive measures can increase general resilience, a first line of protection, while more specific reactive responses are developed. Preemptive measures also can minimize the negative effects of events that cannot be avoided. In this paper, we first explore approaches to prevention, mitigation and adaptation, drawing inspiration from how evolutionary challenges have made biological systems robust and resilient, and from the general theory of complex adaptive systems. We argue further that proactive steps that go beyond will be necessary to reduce unacceptable consequences.

AB - The increasing frequency of extreme events, exogenous and endogenous, poses challenges for our societies. The current pandemic is a case in point; but "once-in-a-century" weather events are also becoming more common, leading to erosion, wildfire and even volcanic events that change ecosystems and disturbance regimes, threaten the sustainability of our life-support systems, and challenge the robustness and resilience of societies. Dealing with extremes will require new approaches and large-scale collective action. Preemptive measures can increase general resilience, a first line of protection, while more specific reactive responses are developed. Preemptive measures also can minimize the negative effects of events that cannot be avoided. In this paper, we first explore approaches to prevention, mitigation and adaptation, drawing inspiration from how evolutionary challenges have made biological systems robust and resilient, and from the general theory of complex adaptive systems. We argue further that proactive steps that go beyond will be necessary to reduce unacceptable consequences.

KW - Adaptation

KW - Extreme events

KW - Governance

KW - Mitigation

KW - Prevention

KW - Resilience

KW - Robustness

KW - Environmental planning

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85114407433&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/be97fac7-cb3e-3d3c-919a-528eef6539c9/

U2 - 10.1007/s10021-021-00680-2

DO - 10.1007/s10021-021-00680-2

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 34512142

AN - SCOPUS:85114407433

VL - 25

SP - 697

EP - 711

JO - Ecosystems

JF - Ecosystems

SN - 1432-9840

IS - 3

ER -