Inevitable change: The “new normal”

Change is inevitable--change is constant.

Adapting environmental management to uncertain but inevitable change.

Implementation of adaptation actions to protect biodiversity is limited by uncertainty about the future. One reason for this is the fear of making the wrong decisions caused by the myriad future scenarios presented to decision-makers. We propose an adaptive management (AM) method for optimally managing a population under uncertain and changing habitat conditions. Our approach incorporates multi...

Avoiding disastrous climate change is possible but not inevitable.

W hat the world does or does not do about climate change will have profound implications. If the world fails to act, we may cross a climate tipping point, with disastrous consequences all around. No country by itself can prevent this, but a substantial number of countries working together can avert disaster. Collectively, we know what we need to do. However, can we agree on what each of us shou...

Climate change and infectious disease: time for a new normal?

At present, there is a clarion call for action on climate change across the global health landscape. At the recent WHO-sponsored conference on health and climate (held in Geneva, Switzerland, on Aug 27–29, 2014) and the UN Climate Summit (New York, USA, on Sept 23, 2014), participants were encouraged to act decisively to change the current trajectory of climate disruption. Health inequalities, ...

Facing the Inevitable?

This contribution aims at showing some of the advantages of taking a novel, broad and systemic view on constitutive rules based on a failure oriented analysis, relying on the notion of impasse. Basically, impasses can descend by two main kinds of causes: either a mismatch between rules (how things should be done) and facts (how things are actually done), or an internal contradiction among rules...