ChAPTeR 4
Global challenges as wicked
problems
INTRodUCTIoN
In a book aimed at shifting the way we think about the biggest environmental
challenge facing global humanity, Mike Hulme (2009) made the rather surprising
suggestion that it is useful to think of climate change as a ‘wicked problem’ of
unprecedented scope and likely duration. This is because it helps us move from
thinking of climate change as a ‘problem to be solved’ in order to see it as a ‘condition
in which we are enmeshed’, Hulme wrote.1 The identification of ‘wicked problems’
as ones which defy any ‘true-or-false’ solutions, partly because they are commonly
symptoms of other problems, was first advocated by planning theorists Horst Rittel
and Melvin Webber (1973). Rittel and Webber noted that planners have to grapple
wicked problems is
a term first coined by
design theorist Horst
Rittel at the University
of California Berkeley
(UCB) in the 1960s.
Rittel collaborated
with UCB urban
planner Melvin
Webber to develop
the concept of wicked
problems in regard to
urban planning in a
book published in
1973. The term is
used to refer to
complex problems
that have no single,
complete or
trial-and-error
solutions; problems
which may emerge as
symptoms of other
complex problems.
Key concepts and concerns
■■ the concept of ‘wicked problems’
■■ climate change mitigation and adaptation
■■ threats and opportunities posed by climate change
■■ inadequacy of ‘poverty line’ estimates of global poverty
■■ a community development approach to poverty reduction
■■ focusing on ‘adaptive capacity’
Key characteristics of ‘wicked problems’
1 There can be no definitive definition of the problem.
2 There are no true or false solutions, only relatively good or bad
responses.
3 They can all be seen as symptoms of other interacting problems.
4 They are unique so there can be no template to follow in responding.
5 Responses are ‘one-shot’ efforts that cannot be replicated.
6 Responses include many ‘stakeholders’ with a wide range of values
and priorities.
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hIsToRY, keY CoNCePTs ANd oPeRATING PRINCIPLes52
with unpredictable human behaviour in trying to meet sometimes competing social
needs and there is a touch of humour in their use of a term which suggests that
some problems are too devious for us to tame. Horst and Rittel articulated ten
characteristics of ‘wicked problems’, however they can be boiled down to six.
We will return to Hulme’s interesting perspectives on living with climate
change later in this chapter, however, we will begin by focusing a little on how we
got enmeshed in the climate change condition. This chapter suggests that it is
useful to think of three global challenges to sustainability as wicked problems and
these are:
1 the emergence of human-induced global climate change;
2 the growing dangers of oil dependency; and
3 the intransigence of global poverty.
Debate continues to simmer globally about the contribution that humans have
made to the global warming phenomenon that is changing the planet’s climate.
However, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) released
its fifth global assessment report in 2013 and the assessment reports that have
had contributions from thousands of the world’s leading scientists since 1990
point inexorably to a human contribution. The suggestion that the world is rapidly
approaching a point of peak in the extraction and processing of oil was first made
by US geophysicist M. King Hubbert soon after the first big global oil supply
crisis in 1973. Hubbert’s dire prediction has been widely dismissed as being
excessively ‘alarmist’ in the years since that oil shock and yet Chapter 5 will show
that supplies of easily accessible oil are declining and that oil companies are
having to go to remote locations and extract oil from ‘difficult’ sources in order to
sustain supply. The world depends very heavily on oil and other ‘fossil fuels’ for its
systems of transport, manufacture and agriculture and products emanating from
the petrochemical industry – including the vast array of plastics – are found in
almost everything we use on a daily basis. Ultimately, fossil fuels are in finite supply
and their burning turns stored carbon into the gas – CO2 – which is making the
biggest contribution to human-induced climate change. There are many reasons
to act now rather than wait for future global oil shocks but tackling oil dependency
is truly a ‘wicked problem’, as will be shown in Chapter 5.
Global poverty is the third ‘wicked problem’ featured in this book because it
was a key barrier to sustainability identified in the 1987 Brundtland Report. Since
1987 numerous efforts have been made at a global level to tackle the entrenched
problem of global poverty by lifting all people above the World Bank’s income
‘poverty line’ of $US1.25 per day. The elimination of global poverty was
enshrined in the Millennium Development Goals adopted by the United Nations
in 2000 and, as we will see later, the World Bank has claimed that the global effort
is having some success. However, income is a very inadequate poverty indicator
and the workings of the globalised market-driven economy appear to be making
poverty even worse in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Despite the growth
of the ‘middle class’ in countries such as India, China and Brazil, the overall gap
between the world rich and poor seems to be actually increasing and this is at
least partly responsible for many of the wars and conflicts that rage across Africa
and Central Asia, in particular.
Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate
Change was formed
in 1988 by two UN
organisations – the
World Meteorological
Organisation and the
United Nations
Environment
Programme – to
collate information
from scientific studies
of human-induced
climate change. Its
first report was
published in 1990.
M. King Hubbert
(1903–89) trained in
geology, physics and
mathematics at the
University of Chicago
where he received his
Ph.D. in 1937. He
worked for Shell Oil
Company from 1943
to his retirement in
1964 and it was in
1956 that he made
his prediction that oil
production in the US
would reach a peak
around 1970.
World Bank poverty
line the concept of a
poverty line has been
in use since the early
twentieth century; in
recent decades it has
become popular to
say that extreme
poverty means that
people exist on less
than $US1 a day. In
2006 the World Bank
set the line for
extreme poverty at
$US1.25 a day on the
estimate that this was
equivalent in spending
power to $US1 a day
in 1996. While the
World Bank draws a
distinction between
‘absolute’ and ‘relative’
poverty the arbitrary
poverty line adopted in
2006 has been a
focus of attention.
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GLoBAL ChALLeNGes As wICked PRoBLeMs 53
Of course, there are many other global sustainability challenges beyond the ‘big
three’ mentioned above. They include deforestation and desertification,
declining soil fertility and declines in global fish stocks, transborder pollution,
unresolved wars and conflicts and increasing flows of refugees and asylum
seekers, and continuing dangers posed by the use of nuclear power. All of these
are ‘global problems’, because the capacity to address them effectively at local or
even national levels is limited, even if global action must be driven from below.
However, many of these big problems are now framed by the need to tackle the
‘big three’ sustainability challenges and any successes in managing climate
change, reducing oil dependency and reducing global poverty will have help us
tackle all the other problems.
This chapter will focus on:
■ Understanding the key causes of human-induced global climate change and
some of its emerging consequences.
■ Broadening our understanding of how we can mitigate climate change
impacts while also learning how to adapt to changing climates.
■ Considering how we can use the onset of human-induced climate change to
rethink unsustainable assumptions, values and practices.
■ Deepening our understanding of what it means to live in entrenched poverty and
examine why global poverty elimination strategies have had limited success.
■ The need to extend our empathy and responsibility for the wellbeing of all
humans and non-human forms of life living on our planet now and in the future.
UNdeRsTANdING hUMAN-INdUCed GLoBAL
CLIMATe ChANGe
The idea that humans are either causing or accelerating global climate change
has only become a matter of broad public concern since around 2006. It has, of
deforestation refers
to the clearing of a
forest or stand of
trees where the land
is subsequently
converted for
non-forest use.
desertification
refers to a form of
land degradation in
which an area loses
its natural reserves of
water and existing
forms of vegetation
and wildlife.
transborder
pollution refers to
any form of pollution
that cannot be
contained within
national borders, or
waste materials that
are deliberately
transported beyond
the borders of the
country in which they
were generated.
Startling statistics
■ Scientists predict that if post-industrial increases in surface
temperatures exceed 2ºC the world’s coral reefs are all doomed and
the massive Greenland ice shelf is likely to collapse.
■ We are already halfway to the ‘dangerous threshold’ of 2ºC increase
in atmospheric temperatures.
■ We are witnessing increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather
events, including floods, fires, droughts, cyclones and storm surges.
■ An estimated 70,000 people died in the record European heatwave
of 2003.
■ 43 per cent of people in the world earn less than $US2 per day.
■ 12 per cent of the world’s population is responsible for 60 per cent of
private consumption.
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hIsToRY, keY CoNCePTs ANd oPeRATING PRINCIPLes54
course, concerned climate scientists for much longer and it has become the stuff
of legend that climatologist James Hansen took his concerns to the US
Congress in 1988 to seek government action on his proposal to cut greenhouse
gas emissions in order to prevent a slide into dangerous levels of climate volatility.
Hansen was responsible for setting widely accepted targets of climate change
mitigation, aiming to keep the increase in surface temperatures below 2ºC and
the concentration of greenhouse gases in the upper atmosphere below 350
parts per million. Hansen’s core argument was that if human activity has increased
greenhouse gas emissions to dangerous levels, then we can also take action to
reduce those emissions and stabilise atmospheric warming.
Of course, global climate change in itself is not a new phenomenon and we
have long known that there have been extended periods in the history of the
planet when ice has covered much more of the Earth’s surface that it does today.
What concerned James Hansen, however, was the mounting evidence that human
industrial and farming activity is contributing to an observable rise in global
atmospheric and surface temperatures by pumping ‘greenhouse gases’ into the
upper atmosphere. It also needs to be noted that Hansen was far from being
the first scientist to detect the human contribution to global warming. Indeed the
possibility that certain gases accumulating in the upper atmosphere could
contribute to global warming by trapping solar radiation within the atmosphere –
i.e. create a ‘greenhouse effect’ – was first mooted by the French scientist Joseph
Fourier in 1824 and demonstrated empirically by the English physicist John
Tyndall in 1859. It became evident that human activity is increasing concentrations
of a number of greenhouse gases in the upper atmosphere and in 1917 the
eminent Scottish scientist and inventor Alexander Bell urged the fastest possible
transition from the use of carbon-based fuels to the use of solar energy.
Hansen’s appearance before the US Congress in 1988 undoubtedly helped
to put the science of climate change on the political agenda and the United
Nations established the IPCC in the same year and it collated input from hundreds
of scientists to release its first ‘assessment report’ in 1990. Its fifth assessment
report – an overview of a series of separate reports – was released in September
2013 and it included the assessment that it is 95 per cent certain that humans
are contributing to an observable increase in global temperatures. It is not really
surprising that there are some scientists who dissent from the assessments
contained in IPCC assessment reports because it is the nature of scientific inquiry
to contest interpretations of data. The surprising, and alarming, thing is that
thousands of scientists – operating in a wide range of fields – have reached the
levels of consensus reported in the fifth IPCC report. Dissenters – many of them
having little or no scientific credibility – have received a disproportionate share of
media attention.
Climate change sceptics focus on the fact that average surface temperatures
can fluctuate from one year to the next or from one decade to the next. However,
it is becoming increasingly obvious from one IPCC assessment report to the next
that the long view – which looks beyond short-term variability – shows that
average surface temperatures have turned upward quite dramatically alongside
the growth in human industrial activity over the last 100 years or so and the 2013
assessment report included a set of graphs showing ‘multiple observed indicators
of a changing climate’ (see Figures 4.1 and 4.2). Graphs of long-term indicators
climatology is a
subset of atmospheric
science and physical
geography devoted to
understanding the
functioning of the
Earth’s climate
systems.
James Hansen was
born in Iowa in 1941
and he gained his
Ph.D. in physics from
the University of Iowa
in 1967. He was
Head of the NASA
Goddard Institute for
Space Studies
located in New York
City (1981–2013).
mitigation refers to
attempts to reduce
emissions of
greenhouse gases,
while climate change
adaptation refers to
action taken to adapt
to the impacts of
climate change.
greenhouse gases
refers to a group of
gases that have the
ability to absorb and
re-radiate solar
energy. They include
water vapour, ozone,
carbon dioxide,
methane and nitrous
oxide, with the latter
three increasing in
the upper atmosphere
concentrations as a
result of human
activity.
Joseph (Jean-
Baptiste) Fourier
(1768–1830) was
the son of a tailor
who became an
orphan at the age of
nine. He was active in
the French
Revolution, jailed in
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the reign of terror and
served in Napoleon’s
army before gaining
distinction as a
mathematician and
physicist. He became
famous for his work
on heat transfers and
he theorised the
‘greenhouse effect’
for Planet Earth in a
paper published in
1824.
Figure 4.1 Observed globally averaged combined land and ocean surface temperature
changes 1850–2012
Source: Figure SPM:1 in IPCC Working Party 1 Report, 2013 (www.climate
change2013.org/report/reports-graphic/report-graphics)
Figure 4.2 Arctic summer sea ice extent
Source: Figure SPM:3 in IPCC Working Party 1 Report, 2013
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hIsToRY, keY CoNCePTs ANd oPeRATING PRINCIPLes56
of global warming tend to show a ‘hockey stick effect’ in that they turn up sharply
towards the end of the graph period.
Climate scientists are coming under increasing pressure to provide accurate
predictions about the consequences of rising surface temperatures but their
modelling reveals that increasing heat creates greater climate volatility, meaning
that future predictions are likely to be less reliable. However, the signs of change
are accumulating with record low levels of Arctic ice, increasingly intense and
frequent floods, droughts and ‘extreme weather events’. It is hard to imagine what
more the scientists can do to prepare us for what lies ahead and to encourage
governments to take more resolute mitigation action.
UNdeRsTANdING ‘CLIMATe’ ANd CLIMATe
sYsTeMs
Having been exposed to the well-publicised views of climate change sceptics,
people without scientific training could be excused for thinking that unseasonably
cold weather puts in doubt the predictions about global warming or that fluctuations
between heatwaves and flooding rains put any underlying trend in doubt. The first
thing that needs to be understood is that ‘weather’ and ‘climate’ are not the same
and that incremental shifts in climate can actually increase the variability of the
weather patterns we might experience. A warmer atmosphere means warmer
surface temperatures and warmer seas and we know that changes in weather
result from temperature differences between land, sea and atmosphere, with
storm systems often forming in the interplay between ocean currents and the
movement of water molecules in the atmosphere. A warming of climate systems
makes such interplays even more dynamic and less predictable and this is why
climate scientists prefer to talk about ‘climate change’ rather than ‘global warming’.
The global climate system is a single system but the addition of more heat is
making it behave more unpredictably. Ocean currents have an enormous influence
on weather systems and many models have been released to show how these
currents act as a ‘global conveyor belt’ which can distribute weather disturbances
globally (see Figure 4.3). We can only really understand global climate change if
we know something about global – rather than local – climate systems.
A common misconception about climate change is that incremental increases
in surface temperatures will result in incremental increases in sea water levels
and in the kind of weather we might experience from one year to the next.
Climatologists can now predict periods of prolonged wet and dry related to the
global movement of ocean currents but the consequences of climate change
for these kinds of global climate fluctuations is not yet known. What is known is
that it is only the melting of ice sheets sitting on land masses – rather than ‘sea
ice’ – that will raise sea levels globally and scientists fear that a steady weakening
of ice sheets covering Greenland or Antarctica could eventually result in a rather
dramatic collapse and a surge in ocean levels. Natural systems rarely change in a
linear way and ecologists have long known that a seemingly stable ecosystem
can suddenly experience a devastating ‘tipping point’. We need to be prepared
for the unexpected, but that runs counter to our cherished belief that scientific
knowledge can gives us ever-greater certainty about how our world operates.
ocean currents can
be caused by wind or
by movement arising
from density
differences in water
caused by differences
in temperature or
salinity.
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GLoBAL ChALLeNGes As wICked PRoBLeMs 57
Confidence in science is deeply embedded in western culture, even if it sometimes
points to an ‘inconvenient truth’.2
In his aforementioned book, Mike Hulme (2009) stresses that the word
‘climate’ is used rather loosely. We tend to think of ourselves as living in places with
a particular kind of climate – be it wet, dry, humid or variable – and the perceptions,
as well as the reality, influence our ways of living. Human societies have adapted to
very different prevailing climates and their cultural practices, Hulme points out, are
strongly influenced by those kinds of adaptations. In other words, our relationship
with climate is framed by culture as much as the scientific meaning of climate and
communities of people find remarkable ways to adapt to the extremes of climate
that they expect to experience; whether that involves sheltering from extreme heat
or extreme cold. Talking about the weather can open up communication channels
and create a sense of solidarity, especially when the weather is challenging.
Figure 4.3 Image of ocean conveyer belt
Tipping point: collapse of the North Atlantic cod
fisheries
Ecologists have long understood that incremental changes to a self-
regulating ecosystem can eventually overwhelm its capacity to adapt to the
changes; it reaches a ‘tipping point’ at which the functioning of the system
undergoes rapid change. A famous example of this occurred in the northern
summer of 1992 when the Newfoundland fishing fleet caught less than
1 per cent (by biomass) of North Atlantic cod compared to previous
seasons. Harvests had been falling due to overfishing of the cod during the
1960s and 1970s but no one had imagined such a dramatic collapse in fish
numbers. This was a devastating blow to the centuries-old Newfoundland
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hIsToRY, keY CoNCePTs ANd oPeRATING PRINCIPLes58
The CAse FoR RAdICAL ANd sUsTAINed
eMIssIoNs CUTs
While it is impossible to predict accurately how global warming affects climate
systems, some trends are already clear, and broad predictions made by
climate scientists are being confirmed. There is not enough space here to cover
all the trends and predictions but the following suggest the need to take radical
and sustained action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
fishing industry with around 35,000 people in coastal communities losing
their livelihoods and many people being forced to leave the province. A
moratorium was imposed on catching the remaining cod and there has been
a very slow recovery in numbers since. However, the collapse serves as a
reminder that incremental changes can eventually lead to a rapid change.
If trends continue unabated …
■ Sea level rises of ten metres or more causing extensive inundation of
coastal cities and towns, including megacities such as Shanghai,
Mumbai and New York.
■ Inundation and salinisation of major food producing areas in the
deltas of rivers such as the Nile in Africa and the Mekong in Asia.
■ Increasing droughts threating supplies of food and freshwater,
especially in Africa.
■ Likely loss of all the planet’s coral reefs with devastating consequences
for marine biodiversity.
■ Increasing extinctions for species that lose required habitat.
■ Major problems for humans posed by more frequent and intense
heatwaves, floods and by reduced supplies of freshwater.
salinisation refers
to increasing
concentrations of
water soluble salts in
soil which can impede
plant growth.
Accumulating impacts
■ Unprecedented extreme weather events, such as ‘Superstorm Sandy’
slamming into New York and parts of New Jersey in 2012 and regular
cyclones and typhoons in the Pacific region from 2013 to 2016.
■ More frequent and intense flooding events, such as those occurring
in the UK in February 2014 and even more devastating flooding in
Pakistan in 2010.
■ More frequent and intense heatwaves, with the 2003 heatwave in
Europe being responsible for an estimated 70,000 deaths.
■ Increasing acidification of the oceans causing increased coral bleaching.
■ Record low summer levels of sea ice in the Arctic and noticeable
thinning of the massive Greenland ice shelf.
Mulligan, Martin. An Introduction to Sustainability : Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest
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GLoBAL ChALLeNGes As wICked PRoBLeMs 59
GRoUNds FoR FRUsTRATIoN ANd hoPe
Scientists contributing to IPCC Assessment Reports are not the only ones to feel
frustrated about the slow and spasmodic policy responses to the growing risks
associated with climate change. As discussed in Chapter 2, considerable
expectations were invested in the outcomes of the 2009 Copenhagen Summit on
climate change and the outcomes were seen as being disappointing. However, the
real achievement of the Copenhagen Summit – often overlooked in the commentary
– was that delegates included representatives of the rapidly developing nations –
such as China and India – and also many of the small nations that are most
vulnerable to climate change impacts – including small island nations in the Pacific
Ocean. While China is continuing to increase its use of coal for the generation of
electricity, it has also set relatively ambitious targets for reducing its greenhouse
gas emissions and by 2012 it had become the largest producer of solar panels and
wind turbines in the world. As also discussed in Chapter 2, the failings of Copenhagen
in 2009 stimulated intense behind-the-scenes negotiations to ensure a better
outcome at the next summit held in Paris in December 2015. With the biggest
greenhouse gas emitters, China and the USA, agreeing to take more resolute action
before the Paris meeting convened, momentum had shifted and the Paris summit
set rather ambitions climate change mitigations target for participating nations, to
the obvious delight of all present when the final announcements were made.
While they continue to get disproportionate media attention, climate change
deniers and sceptics are rapidly losing their influence and all national governments
now agree that action must be taken to reduce emissions and prepare for
accumulating impacts. Yet the key indicators are all still heading in the wrong
direction and national policies and political rhetoric largely lack the required
ambition and urgency. Weaning ourselves off fossil fuel dependency is the biggest
change humanity has been obliged to make and even when emissions begin to
fall, global climate systems will be slow to respond; a prolonged period of climate
volatility is already locked in. However, just as incremental accumulations can
trigger ‘tipping points’ in the behaviour of natural systems, global action on climate
change will gather momentum and our ability to act resolutely in times of crisis will
come to the fore. As was shown with the international campaign to end human
slavery, action can grow rapidly when inaction becomes morally repugnant.
Expect the unexpected!
When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in August 2005, it overwhelmed
the city’s defences with over 50 breaches of the hurricane defence levees.
Around 80 per cent of the city was flooded and over 80 per cent of residents
were evacuated. The final death toll was put at 1,464. Hurricanes are cer-
tainly not unexpected in New Orleans because the records show that
49 hurricanes have hit the coast of Louisiana between 1851 and 2004.
However, the intensity of the storm surge that came with Katrina took authori-
ties and residents by surprise and preparations for such an event proved
to be woefully inadequate. The authorities and residents of New York, by
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hIsToRY, keY CoNCePTs ANd oPeRATING PRINCIPLes60
contrast, had not even imagined that they could be in the path of a major
hurricane, so the shock was even greater when ‘Superstorm Sandy’ slammed
into the city and nearby areas in October 2012 destroying homes and busi-
nesses and flooding parts of the New York subway and most of the city’s road
tunnels. The massive storm surge caused an estimated $US68 billion in
damage and the final death toll was 44. Sandy emerged out of the largest
Atlantic hurricane on record yet technically it became a ‘superstorm’ rather
than a ‘hurricane’ when the core cooled before making landfall. Nobody
expects hurricanes in New York and the definition of what it was only added
to the surprise and confusion. IPCC Assessment Reports have repeatedly
warned that ‘extreme weather events’ will become more common and more
intense and, as Sandy demonstrated, they may hit where they have rarely
hit before.
ReThINkING CLIMATe ChANGe ResPoNses
James Hansen’s 1988 call to contain the concentration of greenhouse gases in
the upper atmosphere to less than 350 ppm focused attention squarely on strate-
gies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the need to significantly reduce
our reliance on ‘fossil fuels’, either by using them much more efficiently and frugally
or by finding alternative sources of energy. This inevitably puts the focus on new
or alternative technologies and it became popular to talk about the creation of
‘carbon neutral’ households, neighbourhoods, towns, cities and farms. This kind
of work and effort is clearly very important, both to reduce greenhouse gas emis-
sions and move away from a dangerous dependence on fossil fuels. Furthermore,
the targets set by Hansen have provided a valuable focus for what needs to be
done, even if we have already passed 350 ppm and it seems increasingly difficult
to contain the temperature rise to less than 2ºC. Scientists warn that the impacts
of rising temperatures are not linear and the impacts would be much less if the rise
is kept to around 1.5ºC or 1.6ºC rather than 2ºC and significant declines in emis-
sions can still reduce the concentrations below 350 ppm. However, the focus on
Hansen’s targets keeps discussion on mitigation focused on avoiding ‘dangerous’
climate change to come rather than dealing with changes already under way. The over-
whelming focus on mitigation has overshadowed the need to also consider what
climate change adaptation requires. It has also taken attention away from the dis-
cussions we need to have the beliefs and assumptions that have enabled us to
ignore warnings about our global environmental impacts for so long. A focus on
technological innovation encourages the belief that the responsibility lies with
‘experts’ or policy-makers rather than with the public at large.
Mike Hulme’s thought-provoking book (2009) argues that climate change is
no longer a problem for scientists or experts because the barriers to effective
action are largely cultural. At the same time, he argues that climate change can
also be seen as a kind of opportunity to open up meaningful dialogues about
problematic cultural beliefs and practices and the need to make radical changes
to the ways in which we live (see the essay at the end of this chapter). The onset
of global climate change can also serve to underline the work of the German
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GLoBAL ChALLeNGes As wICked PRoBLeMs 61
sociologist Ulrich Beck on the globalisation of risk and the emergence of what
he called the ‘risk society’ (1992). Having witnessed the secretive and patronis-
ing regime in post-Second World War East Germany, Beck was well placed
to warn of the dangers of risk denial and he used the example of the 1986
Chernobyl nuclear plant accident in Ukraine and an overlapping outbreak of foot-
and-mouth disease in sheep and cattle to point out that risk can no longer be
contained within regional or national boundaries. We need to learn how to live with,
rather than try to avoid, increased levels of risk and that will be the subject of
Chapter 7.
The wICked PRoBLeM oF GLoBAL PoveRTY
In highlighting links between entrenched poverty and environmental degradation,
the 1987 Brundtland Report provided extra incentives to reduce global poverty
and this has been a recurring topic of conversation ever since. It featured in the
outcomes of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, it was adopted as one of the UN
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000 and it became the focus on the
global ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign which reached its peak in 2005. Indeed
the first MDG to ‘eradicate extreme poverty’ morphed into a more ambitious
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) in 2015; to ‘end poverty in all its forms
everywhere’. A convenient focus for global efforts to ‘eradicate extreme poverty’
between 2000 and 2015 has been the World Bank’s international ‘poverty line’
which was for many years set at an income of less than $US1 per day before that
figure was adjusted to $US1.25 per day in 2005. As we will see below, the World
Bank has recently claimed that the world is on track to achieve the goal of
Photo 4.1 Poverty is rife and highly visible in countries such as India, as seen here in
Kolkata
Photo by Arne Huckelheim (Wikimedia Commons)
Mulligan, Martin. An Introduction to Sustainability : Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest
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hIsToRY, keY CoNCePTs ANd oPeRATING PRINCIPLes62
eradicating extreme poverty – even if the 2015 target proved to be too ambitious
– because of the clear decline in the number of people living below the income-
related poverty line. However, the very idea of an international ‘poverty line’ has
many critics, both because the income level has been set so low and because
monetary income does not reflect numerous causes of poverty and disadvantage,
such as access to adequate food and clean water supplies, access to adequate
health care, safety from violence and access to education. While it is true that there
has been a welcome drop globally in the number of people earning less than $US2
per day and a Global Hunger Index suggests a 27 per cent reduction between
2000 and 2015 in the number of people living with chronic hunger, the global
spread of poverty has changed very little and the gap between extreme wealth
and extreme poverty has grown. Millions of people have died in entrenched civil
and transnational wars in Africa and the Middle East in recent decades and there
are more refugees and ‘forced migrants’ on the move around the world than at
any time since the Second World War. Entrenched poverty is spread very unevenly
across the world and there is a lot of data suggesting that in parts of Africa and
Asia, in particular, things are getting worse rather than better.
The single word ‘poverty’ masks a complexity of forms and causes of
environmental, economic and social disadvantage and some economic develop-
ment strategies aimed at reducing poverty can make things worse; for example,
by relocating people out of established ‘illegal’ slum communities with strong
social networks or by actually drawing more people from rural settlements into
urban ‘slums’ as they seek paid employment in newly established industries.
Multinational corporations frequently take advantage of the fact that wages
are very low and working conditions are unregulated in many ‘underdeveloped’
nations while ‘deindustrialisation’ and rising living costs are resulting in entrenched
Global Hunger
Index is published
annually by the
Washington-based
International Food
Policy Research
Institute. It combines
data on
undernourishment,
child mortality, child
‘wasting’ and child
‘stunting’ due to
malnutrition.
Photo 4.2 Poverty is rife but less visible in countries such as the USA, as seen here in
New York
Photo by Robert Scifo (Wikimedia Commons)
Mulligan, Martin. An Introduction to Sustainability : Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest
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GLoBAL ChALLeNGes As wICked PRoBLeMs 63
pockets of poverty and rising numbers of ‘working poor’ in a range of ‘developed’
nations, such as the USA, Greece and Spain. The fact that many more people in
countries such as India and China are entering the ‘consumer class’ is also
frequently touted as a sign that global poverty is in decline. However, as we noted
in Chapter 3, increasing consumption is generating a host of new environmental
and social problems.
There can be no single strategy to reduce – let alone eradicate – global
poverty and the fact that economic ‘development’ can inadvertently increase the
gap between the rich and the poor means that global poverty should be seen as
a ‘wicked problem’ rather than one which can be ‘resolved’. We also need to note
here that the wicked problems of global climate change and the rising cost of oil
dependency interact to make things even more difficult for poor people and
communities because they are likely to be most vulnerable to things such as
extreme weather events and rising food prices (caused by the rising cost of oil).
Studies of homelessness in countries such as Australia, the USA and the UK
reveal how easy it is for individuals, families or whole communities to fall into very
difficult and challenging circumstances and this reminds us that poverty will be
ever present in human societies. The hallmark of a caring and inclusive society will
not be that it has succeeded in ‘eradicating’ poverty but that it pays constant
attention to emergence and/or continuation of poverty ‘traps’. At all levels from the
local to the global, poverty is a perennial threat that calls for unlimited compassion
and endless vigilance.
exAMINING CLAIMs oF PRoGRess oN
PoveRTY RedUCTIoN
In March 2012, the World Bank released a report on global poverty which carried
the good news that in the period from 2005 to 2008 the number of people living
below the poverty line of $US1.25 per day had decreased from 1.38 billion to 1.27
billion. This news was widely welcomed in global news media with The Economist
reporting that the world is on track to achieve UN poverty reduction targets
underpinning the MDG of poverty ‘eradication’. While any progress in reducing
global poverty is indeed welcome, the trends reported by the World Bank are much
less impressive when subjected to close scrutiny. Much of the improvement in the
headline global statistic can be attributed to rapid economic growth in China alone.
Furthermore, the choice of a particular income-based benchmark for poverty is
rather arbitrary and the Worldwatch Institute reported in 2012 that if you lift the
nominal poverty line to just $US2 per day an alarming 43 per cent of the world’s
people are still below this line and 70 per cent of people living in South Asia and
sub-Saharan Africa are in that category.3 Echoing the World Bank report on
poverty reduction, the Global Hunger Index compiled by the International Food
Policy Research Institute indicated that between 2000 and 2015 there had been
a welcome decline of 27 per cent in the number of people living with chronic
hunger. Yet this still leaves 795 million people living in hunger and recent reports
from UNICEF suggest that an alarming 25 per cent of children in ‘developing’
nations are stunted by malnutrition and it still accounts for around 45 per cent for
the deaths of children under five. While the Sustainable Development Goals
sub-Saharan Africa
refers to a band of
countries – from
Mauritania to Somalia
– that are located
south of the Saharan
desert and north of
sub-tropical forests
and savannahs.
Sustainable
Development
Goals (SDGs) are a
2015 extension of
the UN’s 2000
Millennium
Development Goals
(MDGs) which largely
aimed to eradicate
extreme poverty and
disadvantage by
2015. Eight MDGs
were expanded into
17 SDGs and they
strongly reflect the
principles outlined in
the 1987 Brundtland
Report.
Mulligan, Martin. An Introduction to Sustainability : Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest
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hIsToRY, keY CoNCePTs ANd oPeRATING PRINCIPLes64
(SDGs) continue with the ‘no poverty’ and ‘zero hunger’ rhetoric of the MDGs it is
clear that the rhetoric is far from the reality, especially when the gap between the
rich and the poor continues to grow. The Worldwatch Institute report from 20124
indicated that 12 per cent of global population – living mainly in North America
and Western Europe – account for 60 per cent of private consumption, while
a third of the world’s people – living mainly in South Asia and sub-Saharan
Africa – account for just 3.2 per cent of global consumption.
Of course, any successes in lifting people and communities out of poverty
are welcome and there is some good news within the reports of progress
emanating from the World Bank and other global agencies. The simplistic and
misleading ‘poverty line’ indicator has been challenged by much wider indicators,
such as the UN Human Development Index, which includes data on
malnutrition, infant mortality and education levels alongside per capita income
estimates. This broadening of the indicators of poverty and disadvantage is also
reflected in the way in which eight MDGs became 17 SDGs 15 years later.
However, indicators do not identify causes, and poverty reduction strategies
continue to be underpinned by the mantra of economic growth. Access to paid
employment is certainly an important factor, however for some communities,
access to safe drinking water and adequate supplies of food may be even more
pressing. In many parts of the world – particularly in parts of Africa, the Middle
East and the Central Asia – an end to war and violent conflict is an essential
precondition for doing anything about rising poverty. People need to have a
reasonable level of physical security before they can even think about their
employment prospects. The growing refugee crisis means that international
humanitarian relief agencies are now obliged to focus more of their attention and
resources on people living in refugee camps while their wider focus is shifting to
priorities such as water security rather than paid employment. Perhaps the best
critique of the narrow approaches adopted by the World Bank and other
international agencies on poverty reduction has emerged from the Wuppertal
Institute in Germany, where they take the link between the social and
environmental dimensions of the problem as their starting point (see Sachs and
Santarius 2007).
Even when attention turns to income generation for poor people and
communities, the definition of income is often too narrow because household
‘livelihoods’ can depend on non-cash components, such as food or other forms of
exchange. While the World Bank and other international agencies focus on
incomes, most humanitarian agencies work with a much broader definition of
‘livelihoods’. The author was a lead researcher on a research project focusing on
social recovery from the 2004 tsunami disaster in Sri Lanka and southern India
(see Mulligan and Nadarajah 2012) and this highlighted the fact that people living
in poor communities are commonly obliged to find a range of strategies to sustain
their households. This might include growing and swapping food and other
‘informal’ trade in non-monetised goods and services. In many cases monetised
income only accounted for a relatively small proportion of the household ‘income’.
The study noted that the informal economy relies on the development and
maintenance of good social networks, yet these were often disrupted when well-
meaning agencies decided that the disaster victims needed to be relocated into
‘more secure’ new settlements.
Human
Development
Index was first
proposed by Pakistani
economist Mahbud ul
Haq in 1990 as a
way to add indicators
related to health and
education
opportunities to the
single index for per
capita income. It was
adopted by the
United Nations in the
early 1990s and uses
date on life
expectancy, education
achievements and per
capita income.
Wuppertal Institute
for Climate,
Environment and
Energy is an
independent research
centre that works
with a number of
German universities.
Wuppertal is located
in the Wupper Valley
not far from the large
city of Dusseldorf; the
institute was set up in
1991.
Mulligan, Martin. An Introduction to Sustainability : Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/latrobe/detail.action?docID=5103696.
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GLoBAL ChALLeNGes As wICked PRoBLeMs 65
PoveRTY IN The ‘deveLoPed’ woRLd
The term ‘global poverty’ evokes images of starving people in Africa or slum-
dwellers in countries ranging from India to Brazil. Poverty in the ‘developed’ world
is less visible but in many cases it is no less entrenched. The Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which aims to represent the
interests of many of the nations with the most developed economies – excluding
China, Brazil, South Korea, South Africa and India – published a report in 20095
indicating that in 75 per cent of 32 member countries, the gap between rich and
poor had increased in the period from 2005 to 2008. The nation with the biggest
economy at the time – the USA – rated third worst for the length of time that
people remain trapped in poverty; rating above only Mexico and Turkey. It was no
great surprise to find that Mexico had the most entrenched pockets of poverty,
even though it was home to the world’s richest man of the time, Carlos Sim. It was
more surprising, perhaps, to find that poverty had become more entrenched in the
USA, even before the onset of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008–9. Among the
wealthy nations of the world, the USA has a notoriously weak social welfare
system. This reflects its historic confidence in the ‘trickle down’ benefits of ‘free
market’ economic development; however, the OECD report suggests that this
confidence is misplaced when it comes to poverty reduction.
People and families in developed nations can fall into poverty when things go
wrong, but some manage to haul themselves out of the poverty trap. However,
poverty is often intergenerational because the children of poor people tend to have
less access to education or to secure employment. A 2016 report, from the
Australian humanitarian agency Jesuit Social Services, noted that in the state of
New South Wales, nearly 50 per cent of those experiencing chronic disadvantage
– on a broad range of indicators – live in just 6 per cent of the state’s ‘postcode’
areas, indicating the existence of ‘postcode poverty’. The report confirmed that
whole communities could be disadvantaged by having limited access to sources of
employment, education facilities, community facilities or even spaces for recreation.
Affordable housing is often found in areas with poor public transport and people
without motor cars often have poor access to shops and services. Different forms
of disadvantage compound each other and exit routes are hard to find.
PoveRTY RedUCTIoN sTRATeGIes
Welfare payments and charity may enable people to survive but they do not offer
pathways out of poverty. When he became British prime minister in 1997, Tony
Blair argued for a shift in emphasis away from identifying and defining poverty to
identifying barriers for stronger ‘social inclusion’. By focusing initially on factors
that seem to exclude certain people and communities from opportunities available
to other people and communities it may then become possible to focus on
strategies for inclusion, or pathways towards greater participation. The Blair
government’s strategy for social inclusion focused almost entirely on removing
barriers for participation in paid employment when a broader understanding of
social exclusion and inclusion might have benefited many more people, families
and communities. Furthermore, the government’s initial enthusiasm for its social
social inclusion
became a policy
orientation of the
Blair Labour
government in the UK
after leader Tony Blair
gave a famous
speech titled
‘Bringing Britain
Together’ in London
in 1997. The
government
established a special
Social Inclusion Unit.
The government’s
ability to build a more
inclusive society did
not live up to Blair’s
rhetoric but the ‘social
inclusion agenda’ had
a significant influence
on public policy in
many other countries.
Mulligan, Martin. An Introduction to Sustainability : Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest
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hIsToRY, keY CoNCePTs ANd oPeRATING PRINCIPLes66
inclusion agenda slowly subsided as Blair and his senior ministers became
preoccupied with other national and international challenges. However, the
innovative shift in public policy showed enough potential to encourage a strategic
shift of emphasis for all agencies concerned with poverty reduction.
It should also be noted that people living within poor communities are likely
to have the best understanding of the various barriers to greater social inclusion.
People with a detailed knowledge of a particular community will know about the
community’s existing coping strategies and they are best placed to determine the
community’s most promising ‘assets’. A community development approach to
poverty reduction aims to use such insider knowledge to ensure that any injection
of new resources is well targeted and is likely to benefit those who can turn assets
into community-based enterprises. Community development workers – whether
they be insiders or empathetic outsiders – can ensure that short-term assistance
can have some long term benefits. A community development approach aimed at
strengthening social inclusion has more chance of success than either charity or
a belief in the ‘trickle down’ benefits of wealth accumulation. A community
development approach to poverty reduction is relevant for ‘developed’ and
‘underdeveloped’ nations alike.
‘Developed nations’ have often accumulated wealth by exploiting the natural
and human resources of nations that were once colonised by European powers.
The terms ‘developed’ and ‘underdeveloped’ tell us nothing about how this
distinction emerged historically and it is better to think of ‘underdeveloped’ nations
as those in which the citizens have benefited little from the exploitation of the
country’s natural resources or from its wealth-generating enterprises. Rather than
being seen as charity for the less fortunate, most forms of international aid should
be seen as partial compensation for past and continuing exploitation and
meaningful poverty reduction work should be seen as an obligation for the
‘developed world’. Much more should be done at a global level to ‘lift all boats’ in
terms of minimum pay and working conditions. Globally integrated taxation
arrangements could ensure that multinational corporations are obliged to reinvest
in the nations from which they have been able to generate their wealth.
As mentioned above, climate change and the rising cost of oil will impact
most heavily on poor communities and on frail people. Poor people – often living
in rather flimsy housing in crowded settlements – tend to be most highly exposed
to floods, droughts and extreme weather events while the elderly and frail suffer
the most from heatwaves and floods. The poor are obviously most vulnerable
to the impacts of rising prices and poor nations lack the resources to reduce oil
dependency and adopt low-carbon technologies. Growth industries of the future
include international aid and disaster management and this work needs to be done
well to prevent a growth in social and economic exclusion and consequent
increases in tension and conflict.
shIFTING The eMPhAsIs To AdAPTIve
CAPACITY
Big global challenges – such as climate change and global poverty – remind us
all that we live in a risky and uncertain world and the risks are increasing. Climate
Mulligan, Martin. An Introduction to Sustainability : Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest
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GLoBAL ChALLeNGes As wICked PRoBLeMs 67
scientists have argued that we are entering a new phase in the history of life on
Earth and that history is becoming an unreliable guide for what may lie ahead. We
need to be prepared for the unexpected and this implies that we need to be more
adaptable and resilient, both individually and collectively. If the future is becoming
less predictable, then adaptation becomes a matter of being able to cope with the
unexpected and the term ‘adaptive capacity’ is being used more widely.
As we will see in Chapter 7, adaptive capacity lies at the heart of the concept
of ‘resilience’, which is also being applied more frequently and liberally. We can
contemplate what makes some people more adaptable or resilient than others,
but it is becoming increasing important to consider what can make some
communities of people more resilient and this is the core concern of a community
development approach to poverty reduction. In this book we are using the term
‘wicked problems’ to avoid the trap of thinking that the big global challenges can
ever be ‘resolved’ or designed out of existence and we have noted that seemingly
separate wicked problems – such as climate change and global poverty – interact
in some dangerous ways. The concept of adaptive capacity makes the link
between environmental challenges, such as climate change, and social problems,
such as entrenched poverty.
Discussion questions
1 What benefits can come from thinking of big global challenges as
‘wicked problems’ rather than as problems to be resolved?
2 Why has the world been slow to respond to consistent messages
emerging across the series of IPCC Assessment Reports since 1990?
3 Why do many climate scientists argue that history is becoming an
unreliable guide for what lies ahead and what is creating greater
uncertainty?
4 What do you think of Mike Hulme’s suggestion that climate change
presents major opportunities as well as threats for humanity?
5 What is wrong with prevailing thinking about how to measure and
reduce global poverty?
6 What is meant by a ‘community development’ approach to poverty
reduction?
7 What is meant by the term ‘adaptive capacity’?
8 Is it defeatist or useful to focus on adaptive capacity?
keY ReAdINGs
Hopkins, Rob (2008) The Transition Handbook: Creating Local Sustainable
Communities beyond Oil Dependency, Sydney: Finch Publishing.
Hulme, Mike (2009) Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding
Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
IPCC (2013) Fifth Assessment Report (www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/).
Mulligan, Martin. An Introduction to Sustainability : Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/latrobe/detail.action?docID=5103696.
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hIsToRY, keY CoNCePTs ANd oPeRATING PRINCIPLes68
Sachs, Wolfgang and Tilman Santarius (eds) (2007) Fair Future: Limited
Resources, Conflicts, Security and Global Justice, London: Zed Books.
Whitehead, Mark (2014) Environmental Transformations: A Geography of the
Anthropocene, London: Routledge.
Embracing uncertainty
Professor Mike Hulme was browsing in a bookshop when he decided to write
a book urging the world to let go of the desire for agreement on what to do
about global climate change. He had been trying to convince the world to take
more notice of climate change warnings – first as a long-standing member of
East Anglia University’s Climate Research Unit and then as the founding
director of the highly regarded Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
By 2008, however, he was beginning to despair about public debates that were
focusing on the accuracy, or otherwise, of climate science. Science, he noted
in his book, is all about performance and contestation. It is very unusual to find
the levels of consensus among scientists that have been reflected in the
climate change reports emanating from the IPCC, Hulme noted, so we have to
assume that human activity has changed the conditions in which we must live.
However, across the course of our long history on Planet Earth, human
societies have adapted to a wide array of climatic conditions and, indeed,
climates have played a big role in shaping the societies and cultures that have
evolved. In this sense, Hulme suggested, we need to think of climate as ‘not
merely a physical boundary for human action … [but a] more fluid, imaginative
condition for human existence’ (2009: 359).
Learning to live with more volatile climates will make us think more deeply
about what we value, Hulme stressed, and we can become more conscious of our
interactions with climate systems and with other forms of life on Earth. Describing
himself as a person with ‘orthodox Christian beliefs’ and ‘democratic socialist
political preferences’ (ibid.: xxxiv), Hulme called for more open conversations about
climate change which would enable us all to rethink our core values and beliefs in
a spirit of renewed tolerance. We have more capacity to adapt to change than we
tend to believe, Hulme argued, and for this reason climate change could become
as ‘an imaginative resource which can be made to work for us’ (ibid.: 359).
However, we have to get beyond thinking of it as a scientific or technical problem
to be solved; rather we have to ‘harness the full array of human sciences, artistic
and spiritual endeavours … civic and political pursuits’ (ibid.: 362).
Geographers, psychologists and political scientists have turned their
attention to the social, cultural and political challenges posed by the growing
realities of climate change (see Moser and Dilling 2007; Lever-Tracy 2010; Urry
2011; Whitmarsh et al. 2011). Mostly they have been focusing on ways of
moving from fear to action and on ways of talking about the challenges that
might engage the public more fully. Sociologist John Urry (2011) has suggested
that social scientists have been slow to grapple with the problems of fossil fuel
dependency, imaging that this was not within their domain. We now have to use
th
em
at
ic
e
ss
ay
Mulligan, Martin. An Introduction to Sustainability : Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest
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GLoBAL ChALLeNGes As wICked PRoBLeMs 69
NoTes
1 Hulme (2009: 364).
2 The term used for the title of an influential 2006 film about climate change
narrated by former US Vice President Al Gore.
3 See www.worldwatch.org/node/81
4 Ibid.
5 The OECD report was entitled Growing Unequal (www.oecd.org/els/
soc/41527936.pdf).
our imagination to contemplate the possibilities of various kinds of catastrophes,
on the one hand, but also the possibilities of ‘post-carbon’ societies, on the other.
To move in the latter direction, Urry argued, we need to work out how to ‘embed’
low carbon systems within a wide array of social contexts (ibid.: 160).
Imagination will play a big role in enabling us to deal with climate change
impacts and put in place new low-carbon systems. In this regard we might take
our lead from people who have particular skills in imagining what it might be like
to face up to previously unimagined challenges; people such as creative writers,
visual artists, film-makers. The Nobel Prize-winning writer J. M. Coetzee has said
that fiction writers commonly imagine how humans might manage to deal with
deep physical or moral challenges and he suggested that this is achieved through
‘pure writerly attentiveness, pure submission to the experiences of a world which,
through being submitted to in a state close to spiritual absorption, becomes
transfixed, real’ (cited in Lamb 2010: 177). Those of us living in relatively
comfortable western societies can learn a lot about adaptability and resilience
from the experiences of people living within poor communities. For example,
living poor in the Indian city of Mumbai must be one of the biggest challenges of
all and the beautifully written novels of Rohinton Mistry (Such a Long Journey,
1991; A Fine Balance, 1995; Family Matters, 2002) take the reader on an
emotional roller-coaster ride through the depths of despair and the triumphs of
the human spirit. Ultimately there is something wonderful about the capacity
of some humans to cope with adversity in all its guises.
Mulligan, Martin. An Introduction to Sustainability : Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/latrobe/detail.action?docID=5103696.
Created from latrobe on 2020-12-19 15:39:56.
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Mulligan, Martin. An Introduction to Sustainability : Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/latrobe/detail.action?docID=5103696.
Created from latrobe on 2020-12-19 15:39:56.
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