Title: Unintended Consequences: Unknowable and Unavoidable, or Knowable and Unforgivable?
Abstract
- Paraphrase
- there are multiple environmental limits within which humanity can safely operate,
- potential negative outcomes of seemingly positive actions need to accounted for.
- “nexus” research is consistent with the above
- it recognizes the integrated and interactive nature of water, energy and food systems,
- and aims to understand the broader implications of developments in any one of these systems.
- This article presents a novel framework for categorizing such detrimental unintended consequences, based upon:
- how much is known about the system in question
- and the scope for avoiding any such unintended consequences.
- The framework comprises four categories:
- Knowable and Avoidable
- Knowable and Unavoidable
- Unknowable and Avoidable
- Unknowable and Unavoidable
- The categories are explored with reference to examples in both:
- the water-energy-food nexus and
- planetary boundary frameworks.
- The examples:
- highlight the potential for the unexpected to happen and
- explore dynamic nature of the situations that give rise to the unexpected.
- The article concludes with guidance on how the framework can be used
- to increase confidence that best efforts have been made to navigate our way toward
- secure and sustainable water, energy and food systems,
- avoiding and/or managing unintended consequences along the way.
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- This paper is principally about
- progress traps,
- how they emerge,
- their characteristics
- as they morph through the knowability / avoidability matrix
- and how we might predict and mitigate them in the future