Climate Change Crises Are Manageable: the Scientific, Ethical and Policy Debates

Abstract

Climate change has been portrayed as a serious threat because of its irrevocable impacts affecting the entire world. Although these views underscore actual threats, their promulgation evokes fatalism and resignation. Reviewing some of the scientific and philosophical debates demonstrates that the impacts of climate change, although seriously threatening and dangerous, are in fact manageable. Pragmatic manageability is a perspective that integrates resilience, polycentrism and technical plurality in supporting a realistic optimism that has been embraced by communities demonstrating their growing resilience through strategies for adapting successfully to droughts, floods, fires, severe storms and unprecedented temperature extremes. Farmers and pastoralists in Africa and in South East Asia integrate peril and potential in their responses to the severe existential crises that climate changes impose throughout various geographic regions. Their successful adaptations are supported by recognising that both the threats and the solutions concerning climate change are issues of governance and innovation, not just consequences of environmental transformation.