Elements of Change 1994: Social Science and Global Change Surprises

Social Science and Global Change Surprises

B. L. Turner

Clark University, School of Geography

Worcester, Massachusetts

Drawing upon his recent review of the social science literature on the topic of global-change surprises, Turner summarized the findings of several major studies by social scientists. Although researchers are well aware of the existence of surprises, they continue to base social science models on aggregated averages and pay scant attention to surprise-rich scenarios. As Harvey Brooks (1986, 326) observes

"The focus on surprise-free models and projections is not the result of ignorance or reductionism so much as of the lack of practically usable methodologies to deal with discontinuities and random events. The multiplicity of conceivable surprises is so large and heterogeneous that the analyst despairs of deciding where to begin, and instead proceeds in the hope that in the longer sweep of history, surprises and discontinuities will average out, leaving smoother long-term trends that can be identified in retrospect and can provide a basis for reasonable approximations to the future."

It is important to recognize that a very large literature exists on the typologies of surprise and uncertainty as well as on the philosophy or perspectives with which to deal with the phenomena in the abstract. The majority of this work comes from the interdisciplinary field of risk-hazard studies. Turner focuses here not on that literature, but on the efforts that actually forecast or provide scenarios of surprise. This literature is far smaller, indeed sparse in specifics from the expert community. There are two classes of work: big picture scenarios and specific surprises. The studies rarely distinguish uncertainty from surprise.

Brooks (1986) identifies three general types of surprises:

unexpected discrete event (e.g., Three Mile Island)
discontinuities in long-term trends (e.g., stagflation in OECD in 1970s)
the sudden emergence into political consciousness of new information (e.g., ozone hole and CFCs)

Surprising Futures (Svedin and Aniannsm, 1987) the report of a meeting convened by the Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research in 1987, outlines four potentially surprising future scenarios:

The Big Shift The center of the world economy moves to the Orient and South Asia. The Western World stagnates in population and economic activity.
The Big Load A world of 20 billion people emerges at relatively high standards of living in terms of energy use and agricultural production.
History Lost Science loses its dominance and stagnates. Data, etc. are lost as well as lessons from the past. World becomes fragmented and localized.
Hope Regained - World population is far less than expected. Current developed world moves to environmentally sensitive behavior. Much of the South increases significantly in economic development by focusing on the small scale.

A report (Toth et al. 1989) from a meeting at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) details the following potential sources of surprise:

Population

Sources of surprise likely to be in the key determinants of population growth (e.g., fertility) as well as the consequences of such growth.

Energy

Important countries move to "soft" energy sources (Lovins)
the impact of urbanization on LDC energy use
increase in primary energy use due to electrification
decision not to use nuclear power
decision of producers not to meet demand
frequent TMI-type incidents
price shocks

General

North-South economic distinctions remain
technology does not allow a three- to four-fold increase in energy use
unknown environmental feedbacks

Turner also alluded to C.S. Holling's observation (1986) that "surprises occur when causes turn out to be sharply different than was conceived, when behaviors are sharply unexpected, and when action produces a result opposite to that intended - in short, when perceived reality departs qualitatively from expectation." Turner also noted how quickly the critical issues change: only 3-4 of the 31 problems identified in the Study of Critical Enrvironmental Problems (SCEP 1977) are still on the agenda. (Surprise!)

Key for future work, other than improved methods of dealing with surprise and uncertainty, is to provide a more rigorously devised and expansive list of surprises for the expert community. Turner's work with agricultural experts leads to a more pessimistic view about the promise of technological breakthroughs having a large impact on increasing global food supplies.

References

Brooks, Harvey, "The Typology of Surprises in Technology, Institution, and Development," in Sustainable Development of the Biosphere, 1986.

Svedin, Uno and Britt Aniansson, Surprising Futures, Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research, 1987.

Toth, Scenarios of Socioeconomic Development for studies of Global Environmental Change: A Critical Review, edited by Toth et al., 1989