A Safe Governance Space for Humanity: Necessary Conditions for the Governance of Global Catastrophic Risks

Abstract

The world faces a multiplicity of global catastrophic risks (GCRs), whose functionality as individual and collective complex adaptive networks (CANs) poses unique problems for governance in a world that itself comprises an intricately interlinked set of CANs. Here we examine necessary conditions for new approaches to governance that consider the known properties of CANs-especially that small changes in one part of the system can cascade and amplify throughout the system and that the system as a whole can also undergo rapid, dramatic, and often unpredictable change with little or no warning.

Sustainability: We need to focus on overall system outcomes rather than simplistic targets

“…'Adaptive governance' is the key (Walker et al, 2010). In terms of governance for sustainability, it rests on five supporting pillars (Fisher & Sandberg, 2022):…”

“…‘Adaptive governance’ is the key (Walker et al., 2010). In terms of governance for sustainability, it rests on five supporting pillars (Fisher & Sandberg, 2022): Recognition that global catastrophic risks, individually and collectively, are linked in complex network where perfect certainty and control are not achievable and sudden, system‐wide change is an ongoing possibility; Integrated monitoring and action for global threats; Flexible, rapid decision‐making on timescales that reflect the behaviour of the system; Cooperation and coordination to make and implement those decisions; Investment in resilience and preparedness for situations when change becomes inevitable. …”

“…In practice, however, most global threats are inter dependent, linked together in a complex network of cause and effect, action and reaction, multiple feedback loops and runaway chain reactions (Fisher & Sandberg, 2022). This interdependence means that the achievement of one target may actually be at the expense of other targets.…”

Characteristic processes of human evolution caused the Anthropocene and may obstruct its global solutions

“…Recent meta-analysis supports multiple causal connections between resource interactions and war [110]. In their evaluation of the global catastrophic risks (GCRs) facing humanity, Fisher & Sandberg [111] counted 15 of 18 GCRs as anthropogenic—they believe humanity may face more categories of risk from its own actions than from any external source. Thus, path B could lead to biosphere collapse in the short term or extinction in the very long term (figure 2, upper left).…”

“…We do not propose building policy solely from a new and untested theory. However, our mechanistic framework is an improvement over calls for a ‘crisis discipline’ of global collective behaviour [133] and GCR research [5,111], which have lacked mechanistic theory. Other theories of human evolution should be similarly explored.…”