Navigating Uncertainty – Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World

Some readers will have attended our recent conference on grounding and flourishing in an age of chaos, complexity and transformation. Unfortunately, Ian was unable to participate, but I will be talking to him about this important book next month. As he points out, uncertainty is ubiquitous, and must be navigated with an appropriate mindset. He argues that we need to adjust our modernist, linear, mechanistic, controlling, risk-management view since it is inadequate to our complex challenges, as other thinkers such as Bruno Latour have also argued. Each chapter contrasts a control-oriented, risk-based calculative approach – where we assume we know about and can manage the future – with a more flexible, practice-based approach that is responsive to uncertain conditions. (p. 2) Uncertainty is also at the heart of human creativity, as Ilya Prigogine observed in relation to dynamic open systems. Hence, taking uncertainty seriously means rethinking our world quite fundamentally.

One central aspect is the assumption that top-down, centralised, control-oriented responses are desirable for environmental global governance, which also presumes a potential return to normality and stability. The author notes that crises are in fact constructions of knowledge and narratives where our knowledge is necessarily incomplete, unsettled and indeterminate. Historical context is also crucial, and here he points out that experiences of empire and conquest help explain current crises and responses that follow. Colonialism was the first phase of globalisation. Four key factors are risk, uncertainty, ignorance, and ambiguity, while ways of knowing structure our responses, and these should be rooted in forms of solidarity, mutuality and care. The introduction usefully frames key themes and questions applied to each of the subsequent chapters.

The chapters deal with finance and markets as complex systems, technology, critical infrastructures, pandemics, disasters, and climate change. In each case, the quality of our analysis and thinking determines our responses, and the same inadequate patterns tend to recur. Uncertainty is endemic to life itself, so we need to open up to this rather than closing down to risk: a risk-free world is impossible, and an understanding of complex systems is essential. The author explains key lessons learned, especially with respect to policy and decision-making processes, as well as political and economic contexts. He provides a very useful table explaining how best to move from a risk-and-control paradigm to an uncertainty paradigm, highlighting its implications for the way we see and respond to an uncertain world. This is a key briefing, especially for policy makers.