I'm going to explain "Opportunity Space and Climate Resilient Pathways", which I was going to write an explanation for yesterday but fell asleep (^^;). My explanation also shows the connection between the SDG wedding cake and planned contingency theory.
Today's world is affected by multiple stressors, including climate change. Divided into biophysical and social, stressor examples include climate change, land-use change, ecosystem degradation, poverty and inequality, and cultural factors. We believe that there is a resilience space between biophysical and social stressors to live our lives. This figure fits with the wedding cake of the SDGs as conceived by the Stockholm Resilience Centre. No society is greater than its environment. If the environment is destroyed, the society becomes uninhabitable, as can be seen from the fact that very few people live in desert areas. Similarly, social stress is defined as stress from within; in the SDGs' wedding cake, the economy is the engine that sustains society, and no economy is greater than society. The fact that economic activity cannot work in a world where society has broken down can be seen in the fact that companies cannot grow properly in conflict zones.
There is an opportunity space between the present and possible future worlds, and there are decision-making points at critical points. Pathways exist to connect these decision-making points. Throughout the opportunity space, successes and failures in action are repeated as we move towards the future. The original idea behind this is adaptive decision making, where the key is to deal with uncertainty by making decisions at multiple points rather than thinking about the future all at once. It is a simple creature like a cockroach, going haphazardly without much thought, maybe more resilient. Rather than planning our lives backwards from the future, as in the Franklin Planner, this approach is more like Planned Happenstance Theory: we take action, find opportunities, and set out on a new path. The only difference between a cockroach and us is that we have a direction we want to go to. If you don't know what direction you want to go, go in the direction you don't want to go. That's what climate change resilience is all about - not moving towards a fossil fuel-dependent society that will strangle us in the future or wasting money building dams where there will be no water at all.
By going down the climate-resilient green pathway of opportunity space, we will have a resilient world with fewer biophysical and social stressors than we have now.
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