Corridors of Clarity: Four Principles to Overcome Uncertainty Paralysis in the Anthropocene

Abstract Global environmental change challenges humanity because of its broad scale, long-lasting, and potentially irreversible consequences. Key to an effective response is to use an appropriate scientific lens to peer through the mist of uncertainty that threatens timely and appropriate decisions surrounding these complex issues. Identifying such corridors of clarity could help understanding critical phenomena or causal pathways sufficiently well to justify taking policy action. To this end, we suggest four principles: Follow the strongest and most direct path between policy decisions on outcomes, focus on finding sufficient evidence for policy purpose, prioritize no-regrets policies by avoiding options with controversial, uncertain, or immeasurable benefits, aim for getting the big picture roughly right rather than focusing on details.

• Publication year

  2020

• Venue

  BioScience

• Publication date

  2020-10-28

• Fields of study

  Geography, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1093/biosci/biaa115PMID 33376456PMCID 7750100
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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