Climate Change in the Great Lakes Region: Navigating an Uncertain Future

The Contextual Importance of Uncertainty in Climate-Sensitive Decision-Making: Toward an Integrative Decision-Centered Screening Tool

179 The Contextual Importance of Uncertainty in ClimateSensitive Decision Making Toward an Integrative DecisionCentered Screening Tool SUSANNE MOSER As human-induced climate change is increasingly accepted as fact, and decision makers begin to grapple seriously with the policy and management implications, climatic changes have the potential to become relevant to decision making; but the challenges of effectively linking science to policymaking and management practice are real and difficult to overcome. While uncertainties in climate change projections matter in important ways to those who must design and decide on mitigation policies, this paper focuses on the relevance of uncertainty to resource and land management at various levels of governance that addresses adaptation. Clearly, decision makers in the Great Lakes region at local, state, and regional levels will face precisely such challenges. This then raises several important questions , including: • In what ways can climate change science support adaptation decision making? • When and to what extent does uncertainty in climate change projections matter to decision makers concerned with adaptation challenges? • How do we frame—and contain—the amount and type of uncertainty analysis that matters for the decisions at hand? 180| Susanne Moser • What do decision makers need to know about scientific uncertainties in order to account for them appropriately in their decisions? These types of questions force us to link and integrate scientific advances forged on uncertainty assessments within weather forecasts, climate variability and change projections, and impact analyses with those made in the understanding of the role of science in practical decision- and policymaking . Echoing a vast body of literature1 and experience, the ultimate goal of such an integrative effort is to ensure that scientific information effectively connects with the needs of decision makers as they begin to address adaptation questions.2 Importantly, this integrative work must shift the focus to the decision maker, the decision-making process, and the relevance of weather and climate information—and specifically the relevance of obtaining information about uncertainty in climate research. The objective then is to develop a systematic approach to determining where and when uncertainty matters: Where is the decision-making environment particularly sensitive to uncertainty in the information provided? Is it useful and necessary to produce an “end-to-end” characterization of uncertainty (e.g., from emissions scenarios to model uncertainties, to climate sensitivity, to climate impacts to vulnerability and adaptation or mitigation policy options), and if so, when should it be produced? And if not, what do decision makers need to constructively and appropriately take climate change into account in their decisions? This chapter proposes such a systematic approach and illustrates it with examples relevant to the Great Lakes region. The approach has been tested already in a case study of adaptation decisions in coastal management in California, but additional testing in “real-world” contexts would help strengthen it and prove its broad utility. The following sections begin with a conceptual discussion of the usefulness and fit of scientific information in the decision-making process, present the basic premises and objectives of the proposed approach, and then lay it out in a way that is cognizant of the decision process and of the constraints that decision makers face. Along the way, the chapter offers examples to illustrate the meaning and application of the approach. Suggestions for testing the approach further are also made, before concluding with an appraisal of its potential usefulness and limits. The ultimate hope is that the proposed tool will give scientists and decision makers a procedure to identify those instances where (even uncertain) science can most effectively support decision making. The Contextual Importance of Uncertainty| 181 THE USEFULNESS OF SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION IN THE DECISIONMAKING PROCESS Science that aims to support decision making must pass—at the very least— the usefulness test. Additional important criteria that need to be met in order for the science/decision-making interaction to work effectively have been identified. These criteria include salience or relevance, credibility (which Jones, Fischhoff, and Lach (1999) include indirectly in their usefulness criteria), legitimacy of process (Moser 1997; Gieryn 1999; Cash 1998; GEA Project 1997; Mitchell et al. 2006; Cash and Moser 2000), and efficacy (again, included under the rubric of “usefulness” by Jones et al. 1999). As many recent studies and reviews have found, there is no clear, natural, or easy fit between the world of research and that of decision making (figure 1a) (e.g., NRC 2009).3 Instead, in most instances...