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

Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change: Is Uncertain Information Usable Knowledge?

129 Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change Is Uncertain Information Usable Knowledge? WILLIAM E. EASTERLING, CLARK SEIPT, ADAM TERANDO, AND XIANZENG NIU The earth likely is committed to at least .° to .°C of future warming in response to historical atmospheric accumulations of greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of steps taken, if any, to mitigate future emissions (Karl and Trenberth 2003; IPCC 2007). Unabated future emissions will surely add even more warming and climate changes. The effects of future climate change, mitigated or not, on critical ecosystem services such as food production are predicted to require adaptation in order to avoid or minimize losses or seize gains (NRC 2001; Gitay et al. 2001). Adaptation to climate change is defined here as adjustment to or by ecosystems and society in response to climate stimuli and their impacts (Smit et al. 2000). Bradshaw et al. (this volume) posit that adaptation can take several forms along the lines of such attributes as proactive versus reactive (e.g., manipulation of trade policy versus change in existing on-farm tillage systems ), short versus long time scale (e.g., use of seasonal climate predictions versus investment in fundamental adaptive research), local versus national scale (e.g., farm-level soil and water conservation practices versus federal crop insurance policy), and technological versus institutional (e.g., implementation of irrigation infrastructure versus modification of groundwater management policy). The implicit goal of adaptation is to avoid damage to ecological and social form and function so as to maintain current ecological integrity and related social welfare. Although some researchers use the terms 130| Easterling, Seipt, Terando, and Niu mitigation and adaptation interchangeably to collectively identify actions to ameliorate climate change and the consequences thereof, they are kept distinct here where the focus is exclusively on adaptation as defined above. No matter what form adaptation takes, it will require a sustained stream of reliable information from the scientific community. That is, it will require usable knowledge in order to remain effective. Usable knowledge is accurate information that is useful to decision makers (Haas 2004). Haas argues that it has a number of qualifying traits: (1) it is tractable to its users—i.e., it can be practically applied; (2) it is credible—i.e., it is believed to be true; (3) it is legitimate—i.e., it is thought to derive from a valid scientific process; and (4) it is salient—i.e., its arrival is timely with respect to important policy or management decisions. One of the formidable challenges to the efficient exchange of usable knowledge about climate change adaptation between the research community and the managers, policymakers, and other stakeholders who would benefit from it is the large inherent uncertainty in that knowledge. Climate change is an uncertain science. Although great progress has been made toward pinpointing the sensitivity of the climate system to rising greenhouse gas concentrations, it is still expressed by scientists as a sizable range. But does that mean that uncertain information about climate change and potential adaptation strategies cannot, ipso facto, become usable knowledge ? We assert that the answer is an emphatic no. It is not reasonable to hold all scientific knowledge to a standard of indisputable fact in order for it to be considered usable knowledge. Were that not the case, then neither weather forecasts nor projected hurricane paths would graduate to become usable knowledge. However, it does follow that the scientific community has an obligation to make uncertainties explicit as a necessary condition for its findings to be transformed into usable knowledge, and to be attentive to issues of how uncertainty is processed in decision making, as reviewed by Marx and Weber (this volume) and Moser (this volume). The purpose of this chapter is to identify and characterize the major sources of uncertainty concerning the estimation of the effects of climate change on food security and the prospects for effective adaptation. For convenience, the sources of uncertainty are classified into three categories: fundamental, structural, and parametric. We include two case studies of research designed to illustrate the importance of unpacking the effect of scientific uncertainty on the adaptive process itself: the first examines the effect of path dependence on adaptation of crop production to climate change, and the second suggests a beginning discourse between scientists and farmers over the utility of climate forecasts. We consider uncertainties across the Agricultural Adaptation| 131 spectrum of biophysical and socioeconomic (and policy) knowledge needed for effective adaptation. The goal...