Climate refugees are most often treated as if they were victims unable to adapt to the climate changes occurring in their region. They play the role of “canaries in a coal mine”, signalling the rest of the World what is to come. We should instead recognize that emigrating is a legitimate adapting strategy to climate change, and that climate refugees are far from being victims without any capacity to act. Displaced populations are only one aspect of the problem. We need to better understand the conditions that lead to the decision to either stay or leave an affected region.
Policy making in UK is currently making the headlines because of its very aggressive spending cuts program. I’m not going to speak about politics here, but about scientific models that should play a pivotal role in the design of any successful policies. The role that science could play in policy making is most often overshadowed by political dogmas. I believe that many important questions of society would be better addressed if data and predictive models were more widely used. Here are four examples from the ECCS 2010 conference in Lisbon.
Applications of complex systems theory in policy making
“Intervention and Policy Making in Complex Socio-Economic and Technical Systems”
What is the resource that most companies are desperate to get their share of: oil, food, human power? Well, did you ever think of our own minds? Our minds are solicited nowadays by tons of information per day. We cannot pay attention to all of them. Consumer products, politics, activists and media want desperately to get their “mindshare”, and I don’t even speak about the attention sought by our friends and family. Mindshare is a limited and highly valued resource, its negotiation is the object of a new economy, the Mind Economy. But if you are let’s say a teenager, fan of Justin Bieber, and want to become influential, how can you compete and get a bit of the public’s mindshare?
Complex Systems Theory could help us predict public’s opinions. The applications are endless and rather scary, e.g. media manipulation for political control or commercial gains. On the other hand, these researches could also explain us how we interact in a society, and maybe in which conditions social change is possible. It is in any case necessary for the general public to become aware of these new techniques. If not, nothing will refrain their use for the benefit of a few. Here are three examples from the ECCS 2010 conference in Lisbon. (I have edited the paper introductions in order to make them more accessible.)
