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Global Environmental Change, Resilience, and Sustainable Outcomes
However, each of these practices also introduces vulnerabilities that may not be
apparent until a substantial period of time has passed or the region experiences
what would not otherwise be a disastrous environmental stress.
Humans are probably best known as creators of new technologies and
built environments to meet the challenges they face. Terraces to improve
agriculture on slopes, levees to keep modest rises in river levels from flooding
homes and fields, and the more recent use of chemicals to combat pests
and competing plants all produce clear advantages but also lead to unintended
consequences. For example, terraces require continual labor inputs and inhibit
mobility, levees allow more construction in floodplains that may be disastrous
in extreme events when the river overtops them, and the heavy use of formerly
effective chemicals can either have deleterious side effects or cause the pests
to evolve into chemical-resistant strains. This is an important lesson for those
currently considering technological versus social solutions to the threats posed
by accelerating climate change. Finally, what may be the most subtle contradictions
arise from the establishment of social institutions—both informal rules
and more formal organizations—to take advantage of, and continue to manage,
environmental opportunities and threats. The case studies point out how
various institutions that emerged to derive benefits from local environmental
conditions often stagnated or were at an inappropriate scale to continue as a
positive force once the environment and society had changed.
The objective of recategorizing these adaptive strategies is to situate
the insights that have emerged from the case histories of particular human
responses to sudden environmental changes as reflective of the more universal
issue of human decision-making as it led to the success or failure of societies.
There are any number of specific reasons societies have stagnated, diminished,
or ceased to exist as a cultural unit; but, as Jared Diamond suggests, all of these
cases had one common thread: a failure within the decision-making process.
Diamond sees four basic reasons for these failures that can also be seen in the
case studies reported here: failing to anticipate the problem, not recognizing
the problem, not trying to solve it, and, if recognizing the problem and trying
to solve it, not responding in a timely or appropriate manner (2005: 221).
From the case studies, two other insights can be added. First, many human
responses to environmental changes are intended to introduce adjustments or
buffering that allow the society to weather the more frequent smaller-scale and
smaller-intensity events that must be confronted on decadal or more frequent
timescales; by doing so the responses often introduce serious vulnerabilities
to the less frequent but devastating extreme events. Second and related to the
first, most human decision-making appears to be designed to enhance shortterm
opportunities and minimize risks to frequent or short-term threats, with
little attention to the long-term implications of these actions or to how to deal
with opportunities and threats that only become apparent after a long time. It
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