PIK Biennial Report 2000-2001 - Potsdam Institute for Climate ...

Completed Projects
QUESTIONS
Qualitative Dynamics of Syndromes and Transition to Sustainability
Project leader: Gerhard Petschel-Held
PIK project members: Martin Cassel-Gintz, Matthias
Lüdeke, Fritz Reusswig, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber.
Rationale
Global change results from a manifold of processes,
ranging from climate change on the global scale to local
processes like land-use decisions or community policies.
Within the syndromes approach this variety of processes
is clustered into patterns which represent new entities
for analysing global change (Figure 1)..
Fig. 1: Syndrome approach: global and local processes of global
change are clustered into typical functional patterns.
Syndrome Diagnosis
In 1996 the German Advisory Council on Global
Change (WBGU) proposed a set of 16 syndromes. This
set represented the basis for the work within the QUES-
TIONS project, seven syndromes being analysed in
greater detail. One example, the analysis of the FAVELA
SYNDROME, is depicted in Figure 2.
Syndrome Coupling
Individual syndromes describe major processes of Global
Change. Yet the processes of each syndrome might
induce or reinforce each other. Deforestation, for example,
is often initiated by profit-oriented timber exploitation
(OVEREXPLOITATION SYNDROME) which opens up
the forest and entails in-migration of farmers (SAHEL
and DUST-BOWL SYNDROME). This leads to an
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enhanced endangerment of forests, the assessment of
which is depicted in Figure 3.
Fig. 2: The FAVELA SYNDROME describes the socio-ecological
degradation through uncontrolled urban growth and development.
Map (a) in the central panel shows the countries where the
syndrome occurred during the 1980s and early 1990s. Due to data
gaps, however, high uncertainties exist. These are mapped out in
bottom panel. For countries coloured in blue no data exist.
Fig. 3: Threat to the world’s forests through syndrome coupling
as sketched by the successor graph. The assessments of the intensity
and disposition of the syndromes involved are combined to
compute an upper and a lower bound for the threat by coupled
processes of land-use change (yellow: low threat; red: high
threat).