Generic slides available for downloading Created by the CDMC team at UBC

Website overview Structured decision making in a climate context This website is designed as a resource to help guide wise decision making about climate change adaptation, with a focus on natural resource contexts. The goal is to provide information and examples to show how structured decision making (SDM) can help guide the thinking and actions of decision makers. Visitors can use this site to share useful concepts, strategies, case studies, and research findings related to SDM & climate change adaptation.

Who should use this website? This climate adaptation website is designed for decision makers and for people who work with them, including resource managers, stakeholders, and researchers.

Structured decision making overview Making good decisions in an environmental policy context is difficult because of the complexities in the issues at hand. It may not be clear how problems fraught with uncertainty will affect stakeholders. Structuring decisions can help overcome these challenges by breaking down difficult decisions in ways that can be acceptable to a broad range of individuals and groups. SDM is a term that refers to decision analysis often involving stakeholders (who provide value perspectives) and technical specialists (who provide technical perspectives). SDM can be readily described in terms of a series of steps or components (following Hammond, Keeney, Raiffa, 1998; and Clemen, 2004).

Structured decision making key steps 1.Identifying the problem: identify the decision to be analyzed & the decision context. 2.Objectives: brainstorm a list of objectives to meet under ideal conditions. 3.Performance measures: should both describe the objective and its consequences to help gauge progress over time and determine when objectives have been achieved. 4.Alternatives: should be robust to cope with a range of possible & uncertain outcomes. 5.Values: focusing on shared values of stakeholders can help guide decision making for difficult problems. 6.Consequences: consider the full range of outcomes for stakeholders and others associated with each alternative before making final decisions. 7.Value tradeoffs: Identifying tradeoffs can help decision makers evaluate alternatives.

Key themes of structured decision-making for climate change adaptation Climate Forecasts Irreducible Uncertainty Basic Structures of Uncertainties Vulnerabilities Adaptive Capacity Scenarios Adaptive Management & Robust Strategies Value of Information Robust Alternatives

Climate forecasts Climate forecasts are developed by using Global Circulation Models (GCMs), which is a mathematical representation of the physics driving climatic processes. The current GCMs typically link dynamic models of the atmosphere and the ocean so that the interactions between these two aspects of the climate system can be captured. Before they are used to predict future changes, models are carefully calibrated by tuning them until they are accurately able to predict past climate conditions.

Irreducible uncertainty Given the deep and irreducible uncertainties in the processes, rate, and implications of climate change, along with the many ethical and institutional complexities climate adaptation decisions entail, standard tools of policy analysis are often not up to the task (Cullen and Small, Morgan, et al Inadequacy editorial). “Deep” and “irreducible” uncertainty could be referred to by other terms such as ambiguity, model uncertainty, “Knightian” uncertainty or unknowable futures. In other words, the terms refer to situations in which standard use of probability to characterize uncertainty is profoundly challenging if not impossible, particularly for long term problems.

Basic structures of uncertainties All climate adaptation choices involve uncertainties about how fast and how much the climate will change, in terms of key variables such as average annual temperature, monthly precipitation and so forth. These climate uncertainties often interact with other uncertainties in other systems, such as the ecological or human response to a given level of climate change.

Vulnerabilities The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines vulnerability as “the degree to which geophysical, biological and socio-economic systems are susceptible to, and unable to cope with, adverse impacts of climate change” (Schneider et al. 2007, pp. 783). Assessing vulnerability is more complicated that merely assessing the potential impacts of climate change. Vulnerability is composed not only of the direct impacts of climate change on a variety of systems, but also our ability to deal with these impacts.

Adaptive capacity Adaptive capacity is an important concept to address when thinking about community vulnerability. Adaptive capacity is the “ability to design and implement effective adaptation strategies, or to react to evolving hazards and stresses so as to reduce the likelihood of the occurrence and/or the magnitude of harmful outcomes resulting from climate-related hazards” (Brooks, Adger et al. 2004). The most critical aspects are the ability to design strategies that will address the possible stresses facing a region and to implement plans based on these designs.

Scenarios Scenarios are a decision making tool that policy makers can use to model the range of possible consequences associated with particular actions or events. The European Environmental Agency explains that scenarios are “based on 'if-then' propositions” and are not intended to be used as predictions or forecasts. These stories can help decision makers explore assumptions; test hypotheses; and ultimately, develop robust strategies capable of managing the irreducible uncertainties of global environmental change. * The European Environmental Agency’s scenario product PRELUDE

Adaptive management & robust strategies Adaptive management at its simplest can be understood as ‘learning by doing’. It is an approach to resource management that uses management decisions as a tool to learn about ecosystem functioning. Adaptive management aims to identify and embrace uncertainty and use management actions as a process to learn more about the system.

Robust alternatives Some researchers have recently stressed the importance of seeking robust alternatives (which are reasonably effective and acceptable over a wide range of possible futures) as a response to deep and irreducible uncertainty. Alternatives that are judged robust in the short term and adaptive in the long term are likely to contribute to ecological (and social) resilience for climate change adaptation contexts.

Case studies included on website Case study #1: Climate Change Adaptation Planning in British Columbia: A Case Study Investigation of Ecosystem Management in Mount Robson Provincial Park This case study examines challenges of ecosystem management in Mt Robson Provincial Park in the context of the potential for climate change. The study looks at two distinct, but related SDM processes for Mt Robson Provincial Park. –The first SDM process can be characterized as the requirement to manage long-term forest ecosystem and disturbance regimes within the Park in the context of climate change. –The second SDM process is a prescribed fire options assessment exercise undertaken in a workshop setting by the Mt. Robson Ecosystem Working Group.

For more detail please visit our website climate-decisions.org

Acknowledgments The climate-decisions.org project is concerned with decision-aiding for forestry, fisheries, and biodiversity preservation decisions in the Pacific Northwest, given irreducible uncertainties concerning climate change. It is part of the UBC component of the Climate Decision Making Center at Carnegie Mellon University, which is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).

For more information General Inquiries Tim McDaniels, Professor, Institute Director Tel: Fax: Address Institute of Resources and Environment, School of Community and Regional Planning Rm 428, Lasserre Building 6333 Memorial Road Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z2