Exploring the Scope of Public and Private Responsibility, Article Review Example

This article discusses a framework for balancing the responsibility for adaptation to climate change between public and private sectors.  While Government has largely been responsible for planning for adjustment related courses of action to cope with climate change, it is pointed out that by sharing responsibilities the resources of all segments of society can be fully utilized.  From this article I learned about the contextual factors may help or hinder efforts to adapt to climate change.  For example, the article describes flood risk management responsibility in the Netherlands and in the U.S.  In the Netherlands the Government is responsible for flood risk management since its structure is such that it ensures safety and guarantees equal protection for all of its citizens.  In contrast, the U.S. has a system where individuals and businesses are largely responsible for buying their own flood insurance policies and assuming responsibility for risk management.  Thus, the context of the situation determines who has responsibility for which aspects of flood risk management.

A quote I found to be particularly interesting is as follows:

An obvious strategy to reduce uncertainty is to generate more knowledge through climate predictions, scenario building, etc., although this strategy is increasingly contested for adaptation.  Instead, it is argued that we should focus on coping with uncertainties by designing flexible and reversible adaptation strategies that can accommodate different futures and can be quickly adapted as new understanding becomes available (pg. 311).

The reason I think this quote is interesting is because instead of just trying to identify stop gap measures that may not help relieve uncertainty it focuses on utilizing coping skills to deal with uncertainty.  By giving the public the ability to cope adaptively with uncertainty this factor won’t continue to get in the way of functioning and adjusting to newly learned or unanticipated information.  There will always be uncertainty in the world and it is unlikely that we will be able to perfectly predict the process and outcomes of process change.  By learning to better cope with these uncertainties we will better be able to handle what we cannot predict without it preventing us from continue to address climate change.

After reading this article one thing I still wonder about is who will ultimately be capable of making decisions that are followed regarding the responsibilities that should be assumed by each public or private sector.  When the decision making body is ultimately one of the stakeholders, any decisions they make may be seen as unfairly biased towards them in establishing the greatest amount of control with the smallest amount of effort and cost necessary.  Without there being a neutral body available for making these types of decisions regarding climate control it is hard to understand how there can ever be a universally followed policy.  Additionally, this paradox will be repeated in each country and since each nation will have a different starting point the answers found in one nation will be unlikely to generalize to the needs of another country.

The manner in which the government, business and society interact is emphasized in this article by examining the juridical, economic and political arenas as they relate to adaptation to climate change.  The Government represents juridical considerations by passing laws and regulations to manage the public-private divide.  Business represents economic considerations by managing the balance between cost and benefits. Society represents the political arena by focusing on reciprocity in the private sector and through individual policy networks.  These three sectors compete to establish fairness and equity for their own sector while minimizing cost and maximizing benefits.