Do we underestimate the complexity of risks? On March 7, 2008, a Tällberg Conversation was held to explore the global landscape of increasingly complex and interacting risks. The meeting was an opportunity to take part in an evening conversation that did not have a set agenda, but the purpose was rather to open the floor to different perspectives, ideas and questions.
The entry-point of the conversation was the fundamental change in how risks emerge, as a result of the increasingly complex interactions between ecological, economic and political systems. The importance of the topic was highlighted in an update on the most recent scientific findings on the state of the eco-systems. It became clear that scientific knowledge has now in a very short time reached far beyond the facts presented in the IPCC – and it shows that we are in a much more dangerous state than we have earlier thought. Especially, the long term feed-back mechanisms, such as the diminishing CO2 absorption capacity of biospheres and oceans, are likely to have an immense but yet unforeseen impact.
Business and finance, while coming up against the limits of ecosystem, are facing more immediate risks in the form of pressure from customers, other stakeholders and media.
At the same time the funds available for new investments have never been larger – the size of oil investment funds are magnitudes larger than e.g. the Swedish GDP. Is it utopian or within reach to imagine that some of those funds could be directed into sustainable solutions?
The great political challenge we are facing is that our greatest global challenges are being subject to political debates where short term interests and detailed arguments dominate the real challenges. History has shown that the areas where agreements have de-politicized potential grounds of conflicts, cooperative processes work well. Can we treat the question of a planet in prosperity and equity as a technical issue and not a political one?
As the conversation progressed, strong needs were expressed for institutions and functioning global agreements, regulations as well as “rules of the game” – for a new kind of game, and the need for processes that can help a critical mass of leaders develop and act according to new insights.
Out of the requests for a new institutional leadership emerged reflections on us as humanity and on our own attitudes, responsibilities and actions. It is not enough to talk about what leaders should do – we need to start ask ourselves what we can do as leaders. We need to enter into the difficult questions, and to take on the challenges we do not want to take.
In a world of uncertainty, we are trying to calculate only the known risks. And we cling to the notion of sustainability, in the hope that it will offer stability. But a sustainable society – one where today’s uncertainties should be replaced by manageable risks – is not within reach if we only try to make the current trajectory of development as stable as possible.
As the poet Tomas Tranströmer put it: “So much we have to trust to be able to live our daily day without sinking through the earth … The quintet of string players say that we can trust in something else”
The conversation was set off by contributions from Peter Norman (CEO of the Seventh Swedish Pension Fund), Johan Rockström (Executive director of Stockholm Environment Institute) and Peter Wallensteen (Dag Hammarskjöld Professor of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University), who presented financial, ecological and political angles to the overarching question. All participants in the group provided their perspectives, which created a broad explorative discussion with a variety of views.