Adaptation Strategies for Risk and Uncertainty: The Role of an Interdisciplinary Approach Including Natural and Human Sciences

Abstract

The human and social response in Eastern Siberia to possible changes induced by global warming is the main theme of the Research Institute for Humanities and Nature (RIHN) Siberia Project. This presentation explains why we must use an interdisciplinary approach including natural science and human sciences to tackle this theme.

The behavior of local society and ordinary people, especially indigenous peoples, is not always based on knowledge of modern natural science, but rather on local empirical knowledge or social norms. The latter may have been collected, conceptualized, and investigated by human and social scientists. Such empirical knowledge and social rules have rarely been the product of theoretical thinking or optimal design, but of an accumulation of tacit knowledge inductively attained and tested through interactions with other people in one society, among different societies, and the natural environment, in a trial-and-error manner over time. If the effectiveness of such knowledge and rules has been tested only within the range of past environmental change, then we cannot be certain of their effectiveness and applicability in the future, especially in relation to possible climate changes associated with global warming or to major changes in the social environment (for example, in demography). In other words, empirical knowledge can be interpolated but not extrapolated.

In comparison, natural sciences such as mathematics and physics have a wider range of applicability and extrapolatability. Even in novel case settings, we can simulate possible situations. When we execute a simulation, however, we must determine the range and step of time and space. At such times, natural scientists usually want to establish consistency and fit with empirically observed data. As a result, they pay attention only to the interpolation of known phenomena and exclude the possibility of never-experienced or unexpected phenomena.

To enhance a society’s capacity to adapt, we must encourage all scientists to take the risk of extrapolation. Natural scientists need not propose an accurate expectation in a strictly limited setting, but should clarify the range of oscillation of nature and indicate the possibility of new phenomena appearing outside it. Human and social scientists should investigate whether local knowledge includes any insight into the appearance of new phenomena.