We like to think the future can be predicted, uncertainty eradicated, and that risk can be managed and controlled. But what if this approach to uncertainty doesn't work, never has, and never will? Ian Scoones argues our current technocratic frameworks for managing uncertainty fail to account for the complexities of our world. Instead, we should embrace uncertainty, and learn from people who live with it, to take a more flexible approach to decision-making and resilience.

Uncertainties are everywhere. Climate change, financial volatility, new technologies, pandemics, disasters. Uncertainties frame our lives. But what are the implications of taking uncertainty seriously, embracing it rather than trying to ignore it?

We are currently stuck in a linear, mechanistic, technocratic risk-based paradigm that fails to address the enormous complexity of today’s turbulent world. This is problematic, and sometimes dangerous. We often act as if our world can be predicted and understood in its totality. But what if the world is dominated by uncertainty and complexity, not risk and stability? What if the modernist systems - of formalised planning, risk management, control systems and so on - just don’t work, and never will? As I argue in my new book, we need to rethink our approach.

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Distinguishing risk and uncertainty

How then should we understand uncertainty and distinguish it from risk? Drawing on the work of Andy Stirling, a simple framework shows how risk is where the probabilities of both outcomes and their likelihoods are known, or can be calculated and predicted, while uncertainty is where likelihoods are unknown, even if we know the potential outcomes. Conditions of uncertainty – and indeed ignorance, where don’t know what we don’t know - are by far the most common situations we encounter in policy and practice, and indeed in daily life. Such knowledge conditions are not amenable to simple risk management.

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Whilst embracing uncertainties can open up debate, requiring deliberation amongst different knowledges and diverse publics, this may be unsettling for those in power, despite the obvious futility of control.

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The problem is that currently, most approaches tend to close down to risk, assuming that futures can be predicted, managed and controlled. For example, in many fields – from economic policy to pandemic response – we often rely on risk models. These are mathematical constructions of reality that attempt to provide a precise risk assessment, yet in practice uncertainty, even ignorance, prevail. What follows are plans, protocols, targets, metrics and, with these, liability law, insurance and so on. All seek closure around a risk-based solution. Such responses emerge through processes of justification, professionalisation and institutionalisation, deployed by those in power wishing to exert control.

Think of any situation where complex, variable situations are being managed, and the pressure to assume risk rather than uncertainty is strong. Whilst embracing uncertainties can open up debate, requiring deliberation amongst different knowledges and diverse publics, this may be unsettling for those in power, despite the obvious futility of control. Yet,  such risk-based framings and practices frequently push us dangerously into zones where knowledge of outcomes is assumed to be known; or at least thought to be able to be estimated, predicted or calculated.

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Opening up to uncertain knowledge: preparing for and responding to disasters

What though would an alternative be that opens up to uncertain knowledge, and accepts the complexities of a turbulent world? This, I argue, is a major challenge across policy and practice domains the world over.