Climate Change - a wicked problem?

"Wicked" you ask? Don't panic, this is not a continuation of my previous post regarding whether as inanimate object such as coal could be evil per se and I definitely haven't picked up the parlance of the youth, despite my daily exposure to the young and impressionable.

"Wicked problem" is a phrase coined by Rittel and Webber in 1973 and was originally used to describe an issue in public or planning policy. Summarised below are characteristics of a "wicked problem";

• it is difficult to define
• it has interdependencies and is multi-causal
• attempts to address it may result in adverse unforeseen circumstances
• it is often not stable
• it often does not have a clear solution
• it is socially complex
• it hardly ever sits conveniently with the responsibility of any one organisation
• it involves changing behaviour
• it may sometimes be characterised by chronic policy failure.

Unsurprisingly the majority of issues in the environmental and the greater sustainability space may be described as "wicked". For the curious, the same authors labelled those problems which although difficult could be solved in a systematic and somewhat linear way as "tame". A wit in our class today noted that if you love a challenge, you'd want all your problems to be "wicked" in the other sense of the vernacular..

"Wicked problems" need multi-faceted treatment from the variety of stakeholders (the literature likes to throw around the term "actors" - but after the fuss Cate Blanchett accidentally achieved, perhaps not appropriate in this case) and on-going attention. You manage an evolving wicked problem rather than ever truly solve it. The key challenge is successfully convincing everyone to make the right behavioural changes to make that difference. 

If that could be achieved in my lifetime, that would be truly "wicked"!!