When is transformation a viable policy alternative?

Highlights

• Some policy problems will be complex and lie outside of previous experience.

• Transformation could help manage such problems, but is poorly understood.

• We draw on an existing typology to determine where transformation could be useful.

• Improved understanding could emerge from long-term monitoring and evaluation.

Abstract

The most common response to change by societies is either to take incremental steps and maintain the current system or accept gradual partial change. Yet, given the current and future complex large-scale challenges like climate change, such responses are increasingly inadequate. Calls are now made for societies to implement transformative approaches in order to manage complex problems in a more sustainable and adaptive manner. However, the discussion around transformative change is still emerging and it is not clear as to what transformation means, how it can be evaluated, and how the conceptions of transformation fit within the current understanding of dealing with policy problems in practice. This paper explores the range of current understandings on transformation and its characteristics, and uses Handmer and Dovers’ (2007, 2009, 2013) three-staged typology to investigate different approaches to identifying and managing policy problems and the potential scope for transformation. Examples from policy and practice within disaster risk management are used to demonstrate how different management approaches attempt to deal with particular problems and to investigate to what extent these could be transformative. It is argued that not all transformation is positive and welcome, and that greater focus needs to be placed on how complex problems are managed in a manner that enables long-term positive transformation.

Introduction

Changing climatic conditions are bringing numerous challenges to policy and practice across all sectors (Handmer et al., 2012, Mechler and Bouwer, 2014). These challenges include for example increases in extreme events such as shifts in fire regimes due to increased drought conditions (Pausas and Fernández-Muñoz, 2012), extreme fire weather (Grose et al., 2014), extreme water deficits (Sippel and Otto, 2014), and extreme temperatures and heat waves (Hansen et al., 2012). The heatwaves in Europe in 2003 (Feuensenger, 2012, Larsen, 2006) and Russia in 2010 (Gallant, 2010) both broke temperature records and exposed multiple simultaneous vulnerabilities across service networks and economic sectors. In 2010, NOAA National Climatic Data Center reported a range of extreme events across the globe, many which displayed increases in magnitude (NOAA National Climatic Data Center, 2010). Australia has broken its heatwave records first in 2013 and now in 2014 prompting discussion on the kinds of societal changes more intense and frequent heatwaves will pose to the society (Frew, 2014). Hence, policy problems in a variety of areas are likely to display increasingly complex features and lie outside of previous experience (O’Neill and Handmer, 2012, Preston et al., 2013).

Yet, while the evidence for climatic regime shifts is accelerating (IPCC, 2014), societies tend to respond to pressures to change mostly through incremental steps, which focus on maintaining the current system or accepting gradual partial change (Handmer and Dovers, 2009, Handmer and Dovers, 2013). Part of this problem lies in the human experience as Patt et al. (2010, p. 385) note: “Human society is inexperienced at trying to steer itself, deliberatively and quickly, in fundamentally new directions”. In terms of risk management, organisations can be quite rigid in their management regimes and “the capacity to respond quickly and appropriately, once emergent signs are noted, often seems to be restricted” (Barnes et al., 2007, p. 9). As Kasperson (2011, p. 435) also remarks, “societies and decision-makers proceed on basic management or technological courses that accumulate over time. Major shifts away from these well-established developmental paths generally require either major risk events or incremental decisions made over long periods of time”. There are exceptions to this view, but they are few.

While institutions and agencies have developed and adhered to particular approaches over time to manage policy problems (Handmer and Dovers, 2013), the way the nature of policy problems is now changing has invoked thinking around which management approaches are sufficient and where transformative change, both in practices and perceptions, is necessary to respond more effectively to evolving complexity in the scope and scale of issues (Kates et al., 2012, O’Brien, 2012, Park et al., 2012, Pelling, 2011, Preston, 2013). Transformation is championed partly due to the urgency to change development pathways to adapt to climate change (Hallegatte, 2009; IPCC, 2014), and the accompanying increasing number of disasters associated with extreme weather and climate events (IPCC, 2012, Preston, 2013, Visser et al., 2014).

However, although the idea of transformation has become more prominent in particular among the scientific community (IPCC, 2012, Mustelin and Handmer, 2014, O’Brien, 2012, O’Brien and Sygna, 2014, Park et al., 2012, Pelling, 2011, Preston et al., 2013), there is no clear consensus as to what the concept means in practice, how it could be evaluated, and what role transformative approaches play in disaster risk management, policy and practice. For example, O’Brien (2012, p. 670) notes that despite the increasing interest in transformation research, the concept remains fairly vaguely defined specifically given that it can mean “different things to different people or groups, and it is not always clear what exactly needs to be transformed and why, whose interest these transformations serve, and what will be the consequences”. This poses obvious problems regarding attempts to set and identify such elements as boundaries, scale, and the evaluation of transformation, even though most definitions agree that transformation involves fundamental change.

The aim of this paper is to explore the concept of transformation in its current usage and definition, and to demonstrate how different approaches to public policy and policy problems are more or less able to accommodate transformative approaches. It uses Handmer and Dovers, 2007, Handmer and Dovers, 2009, Handmer and Dovers, 2013 typologies of common approaches to societal resilience and framing of policy problems, and examines the level of potential for transformation.

The paper is organised as follows: Section 2 reviews briefly common definitions for transformation as qualitative change. After that Section 3 discusses different framings of policy problems and introduces the typology used to illuminate different dimensions of problem types and management responses. Section 4 discusses in more detail what different responses and framings mean in terms of identifying and understanding the nature of transformative change by using several practical examples from disaster risk management. Section 5 summarises the arguments and suggests some strategies to better understand such processes of change.