Climate Policy and Industry Elite Perceptions of Risk and Uncertainty: A Cross-National Study

Abstract

There has been a growing focus on uncertainty as a distinct concept in the risk literature. This paper is concerned with how those involved in the design and implementation of climate change policy conceptualize risk and uncertainty. Based on interviews with policy and industry elites in Australia, China and the UK, it finds that participants did not distinguish between “risk” and “uncertainty” in their conceptualization of climate threats. For the majority of them, politics was the most significant source of risk and uncertainty in climate policy, but delegation of otherwise political decisions to the market was seen as the best solution. The conclusion suggests that the conceptual distinction between risk and uncertainty is less important, for policy and industry elites, than the need to develop mechanisms that account for both persistent scientific uncertainties as well as interpretive and moral ambiguities in climate policy design and implementation.

Keywords:

• Climate policy
• risk perception
• uncertainty
• Australia
• China
• United Kingdom

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Australian Research Council, Project ID: DP130104842.

Notes

1 Reluctance to speak on the record by participants was in large part due to prohibitions on public servants expressing personal views on government policy and the polarized state of climate politics.

2 Here, interview transcripts related to “responses to risk” and “responses to uncertainty” were combined in the analysis because it was often difficult to distinguish when participants were talking about dealing with risks as opposed to uncertainty.

3 Participation and deliberation are not to be confused with trying to force public consensus on the science or facts of climate change. As van der Sluijs (2012, 188) notes, such an approach tends to drown out weak signals of possibly catastrophic risk, reduce the plurality of scientific opinions and limit political fields of action. Indeed, other studies have shown that consensus is not necessarily the most important factor in risk management and, in assuming so, scientists and government officials have routinely underestimated the public’s capacity to deal with and operate within uncertainties (see, e.g., Wynne 1992).