Climate Change: A Wicked Problem and Policy Approach

Running head; FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIAL INNOVATION
Foundations of Social Innovation
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Introduction
21st century is the warmest period in the earth since the year 1880 and this has made
the problem of climate change, a problem of global relevance (Miller, 2016). Climate change
is widely regarded as the most important and the most urgent problems of all in the
contemporary world. It requires a global and integrated response. There are high level of
debates among several researchers and scholars upon this issue. This paper shall elaborate on
describing and analysing this wicked problem of climate change highlight a policy approach
or intervention that has been launched for overcoming it. With the same, it shall also
highlight the degree to which this attempt has success with strong evidence to support the
stance. Furthermore, this paper shall also identify and provide evidence of an unintended
consequence of the mentioned attempt for addressing the problem.
Discussion
The wicked problem of climate change
The term “wicked” in this context refers to an issue that is highly resistant of
resolution. There are a good realm of problems related to social planning which cannot be
treated successfully with the analytical and the traditional linear approaches (Woodford et al.,
2016). These problems are considered to be wicked problems. It is to note that the wicked
problems are very difficult to define in clear manner. The nature and the level of problems
are based on notion that who has been asked to. Different people have different opinions on
this problem. However, one of the issues that demonstrate most of the characteristics of
wicked problem is that of the recent issue of climate change. The issue of climate change is
pressing and is a highly complicated policy issue that involve many casual factors and higher
degree of disagreement regarding the nature of the issues as well as the best way of tackling it
(Edenhofer, 2015). Behaviour and motivation of the individuals are the key parts of the

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solution because they are the involvement of all the levels of government and a huge range of
non-government organisations like NGOs.
There are high level of debates among several researchers and scholars upon this issue
and these debate can be classified into three different competing stories that focus on
different aspects of the issues of climate change and they are- the profligacy, the lack of
global planning and the much ado regarding absolutely nothing. Profligacy sees the
prevailing structural inequalities, especially in between the nations, as having resulted to an
increasingly unsustainable consumption and production patterns (Urry, 2015). The urgent
need of strong reform of the unsustainable lifestyle and political institutions is necessary in
this regard. With the same, the process of decision making is required to be decentralised
down to the grass roots level and at the same time, the citizens need to simplify their
lifestyles in significant way for conserving the resources of the earth. Secondly, the next story
of the lack of global planning sees the underlying issue of the shortage of global planning or
global governance which would rein in the international markets. They would also factor into
the prices of environment.
According to Schuur et al. (2015), it makes absolutely no sense for any country,
organisation or household to reduce its emission level because the contribution of each and
every person is very small to make any difference. Therefore, the solution to this problem
need all the parliaments and government bodies to agree on the level to which the upcoming
or the future emission need to be cut and at the same time, to set a limit on how and when
they should do that in formal ways. The third story is all about seeing the debate on climate
change as scaremongering by the naïve idealists. These naïve idealists believe on the nation
that the world could be a much better place to live with our attempts or by the attempts of the
international bureaucrats who look towards expanding their budgets and impacts (Schuur et