Risk Management/Global Challenges

Global Challenges of Risk Management

The planet Earth is a finite system, which means it has limits expressed in planetary boundaries

The human population has limited resources on earth. If humanity uses more resources than the earth is able to renew, than an growing population must cope with less resources. This will increase the probability of political and social conflicts including the socio-economic impact in the affected regions. Even basic qualitative assessment of exceeding consumption of planetary resources such as water, soil, and clean air will lead to conclusion, that human population will reduce the performance of the required supply chain steadily. To learn about this concept, tne scientific findings had to be transformed into more comprehensinve [[w:Metaphor|metaphors] (like "the frigde of humanity is getting empty") or more comprehensive events (like the Earth Overshoot Day 2017, that aims to improve risk literacy of the human population.

"By August 2, 2017, we will have used more from Nature than our planet can renew in the whole year," the groups said in a statement.

"This means that in seven months, we emitted more carbon than the oceans and forests can absorb in a year, we caught more fish, felled more trees, harvested more, and consumed more water than the Earth was able to produce in the same period."

The Earth Overshoot Day 2017, that will arrived on August 2nd, 2017, is a global public awarness programme to increase Risk Literacy in the global population and trigger individual small activities of response to risk.

The awareness about this global challenge and the planetary boundaries is the first step of risk management. The success of response in the worlds population aims to reduce the time span per year in which humanity lives on "credit" for the rest of the year. Quantification of risk lead to an equivalent of 1.7 planets, that worlds population would be need to current consumption of resources per year.

Learning Tasks

The Sustainable Development Goals are a UN Initiative.

• Sustainable Development Goals: Explain why Climate Change is a grand challenge for all member states and identify the impact of Climate Change on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals!
• Risk Literacy: Why is it difficult to understand the impact of climate change with a 2 degrees limit, when the citizien e.g. are exposed to 40 degrees temperature difference with one year? (see also Risk Literacy)
• Climate change risk mitigation: If decision making is based on climate change risk mitigation (i.e. reduce extreme events - droughts, floodings, ...) e.g. the emission of greenhouse gas and especially the use of fossile fuels must be reduced. Explain the consequences on investments into fossile energy resources (e.g. fracking, oil platforms, Extraction of Oil and Gas, Gasoline supply infrastructure, ...?
  • (Simulation) Explore the Climate C-ROADS Climate Simulation.
  • (Decision Support) Explain the role of simulation tool for decision support and Risk Literacy!
  • (Simulation Results) What is your expected result resp. impact of climate change, if a large number of people use the simulation tools in schools and for basis insights into consequences and requirements of activities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• One United Nations: Explore the approach of One United Nations and apply the relevance to global challenges!
• (United Nations Volunteer) "Unite Nations for a mutal benefit for all member states" is one way to perceive the idea behind United Nations. Identify area in your country in which you can can contribute to risk mitigation for global challenges. Explain how your contribution is linked to the concept "Think globally - act locally"!
• (Limits To Growth) Explore the learning resource about the Limits To Growth and explain why these limits are closely linked to global challenges and the Risk Management for these global challenges.

See also

• Sustainable Development Goals
• Grand Challenges
• Climate Change - Wikipedia
• Open Community Approach
• Reach People
• Limits To Growth
• Corona Virus - COVID-19

External Links

• Earth Overshot Day

Simulation Software

• C-ROADS Climate Simulation