Jonathan Boston, Professor of Public Policy, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington.ABSTRACTFundamental to good governance is the active anticipation, assessment and management of risBased on this analysis, the paper applies the concept to the policy challenges posed by climate change adaptation, particularly sea-level rise. In this regard, humanity is confronted with a slow-motion disaster that will grow progressively in scope and scale, sometimes abruptly. Societies will face significant uncertainty, multiple and compounding risks, immense costs and difficult intertemporal and intragenerational trade-offs. More specifically, rising sea levels will have a major and increasing impact on the built environment in coastal regions. Globally, hundreds of millions of people could be forced this century to relocate from areas at risk from coastal erosion and inundation, higher water tables, and more frequent and intense rainfall events. Mitigating some of the risks and increasing societal resilience via anticipatory, pro-active, prudent and adaptive policy responses will be politically challenging, not least because of the large upfront costs, the likelihood of powerful blocking coalitions, and the complexities of inter-governmental and inter-agency coordination. This paper outlines how, in the interests of sound anticipatory governance, these challenges might be addressed through the creation of new governmental institutions, funding mechanisms and revised planning processes.

Venue: Institute for Futures Studies, Holländargatan 13 in Stockholm or online Research seminar with Christina Garsten, Principal of SCAS and Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm and Uppsala Un

British Journal of Social Psychology Abstract Throughout the literature, there are assertions that those endorsing conservative ideologies reject the science and solutions of climate change due to perce

Institute for Futures Studies Research Report 2009/2, 101p. This report assesses the diversity feasibility, but also the relevance of the social investment strategy in Europe. What policies have been i

Johan Mellberg

I am Adjunct Associate Professor in Finance at the Norwegian School of Economics in Bergen (NHH) and researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies. I received my PhD in 2020.  My research is focused o

Urbanisation, education, mobility and communication technology were all supposed to weaken people’s identification with “primordial” ethnic or religious groups. This has not occurred. Why this is and w

Stella lives with her family in a villa in a medium-sized town in Sweden. She likes her job but her back is hurting. How do we measure her well-being? Increasing well-being is generally accepted as one

Anandi Hattiangadi

I am a professor of philosophy at Stockholm University and a researcher here at the institute. I received my PhD from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, at the University of Cambridg

The new wave of basic income experiments

Welcome to a seminar on the new book "Basinkomstens nya våg" (The New Wave of Universal Basic Income). In the book leading researchers on universal basic income (UBI) analyze recent UBI-related experi

The #MeToo movement has recently been praised by the United Nations experts in women’s human rights. Yet if sexist violence against women has been under the spotlight and denounced in every context ov