Your Map Is Not My Plan

Earlier this year, I gave the second in a pairing of talks about climate risk and resilience. I was grateful to be second, because watching the first talk completely changed what I said, even if my slides weren’t altered at all.

The first talk emphasized climate risk, and essentially risk in the abstract — the same way that an actuary with a life insurance company might look at a particular person’s broad demographic characteristics: gender, age, income, place of residence. Of course, for climate risk, most of that calculation is on the basis of geography: where are you located?

The key slide in that talk showed a map of northern India, which has multiple high-risk factors around drought, increased climate variability, intense competition for water, and extreme air temperatures. Indeed, those are all important, significant risks. But these two talks were being given to businesses. Looking at the bright shades of red on that map looked like a message to the people in the room to stop investing in northern India. Indeed, maybe operations and investment should leave that region — to divest and undevelop a huge economy. That’s upsetting, and I believe it’s a widespread side effect of most forms of risk assessment.

My turn to speak was next. I pivoted by saying that no place on earth has “easy water” anymore. Instead of just looking at abstract risk, from the outside in, we should look at risk from the inside out (or bottom up, if you prefer). To continue with the actuary example, you might look at an individual: does this person eat well? smoke? exercise? Does this person have a genetic disposition to certain health outcomes? These are intrinsic risks. And from a climate resilience perspective, they often represent choices that are under our control.

In the case of the image I saw of South Asia, the question is not if India is too risky for development and investment anymore. The question is how to invest there. Not just reduce risks, but ensure that the communities and ecosystems there are creating something that moves us towards the robust, flexible stance necessary for the changes we’ve already been facing and that we will continue to face into the future. Can we help someone who is not exercising or eating well to change habits, even to preemptively work to reduce genetic risks? Building resilience is a different approach than simply avoiding risk.

I’ve long wanted to create a button to wear when I am around climate scientists that says, “Your map is not my plan.” I wish I had ended my talk that way.

John Matthews

Corvallis, Oregon, USA