Future Energy

Pragmatic Regulation: Sparrow and the Control of Harms

“Pick Important Problems and Solve Them”

Malcolm Sparrow, a Harvard professor in the Kennedy School of Government and ex-British cop, has spent a decade or more popularizing this phrase and the approach to regulation that it summarizes.  In his most recent book, The Character of Harms: Operational Challenges in Control, he looks closely at the difficulties of picking and solving regulatory harms or risks and has this to say:

“However simple that sounds, it turns out that organizing around carefully selected and important pieces of risk - rather than around traditional programmatic or functional tasks, or around core-high-volume operational processes – is extraordinarily difficult for agencies or institutions to do.”

Harms or risks, as defined by Sparrow can include international terrorism, hunger, war, child mortality, loss of environmental resources, crime of all kinds, etc., etc., etc.  In Sparrow’s words, “much of the unfinished business for the human race consists of harms, threats, or risks of one kind or another, insufficiently controlled”.

Solving harms is a different kind of work from the routines practiced by most regulators and others in the risk management business.  It even gets its own acronym, ROPE (Recognize, Organize, Perform, Explain) to distinguish it from the functional and process-based approaches normally practiced by regulators.  Introducing the characteristics of his approach to solving harms, Sparrow describes it as “spot the knots, study them and unpick them one-by-one”.  More prosaically, he describes the four important properties of the approach:

• Addresses specific, tightly defined concentrations of harm;
• Involves a prolonged period of analysis resulting the development of hypotheses about what the specific problem really is;
• Results in interventions that are qualitatively new, not merely a mix of existing functions and methods; and
• Projects involve multiple agencies and organizations working in collaboration because the problems frequently straddle jurisdictional and pragmatic boundaries.

Sparrow advocates a pragmatic, practical approach to regulation, urging regulators (and readers) to understand the problems facing them before worrying about which tools, tactics or times to intervene and to avoid ideological preferences.  He goes further, suggesting that practitioners ....

“respect the natural shape and size of the harm itself.  Fashion your response around its structure, rather than forcing the harm into your structure.  Use a control structure which mirrors the structure of the harm itself.”

And in his opinion the people chosen to carry out this type of work matter (they always matter, but it’s nice to read an author that understands that).   

“The analysis and planning stages favour creative, analytic-types; not champions of particular functions with entrenched views; not necessarily senior staff or authority figures; rather those who work well in lateral teams, far away from their normal supervisor, the only one-of-their-kind in a diverse group; people not wed to any one particular set of tactics but willing to engage in brain-storming, working and re-working strange new ideas until they eventually morph into something feasible, legal, publicly acceptable and (hopefully) brilliantly effective.”

In short, pragmatic, practical people.

It would take a book to adequately describe his approach and that is what Sparrow very ably provides.  And it's divided into two sections: the first half provides the how-to, with sections such as “A different type of work”, “Defining the problems: setting the scale”, and “Puzzles of measurement”.

The second half of the book tackles special categories of risk such as invisible harms, catastrophic harms and conscious opponents.  In each case providing insight into what’s different and how responses must be tempered to address the specifics of the particular type of harm.

Perhaps most importantly, is that the approach is not just for regulators.  It can be applied equally well to the management of risk by other organizations, corporations, NGO's ..... wherever individuals are struggling to manage risks associated with the potential harms of our day.

It’s a very good read if you are interested in effective regulation and the art of risk management.

Enjoy.

The End of the Wild

Source: Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust

Small books can sometimes make big impressions - one such for me was The Theory of Island Biogeography by Robert MacArthur and Edward Wilson (1967).  When I first encountered it as an undergrad, the math scared me off.  It took a reading of David Quammen's Song of the Dodo to make me want to go back and give it the reading it deserved.  

A more recent contribution to this same lineage of ideas that helps us to understand the full impact that we have had on the world is The End of the Wild by Stephen M. Meyer.  The End of the Wild has been described as a wake up call.  In it, Meyer argues that the race to save biodiversity is over.

“The broad path for biological evolution is now set for the next several million years.  And in this sense the extinction crisis – the race to save the composition, structure, and organization of biodiversity as it exists today – is over, and we have lost.”

In a nutshell, Meyer argues that nothing – not national or international laws, global bio-reserves, local sustainability schemes or “wild lands” – will change the course that has been set.  That is, the loss of half of the earth’s species by the end of the century and a homogenation of what’s left, comprised of only those species that thrive in human-dominated environments.

Despite this negative outlook, Mayer makes a strong argument for why we need to continue to protect and manage biodiversity.  In his view, the end of the wild is not the worst possible outcome.  Doing nothing, i.e. benign neglect, would lead to a collapse of biodiversity and the emergence of a human-selected biosphere that might not be human-friendly.  The surviving ecosystems would not be merely simplified but impoverished to the point that they could fail to provide the ecosystem services essential to human survival.

Meyer argues for four strategies for addressing this crisis:

1. Come to terms with what we have wrought - recognize that the end of the wild is primarily about people and our cultural norms, values, priorities and choices.  It is not primarily about the environment.
2. Invest in research that will allow us to "apply the cold light of a necropsy" to understanding the collapsing processes of natural selection - Meyer suggests a massive and sustained effort over the next two decades to map the earth's biota.
3. Protect the landscape to safeguard evolutionary processes and pathways and preserve ecosystem processes and functions.
4. Recognize the need for intensive management of the wild to emulate natural processes that have been weakened or lost.

Meyer's is a bleak but realistic outlook.  With a  human population that could reach 10 billion within some of our lifetimes, there is no opportunity for us to take the global environment back to where it started.  As much as it pains me to admit it, I believe he is right in concluding that restoration and hands on management will be required.

This book is really short (97 small pages) and more of an essay - but a concise and well written essay.

Illustrating the Need for Sustainability: 100 Places to Remember Before They Disappear

After 15 years of working with companies and sometimes governments, helping them to manage the sustainability and the issues that affect sustainable development, I still oftentimes find it a fuzzy concept.  So I really appreciate it when something comes along that helps even me to put a real image to the issues. 

This time, that image has come from (for me) a surprising place.  Not too long ago Newsweek released a special issue that looks at some of the places that could disappear or be radically changed as global warming exerts a growing influence on the world in which we live (100 Places to Remember Before They Disappear; Newsweek Special Issue, Spring 2010). 

While I would have liked to see a stronger link between global warming and the descriptions that accompany each picture/location, the magazine is a great illustration of why environmental sustainability and sustainable human development is needed.

"To read this book is to be reminded that, like the tea bushes, human beings also occupy a narrow ecological niche .... the distribution of human settlements around the globe is crucially dependent on specific patterns of rainfall, sunlight, temperature and wind, all of which will be affected by global warming.  Mountain glaciers may seem like a remote concern to most city dwellers, but if you live downstream from them - in Southern California, say - it matters a great deal how and when they form and melt."

And unlike many pictorial statements of whats at stake, Newsweek demonstrates that it is not just natural ecosystems that are at risk.  With photos of many of the worlds most populous or beautiful urban settings, they make the point that global warming poses risks to  the places we have constructed and live in - indeed to civilisation itself.

"This book isn't about atmospheric chemistry or carbon emissions; its about people, the places they inhabit and the places they have made, and a heart-tugging evocation of what we may lose if global warming proceeds apace ... this book is a reminder of what's at stake if we are complacent in the face of a rapidly changing climate."

And the photos illustrate some beautiful locations ...........

 

The Maldives                                                 Paris, France                                 Ontong Java Atoll, Solomon Is.

Newsweek is to be commended for publishing such a high profile look at just what is at risk as a result of the current official paralysis regarding efforts to reduce emissions and other carbon releases to the atmosphere. 

[Well I'm slow, but I get there eventually.  I still appreciate Newsweek's effort at publishing the 100 Places ... issue but it seems that its based on a project by a Danish media group Co-Life developed for and presented at the Copenhagen COP meeting last fall.  The main website for the initiative, including a place to by the books and posters, is here: 100 Places to Remember Before They Disappear.]