Four scenarios

摘要: Current understanding of ecological and social systems is inadequate to predict when and how ecological-social systems will produce adverse feedbacks or unpleasant surprises. There is considerable evidence of adverse cross-scale interactions between ecological processes and human activities (including interventions intended to fix problems). There also is emerging understanding of how these adverse outcomes have been caused. However, we found it surprisingly difficult to locate when within the next five decades the impacts would emerge or precisely what combinations of policies and interventions are most likely to produce them.