Seminar by Ian Scoones, ESRC STEPS Centre director, at the College of Environmental Sciences & Engineering, Peking University

Uncertainties are everywhere: climate change, financial crises, migration flows, infrastructure development, disease outbreaks and more. Pastoralists – people living largely from livestock in dryland, montane and Mediterranean regions – have long experience of responding to intersecting uncertainties. Perceptions, cultures and practices; markets and economic relations; and institutional arrangements and governance systems have co-evolved with environmental, economic and political uncertainties. Can we learn from these experiences for other contexts, such as financial systems, disease outbreak response, migration policy and critical infrastructure management, where the challenges of responding to uncertainty are real, and growing?

This event is related to the PASTRES project.