Moving from a ‘wicked’ problem to a historic opportunity | Environment Victoria

Moving from a ‘wicked’ problem to a historic opportunity

Northern Victoria is facing multiple challenges.

These include ongoing drought coupled with the prospect of a permanently drier future; the economic and social challenges posed by the agricultural industry’s declining terms of trade, rising production costs and declining rural population; and the imminent collapse of the river systems on which rural industries and communities depend. Together these challenges create both a ‘wicked problem’ and an historic opportunity.

‘Wicked’ problems are highly resistant to solution (3). They are hard to define, have many interdependencies and are multi-causal, and attempts to resolve them often lead to unintended consequences or create other problems. Because there is no clearly defined ‘problem’ there is also no clearly defined ‘solution.’ Water management shares these characteristics with other wicked problems such as climate change, obesity and indigenous disadvantage.

The keys to resolving a wicked problem are “creating shared understanding about the problem, and shared commitment to the possible solutions. Shared understanding does not mean we necessarily agree on the problem. Shared understanding means that the stakeholders understand each other’s positions well enough to have intelligent dialogue about the different interpretations of the problem, and to exercise collective intelligence about how to solve it. Because of social complexity, solving a wicked problem is fundamentally a social process. Having a few brilliant people or the latest project management technology is no longer sufficient”(4).

The big question is how to achieve this shared understanding and allow thinking that goes beyond ‘either/or’ solutions and lowest common denominator trade-offs. This Discussion Paper, as a first step in Environment Victoria’s River Rescue and Regional Renewal program, lays out some options for moving forwards and is intended to create a space out of which shared understanding can grow. We invite you to share your thoughts and perspectives, and be part of the consultation process that will follow release of the Discussion Paper. Together we will create shared understanding of the wicked problem, and stimulate thinking about turning it into a historic opportunity for change.

Question for discussion:

What approaches can we take to address the environmental and economic crisis facing our northern Victorian rivers and communities?

References

(3) Considerable literature exists on wicked problems. The concept was originally developed in H. W. J. Rittel and M. M. Webber, ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’, Policy Sciences, Vol. 4, No. 2, June 1973, pp. 155–69.

(4) Conklin, J (2007) Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems. Quoted in ‘Tackling Wicked Problems – A Public Policy Perspective. Australian Public Service Commission.