Using Catholic Social Thought and the Normativity of the Future in Responding to the Super Wicked Problem of Climate Change

Abstract

The climate crisis has been dubbed a “super wicked problem”—one where there is a sense of urgency, complicity in the problem by those who wish to solve it, and difficulty in sacrificing the short term for the long term. To respond to the difficulty of long-term thinking in addressing super wicked problems as part of SDG 13 (Climate Action), there is a need to pay attention to the narratives, norms, and values at work, and how we employ these categories in climate action. This paper discusses how Catholic social thought and the concept of the normativity of the future can be an approach to understanding the SDGs and the alternative future they offer in order to energize communities toward responding to the climate crisis, especially in response to current dominant narratives that make climate action difficult, as well as a way to make sense of the tensions found within the SDGs themselves.

1. Introduction

One of the urgent sustainable development goals (SDGs) is the concern regarding SDG 13 on climate action. The 2023 SDG Report emphasized that “human activities, particularly over a century of burning fossil fuels, unsustainable energy and land use, and untenable consumption and production patterns, have caused global warming of 1.1 °C above pre-industrial levels. This has led to a surge in extreme weather and climate events in every region, which is now the everyday face of climate change” (United Nations 2023, p. 38). Extreme temperature changes and more violent weather patterns that have caused death and destruction have become more frequent; this also affects access to resources such as food and water security, particularly in the global south, which is more vulnerable, and thus requires cultivating adaptive capacity in the face of sometimes competing objectives (Adger et al. 2003). The effect of climate change on land use and food and water access can also fuel socio-economic or political tensions, as people begin to move across communities and borders to find the resources to survive (United Nations 2019).

Climate action has thus become more urgent. The report continues that in order “to curb climate change, rapid, deep and sustained [greenhouse gas] GHG emissions reductions in all sectors, starting now, are vital. This requires global climate-resilient development action, accelerated adaptation and mitigation measures and leveraging SDG synergies. Increased finance, political commitment, coordinated policies, international cooperation, ecosystem stewardship and inclusive governance are all urgently needed for effective and equitable climate action” (United Nations 2023, p. 38). While technical solutions are important and needed, addressing the attitudes and perceptions that make responding to the climate crisis more difficult should also be considered, especially the attitudes, tendencies, and perceptions that may also be affected by convictions such as religion, spirituality, the narratives people tell themselves of their life and reality, or values. One such tendency is the focus on the short term and now, at the expense of the long term, in terms of how people make decisions when it comes to climate action, despite knowledge that says that decisions need to be made for long-term sustainability in terms of climate action.

This paper thus focuses on the narratives, norms, and values at work and how we employ these categories in climate action. I argue in this paper that the concept of the normativity of the future and Catholic social thought can be an approach to understanding the SDGs and the alternative future they offer in order to energize communities toward responding to the climate crisis, especially in response to current dominant narratives that make climate action difficult, as well as a way to make sense of the tensions found within the SDGs themselves.

2. Analysis

Climate issues have been analyzed in a number of ways in order to come up with ways to address them, one of which is through the concept of super wicked problems. Super wicked problems are an offshoot of wicked problems, which are understood to be a “class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing. Climate change itself can be confusing and a point of disagreement due to the various ways climate is understood, and the different ways people have responded to these various definitions because of their own personal values, motivations, and fears” (Hulme 2009).

“The adjective wicked’ is supposed to describe the mischievous and even evil quality of these problems, where proposed ’solutions’ often turn out to be worse than the symptoms” (Churchman 1967, p. 141). They are defined to have the following characteristics: (1) wicked problems have no definite formulation, though each definition will affect the kind of solution proposed; (2) wicked problems have no stopping rules; (3) solutions to wicked problems are not binary true or false, but good or bad in how they improve or worsen the situation; (4) there is no discrete list of possible solutions for a wicked problem; (5) for each wicked problem there is more than one possible explanation or solution, and it is heavily dependent on the context from which the problem solver is coming; (6) wicked problems are symptoms of another wicked problem; (7) there is no definitive test for solutions to wicked problems, so therefore, (8) attempting a solution to a wicked problem is a one-shot operation, in that the constraints will change after implementing any solution, thus requiring a new solution given the new context generated; (9) each wicked problem is unique due to context; and (10) the wicked problem solver is responsible for their actions (Buchanan 1992, p. 16).

Super wicked problems are a step above the mentioned characteristics as they have four additional characteristics: “(1) time is running out; (2) those who cause the problem also seek to provide a solution; (3) the central authority needed to address the problem is weak or non-existent; and (4) irrational discounting occurs that pushes responses into the future” (Levin et al. 2012, p. 124). This paper focuses in particular on the fourth characteristic: the tendency of people to focus on immediate interests and concerns, giving more weight to short-term concerns and thus delaying much-needed climate action both at the individual level and the structures and policies level.

Scholars Levin, et. al., explain it as such, using behavioral economics to show that many individuals “apply a declining social discount rate to the long-term future in a manner that gives greater weight to consumption now than what the economic tool of a constant discount rate suggests is ’rational’”, thinking that perhaps the problems will correct themselves or their negative effects will diminish in the future (Levin et al. 2012, p. 128). “Super wicked problems generate a situation in which the public and decision makers, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of the risks of significant or even catastrophic impacts from inaction, make decisions that disregard this information and reflect very short time horizons…This phenomenon is analogous to smokers who, while they know the high probability of significant health problems and even death, make a decision to smoke based on immediate gratification. This characteristic is especially pernicious because although it is known that negative effects will occur (such as respiration challenges for the smoker) and that there is a high risk of catastrophic events (such as a heart attack or lung cancer), the precise consequences are never certain for any one individual” (Levin et al. 2012, p. 128).

Thus, Levin, et. al., ask: “(1) what can be done to create stickiness, making reversibility immediately difficult?; (2) what can be done to entrench support over time?; and (3) what can be done to expand the population that supports the policy?” (Levin et al. 2012, p. 129). In this case, path stickiness is understood as the stability of particular policies over time and seeking to lessen the risk of climate policy changing or being reversed (Rosenbloom et al. 2019). To address these questions, several points have been made. For example, there is a need to create lock-in in terms of policies, making policy reversals more difficult or costly over time, while also making the benefits increase over time and getting the commitment and buy-in from more and more of the population (Levin et al. 2012, pp. 134–36). In terms of lawmaking, lawmakers should be able to account for the possibility of agents trying to undo a law, and thus it should be stable and steadfast enough, “to include institutional design features that allow for such flexibility but insulate programmatic implementation to a significant extent from powerful political and economic interests propelled by short-term concerns. Such design features will include ‘precommitment strategies’ that deliberately make it hard (but never impossible) to change the law in response to some kinds of concerns. At the same time, the legislation should also include contrasting precommitment strategies that deliberately make it easier to change the law in response to other, longer-term concerns that are in harmony with the law’s central purpose, which is to achieve and maintain greenhouse gas emissions reductions over time” (Lazarus 2009, p. 1158). However, since these are all long-term decisions that need to be implemented, there is still a need to further reflect on how to encourage people to make those long-term decisions and policies, given the tendency to focus on short-term goals and concerns because of the underlying uncertainties and scarcities people face in the present due to the effects of climate change. Such effects can seem overwhelming and, for individuals, a daunting task that their work will have no effect on.

Furthermore, the SDG on climate crisis, alongside the other two SDGs on the environment (SDG 14 on Life Below Water and SDG 15 on Life on Land), have been seen as in tension with the rest of the SDGs, which still rely on increasing growth and consumption as foundational to sustainable development (such as SDG 8, on decent work and economic growth) while not really discussing how they relate to the limits of the earth’s resources (Robra and Heikkurinen 2021). “There is no mention of the need to reduce consumption and production in the SDGs; that is, there is no reference to the key findings of the burgeoning body of scholarly literature on degrowth, which problematizes economic growth and calls for reducing the matter/energy throughput of human society. Very much to the contrary, economic growth is actually encouraged throughout the framework, as explicitly shown in goal 8 that targets sustainable economic growth and full employment for all. Apart from the obvious critique on growth, as well as sustainable growth discussed above, economic growth is here seen as the main driver providing employment for a growing global population” (Robra and Heikkurinen 2021, pp. 6–7). While there are individual goals such as SDGs 13, 14, and 15, concerns have also been raised as to the lack of an overarching goal regarding planetary ecological integrity that ties all the goals together (Kotzé et al. 2022). “Many studies concur that the SDGs lack ambition and coherence to foster a transformative and focused push towards ecological integrity at the planetary scale. There are indications that this lack of ambition and coherence results partially from the design of the SDGs; for example, global economic growth as envisaged in SDG 8 (notwithstanding regional development needs) might be incompatible with some environmental protection targets under SDGs 6, 13, 14 and 15” (Biermann et al. 2022, p. 798).

There is also not much discussion on the trade-offs in managing the tensions between environmental sustainability and social sustainability, which also need to be acknowledged and managed in order to meet social, economic, and environmental goals together (Biermann et al. 2022; Machingura 2017). The goals have also been critiqued as still being underpinned by a neoliberal capitalist economics, leading to a concern that environmental destruction may be committed in the name of accomplishing the SDGs (Banerjee 2003). It is unclear how climate change action can be achieved alongside continuing growth and consumption as they are explained in the other SDGs, and thus, there is also a need to reflect on how to manage the tensions found among the goals, given the trade-offs that may need to be made when seeking to achieve these goals together.

In sum, seeking a way forward to address the issue of path stickiness and the willingness to think long term, as well as the issue of the tension between the environmental SDGs and the social SDGs, we will need to pay attention to the ways in which people read and understand the SDGs as well as how they interpret them and put them into action using such interpretations. If we are to address path stickiness, entrenchment, and expansion, as well as the tensions present within the SDGs, attending to the hermeneutics, narratives, assumptions, and values that people use to understand reality and make decisions is crucial. Theology can offer a particular way of understanding the world that underpins the kind of ethics we employ as well as pays attention to the hermeneutics we use, the narratives we privilege, and the assumptions of reality people hold, as seen in Catholic social thought and the normativity of the future approach.

3. Arguments

This paper uses the concept of the normativity of the future by scholars Reimund Bieringer and Mary Elsbernd as an alternative way to understand the SDGs that drives how people read and interpret important texts such as the bible. Initially developed as an approach to reading biblical texts, this approach has also been extended to interpret other texts, such as the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, given that other texts beyond the bible can also be loci of revelation (Bieringer and Elsbernd 2010a; Elsbernd 2010). The normativity of the future approach acknowledges the narratives at work in a particular text and allows new ways of interpreting particular texts that is critical, but also remains open to how a particular work may be sacred and revealing God’s self to the world, inviting us to a particular way of living, being, and doing that is aligned with the more just and loving reality of God (Tuazon 2010).

This approach identifies a vision of the future as a locus of inspiration and starting point and asks what vision of the future is being embodied in what is being interpreted. “The vision provides content for the articulation of values and norms in the present…the vision of a just and inclusive community puts us in touch with values…which need to be promoted by norms in and for the present…which require the formulation of norms. Such norms guide praxis which transforms or at least moves the current world toward an incarnation of the vision” (Bieringer and Elsbernd 2010b, p. 16). This approach is not meant to replace approaches that also pay attention to the past and present, but rather, this approach is meant to complement and balance those approaches that primarily focus on the past or the present.

In using the normativity of the future approach, the future has an ethical claim on those in the present. This eschatological vision—a vision of values that Christians hope for and is different from the more traditional utopic vision of the future—is one that is not simply what we move toward from here in the present, but is rather an in-breaking into the now, as it “reaches from the future into the present and begs for creative embodiment”, compared with the traditional utopic vision that “move[s] from the present into the future” (Bieringer and Elsbernd 2010a, p. 84). The traditional utopic vision of the future “means the good place that is nowhere,” and seems to “lend itself to the most fantastic products of the imagination, unchecked by any considerations of reality or rationality” (Kumar 2003, p. 64). In contrast, the Christian eschatological vision is grounded in the experience of divine promise and an anthropological elaboration of the future, where there is justice and peace and communion with God, and which makes demands on us in the here and now (Pannenberg 1984).

Thus, given the divine aspect of the eschatological vision in Christianity, the future is seen as a gift, characterized by the “Spirit’s in-breaking, and active hope [as] the human response” (Bieringer and Elsbernd 2010c, p. 293). Such an in-breaking is often unanticipated and unpredictable, challenging and going beyond the technocratic paradigm that underscores the more traditional utopic vision that tells people that all development is progress and will help people (Francis 2015, sct. 109–11). This eschatological vision is also more encompassing, not just for a few or for the human, but for all creation, especially those that are marginalized—“This is where religion is fundamentally distinguished from any pure utopia, to which, as everyone knows, nobody prays and which also only knows about a promise for those still to come, a ‘paradise for the victorious,’ but nothing for those who died suffering unjustly” (Metz 2007, p. 80). It is not enough to wait for the utopia of the future, but rather, there is a need to work for the future and strive for the fulfillment of the eschatological vision, in cooperation with God’s grace (Moltmann 1968).

This approach is helpful in reading and interpreting the SDGs, given the two concerns raised above on path stickiness and willingness to do what needs to be done for the SDG, as well as the tensions found within the SDGs themselves. First, in using the normativity of the future approach, a person is able to cultivate a disposition of hope to respond to the acedia that is felt in our context, underpinning hope in an alternative vision of the future that energizes one toward action.

It is important to consider acedia, as acedia is the vice of despair that contributes to the unwillingness and/or inability to think long-term or respond to a call to action. Psychologist Sally Gillespie notes that an important issue in climate change engagement is the “fear of losing hope and with it, the will to act and even to live” (Gillespie 2014, p. 129). Acedia can be used to further flesh out the eco-anxiety that people feel today, where “eco-anxiety can overwhelm individual and collective psyches in ways that immobilize capacities for action (because it is believed that no action one might take can matter) and for finding a sense of wholeness in living (because the loss of hope renders one unable to find meaning in life, in relationships, in the practice of faith, etc.)” (Robinson 2020, p. 2). Acedia is a dominant narrative that characterizes the present moment that makes it difficult for people to do the good they can do—it is a vice that is often translated into sloth, but is more than just laziness. The vice of acedia is described in terms of restlessness and a lack of care and motivation for the good, not out of malice, but rather out of fear and anxiety for the future. “An acedious person is unable to settle down to her task, searches out distractions, and feels impatient at the slow passage of time. Whether she blames this discomfort on the time of day, her location, or the activity that she is engaged in, the effect of the noonday demon is to create a desire to escape…[this] inability to settle down to the tasks [at hand] is due in part to his worry that these tasks will ultimately be ineffective in producing his goals of holiness and impassibility. Because he perceives his effort as paying no dividends, he loses the will to keep applying himself to the task, and feels an increasing aversion to expending effort at all…the acedious [person] has convinced himself that until his circumstances change, none of his work will be effective, and so he stops working, looks for distractions, and imagines a different environment in which he could be effective” (Aijian 2017, pp. 187–88). Believing that their work has no effect and that this is due to the circumstances around them thwarting their work can cause discomfort and cognitive dissonance in a person and lead them to look for escape, often busying themselves with work or entertainment to avoid having to face the anxieties of today—the climate crisis, rising cost of living and corporate greed and commodification, loss of life and destruction through wars, and overwhelming despair that as an individual, they may not be able to do much in the face of such huge and overwhelming issues. The anxiety and despair that mark an acedious person leads them to pusillanimity—a “shrinking of the soul” where one refuses to face challenges and difficulty; “in the fear that she may not achieve anything worthwhile, let alone something great, a pusillanimous person chooses instead not to try. She withdraws, and either retreats into total inactivity, or throws herself into an activity that will distract her from her calling, and its accompanying fear of failure” (Aijian 2017, p. 190). With this lack of courage in the face of despair, the vice of acedia thus exacerbates the tendency to focus simply on what is easy and what is in the now, the short term, rather than the more long-term decisions needed as described earlier for super wicked problems, because the long term is so much more difficult, and there is no guarantee for success or even effect from one’s own efforts.

As a key concept of the approach, hope “is the virtue that bridges the present experience of suffering and the future promise of salvation” (Bieringer and Elsbernd 2010b, p. 14). “Hope is not merely about the future, but it orients and motivates humans in their concrete and embodied existence in the here and now” (Henriksen 2019, p. 123). Hope, grounded in the Christian eschatological vision, thus challenges us as well to reflect on where in the present there are moments of individuals and communities working toward the Christian eschatological vision, where the in-breaking of God’s love and justice is present in the midst of a world marred by injustice and violence and in the midst of the temptation to despair rather than hope.

Using the normativity of the future approach helps a person cultivate hope in how they read and understand particular texts and situations. Such hope is cultivated traditionally through perseverance, but also through wonder and gratitude (Dahm 2021). Such hope in the normativity of the future approach is not optimism, which believes that everything will always be okay; rather, hope in this case acknowledges that while there may be setbacks, trade-offs, and sacrifices, that ultimately every little thing one does contributes to the good, even if one does not automatically see the results. Christian hope, in this sense, is about “releasing unrealistic and overly optimistic notions of hope that rely on technological innovation or a divine sovereign” without considering our own actions and concrete realities and possibilities (Robinson 2020, p. 10). It moves away from a transactional understanding of hope that will only “hope” if results are tangible and felt immediately, or an understanding of hope that relies solely on external acts, without reflecting on one’s role in the entire process.

In managing the tensions within the goals themselves, the normativity of the future approach challenges us to ask, what is the compelling overarching vision that the SDGs offer? While there are 17 goals, the normativity of the future approach invites us to think about how they are interconnected, how they interact with each other, and how they would be appropriate in a particular space and time. They are not just a legal or binding text, but in using the normativity of the future approach, the SDGs also provide an encounter for the community with the mystery and dignity of creation, across cultures and countries, through these SDGs. In Catholic social thought, the concept of integral ecology emphasizes how the various environmental issues and socio-economic and political issues are part of an interconnected global crisis (Francis 2015). The overarching vision in integral ecology challenges the traditional understanding of sustainable development, calling to our attention what aspects of the eschatological vision are already present in the here and now and how they connect to one another (Elsbernd 2010, p. 344). The SDGs provide glimpses of this eschatological vision but need to be further integrated as part of a compelling vision of a community of creation.

Solidarity and intergenerational justice—two key themes in Catholic social thought that are brought to the fore in using the normativity of the future approach—are emphasized, challenging the more individual and neoliberal economic understanding of the goals. The normativity of the future approach underscores that “our interpretation process is accountable to the human community as a whole and to the scholarly community, as well as to the texts and events that are being interpreted. We are also responsible for the consequences that our interpretation has for others…[it] impels us to engage the interpretative process deliberatively for the advantage of the oppressed and to include the marginalized in the interpretative process” (Bieringer and Elsbernd 2010b, p. 16). Solidarity is the “firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all” (John Paul II 1987, sct. 38). In this case, “solidarity bespeaks mutuality in relationship, a certain give and take based on rhythms and contours of possibility built into those creatures in relationship” (Bieringer and Elsbernd 2010c, p. 292). Intergenerational justice, on the other hand, asks the question, “what kind of world are we leaving for those who will come after us?” This is not simply an environmental question or social question, but a question as well about the kind of values and meaning we are cultivating in society that people will consciously or unconsciously learn and implement (Francis 2015, sct. 159–62). These values are crucial, as “climate justice requires sharing the burdens and benefits of climate change and its resolution equitably and fairly. It brings together justice between generations and justice within generations” (Kanbur 2015, p. 13).

Solidarity and intergenerational justice as part of integral ecology are grounded in the dignity of all creation, and recognition of this dignity and intrinsic value—the equity of dignity among creation—challenges how we think about the goals as merely social and economic goals separate from the environmental goals, with each one focusing on a particular aspect. Instead, we are challenged to think about them as a cohesive whole that challenges what sustainable development in the SDGs actually means.

In the literature on sustainable development, there has been concern about the ambiguity of its definition. On the one hand, sustainable development can be read as ensuring that we are able to support people’s socio-economic needs within planetary limits; however, it can also be read as ensuring that we sustain progress and growth for the socio-economic needs of people, without really thinking about the planetary limits (Castillo 2016). Because sustainable development often still presupposes economic growth as necessary to support present and future populations (the latter definition), rather than the former definition that underscores planetary limits and the need to change our understanding of growth and consumption, the understanding of sustainable development loses the environmental dimension, as seen in how the World Bank often defines sustainable development (Goldman 2005). Such an understanding of sustainable development, which focuses simply on sustaining economic growth to the detriment of the environment, including the climate, is what integral ecology rejects, and thus, the normativity of the future approach with Catholic social thought clarifies this overarching vision of the SDGs (Castillo 2016).

Example: The Normativity of the Future Approach in Education

As a concrete example, this paper will now discuss cultivating the normativity of the future approach toward climate justice in education. Much of the literature on climate education focuses on education that equips people with knowledge and skills (Newell et al. 2021; Svarstad 2021). Alongside this, there is also literature that discusses the need to address the affective dimension of climate justice, where the efficacy and willingness of the ethical action was rooted in the attitude and valuing of working for justice and peace, and thus challenging injustice, and not just in the knowledge that it was the right thing to do (McGregor and Christie 2021). It is in responding to the affective dimension and cultivating particular attitudes and values that might support climate justice that the normativity of the future approach can be helpful, grounded in a transformative education framework that focuses on consciousness raising and critical reflection on one’s values (Dirkx 1998).

When reading theological texts together with the SDGs in religion education classes, for example, using the normativity of the future approach, part of the learning objectives is a paradigm shift and perspective transformation, and cultivating the imagination of students toward a more just future. The normativity of the future approach can be used to cultivate said imagination by asking reflective questions on the kind of future that is hoped for and their role in this future, using theological texts such as Catholic encyclicals or biblical narratives. For example, the story of Moses in the book of Exodus is one story of a leader who brings the Israelites to freedom in another land but never reaches it himself. Such a story can be used to help students reflect on and interrogate their own understanding of hope, the future “promised land” they envision, and if they would do the good to reach this promised land, even if it meant they might not experience this “promised land” in their lifetime, given Moses’ own hopes and his not reaching the promised land. These forms of reflection questions encourage students to think about their values and hopefully to articulate the importance of a realistic hope and if they would continue to act toward climate justice even over the long term (i.e., path stickiness in their own actions and in the systems they create), especially in the face of the possibility that they may not enjoy the tangible rewards of their work, given the long-term plans needed to respond to climate change.

Similarly, activities that help students think critically about what they value and why it is important when they read the SDGs and theological texts in light of climate justice and the future they hope for can also help students articulate their particular attitudes and values in this area and what they do or should prioritize given the issues surrounding climate justice. Cultivating hope that is realistic rather than just optimism—for example, in activities where students are presented with the complex problems of climate change alongside realistic alternative futures, rather than immediately overwhelming students with the big solutions needed to respond to climate change—can be a disorienting dilemma, to use the concept from transformative learning theory. A disorienting dilemma is an experience of feeling unsettled or disoriented, given a new situation that the person encounters. This is the first step toward transformative learning, which then moves toward critical reflection, dialogue, and action (Mezirow 1981). This disorienting dilemma can serve as a catalyst for them to imagine what is possible, how it may be realized over the short and long term, and how to respond to the possible obstacles and challenges in realizing these alternative futures. These activities can lead to action opportunities, in line with the envisioned future, that can help students mitigate negative emotions such as anxiety and the feeling of being overwhelmed and help encourage long-term thinking alongside short-term interests in their planning (Trott 2022). Such activities can also serve as an opportunity for students to identify the different goods at stake between the social and the environmental aspects of climate change; what justice and solidarity might look like in a particular context of a community experiencing the effects of climate change, given our interconnectedness; or how the burden of climate change might be allocated across the different stakeholders, both now and in the future for the next generations.

4. Conclusions

To conclude, the normativity of the future approach is a way for theology to contribute to the understanding and operationalization of the SDGs. The approach helps cultivate hope in the face of despair and difficulty in committing to the work needed, which is much needed in responding to the issue of creating path stickiness and responding to the fear and anxiety of the current generation in the face of the overwhelming issues of climate change. This approach, along with Catholic social thought, also challenges us to think of the overarching vision that the SDGs can offer and how we might prioritize the goals toward the common good, taking seriously the environmental dimension of the goals and the difficult decisions it asks of us, particularly for more developed and wealthy communities. This is part of the role of theology: to continue to challenge the dominant narratives found in how communities try to envision and live out a better world through the SDGs.