Uncertainties are everywhere. Whether it’s climate change, financial volatility, pandemic outbreaks or new technologies, we don’t know what the future will hold. For many contemporary challenges, navigating uncertainty – where we cannot predict what may happen – is essential and, as the book explores, this is much more than just managing risk. But how is this done, and what can we learn from different contexts about responding to and living with uncertainty? Indeed, what might it mean to live from uncertainty?

Drawing on experiences from across the world, the chapters in this book explore finance and banking, technology regulation, critical infrastructures, pandemics, natural disasters and climate change. Each chapter contrasts an approach centred on risk and control, where we assume we know about and can manage the future, with one that is more flexible, responding to uncertainty. 

The book argues that we need to adjust our modernist, controlling view and to develop new approaches, including some reclaimed and adapted from previous times or different cultures. This requires a radical rethinking of policies, institutions and practices for successfully navigating uncertainties in an increasingly turbulent world.

"Navigating uncertainty is indeed much more than just managing risk. This book lays out a compelling argument on how institutions can transform uncertainty from a threat into new opportunities."
—Achim Steiner, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme

"Drawing on 40 years of experience with failures of prediction, Scoones delivers a powerful critique of modernity's obsession with quantification and control. Uncertainty is inevitable, he argues, but robust social networks can help guard us against risks that we could not have foretold."
—Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard University

"Scoones [...] offers a fresh perspective on the subject, providing real-life examples of how different cultures navigate uncertainty."
—Samuele Lo Piano, Minerva

"This important book [...] explains key lessons learned, especially with respect to policy and decision-making processes, as well as political and economic contexts. [...] This is a key briefing, especially for policy makers.
—Paradigm Explorer, Magazine of the Scientific & Medical Network

Ian Scoones is a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.