Abstract

Most socio-ecological systems are exposed to coincident and interacting shocks. Climate change will accentuate individual shocks and heighten interaction among them. The impact of their interactions is likely to exceed the simple sum of singular shocks, thereby seriously challenging adaptive capacity. The concept of interaction, however, is generally missing in scientific inquiry. By nature, interactions span disciplines and are routinely shoved to the fringe of sectorial understanding—often lost between them. Furthermore, even whole system integrated assessment models struggle to quantify their strength. As a first step to understanding interactions, this study inventories hypothesized interactions between 15 impacts of climate change within three separate but interacting systems (climate, natural and human). Interactions supported by scientific literature were registered in a database. Trends were quantified to compare system susceptibility, the force of drivers and system complexity. Results suggest that although the driving force of the climate system as a whole is strongest, climatological events (such as drought or sea level rise) and human mobility have unequivocally destructive force. Degradation surfaces from the analysis as highly complex suggesting implications for sustainable risk reduction and climate change adaptation policy. This transdisciplinary meta-analysis of interactions untangles some of the complexities of a coupled system while bringing new questions to the surface. Aiming for greatest cost-benefit, should science, adaptation and mitigation prioritize the most complex, susceptible and forceful of climate impacts, respectively?