Imagine that summer is forecast to be scorchingly hot and that the city government needs to urgently provide cooling tents to 2,000 people sleeping rough. If the tents are not distributed soon, then there will be significant risk of heat-related illness and death. However, the cooling tents that are immediately available are made of non-biodegradable material that will most likely end up in landfill after 6 months of use. They are also manufactured in questionable facilities flagged by a modern slavery watchdog as having 1,000 unpaid workers labouring in very poor conditions: a clear sustainable development issue that runs counter to the sustainability priorities of the government.

Should the city government approach this as a risk management decision or a sustainability decision? If the government treats this as a risk management problem, then related sustainability issues may tend to be subsumed and de-prioritised (thus perpetuating modern slavery). And if the government treats this as a sustainability issue, then the critical risk management issues would tend to be de-prioritised (thus putting thousands of people vulnerable to heat risk).

Such tensions between risk and sustainability were explored at this year’s annual meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis - Europe (SRA-E), held in Stavanger, Norway, in June. There, alongside Anca Hanea, an expert on decision sciences from the University of Melbourne, I led a panel discussion that brought together experts such as Robyn Wilson, from Ohio State University, who specialises in risk perception, Roger Cooke, decision sciences scholar  from Resources for the Future and Delft University, Magda Osman from the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, an authority on decision-making under risk and uncertainty, and Lesley Walls, from the University of Strathclyde, specialist on quantitative decision models .

The expert panel discussion highlighted that risk researchers and sustainability researchers have typically worked in silos, each independently developing analytical tools. Crucially, this means that decision-makers and policymakers in organisations and governments have drawn on research and advice from two different groups. This has led to dichotomy in analysis and decision-making, reinforcing the often-difficult tradeoffs between risk and sustainability.

This dichotomy and tension are at play as governments grapple with climate adaptation strategies. My research into grey infrastructure (seawalls) and green infrastructure (mangrove restoration) investments to mitigate against extreme weather events in the Philippines is a clear case in point. When infrastructure investment is viewed purely as a risk management issue, other related issues (decent work, economic productivity) have tended to be subsumed. This has inadvertently resulted in a situation where climate risk solutions have given rise to sustainable development problems (such as loss of livelihood and decreased social and economic wellbeing).

Conversely, when decent work through livelihood preservation is viewed as the sole sustainable development problem, then solutions can potentially increase risk and vulnerability in other areas. For example, a hyper-focus on protecting smallholder fishing livelihoods can lead to inter-generational overdependence on one sector, increased vulnerability to extreme climate events in the short term and heightened economic vulnerability in the medium term.

The panel explored ways of bringing risk and sustainability together into frameworks that simultaneously incorporate risk and sustainability objectives into one decision model. These combined models help can help policymakers and decision-makers lay out both risk and sustainability issues on the table, acknowledge tensions, and prioritise what’s most important before identifying integrative ways forward.

Climate adaptation is a highly complex challenge requiring us to develop new tools that are capable of managing the complex analysis and complex decision-making involved. Rather than reinforcing dichotomies, tradeoffs, and chasms, the challenge at hand is to find novel solutions that have synergistic impacts on both risk and sustainability objectives.

Sandra Alday is a risk management researcher at the University of Sydney Business School and Deputy Director for Partnerships of the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC).