Managing the Complexity of Climate Change

The purpose of this paper is to indicate how the knowledge of complex systems can be put into practice to counter climate change. A contribution of the paper is to show how individual behaviour, institutional analysis, political science and management can be grounded and integrated into the complexity of natural systems to introduce mutual sustainability. This is achieved by using bytes as the unit of analysis to explain how nature governs complexity on a more reliable and comprehensive basis than can be achieved by humans using markets and hierarchies. Tax incentives are described to increase revenue while encouraging organisations to adopt elements of ecological governance found in nature and in some types of social organisations identified by Ostrom and the author. Described is the ability of ecological governance to provide benefits for all stakeholders as desired by CEO’s of the US Business Round table. Ecological corporations become a common good to promote global common goods like enriching democracy from the bottom up while countering: climate change, pollution, in-equalities in power, wealth and income