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BACKGROUND: 'Wicked' is the term used to describe some of the most challenging and complex issues of our time, many of which threaten human health. Climate change, biodiversity loss, persisting poverty, the advancing obesity epidemic, and food insecurity are all examples of such wicked problems. However there is a strong body of evidence describing the solutions for addressing many of these problems. Given that much is known about how many of these problems could be addressed - and given the risks of not acting - what will it take to create the 'tipping point' needed for effective action? MAIN BODY: A recent (2015) court ruling in The Hague held that the Dutch government's stance on climate change was illegal, ordering them to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25% within 5 years (by 2020), relative to 1990 levels. The case was filed on behalf of 886 Dutch citizens, suing the government for violating human rights and climate changes treaties by failing to take adequate action to prevent the harmful impacts of climate change. This judicial ruling has the potential to provide a way forward, inspiring other civil movements and creating a template from which to address other wicked problems. CONCLUSION: This judicial strategy to address the need to lower greenhouse gas emissions in the Netherlands is not a magic bullet, and requires a particular legal and institutional setting. However it has the potential to be a game-changer - providing an example of a strategy for achieving domestic regulatory change that is likely to be replicable in some countries elsewhere, and providing an example of a particularly 'wicked' (in the positive, street-slang sense of the word) strategy to address seemingly intractable and wicked problems.

'Wicked' is the term used to describe some of the most challenging and complex issues of our time, many of which threaten human health. Climate change, biodiversity loss, persisting poverty, the advancing obesity epidemic, and food insecurity are all examples of such wicked problems. However there is a strong body of evidence describing the solutions for addressing many of these problems. Given that much is known about how many of these problems could be addressed - and given the risks of not acting - what will it take to create the 'tipping point' needed for effective action?A recent (2015) court ruling in The Hague held that the Dutch government's stance on climate change was illegal, ordering them to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25% within 5 years (by 2020), relative to 1990 levels. The case was filed on behalf of 886 Dutch citizens, suing the government for violating human rights and climate changes treaties by failing to take adequate action to prevent the harmful impacts of climate change. This judicial ruling has the potential to provide a way forward, inspiring other civil movements and creating a template from which to address other wicked problems.This judicial strategy to address the need to lower greenhouse gas emissions in the Netherlands is not a magic bullet, and requires a particular legal and institutional setting. However it has the potential to be a game-changer - providing an example of a strategy for achieving domestic regulatory change that is likely to be replicable in some countries elsewhere, and providing an example of a particularly 'wicked' (in the positive, street-slang sense of the word) strategy to address seemingly intractable and wicked problems.

It is often uncritically assumed that, when digital technologies are integrated into the operation of city functions, they inevitably contribute to sustainable urban development. Such a notion rests largely on the belief that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions pave the way for more democratic forms of planning, and that &lsquo ; smart&rsquo ; technological devices result in a range of environmental benefits, e.g., energy efficiency and the mitigation of global warming. Drawing on the scientific literature that deals with &lsquo ; smart cities&rsquo ; we here elaborate on how both propositions fail to consider drawbacks that could be characterized as &lsquo ; wicked&rsquo ; i.e., problems that lack simplistic solutions and straightforward planning responses, and which often come about as &lsquo ; management surprises&rsquo ; as a byproduct of achieving sustainability. We here deal with problems related to public choice constraints, &lsquo ; non-choice default technologies&rsquo ; and the costs of automation for human learning and resilience. To avoid undemocratic forms of planning and too strong a dependence on non-choice default technologies, e.g., smart phones, we recommend that planners and policy makers safeguard redundancy in public-choice options by maintaining a wide range of alternative choices, including analog ones. Resilience thinking could help planners deal more effectively with the &lsquo ; wickedness&rsquo ; of an increasingly hyper-connected society.

It is often uncritically assumed that, when digital technologies are integrated into the operation of city functions, they inevitably contribute to sustainable urban development. Such a notion rests largely on the belief that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions pave the way for more democratic forms of planning, and that 'smart' technological devices result in a range of environmental benefits, e.g., energy efficiency and the mitigation of global warming. Drawing on the scientific literature that deals with 'smart cities', we here elaborate on how both propositions fail to consider drawbacks that could be characterized as 'wicked', i.e., problems that lack simplistic solutions and straightforward planning responses, and which often come about as 'management surprises', as a byproduct of achieving sustainability. We here deal with problems related to public choice constraints, 'non-choice default technologies' and the costs of automation for human learning and resilience. To avoid undemocratic forms of planning and too strong a dependence on non-choice default technologies, e.g., smart phones, we recommend that planners and policy makers safeguard redundancy in public-choice options by maintaining a wide range of alternative choices, including analog ones. Resilience thinking could help planners deal more effectively with the 'wickedness' of an increasingly hyper-connected society.

This comment on Frodeman and Briggle's Socrates Tenured raises questions about the project of applying philosophy or philosophical skills to wicked problems such as terrorism. By definition, these problems cannot be solved by appeal to principles, but involve conflicting values and goals. The societal problems to which the book refers are of this kind. The argument of the book vacillates between recognizing this and asserting some sort of special disciplinary authority for philosophy in the face of these problems. Examples illustrate the dilemma.

This Article posits, first, that resilience theory offers important insights into our understanding of wicked problems and, second, that to understand the value of resilience theory to wicked problems, we should start by going back to the context of Rittel's and Webber's 1973 delineation of the ten characteristics of a "wicked problem." Rittel and Webber were in fact among the vanguard of researchers beginning to articulate the realization that social and ecological systems—now social-ecological systems ("SESs")—do not follow the predictable and mechanistic rules of Newtonian physics. As a result, SESs do not yield, at least not over the long term, to engineering-based "solutions" designed to satisfy contemporary priorities and desires. Instead, like resilience theorists, although lacking resilience theory's vocabulary, Rittel and Webber acknowledged that change is the norm for both social and ecological systems and that the realities of complex adaptive social-ecological systems make "once and done" planning and management impossible. In rereading Rittel and Webber almost fifty years later, however, it becomes useful to pull apart the blending of social capriciousness and ecological panarchy that together, for them, added up to "wickedness" in social problem solving. Social capriciousness—the fact that social priorities and desires can both evolve over time and flip in response to political events such as elections—has become the far more accepted component of "wickedness"; few anymore expect social "solutions" to persist indefinitely. However, that same acceptance of continual, often unpredictable, change has not yet translated to the ecological side of wicked problems—which is precisely why resilience theory can help twenty-first-century citizens to formulate more productive approaches to those problems.

Wicked problems call for more complex thinking than many of our ethical problem-solving traditions are equipped to deal with. Multi-generational, multi-causal problems with no single solution call on us to think ethics in a new way. This article explores three such facets of what it might mean to live through and with climate change and think ethically about such changes. The reality of our planetary problems and lives might better be addressed using models based upon entanglement, multiple causality, and multiple understandings of time ("rainbow" time).

AbstractThe concept of wicked problems has become widely used in policy analysis. The popularity of the concept has led to its overuse, and has produced significant conceptual stretching. This paper investigates the extent to which this stretching has led to the application of the concept to issues which are not 'wicked' in any meaningful sense. Based on a survey of policy experts, we find that few, if any, policy problems are perceived to have all the attributes of wicked problems. Although the concept does not appear useful in categorizing problems in a strict manner, the presence or absence of certain attributes can still be used in understanding the problems and in designing solutions for them.