If climate governance operates within an informational threshold of what it can recognise and act upon, then an uncomfortable question follows.
What does this mean for those working inside the system?
Much of governance practice is built around clarity.
This means:
- Define the issue.
- Gather the evidence.
- Develop options.
- Make decisions.
This works well when the problem can be fully described and translated into action.
But what happens when it can’t?
The task changes at the edge
At the edge of the system, the task changes, where practitioners may find themselves working with signals that are incomplete, difficult to justify, or that exceed the categories available to them.
This is not necessarily because the evidence is weak, although the situation might be interpreted that way. But because the issue does not fit the way the system is capable of knowing.
Sitting with the tension
This can create a particular kind of tension. It might come up as a sense that something important is present, but cannot be fully articulated. Or that scope for responding feels too constrained for the situation. Or that acting decisively risks overstepping what can be legitimately defended, risking backlash.
What does a practitioner do in these moments? Maybe the challenge is not simply to push harder within the system. In fact, maybe pushing harder within the system could reinforce the system that created the conditions for the predicament in the first place.
So maybe the challenge for the practitioner is to inhabit the limit of what is possible and to work consciously at that limit, rather than against it. In that way, the limit itself might move.
Practitioner judgement at the edge
This seems to require a particular kind of judgement. Not just technical expertise or procedural competence, but the capacity to remain engaged with what is not fully knowable, while still acting responsibly.
It involves staying with the pressure that may arise to reduce uncertainty (too) quickly into something manageable. Once it becomes manageable, it almost certainly gets absorbed within the frame that created the conditions that made management necessary in the first place.
This is a difficult line to inhabit, which requires the ability to discern when available responses are more about maintaining coherence than addressing the underlying issue.
Uncomfortable work
This is not a comfortable position. Governance systems are not designed to support it. In fact, most governance systems may foreclose this type of positioning by rewarding clarity, confidence, and alignment with established categories.
Working at the edge can feel like stepping outside those expectations.
And yet, this may be where some of the most important work now seems to sit. It is not about resolving uncertainty, but about staying in a relationship with uncertainty. It is not about forcing closure, but in recognising when closure is premature.
The subtle but important shift
For practitioners, it might be about moving from asking: What is the right decision within the system? to asking: What is the responsible way to act when the system itself is reaching its limit?
This is not a call to abandon governance. Nor is it a rejection of evidence, analysis, or institutional process. These remain important, but they are probably insufficient on their own.
What is the practice?
The challenge is to develop a practice that can operate within the system, while remaining aware of its limits. It’s a practice that notices when something is being excluded not by choice, but by structure, and it holds that awareness without immediately translating it away.
There is no clear template for this. But for those working in climate governance, it may feel familiar. It comes up in moments where something doesn’t quite fit or where the available language feels inadequate or where the stakes seem too large for what can be formally acknowledged.
Noticing the edge
These moments are easy to dismiss. But they may also be signals of the boundary of the system itself, and of the need for a different kind of attention at that edge.
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