Letter 13 — To Professor Suraje Dessai
From your perspective, what changes to policy and governance are most urgent if we are to adapt to that reality — to build infrastructure and institutions capable of protecting people and livelihoods in a more volatile world?
Acting wisely amid uncertainty
Date: 25 October 2025
Recipient: Professor Suraje Dessai, Professor of Climate Change Adaptation — Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds
Context
Letter 13 — To Professor Suraje DessaiThe sixth letter of Week 2 of One Letter a Day turns to climate adaptation — the art of acting wisely amid uncertainty.
Professor Suraje Dessai’s research explores how societies and institutions make decisions when the future cannot be predicted with confidence. His work highlights that resilience is not simply technical, but moral and civic: it depends on how fairly we share risk, protect the vulnerable and plan for the inevitable disruptions of a changing climate.
Letter
Dear Professor Dessai
I am writing as part of One Letter a Day: a year-long public correspondence that aims to reopen grounded conversations about the climate emergency. Each day I write to someone whose work shapes how we think and act on this crisis, and publish both letters and replies to encourage wider dialogue. This week focuses on climate-adjacent academics here in Leeds.
Your research on adaptation and decision-making under uncertainty helps to redefine what effective climate action looks like. It identifies a path of transformation for our institutions — how societies must learn to act amid greater ambiguity, to plan for change that cannot be fully predicted, and how fairness is a key part of resilience.
Our public debate still revolves around growth and consumer confidence, as if prosperity depended only on continued expansion. Even the promise of “green growth” risks overlooking the instability that a warming world will bring — from disrupted supply chains to volatile markets and rising costs of living. By 2050, whatever progress we make on cutting emissions, we will already be living with the consequences of the ecological changes we have set in motion: shifts in weather, water, food and health systems that will reshape daily life in the UK as much as elsewhere.
From your perspective, what changes to policy and governance are most urgent if we are to adapt to that reality — to build infrastructure and institutions capable of protecting people and livelihoods in a more volatile world?
I ask because adaptation often feels like the quiet twin of mitigation: less dramatic and headline-grabbing, yet indispensable. Your work shows that learning to live with uncertainty is not a weakness but a form of wisdom, and perhaps the most realistic foundation for hope.
With appreciation for your work and the way it helps link scientific understanding with a fairer and more responsible approach to the future,
– Vivien Badaut
Founder, one-letter-a-day.uk
Headingley / Hyde Park resident
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Tomorrow’s letter concludes Week 2 with Professor Piers Forster, reflecting on what it means for the scientific community to speak plainly about climate limits — and where hope can still be found.