Environmental Decision Making In Context

There is a constant drive for greater specialization when it comes to environmental problems. This book provides stakeholders from various backgrounds with the ability to place environmental problems and solutions within a common framework from which decisions can be made.

Contemporary environmental decisions are made within the context of sustainability aimed at meeting integrated ecological, economic and social goals. Most involve a complex mix of actors and institutions - differing values and differing interests. Choices are difficult and often controversial, and decision-making processes and contexts provide crucial influences on outcomes.This book explores these processes and context and the influences which affect them. For example:How do different value systems influence what environmental issues come onto the public agenda, and their management? What institutions and actors are involved in the processes and how? What tools are available and what are their limitations? How should we deal with uncertainty and risk? How do we incorporate relevant but very different forms of knowledge, and how do we manage the information 'explosion'? The authors take a multidisciplinary approach and engage in themes from political science, law, economics, philosophy, natural sciences, geography, engineering and sociology. Their book is rich with practical examples, including three extensive case studies that illustrate the complexities and contestations of environmental decision-making..The book is aimed at the ever-widening range of people who are, or are hoping to become, environmental professionals, whether from the scientific, technical or social science fields. It is also relevant for interested members of the public.

With the growing number, complexity, and importance of environmental problems come demands to include a full range of intellectual disciplines and scholarly traditions to help define and eventually manage such problems more effectively. Decision Making for the Environment: Social and Behavioral Science Research Priorities is the result of a 2-year effort by 12 social and behavioral scientists, scholars, and practitioners. The report sets research priorities for the social and behavioral sciences as they relate to several different kinds of environmental problems.

Because of the complexity involved in understanding the environment, the choices made about environmental issues are often incomplete. In a perfect world, those who make environmental decisions would be armed with a foundation about the broad range of issues at stake when making such decisions. Offering a simple but comprehensive understanding of the critical roles science, economics, and values play in making informed environmental decisions, Environmental Decision-Making in Context: A Toolbox provides that foundation. The author highlights a primary set of intellectual tools from different disciplines and places them into an environmental context through the use of case study examples. The case studies are designed to stimulate the analytical reasoning required to employ environmental decision-making and ultimately, help in establishing a framework for pursuing and solving environmental questions, issues, and problems. They create a framework individuals from various backgrounds can use to both identify and analyze environmental issues in the context of everyday environmental problems. The book strikes a balance between being a tightly bound academic text and a loosely defined set of principles. It takes you beyond the traditional pillars of academic discipline to supply an understanding of the fundamental aspects of what is actually involved in making environmental decisions and building a set of skills for making those decisions.

This book outlines the creative process of making environmental management decisions using the approach called Structured Decision Making. It is a short introductory guide to this popular form of decision making and is aimed at environmental managers and scientists. This is a distinctly pragmatic label given to ways for helping individuals and groups think through tough multidimensional choices characterized by uncertain science, diverse stakeholders, and difficult tradeoffs. This is the everyday reality of environmental management, yet many important decisions currently are made on an ad hoc basis that lacks a solid value-based foundation, ignores key information, and results in selection of an inferior alternative. Making progress – in a way that is rigorous, inclusive, defensible and transparent – requires combining analytical methods drawn from the decision sciences and applied ecology with deliberative insights from cognitive psychology, facilitation and negotiation. The authors review key methods and discuss case-study examples based in their experiences in communities, boardrooms, and stakeholder meetings. The goal of this book is to lay out a compelling guide that will change how you think about making environmental decisions. Visit www.wiley.com/go/gregory/ to access the figures and tables from the book.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is one of several federal agencies responsible for protecting Americans against significant risks to human health and the environment. As part of that mission, EPA estimates the nature, magnitude, and likelihood of risks to human health and the environment; identifies the potential regulatory actions that will mitigate those risks and protect public health1 and the environment; and uses that information to decide on appropriate regulatory action. Uncertainties, both qualitative and quantitative, in the data and analyses on which these decisions are based enter into the process at each step. As a result, the informed identification and use of the uncertainties inherent in the process is an essential feature of environmental decision making. EPA requested that the Institute of Medicine (IOM) convene a committee to provide guidance to its decision makers and their partners in states and localities on approaches to managing risk in different contexts when uncertainty is present. It also sought guidance on how information on uncertainty should be presented to help risk managers make sound decisions and to increase transparency in its communications with the public about those decisions. Given that its charge is not limited to human health risk assessment and includes broad questions about managing risks and decision making, in this report the committee examines the analysis of uncertainty in those other areas in addition to human health risks. Environmental Decisions in the Face of Uncertainty explains the statement of task and summarizes the findings of the committee.

This book introduces and begins to explore a range of concepts and discourses that are relevant to the context of environmental decision making. It presents a framework for environmental decision-making process; the framework has a central role throughout all the books in this series. This book also includes a case study on aviation expansion that is used in later books as a worked example for the analysis of an environmental decision-making situation. The book draws on the T863 Techniques book.The DVD referred to within this book is not for sale due to copyright restrictions. However notes on the activities covered in the DVD are included at the end of the book.It is recommended that this book is used together with Book 1 Readings (Order Code T863/R01) and Techniques for Environmental Decision Making (Order Code T863/TECH) details of which can be found below.

It is clear that our society must become a more sustainable one. To that end, we must change both our production and our consumption patterns. Some argue that this implies the abolition of democratic processes, and thus of citizens' participation in environmental policy. Others argue the opposite: the only way to avoid impending environmental disaster is by engaging in common deliberation and contemplation. Is participation, then, a negative force or not? This volume is one of the first coordinated attempts to study the relationship between democratic, participatory forms of decision making and the quality of environmental decisions. The central question is how can the normatively desirable practice of participatory decision making be combined with an effective approach to environmental issues? Guided by a theoretical introduction by the editors, the 15 chapters deal with topics ranging from the scale of environmental problems, local agenda 21, infrastructural decisions, strategic planning, to environmental policy in developing countries. Three chapters are devoted to each of these broad themes. Each presents either a theoretical or an empirical argument about the central research question, shedding light on such issues as the measurement of decision quality, participation techniques, and the link between participation and decision quality, drawing on experience gained in Europe, North and South America, Asia, and Africa. The introductions to the individual parts of the book have been collectively written by the contributors, who represent a range of professional disciplines, including political science, public policy and planning.