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CONCERTED ACTION: Environmental Valuation in Europe (EVE) |
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Summary of EVE Workshop 1Methods and Approaches to Issues of High Complexity
Contributions:
The first Workshop focused on issues of complexity, regarded as fundamental to all topics in the EVE programme and as highly relevant for environmental valuation. The primary aims of the Workshop were to:
Mario Giampietro's paper put into focus issues of multiple scales of observation and non-equivalent descriptions, arguing that this was the starting point for addressing the complexity problem. As soon as the property of observation becomes important in decision-making, the type of analysis which will allow practitioners to work from multiple perspectives is raised (e.g. multicriteria analysis 'MCA'). There are many cases that demonstrate the problems of taking any highly politicised case with a complex management problem and documenting the dilemmas, contradictions and political stresses involved, even under MCA. Giampietro's paper and ensuing dialogue highlighted the relevance of complexity in environmental policy and science (including economic science) when addressing, for example, different starting or view points in analyses, time and geographical scales, or uncertainty and social indeterminacy (i.e. the irreducible, circular relationship between dissent or conflict in social circumstances and the unpredictability of outcomes over any reasonable time). The paper by Martinez-Alier, Munda & O'Neill recognised complexity and incommensurability as raising different issues. One angle of approach was the idea that incommensurabilities have to be dealt with in a structured and organised way for different facets of the problem. Another complementary dimension of treating problems from the point of view of complexity is not to reduce the relationship in a system (natural or human) to a single dimension of valuation. To assume that valuation results in a description what is predicative, ignores the very nature of valuation, which is contextual. Difficulties in choosing indicators in hierarchical systems were highlighted. The essence of complexity and high complexity were discussed, and that there are systems which can be studied on different levels, with the possibility of some integration. This leads to the use of methods such as MCA where there is at most weak comparability, although MCA was identified as a possible way of incorporating incommensurable parameters and non-equivalent descriptions in environmental valuation. Andrew Stirling's paper focused on three areas: The meaning of complexity; how the issue might be addressed in environmental policy; and diversity as one method for appraising complex systems. He argued that complexity resided more in the relationship between the observer and the observed system, than being an inherent part of the system itself. He presented a typology of different types of risk, uncertainty and ignorance, which showed that the danger of relying too heavily on one type of answer was the possibility of lock-in. Diversity was suggested as being an answer for issues of complexity - the objective is not to diversify in all situations, but to keep diversity as an important factor in appraisals, as it allows the key elements of complexity to be addressed. However, there are problems surrounding the creation of a 'diverse' world which could actually cause, rather than prevent or solve, environmental problems. GMOs, for example, may create 'diversity' in one form, but they also threaten stability and reduce other types of diversity. Stirling also got closest to the idea that political multiple scales cut across systems representation. Alison Gilbert's paper, which used the case study of a mangrove forest in the Philippines, provided a useful way of focusing on the problems of valuation, the conduct of studies and the potential for misuse of information by natural scientists. Cost Benefit Analysis and MCA were both used in the study, based on the assumption that the alternatives for the site (effectively leaving it as a mangrove forest or turning it to aquaculture) were effectively sustainable. Gilbert concluded that CBA alone was inadequate for addressing equity issues, and should be supplemented by MCA, and that further research was needed on the quantification of environmental values such as biodiversity. This paper was based on a previous article in Ecological Economics (Gilbert Alison J., Janssen Ron, Use of environmental functions to communicate the values of a mangrove ecosystem under different management regimes, Ecological Economics (25) 3 (1998) pp323-346). Roberto Jiliberto Herrera's paper used the example of water accounting to show that environmental accounting is a complex issue. Herrera argued that it is impossible to make rational decisions for complex problems, as indeterminacy makes point solutions impossible. He also argued that acting linearly was the way to reach solutions, although this was not a widely held viewpoint across the workshop, as it was felt to be too reductionist a perspective. There were several issues on complexity which the Workshop raised and which were discussed in subsequent EVE workshops (see other workshop summaries). In terms of future research the following gaps were identified:
Workshop Participants:
Contact Details: Giuseppe MundaJoan Martinez Alier Department of Economics and Economic History Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona Edifici B 08193 Bellaterra (Barcelona) Spain Fax: +34-93-581 2012 E-mails: [email protected] [email protected]
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