The context outlined above calls for public decision-making processes able to balance the social, economic and ecological dimensions, and to deal with conflicting interests and priorities expressed at different scales.
This dissertation deals with the issue of public decision-making, and specially with the application of SMCE as an integrative decision-making process. SMCE combines public involvement and multi-criteria evaluation. It offers a powerful framework so as to practice multi/inter disciplinary work2, and to integrate scientific and traditional knowledge.
SMCE would induce a change of priorities in which public choices are based upon; shifting from the predominant economic vision to one that integrates diversity of dimensions of the real-world system we belong to.
After three years carrying out case studies in the field of environmental management, I realized that SMCE is an appropriate decision-making process to deal with the permanent conflict between contradictory and legitimate values, aims and interests held by local, national and international actors. Also, SMCE can play an important role in dealing with global and local problems and perspectives. These are key issues in the context of environmental policy implementation.
So, Chapter 2 briefly presents the theoretical foundations of SMCE as carried out in the case studies presented in this dissertation: as a combination of qualitative participatory
approaches and multi-criteria evaluation. This section deals with some concepts coming from ecological economics, complex systems, post-normal science and political ecology. I will also present some considerations regarding the use of qualitative participatory approaches.
Chapter 3 exposes a case study carried out in Patagonia, Chile. This chapter is a extended version of an article titled “Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation of different development scenarios of the Aysén Region, Chile”, published in 2007 in Ecological Economics (Vol. 59, pp. 157-170). It proposes the use of SMCE in order to overcome some widely recognized pitfalls of the Environmental Impact Assessment Systems (EIAS) commonly used in public decision-making.
Chapter 4 discuss the issue of renewable energy policy at a general level. It analyses the
2 Multi in the sense that each expert takes its part, and Inter in the sense that methodological choices are openly and critically discussed among disciplines (Munda, 2004)
process of problem definition (e.g. climate change) and policy design at supranational level to the policy implementation step at the local level. Also, there is a review of the main instruments used to foster renewable energies and the most common sources of conflict surrounding the implementation of windfarms. Finally, I make some remarks and propositions regarding the information previously analysed.
Chapter 5 presents the problem of locations of windfarms by means of a SMCE framework.
This section tackles a case study carried out in Western Catalonia in the framework of the MCDA-RES project3, and it offers some additional lessons regarding the application of SMCE.
This chapter is an extended version of the article written as co-author with Giuseppe Munda and titled “The problem of windfarm location: A social multi-criteria evaluation framework”, published in Energy Policy (Vol. 35, pp. 1564-1583).
Finally, Chapter 6 draws some learned lessons and practical recommendation on the application of a SMCE process, and it draws some lines of future research.
3 European Union research project “Development and Application of a Multi-criteria Decision Analysis software Tool for Renewable Energy sources (MCDA-RES)”, Contract NNE5-2001-273.
Chapter 2
Theoretical foundations of Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation
Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation has some relationships with the concept of Ecological Economics (EE), which is a multi-disciplinary science that considers socio-economic
subsystems embedded in the ecological system. EE analyses the relationships between the ecological and socio-economic systems in a broader sense (Constanza, 1989), regarding the distribution of goods and burdens across different social groups at different spatial and temporal scales (Martinez-Alier et al., 1998).
EE promotes the expansion of the analysis of human activities beyond the restricted chrematistics vision. It is based on the concepts of weak comparability of values and incommensurability, that is “the absence of a common unit of measurement across plural values” (Martinez-Alier et al., 1998: p. 280). Therefore, it leads to a multi-criteria
representation and evaluation of policy choices.
One can distinguish between technical and social incommensurability; the former comes from the multidimensional representation of complex systems by means of descriptive models and the last comes from the existence of diverse and legitimate values in society (Munda, 2004). In order to cope with both types of incommensurabilities, SMCE respectively relies upon the combination of multi-criteria evaluation and public participation.
EE also relies upon the concept of strong sustainability, which states that human made capital cannot substitute some sorts of natural capital. This is due basically to our incomplete knowledge of natural systems. Therefore, there are bio-physical limits to the ecological degradation produced by socio-economic activities. According to this, one should be aware that the evaluation tools must be able to manage compensation between social, economic and ecological dimensions.
Also, the foundations of SMCE are set up relying upon concepts coming from Complex Systems theory and Post-Normal Science (PNS) (See Munda, 2004).
Complex systems are those whose relevant aspects cannot be captured using a single
perspective (Funtowicz et al., 1999; O'Connor et al., 1996); those characterized by presenting multiple identities at multiple scales, which are subject to non-equivalent descriptions (See also Giampietro, 2004).
Additionally, socio-economic systems are reflexive complex systems. These systems present awareness and purpose, and they continuously add new relevant attributes that should be considered when representing them. According to Simon (1976), one can distinguish between substantive and procedural rationality. The former is independent of the way a decision is made and refers exclusively to the results of the choice. The last refers to the process in which a decision is made.
“A body of theory for procedural rationality is consistent with a world in which human beings continue to think and continue to invent: a theory of substantive rationality is not” (Simon, 1976).
Human systems are learning systems, therefore, decision-making processes shouldn't be rigid and straight forward. Contrary, they should be cyclic by nature, where generated
information must be incorporated in the evaluation, distributed across involved social actors
in order to stimulate social learning and empowering.
Post-normal science also deals with problem solving situations characterized by the presence of high degree of uncertainty and conflicting values. In cases where “scientists cannot provide any useful input without interacting with the rest of the society, and the rest of society cannot perform any sound decisions without interacting with scientists” (Munda, 2004; p. 663-664), PNS proposes to extend participation in decision-making process beyond traditional circles of politicians and experts (scientists). It promotes the combination of scientific and traditional knowledge in order to consider as many perspectives as possible to frame complex issues as well as to carry out the tasks of quality assurance (See Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1991, 1994).
But there are also reasons coming from political ecology (PE) that call for a wider inclusion of social actors within environmental decision-making processes. PE deals with
environmental conflicts, which usually come from the interaction of actors holding different and contradicting meanings of nature. According to Leff (2003), different visions of nature imply different value systems that go beyond the dominant economic rationality. This last can be characterized as a dominant form of nature appropriation. Leff adopts a political perspective of nature, in which human-human and human-nature relationships are built upon power relations in the fields of knowledge, production, nature appropriation and
normalization of ideas, discourses, behaviours and policies. Then, it becomes pertinent to ask, who has the power to simplify complexity by imposing a single language of valuation?
(Martinez-Alier, 2005)
Political ecology explores on the issue of ecological distribution, that means, on the unequal burden of the ecological costs across diverse groups in society. This discipline critiques current forms of production and consumption and western lifestyles that put our relationship with the biosphere in a dangerous situation, asking for important transformations within the industrial and market society.
According to this vision, current environmental problems (climate change, biodiversity loss, water scarcity) are political because relationships between humans and nature are
determined by different forms of social organization (Liepzig quoted in Alimonda, 2002).
Then, it is necessary to think about democracy and environmental justice in order to widen and complement human and citizens rights (Alimonda, 2002). This implies to open
environmental decision-making processes in order to be as inclusive as possible, trying to balance power relations in order to promote what Leff (2003) calls differentiate sustainable societies.