Establishing environmental priorities for the 21st century: results from an expert survey methodology.

Abstract

This paper reports on the development and application of a method for establishing environmental priorities. The paper begins by reviewing two common methods for identifying environmental priorities: state of environment reporting (SER) and comparative risk analysis (CRA). The review shows that SER does not provide clear priority ranking and CRA, while providing clearer priority rankings than SER, is very costly to undertake. An alternative method is developed based on an environmental expert survey. This alternative technique, which is termed the expert survey method (ESM), is applied to a case study region (British Columbia, Canada) to illustrate its strengths and weaknesses. The principal advantage of ESM is that it produces comparable results to the more sophisticated CRA at a much lower cost and with greater flexibility. Limitations of ESM are that the results are not necessarily representative because they are based on sampling an elite segment of society and they do not incorporate the benefits of inte ractive learning. These limitations can be overcome by complementing ESM with more inclusive approaches such as collaborative planning and using subsequent steps in the process such as workshops to achieve interactive learning. If these limitations are addressed, ESM can be a highly effective tool for identifying environmental priorities. The paper also provides a detailed summary of the ESM findings for the case study region. These results from the case study provide a framework for the development of an environmental agenda in a Canadian context.

Cet article porte sur la creation et l'application d'une methode d'etablissement des priorites environnementales. Il examine d'abord deux methodes habituelles: les rapports sur l'etat de l'environnement (REE) et l'analyse comparative des risques (ACR). Ce bref examen demontre que les REE ne fournissent pas une hierarchisation claire des problematiques, tandis que I'ACR (qui fournit une priorite de rang plus claire) est tres couteuse. Une solution de rechange est proposee, creee partir d'un sondage d'experts de l'environnement (SEE). Cette methode est appliquee a une etude de cas regionale (la Colombie-Britannique, au Canada), afin d'en illustrer les forces et faiblesses. Le principal avantage du SEE est qu'il produit des resultats comparables a I'ACR, a un bien moindre cout, et qu'il offre plus de souplesse. En revanche, ses resultats ne sont pas necessairement representatifs car ils sont bases sur un echantillonnage d'un segment de l'elite de la societe et qu'ils n'integrent aucun des benefices associes a l' apprentissage interactif. Ces limites peuvent etre depassees en integrant aux SEE des approches plus inclusives, comme la planification collaborative et l'apport d'etapes subsequentes dans le processus (des ateliers, par exemple), afin d'integrer l'apprentissage interactif. Si de telles solutions sont apportees, les SEE pourraient etre des outils tres efficaces dans l'identification des priorites environnementales. Cet article presente aussi un resume detaille des resultats du SEE sur les priorites environnementales dans l'etude de cas regionale, afin de contribuer au developpement de la question environnementale dans un contexte canadien.

Key Words

Environmental planning, environmental priorities, expert survey methods, environmental risk assessment, state of environment reporting

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to report on the development of a method to identify environmental priorities and report findings from its application to a case study in British Columbia. Development of the method was in response to a request from the British Columbia government to establish provincial environmental priorities at minimal cost within a six-month period.

The paper begins by reviewing two of the most commonly used methods for setting environmental priorities in North America: state of environment reports (SER) and comparative risk analysis (CRA). The review is followed by an outline of the Expert Survey Method (ESM), an alternative based on a survey of environmental experts. ESM is designed to identify environmental priorities, assess environmental policy and generate an environmental mitigation plan. The method was applied to a case study of expert respondents in the Province of British Columbia. Results are reported here to illustrate strengths and weaknesses of this method in comparison to CRA and SER and to identify environmental management priorities in a Canadian context.

Priority Setting in Environmental Management

Priority setting is recognised as an essential step in the environmental management process by a wide range of experts including government agencies (Minard, 1996; USEPA, 1987, 1990), independent research institutes (Carnegie, 1993; Davies, 1996; Finkel and Golding, 1994) and professional management associations (National Academy of Public Administration, 1995). The reason for this is that empirical research shows that setting clear priorities can increase the effectiveness of environmental management by ensuring that resources are allocated to the best use (Breyer, 1993) Public opinion research also shows strong support for systematic environmental priority setting (Graham and Hammitt, 1996).

One approach for identifying priorities is state of environment reporting (SER). Recent Canadian examples include both international reports (NACEC, 2002) and national reports (Canada, 1996). Some provinces have instituted SER as part of ongoing management process (e.g. BC-MELP, 1998, 2000). These reports provide a comprehensive assessment of the state of environment by using a set of environmental indicators such as air pollution levels and number of species at risk to gauge the health of key environmental components. The assessment of trends is intended to assist environmental managers in setting priorities. However, the utility of SER for setting priorities is limited because the absence of comparable indicators precludes explicit ranking of problems.

A more explicit method for setting priorities is comparative risk assessment (CRA). This technique was developed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) in 1987 to establish environmental management priorities for the United States government. The technique has since been applied in more than 36 regions in the United States (Minard, 1996).

The first step in CRA is to identify the environmental hazards to be assessed. A review of evidence on the relationship between the hazard and human health follows. Exposures are then estimated and health impacts are forecast for each hazard. Finally risks are ranked according to overall health impacts. In most studies, human health and ecological rankings are provided in separate categories because human health risks, measured by deaths, and ecological risks, measured by damage to the system, are difficult to compare.

CRA has a number of deficiencies (Finkel and Golding, 1994; Commoner, 1994; McCloskey, 1994; Hornstein, 1992; Davies, 1996). One problem is that CRA is resource intensive (Anderson, 1996): costs are high and completion time is extensive, involving on average three years by large teams of experts. Second, CRA does not give clear results despite its comprehensiveness because indicators used for human hazards and ecological hazards are not comparable. Even where the same indicators are used, such as human death rates, results are not clear because of the high degree of uncertainty over impacts (National Research Council, 1994).

A third, criticism is that CRA excludes many variables considered important by the public (Krimsky and Golding, 1992) -- results of CRA often differ widely from the public ranking of risk (Minard, 1996). This has led some critics to conclude that CRA is inimical to democratic principles because it substitutes scientific judgement for public values under the guise of objective research (Hornstein, 1992). It is alleged that in some instances this reliance on scientific proof can repress the precautionary principle and defer mitigative measures until negative impacts are verified (McCloskey, 1994). Given these problems, the public and key decision-makers are often uncomfortable with CRA results. Consequently, CRA findings have not had a significant impact on resource allocation (Minard, 1996).

In sum, the two most commonly used techniques for selling environmental priorities have serious deficiencies. SER does not provide clear rankings. Although CRA provides clearer rankings than SER, they are still ambiguous and the costs are high. These factors, as well as the limited impact on policy have led some critics to question the utility of CRA. At the same time, critics acknowledge the importance of utilising scientific judgements in the priority setting process. The challenge is to find a method to set priorities that utilises scientific knowledge and is easier and less costly to apply. The purpose of this paper is to report on the development and application of an alternative method that meets these objectives.

Environmental Survey Method (ESM)

An alternative to a costly CRA or SER is to undertake an expert based survey to help establish environmental priorities. A small advisory group of environmental experts was formed to assist the research team in the design of the method, which is outlined in Figure 1. The method and results are outlined in detail in Gunton and Ponsford (2000).

The first step in ESM is for the research team to complete a review of relevant literature regarding environmental issues, the state of knowledge on these issues, and to identify key environmental researchers.