Decision Making for the Environment Social and Behavioral Science Research Priorities (2005) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix D Forecasting for Environmental Decision Making: Research Priorities--William Ascher
Appendix D Forecasting for Environmental Decision Making: Research Priorities--William Ascher
Pages 230-245
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Appendix D Forecasting for Environmental Decision Making: Research Priorities William Ascher INTRODUCTION This brief survey is intended to identify where research on forecasting for environmental decision making is most promising, rather than to assert best practices in the choices of methods and process. Nevertheless, some of the premises and dimensions should be clarified in order to support the recommendation in this analysis.
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to make the most effective contribution to the decision process, it should · engage decision makers in the process so that they can ensure the relevance of the choice of what is forecasted and gain confidence in the process · focus decision makers' attention on emerging problems and opportunities · provide adequate participation for stakeholders (although what is adequate depends on the specific property rights regime, legal mandates, and other contextual factors)
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232 DECISION MAKING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT · involve sufficiently balanced sponsorship (in terms of funding, analytic effort, and review) to bolster its reliability and perceived credibility How can research address these needs in the short and medium term (i.e., within the next five years or so)
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APPENDIX D 233 APPROACHES TO ENHANCING THE ACCURACY AND RELIABILITY OF FORECASTS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL DECISION MAKING Comprehensiveness of the Initial Mapping of Forecast-Relevant Factors The accuracy and reliability of projections depend on sequencing and balancing comprehensiveness and selectivity.3 The first challenge is to ensure that a sufficient range of potential influences is taken into account in a preliminary assessment so that relevant factors are not ignored. For example, technological progress inputs were often missing from long-term environmental models (this was a highly criticized shortcoming of the Club of Rome models)
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234 DECISION MAKING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT pollution, resource depletion, etc. Some efforts, particularly from economics, try to finesse the representation of policy response by using aggregatelevel optimization models.
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APPENDIX D 235 would certainly affect the environment in various ways, but what scope of war to posit?
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236 DECISION MAKING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT succeed in screening out problematic approaches and evaluating degrees of uncertainty. APPROACHES TO ENHANCING THE USEFULNESS OF FORECASTING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL DECISION MAKING The usefulness of forecasts for environmental decision making has five aspects worth analyzing: (1)
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APPENDIX D 237 particularly difficult to forecast, because the markets, tastes, and technology may change in highly unpredictable ways.5 An inventory and assessment of studies that integrate forecasting and valuation would be useful for gauging how well current approaches work and for identifying the obstacles to improvement. Improving the Sense of Impacts on People: Case-Wise Forecasting By forecasting the impacts of environmental outcomes and effects on particular classes or types of individuals, rather than simply projecting aggregate trends, the significance of these impacts for policy making can be better assessed, and policy options can be targeted better as well.
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238 DECISION MAKING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT reporting of uncertainty for authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.6 Similarly, Weiss (2002) has proposed a code of ethics for presenting analysis with clear indications of what constitutes what is believed to be fact, "mainstream" opinion, minority opinion, etc., based on legal distinctions among categories of evidence.
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APPENDIX D 239 Over the past 30 years, forecasting has made remarkable progress in abandoning the compulsion to project just "the most likely" trend. Quite sophisticated approaches to conducting and displaying sensitivity analyses have been developed (see, for example, Prinn et al., 1999)
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Forecasts as Decision Aids Despite disappointments in the progress of simulations as analytic tools, their potential for use as heuristic models remains. The development of simulations as part of the toolkit of policy dialogue is not rocket science, but it may be a very important step in bringing environmental consequences to the attention of policy makers.
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APPENDIX D 241 require that both the assumptions and the uncertainties be made explicit. One of the great virtues of doing multiple computer runs, whether with one or more models, is that the uncertainties become obvious as the variations in inputs or model specifications produce different outcomes.
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242 DECISION MAKING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT 11. Assess existing methods and develop more refined approaches for stakeholder and decision-maker participation in environmental forecasting efforts.
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APPENDIX D 243 that all uncertainty is fundamentally epistemic, the classification of .
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Weiss, C 2002 Scientific uncertainty in advising and advocacy.
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APPENDIX D 245 Weiss, C.H., ed. 1977 Using Social Research in Public Policy Making.
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