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CSERGE at the UEA in Norwich is co-ordinating the ESRC's £2.15 million Programme on Environmental Decision Making (PEDM). Won in an open competition with other UK research institutes, the interdisciplinary PEDM in the CSERGE will run from 2001 to 2007. The PEDM constitutes the ESRC's largest single investment in environmental social science since the completion of the Global Environmental Change Programme in 2000. It brings together researchers from the Schools of Environmental Sciences, Development Studies, and Economic and Social Studies at the UEA. The PEDM will draw upon a mixture of social and natural science disciplines including environmental science, political science, economics, development studies and geography. The PEDM rests on a vision of the main challenges confronting environmental decision makers in the new millenium. This vision will guide the Programme's three principal research objectives, defined in the form of three research programmes (RPs). Each of these three research programmes will cover a number of research themes, which in turn will be implemented through a series of research projects, whose aim is to investigate and elucidate a set of criteria for 'better' environmental decisions. The interconnected research projects are the engine of the research strategy, and will combine new approaches to theory with empirical work in the UK and internationally. CSERGE will remain committed to policy-relevant work and to ensuring the outputs of this research disseminated as widely and as effectively as possible. CSERGE's proven dissemination strategy will be enhanced, relying increasingly on new technology as well as established academic channels, and will continue to interface with policy and decision-makers at all levels. The result of this will be an innovative perspective on environmental decision-making that will be of direct value to government, business, civil society, the wider academic community, and citizens alike. The PEDM has been designed to complement CSERGE's wider ongoing portfolio of interdisciplinary research projects which includes work on environmental politics, waste management, coastal zones, water, catchments and wetlands, climate change, environmental valuation, life cycle assessment and biodiversity. VisionIn the global pathways to sustainability, CSERGE will continue to play its part in exploring and evaluating novel and legitimate forms of governance across different scales of geographical space and human communication, so that decisions about environmental futures are informed by everyone whose interests are at stake, and shaped by means that are socially just, and in ways that are expedient and effective. CSERGE will test the evidence that environmental decisions are being incorporated into a mesh of social, economic and international policy arenas, which in turn require the participation of business, civil society generally, and those who are normally excluded. In so doing, CSERGE will examine fresh methods of visioning, of regulating, and of revealing methods which will empower present generations to take fully into account the legitimate interests of all others, including the ability of future generations to be more sustainable. The results of the new CSERGE's work will be improved through mutual learning with government, business and civil society. Environmental Decision-Making: The Main ChallengesThe political and institutional context in which environmental decisions will be made in the new millennium is the product of two deep-seated transformations. The first is a continuing shift away from a process of policy-making dominated by state action at the global and national level, to a more complex, multi-level system of environmental governance (RP1 and RP2). This links global processes, through activities at the regional and the local, to the individual consumer or citizen via a series of interconnections. The term 'governance' captures the transition to a more poly-centric mode of environmental decision-making and refers to the emergence of new styles of governing in which the boundaries between public and private sector, national and international are more blurred. The second change is the slow but steady extension of environmental imperatives into previously 'non' environmental sectors such as agriculture, trade and energy production. The challenge for policy-makers at all levels of governance is to find the means of securing environmental policy integration (EPI), rather than treating the 'environment' as a discrete, self-standing area of decision-making one step removed from the driving forces of environmental change (RP1). Decision tools are needed to support and inform environmental decisions made at each of the different levels and in the various sectors (RP3) to ensure the overall mix is consistent and supportive of sustainability. One of the key research challenges is to identify opportunities for scaling up or scaling down the experience of successfully applying tools at particular levels (RP2). There is an equally urgent need for tools that promote coordinated decision-making across sectors and levels of governance in pursuit of sustainable development (RP1). Objectives of the ResearchThe research will consider three primary components of governance for sustainability: RP1: Multi-level Environmental Governance and Environmental
Policy Integration RP2: Social Capital, Equity and Justice in Environmental
Decision-making RP3: Innovation in Decision Support (Tools and Methods) The research programmes (RPs) and themes are:RP1: Multi-Level Environmental
Governance and Environmental Policy Integration Projects are being undertaken under each of the above RPs. To find out more about the projects, click on any one of the above RPs. Criteria for 'better' environmental decision-makingIn analysing the challenges, CSERGE will seek to reconcile four key criteria for "better" decision-making for more sustainable futures. These interdependent criteria and their underlying principles are addressed throughout all CSERGE's research programmes: Legitimacy is the basis of informed consent to accept an agreed outcome by means that are judged to be accountable, fair, trusted and responsive to changing circumstances. Legitimacy is based on processes of governance that are inclusive and empowering, which increase resilience and reduce vulnerability in ecological and social realms. Equity is the assurance that legitimate interests are identified, incorporated, and assisted to be included in the process of achieving agreed outcomes. Equity also addresses issues of justice in terms of human and ecological rights, as well as responsibilities for abiding by shared outcomes. Efficiency is the condition that any decision taken must be one in which the consequent sustainability gains outweigh all the costs of implementation. That "benefit to cost" relationship, however, requires an integrated approach to participation and envisioning that explicitly incorporates the interests of the excluded as well as the connectivities of the natural world. Effectiveness is that link to the natural world. Environmental decisions will only be effective if they are informed by natural-systems processes, variability, and change and its driving forces. Environmental decisions, therefore, need to buttress the resilience of those natural systems and ensure that human beings are not placed in a position whereby they undermine this resilience. Hence environmental effectiveness also means reducing social vulnerability as efficiently as possible. |
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