Cynthia Stahl

A New Approach to Environmental Decision Analysis: Multi-Criteria Integrated Resource Assessment (MIRA)

A new approach to environmental policy analysis is introduced that is designed to mitigate the exacerbation of environmental problems, which can result from the application of traditional approaches in environmental decision making. These approaches are problematic because they tend to rely on technical fixes, a single-discipline focus, and optimality. When such traditional approaches are applied, complex environmental problems are simplified beyond recognition, and the solution produced no longer matches the original problem. An alternative approach has been developed at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that is designed to improve the utilization of scientific research results and data (social, physical, and biological) through a more inclusive problem-solving process aimed particularly at difficult and complex environmental issues. Using a policy application pertaining to the EPA’s 1995 decision to approve a fuel additive, the authors illustrate how integrated environmental policy decision analysis can be made operational using this new approach.

How Much Uncertainty is Too Much and How Do We Know? A Case Example of the Assessment of Ozone Monitor Network Options

Limited time and resources usually characterize environmental decision making at policy organizations such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In these climates, addressing uncertainty, usually considered a flaw in scientific analyses, is often avoided. However, ignoring uncertainties can result in unpleasant policy surprises. Furthermore, it is important for decisionmakers to know how defensible a chosen policy option is over other options when the uncertainties of the data are considered. The purpose of this article is to suggest an approach that is unique from other approaches in that it considers uncertainty in two specific ways-the uncertainty of stakeholder values within a particular decision context and data uncertainty in the light of the decision-contextual data-values relationship. It is the premise of this article that the interaction between data and stakeholder values is critical to how the decision options are viewed and determines the effect of data uncertainty on the relative acceptability of the decision options, making the understanding of this interaction important to decisionmakers and other stakeholders. This approach utilizes the recently developed decision analysis framework and process, multi-criteria integrated resource assessment (MIRA). This article will specifically address how MIRA can be used to help decisionmakers better understand the importance of uncertainty on the specific (i.e., decision contextual) environmental policy options that they are deliberating.

Tackling the Dilemma of the Science-Policy Interface in Environmental Policy Analysis

Scientifically derived environmental indicators are central to environmental decision analysis. This article examines the interface between science (environmental indicators) and policy, and the dilemma of their integration. In the past, science has been shown to dominate many policy debates, usually with unfavorable results. The issue, therefore, is not whether science can determine policy but how science can be part of a more holistic analysis that incorporates other critical perspectives. This article discusses the importance of considering alternative views (as represented by different scientific indicators) within the policy debate. Six example ozone indicators, constructed from the same raw data, are used to illustrate this point. Two represent newly developed indicators that respond to present-day policy questions at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The article concludes with a brief discussion of how such indicators can be used to better define a policy question, inform the policy debate, and evaluate policy alternatives.

A demonstration of the necessity and feasibility of using a clumsy decision analytic approach on wicked environmental problems

Because controversy, conflict, and lawsuits frequently characterize US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) decisions, it is important that USEPA decision makers understand how to evaluate and then make decisions that have simultaneously science-based, social, and political implications. Air quality management is one category of multidimensional decision making at USEPA. The Philadelphia, Pennsylvania metropolitan area experiences unhealthy levels of ozone, fine particulate matter, and air toxics. Many ozone precursors are precursors for particulate matter and certain air toxics. Additionally, some precursors for particulate matter are air toxics. However, air quality management practices have typically evaluated these problems separately. This approach has led to the development of independent (and potentially counterproductive) implementation strategies. This is a methods article about the necessity and feasibility of using a clumsy approach on wicked problems, using an example case study. Air quality management in Philadelphia is a wicked problem. Wicked problems are those where stakeholders define or view the problem differently, there are many different ways to describe the problem (i.e., different dimensions or levels of abstraction), no efficient or optimal solutions exist, and they are often complicated by moral, political, or professional dimensions. The USEPA has developed the multicriteria integrated resource assessment (MIRA) decision analytic approach that engages stakeholder participation through transparency, transdisciplinary learning, and the explicit use of value sets; in other words, a clumsy approach. MIRAs approach to handling technical indicators, expert judgment, and stakeholder values makes it a potentially effective method for tackling wicked environmental problems.

Toward sustainability: a case study demonstrating transdisciplinary learning through the selection and use of indicators in a decision-making process.

The purpose of this article is to use a case study example to demonstrate how a transparent, transdisciplinary approach to decision making allows the US Environmental Protection Agency Region III (USEPA Region III) to fulfill its decision-making responsibilities while taking critical steps toward engaging in sustainability discussions. The case study goals were to use information about environmental condition to inform staff and fiscal resource prioritization and allocation for the federal 2010 fiscal year. This article will use a select group of 3 indicators to show 1) that data are not the same as indicators, 2) the feasibility of using disparate data in the same analysis, and 3) specific discussions about indicators can lead to transdisciplinary learning, supporting more informed decision making. We show that, when used in a transdisciplinary learning process, these indicator lessons provide a stepping stone for organizations like USEPA Region III to consider sustainability as more than just a lofty, ethical concept. Instead, these kinds of organizations can more routinely and substantively address sustainability through a progression of individual decisions. We discuss how sustainability can be linked to decision making through a process that requires stakeholders to articulate and confront their values. In this process, selecting indicators and understanding what those choices imply regarding the issues that are highlighted and the population affected is part of the assessment of environmental condition, which is the focus of the case study.

Out of the Land of Oz: the importance of tackling wicked environmental problems without taming them

Struggling with complex environmental decision making often makes us feel that only the wizard in the movie, “The Wizard of Oz” (Fleming in Wizard of Oz, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, California, 1939) can produce agreeable solutions. However, this need not be the case if we distinguish between the technical information used in decision making versus the process of decision making. Making environmental decisions is a wicked problem, meaning that values are imposed, whether or not we explicitly acknowledge or understand what those values are. Classic wicked problems are those such as how to choose among potential ozone control policies, climate change policies or developing a sustainability plan. In contrast, tame problems are those where there is a knowable truth. Classic tame problems are those such as estimating the ground level ozone level given source emissions and meteorology within a chosen spatial and temporal scale such as that stipulated by assessing compliance with the federal ozone standard. Lack of understanding that environmental decision making utilizes tame problem information while remaining a wicked problem is a barrier to finding policy solutions. Hence, we challenge environmental professionals to rethink their processes of decision making with the tame/wicked insight offered here.

Informing the sustainability dialogue

Ed to rial Resource use‐efficiency is often included as a specific goal within a sustainability framework. As a society, we continually assert that if we can develop more efficient technologies (internal combustion engines, light bulbs, etc.), we can avoid catastrophic shortages of resources. We grasp at comforting memes and travel great mental distances to rationalize our actions without realizing the flaws of these memes, even when presented evidence of their shaky foundations. One current meme, that resource use‐efficiency equates to sustainable action, was debunked in the mid‐1800s, yet it tenaciously persists in popular culture and scientific discourse to this day. In The Coal Question, published in 1865, William Jevons (as cited in Polimeni et al. 2008) used known economic forcing functions to explain why increased efficiency in the use of a resource does not result in reduced consumption of that resource but, rather, more consumption. The efficiency gains that lower present demand for a resource also makes that resource more affordable to others. The net result is an overall increase in the consumption rate and total quantity of the resource used by producers and consumers. Although Jevons focused on coal, a resource of primary concern to his time, his observations are relevant to society’s concerns today about energy, water, minerals, and other resources (Jiang and Vo 2013; DOE 2012). Indeed, in his Foreword to a book focused entirely on the Jevons Paradox (Polimeni et al. 2008), the archaeologist Joseph Tainter observed that an intriguing question to ask of this era’s resource use might be “where is [the] Jevons Paradox NOT in effect?” Biophysical scientists can contribute a good deal to the sustainability dialogue. Biophysicists draw upon the Laws of Thermodynamics and various reductionist approaches to understand what is possible and how things work. Ecologists use holistic approaches from systems science to analyze interactions and make predictions of what may come about under different scenarios. Neither a fully bottom‐up (reductionist) nor top‐down (holistic) perspective presents the whole “truth” about our complex world. Bottom‐up perspectives assume that the whole can be represented by the sum of the individual parts. Top‐down perspectives better represent the generalized whole while not substantively addressing finer scale issues. Yet, the relationships among the parts present the critical details when describing the whole. In the dogmatic adherence to one or the other approach to scientific inquiry, we fall short in fully bounding sustainability science. We need, as some argue, an approach to science that is different, an approach that emerges from the standard discourse of traditional science but has a very distinct philosophical grounding, namely a postnormal science (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1994). The principles of postnormal science comport with the concept of “wicked problems” (Rittel and Webber 1973; Selinger et al. 2012). Both groups recognize that when dealing with complex systems there are no right answers. Even when

Evaluating the Effects of Emission Reductions on Multiple Pollutants Simultaneously

Modeling studies over the Philadelphia metropolitan area have examined how emission control strategies might affect several types of air pollutants simultaneously. NOx reductions in July are predicted to increase ozone in the urban core and decrease it elsewhere, decrease PM2.5 and formaldehyde, and slightly increase acetaldehyde and 1,3-butadiene. In January, NOx reductions increase ozone, formaldehyde and acetaldehyde everywhere. VOC reductions decrease aldehydes but have little effect on ozone in this domain. A combination of VOC and NOx reductions reflects the cumulative behavior of each of the emission reductions separately, and minimizes disbenefits for both HAPs and ozone. A comparison of these changes in terms of their effect on health shows that differing behavior of PM2.5 and ozone can counterbalance each other to some extent. While changes in HAPs are affected by changes to reduce ozone and PM2.5, their effect on health impacts is smaller than PM2.5 and ozone. This study supports considering effects of multiple pollutants in determining optimum pollution control strategies.