Abstract
Environmental decisions are not like all other decisions, at least not always. The information for environmental decisions is often poor or insufficient. This is the case not only for decisions with limited consequences, but also for decisions with considerable consequences. There is a serious gap between the information needed and the information available for environmental decisions.
“Franklin: Have you ever thought, Headmaster, that your standards are out of date? Headmaster: Of course they’re out of date. Standards always are out of date. That is what makes them standards. ”
(Alan Bennet, quoted in Metcalf 1986).
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Standards may be classified into effect and quality standards. Effect (quality) standards specify a threshold below (above) which any situation is accepted. In what follows, only effect standards will be discussed. The extension to quality standards is straightforward.
Environmental standards often refer to admissible pollution levels in environmental compartments, such as air, water, soil, and so on. Emission standards are another type of threshold level which relate to the pollution source. For instance, they limit the amount of toxic substances contained in each cubic meter of water for industrial plants. Standards can be set at different stages of hazard evolution, from the source to the final target. This also determines different management measures and options (see Fischhoff, 1984). In the remainder of the text, the term environmental standard is used in a general sense unless otherwise specified.
From the economic point of view, it is interesting to analyse under what conditions it is economically convenient to observe a standard. Reckhow (1994), for instance, analysed the costs of obeying a water standard considering violating costs, such as fines, and the costs of treating waste products. Under an uncertainty distribution of the concentration of industrial discharges, the study highlights a series of cases in which it is convenient to aim at expected pollution levels higher than the standard.
Toxicology, or environmental toxicology, is the study of the adverse effects of substances on humans; ecotoxicology is the study of the adverse effects of substances on non-human species (Rand, 1991).
In a similar fashion. Fischhoff (1984) describes advantages and disadvantages of the application of standards at various phases of the risk development process.
The use of proxy attributes for measuring the performance of management options is very common. For instance, Briassoulis (1995) Usted and classified 210 environmental criteria used for industrial acuity siting. Most of these criteria are proxy attributes selected for their measurability and clarity. This also applies to other management fields.
A detailed example of the role of expert judgement in this process can be found in Keeney et al. (1984). It concerns the estimation of the dose-response relationship between CO air pollution (proxy attribute) and health effects, represented by the percentage of number of angina patients suffering additional attacks (natural attribute).
See Comer and Kirkwood (1991) for cases in which experts assess the value model.
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© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Beinat, E. (1997). Value functions for environmental management. In: Value Functions for Environmental Management. Environment & Management, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8885-0_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8885-0_4
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