DECISION MAKING AND STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT

Måns Nilsson () and Holger Dalkmann ()
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Måns Nilsson: Research Fellow, Stockholm Environment Institute, Lilla Nygatan 1, Box 2142, SE-103 14 Stockholm, Sweden
Holger Dalkmann: Research Fellow, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Döppersberg 19, 42103 Wuppertal, Germany

Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management (JEAPM), 2001, vol. 03, issue 03, 305-327

Abstract: Strategic Environmental Assessment aims to incorporate environmental and sustainability considerations into strategic decision making processes, such as the formulation of policies, plans and programmes. In order to be effective, the assessment must take the real decision making process as the departure point. Existing SEA approaches are frequently tailored after an EIA model conceived from a rational perspective on decision making. However, there are good reasons to assume that most strategic decision making processes are characterised by a bounded rationality. Furthermore, the predictability of environmental consequences generally becomes weaker at strategic levels than at the project level and complexity increases in terms of the numbers of actors involved in the decision. This paper examines various theoretical perspectives to decision making and discusses the implications for decision support in general and SEA in particular. The authors argue that the design of the SEA must be more sensitive to the real characteristics of the decision making context.

Keywords: strategic environmental assessment; decision making; rationality; decision sciences; complexity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
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DOI: 10.1142/S1464333201000728

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