Authors
Thomas M. Leschine Kent A. Lind Rishi Sharma
Report Reference
#Coastal
Management, 31:1–24, 2003
Publication Date
2003
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Beliefs,
Values, and Technical Assessment
in Environmental Management: Contaminated Sediments in Puget Sound
Abstract |
| Principles
of risk assessment and risk management are rapidly making their way
into environmental policy making. Yet risk assessment has proved problematic
in use, since focusing on risks can serve to highlight uncertainties
in scientific information or to delineate the differences between
risk assessment as a technical procedure and the cultural, social,
and institutional dimensions of risk that people also expect to influence
risk management decisions. This article examines the use of principles
of risk assessment in Washington State’s development of management
standards for contaminated sediments in Puget Sound. It asks whether
and how the use of a mixed quantitative-qualitative hazard assessment
approach for contaminated-site ranking, coupled with a strategy of
separating technical assessment from consideration of social and economic
factors in management decisions on a site-by-site basis, helped foster
accord on the management approach selected by the Washington Department
of Ecology. The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) was utilized in
the design and analysis of a survey of policy elites that serves as
the principal data collection vehicle for this study. ACF attempts
to understand the dynamics of policy formation through examination
of the beliefs that opposing advocacy coalitions bring to policy disputes,
focusing on whether cross-coalition learning occurs in analytical
debate over policy. Results show that distinct pro-environment and
pro-development advocacy coalitions exist for Puget Sound’s
contaminated sediments problem. Relatively little disagreement exists
across contending coalitions on the ways principles of risk assessment
should be applied in ranking contaminated sites for remedial attention,
however, suggesting that risk-based management is an area in which
cross-coalition learning has occurred. On the other hand, considerable
disagreement exists at the policy level, over both the extent to which
consideration of risk should drive decision and the extent to which
legal liability should be used to force remedial action. Nevertheless,
these diverse actors have proved willing to accept the Department
of Ecology’s overall approach, suggesting that framing the problem
in the language of risk and separating scientific and technical judgments
from sociopolitical considerations has had value in moving potential
conflict into a realm where a consensus approach can prevail. Difficult
political and economic choices remain for the region as the state’s
sediment management policy continues to evolve. Agreeing to allow
major decision points to be framed as problems in risk reduction through
parallel but separate processes of risk assessment and risk management
has seemingly added resilience to the policy regime developed through
the state’s rule-making process. ACF emerges in this study as
a robust framework for examining the impact of scientific and technical
assessment on environmental policy development. |
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