Visioning event horizons: Where do we go from here?
D. Bray · Climate Research · 2000
Recent research (Bray & von Storch 1997, 1999a, Krück & Bray 1999) does much to confirm the existence of such a significant gap in the process of the transfer of knowledge from science to policy.Such an approach to impact assessments as proposed here, it is believed, would act to lessen that gap and aid both the priorities of the science and the priorities of policy making in the process of making informed decisions.This paper concerns developments in methods of environmental impact analyses that would allow for the incorporation of the role of human agency and human decision making.First, the concept of environmental impacts deserves mention.The decisions regarding such impacts might concern the impact that a certain change in the physical world might have upon another aspect of the physical world, landscape for example; the impact might concern the well being of humans, in terms of health, aesthetics or economics, or it might involve the well-being of other life forms, both plant and animal.Needless to say, the decisions regarding what, if anything, to do to avert change (impacts) involve a number of value judgements and an integration of a diversity of disciplinary-defined data and disciplinary-defined scientific perspectives.This paper suggests some means of combining both the data and the perspectives.It consists of 2 parts, the first of which makes a basic assessment of some aspects of the current paradigm of environmental impact assessments, with a particular emphasis on the issue of climate and climate change impacts.Conclusions from this section include that the typical approach is linear, based on the assumption of rational action, and devoid of the role of human agency.The subsequent section reviews some current approaches which may act to rectify this matter and offers additional, complementary means of addressing these current weaknesses.In short, the aim of the extended approach to impact analysis is to provide practical knowledge to those employing such knowledge in decision making processes.This discussion proceeds with the belief that climate change, both its impacts and consequences, will be enacted at the regional level since the globe is not homogenous in either physical or social characteristics.Consequently, I perceive that models offering