Improving Environmental Decision-Making through Integrated Assessment

Put it to a vote, and policy makers would probably agree: making environmental decisions isn’t easy. Pertinent scientific information can be scarce or conflicting, and timeframes short.

Michigan Sea Grant will embrace this challenge in its next call for research proposals in early 2006. Sea Grant will be looking for those projects that address specific management or policy questions by synthesizing existing scientific information and analyzing options. The process is known as integrated assessment (IA).

“IA is a process that brings together natural and social science information through both quantitative analysis and public participation,” says Michigan Sea Grant Director Don Scavia. He notes that this combination ensures a balanced view of environmental and economic perspectives. It also recognizes that complex environmental issues are also social issues.

“Environmental policy is more about managing human behavior than about managing the environment,” says Scavia. “As such, it’s important to understand and quantify the social and economic costs and benefits of human intervention in natural systems. IA includes an analysis of these costs and benefits.”

Assessing the Great Lakes
The IA process is suitable to address a variety of Great Lakes issues. The process incorporates traditional scientific method and can be adapted to be large or small in scope.

An essential part of an integrated assessment is an unbiased analysis of management options, an aspect that distinguishes IA from more traditional reviews and syntheses. This analysis is critical, says agricultural economist Sandra Batie of Michigan State University.

“This analysis is critical because informed decision making about the Great Lakes’ resources requires knowledge about viable and effective management alternatives,” says Batie. “Analysis can be thought of as a substitute for learning by experience which can take too long, cost too much, be incomplete, and on occasion, can lead to unintended and unfortunate outcomes.” Effective IAs also provide technical guidance for implementing each option.

Talking Points
Throughout the IA process, participating parties have regular opportunities to provide input. This structured dialog is important in several stages—first, to work with policy makers to identify the problem or question to be investigated, and then to help shape the boundaries of what is possible from policy, political, or economic perspectives.

Dialog also serves to inform stakeholders of progress and to obtain public comment on preliminary results of the assessment. This communication is a critical step in the process, says Chris Goddard, Executive Secretary of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.

“Ongoing dialog with stakeholders is especially important in addressing fisheries management issues,” says Goddard. “Citizens need to be involved in the process to strengthen their involvement in policy development and to ensure more effective outcomes.”

In addition, by documenting uncertainties and constraints, IA puts issues into context for policymakers and identifies future research needs. A peer review process is a unique aspect of IA that ensures scientific credibility, particularly for those aspects of the assessment that require interpretation.

One of the challenges, says Scavia, will be getting policy makers to frame key questions in collaboration with researchers. But, he adds, complex problems require this step: “IA is a terrific process for bringing all of the appropriate natural and social science information together to outline and analyze options. By providing solid, unbiased analysis and not making specific recommendations, the IA process provides appropriate support but stops short of advocacy.”

Contact: Don Scavia, (734) 615-4084, scavia@umich.edu

Gulf of Mexico Integrated Assessment
Scientists, policy makers and stakeholders recently used the integrated assessment process to investigate the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, a hypoxic region about the size of Connecticut. The IA brought together dozens of scientists, engineers, and economists to review and assess information from hundreds of scientific studies over the past decade.

The purpose of the research was to assess the causes, consequences, and correctives of hypoxia (oxygen-depletion) in the northern Gulf of Mexico. The process integrated information on the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem and its watershed with economic and policy analysis related to options for reducing the size of the dead zone.

See: IA and its supporting documents

The IA provided options for a Federal-State-Tribal Action Plan that was prepared for the Congress and the President in 2001.

See: Website

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