Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Population growth, needed economic growth, and social pressures for improved infrastructure coupled to the need for human health and ecological protection and environmental security make systematic and transparent environmental decisionmaking a complex and often difficult task. Evaluating complex technical data and developing feasible risk management options requires procedural flexibility that may not be part of existing evaluative structures. Experience has demonstrated that direct transposition of risk assessment and risk management frameworks (e.g. those developed in the United States and European Union) may not work in regions whose social, legal, historical, political and economic situations are not suitable or prepared for acceptance of these methodologies. Flexible decision-making, including the use and development of acceptable or unacceptable risk levels based on the critical nature of an infrastructure type, is one potential approach to assist risk managers in their decision-making. Unfortunately, the newness of the discussions on the interrelatedness of environmental security and critical infrastructure has yet to produce a unified and comprehensive treatment of the fields. As a result, this paper will describe and define these terms in order to set the stage for discussions of human health and ecological risk assessment and risk management later in the paper. This paper reviews basic concepts defined in the field of risk assessment and extends its applicability to the areas of environmental security and critical infrastructure protection.

Within the past 5–10 years, several approaches and tools have emerged that may be useful for evaluating natural and human-made environmental vulnerabilities at chemical manufacturing plants, energy plants, transportation networks and other critical infrastructure located in heavily populated urban areas and coastal ports and harbors. The evaluation of the effectiveness of these approaches and tools in the current framework of environmental management is a crucial issue in order to verify the appropriateness of available techniques and methods and identify possible future needs to address environmental security. At the NATO Advanced Research Workshop, “Environmental Security at Ports, Harbors and Coastal Areas” held 17-21 April 2005, Thessalonica, Greece, a work group of international risk assessment, decision-making, environmental modeling and engineering experts from 11 countries explored the current state of different risk assessment and management tools and approaches for addressing environmental security in coastal ports and harbors. This chapter summarizes the findings of the work group and concludes with a summary of technical challenges and recommendations for future research.

“Wicked” problems emerge from the cross-disciplinary and multi-objective reality of current environmental challenges. Significant ecological risks and their uncertainty combine with conflicting stakeholder objectives and values to create a need for systematic risk and decision integration methods. Comparative Risk Assessment and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis provide useful methods for integrating these diverse, decision-relevant factors. A typical wicked problem is realized in the combination of risk and decision factors within contaminated sediment challenges, such as those found in New York/New Jersey Harbor. In a larger context, we identify three essential decision ingredients, People, Process and Tools that should be carefully considered before prematurely embarking on a decision path.

Practitioners of risk assessment (RA) and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) typically apply their craft in contested settings. This requires a blend of high-level technical skills, combined with a clear understanding of the larger context of social, economic, and political concerns that influence problem situations. In this White Paper, we provide a review of the challenges faced by RA and MCDA practitioners involved in the management of complex environmental problems, specifically in relation to stakeholder engagement. Based on this review, six possible elements of best practice for stakeholder involvement are presented. We also provide a Directory of Tools and Methodologies which can be used by facilitators, with an indication of how each tool or methodology would be utilized to support stakeholder involvement within the context of RA and MCDA. A brief description of selected tools and methodologies that assist with the successful engagement of stakeholders in decision- making processes is detailed. The paper concludes with a discussion of key issues and future challenges.

In order to reach trans-boundary cooperation on environmental regional issues resolution of conflict and definition of borders must come first – in order to unite we must first divide.

The dynamic nature of sediments, from rivers to estuaries and the sea, calls for a holistic approach to sediment management that ensures that transport, quantity and quality are explicitly addressed throughout the framework. If sediments are hydrodynamically connected, it makes sense to prioritize those that pose risk downstream, and to do this in a manner that considers the entire sediment,contaminant and risk budget, from source to sink. Such an approach will provide insight into the highest impact potential changes in agricultural, industrial and development practices that may reduce sediment and contaminant inputs, and hence the cost of maintaining waterways and protecting the environment.Conceptual frameworks for basin-scale sediment management that provide an approach for addressing the complexities inherent in managing sediments at both a basin-wide and site-specific scale and their role in holistic European basin-scale sediment management decision making, are discussed.

Coastal environments present a great variety of complex environmental problems that lack objectively “correct” answers due, in part, to significant uncertainties. Traditional planning and analytical tools are not well-suited to address these uncertainties. Scenario planning is suggested as a useful tool for addressing an uncertain future that can be bounded by identifying key drivers. This amounts to using multiple without condition scenarios instead of one. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) techniques can then be applied to evaluate all plans in each scenario.

The elimination of negative consequences of some human impacts on the environment requires a process for making rational choices among differentmanagement options. The objective of this study is to develop and employ a technique, grounded in Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, that would weightrelevant parameters when making a risk-based decision based upon the most feasible and effective choice of site remediation measures or clean-up actionsamong different options.

Sediment management decisions can have substantial environmental and economic consequences. Due their complexity, efforts should be made to communicate complicated technical facts, uncertainties, risk assessments, and other tools used in the decision-making process to the public and stakeholders in an easily understandable way. This paper briefly reviews the public’s involvement in the decision to cap sediments contaminated with heavy metals in a fjord located on the west coast of Norway.

Increased global trade and modern intercontinental transportation have made invasive species an increasingly prominent stressor of freshwater ecosystems. Invasive species risk assessments, which range from simple screening protocols that focus on species attributes and ecological requirements to rigorous analyses of infestation, have become an important component of environmental impact assessment. In this paper we present two recent case studies in which risk and decision methods were applied to non-toxicological environmental issues that are central to many aquatic ecosystem management programs. The first example reviews potential infestation by the zebra mussel, Dreissena polymorpha, on Bayou Bartholomew, located in southeast Arkansas, as a result of the proposed augmentation of low flow conditions by pumping water from the nearby and much larger Arkansas River. The second example presents a retrospective analysis of the results of transplanting fat pocketbook pearly mussels, Potamilus capax, from an approximately 6-km reach of a drainage ditch in eastern Arkansas. The two examples presented herein indicate the potential for improving environmental decision-making in the face of uncertainty-but in the presence of substantial information. As more rigorous attempts are made to widen and enhance applications of risk and decision methods to environmental decision-making, ecosystem management is likely to further improve.