Arizona Comparative Environmental Risk Project Kentucky Environmental Quality Commission Maine Environmental Priorities Project Seattle Community Network State Environmental Goals and Indicators Project With the encouragement of EPA, state and local governments have begun to set their own priorities. The Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission is setting its priorities by sponsoring the State of Texas Environmental Priorities Project. Foresight is unusual because it is one of just a few projects organized by a non-governmental organization. Foresight also encompasses one of the largest areas of any city or regional project. A key contribution to the discussion is the importance of both scientific information and community values in making good environmental policy decisions.
Environmental science is always incomplete and, to some degree, uncertain.
Yet policy decisions should be based, to the extent possible, on what good science is available. Foresight makes this point in a particularly strong manner through its organizational structure, which places the burden of gathering and assessing environmental information on scientists and other experts, but looks to community leaders on the Foresight Committee to make the tradeoffs and tough choices that will lead to new priorities for the Houston region. Several innovations by Foresight participants have been seen as useful by other projects. For instance, the criteria developed by the Socioeconomic Subpanel may help clarify what has typically been a difficult and confusing analytic task. The inclusion of local academic institutions as hosts for the subpanels has also been seen as useful for ensuring the credibility and independence of the research effort.