Uncertainty and the Environment
Subtitle: Implications for Decision Making and Environmental Policy (New Horizons in Environmental Economics)
Publisher: Edward Elgar Pub; E. Elgar
Published: January 30, 2002
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 249
ISBN-13: 9781840646269
Subjects: Decision theory: general; Environmental economics; Management decision making; Contemporary Economic Situations And Conditions; Political Science; Politics/International Relations; Environmental Conservation & Protection - General; Public Policy - Economic Policy; Decision making; Economic aspects; Environmental Policy
Description: "This book is concerned with the need to deal adequately with uncertainty in environmental decision making. The author advances a critique of the use of traditional models and then develops an alternative model of decision making under uncertainty, based on the work of George Shackle."

"Richard Young forwards a critique of the conventional expected utility approach and, using an alternative conceptualisation of environmental uncertainty, contends that there are a number of different modes of uncertainty and that many environmental decisions are characterised by what is termed 'hard uncertainty'. The presence of hard uncertainty radically alters the way in which environmental uncertainty can be dealt with at both an epistemological and a practice level, and poses a number of problems for traditional decision making frameworks based on probability. The author goes on to apply the model to a case study of the Belize Southern Highway - the first major application of Shackle's theory in the context of environmental economics."

"Detailing and explaining practical and theoretical approaches, this book will interest and inform academics in the fields of environmental economics, environmental science, geography, economics and social science, as well as decision makers in governmental and non-governmental agencies."--Jacket.