The Psychology of Ecosystem Management

2021 ◽  
pp. 180-218
Author(s):  
Arden Rowell ◽  
Kenworthey Bilz

Ecosystems have many potential uses and values, and law and policy can affect ecological systems in extraordinarily diverse ways. This chapter argues that psychology can be helpful in generating legal strategies for more effectively managing ecosystems and natural resources. To that end, the chapter specifically addresses the operation—and psychological vulnerabilities—of influential decision-making frameworks within environmental law: the sustainability framework, the precautionary principle, and cost-benefit analysis.

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (15) ◽  
pp. 6156
Author(s):  
Nataša Šuman ◽  
Mojca Marinič ◽  
Milan Kuhta

Sustainable development is a priority for the future of our society. Sustainable development is of particular importance to the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry, both for new buildings and for the renovation of existing buildings. Great potential for sustainable development lies in the renovation of existing office buildings. This paper introduces a new framework for identifying the best set of renovation strategies for existing office buildings. The framework applies selected green building rating system criteria and cost-effective sustainable renovation solutions based on cost-benefit analysis (CBA), and thus provides a novelty in decision-making support for the sustainable renovation of office buildings at an early-stage. The framework covers all necessary steps and activities including data collection, determination of the required level of renovation, selection of the green building rating system, identification of impact categories and criteria, and final evaluation and decision-making using CBA. The framework can be used in conjunction with different systems and according to different regional characteristics. The applicability of the addressing procedure is shown through a case study of a comprehensive renovation of an office building in the city of Maribor.


2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (02) ◽  
pp. 245-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. RAM BABU ◽  
NALLATHIGA RAMAKRISHNA

Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) has been serving as an important tool for decision making with regard to the development projects involving large investments. The Social Cost-Benefit Analysis (SCBA) is an extension of the CBA to certain social impacts, which hitherto were not measured. As the impacts of development projects on ecology and environment assumed importance, measuring the corresponding costs and benefits also began to assume significance. With the advancement in economic valuation techniques over time, measurement could be done and the framework of SCBA has been extended to incorporate the same. Moreover, unlike the CBAs, which do not account for the distributional aspects, the SCBA can potentially account for these. This paper presents a case study of extending the SCBA framework to include social and environmental impacts of a large water resource development project in India. It emphasises the distribution of project benefits and costs over stakeholders, spatial locations and time horizons so as to demonstrate the utility of extended SCBA in project decision making. It is observed that both the numeraire measure i.e. cost-benefit ratio, as well as the distributional analysis present a favourable case for the project.


Author(s):  
Sandy A. Lamp ◽  
Kathleen M. Hargiss ◽  
Caroline Howard

This article is derived from a qualitative multicase study with two settings that explored the way decisions are made in two IT organizations regarding process improvement initiatives by using face-to-face semi-structured interviews with 20 IT process owners and managers. The two participating organizations are a healthcare insurance company and a manufacturer of electronic interconnects. The study sought to uncover (a) how IT process improvements are prioritized and how approvals are attained, (b) how senior leadership is involved in decision making, (c) how security and risk are considered, (d) if and how formal process improvement methodologies are used, (e) if and how estimated and actual cost benefit analysis are conducted associated with decisions, and (f) how alignment with organizational goals is attained. The topic of IT governance was narrowed to explore the perspective of IT process owners and process managers, and their approaches and methodologies used with IT process improvement initiatives. The study found that pre-decision stages take place in IT investment decision making, and that process owners and process managers, participants other than senior leadership, and executive level decision makers are involved in these pre-decision stages and may be involved in the final decision stages.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1038
Author(s):  
Fabio Zagonari

This paper combines the most popular tourism typologies or goals (i.e., RT, responsible tourism, to represent impact minimisation; ST, sustainable tourism, to represent welfare maximisation; AT, alternative tourism, to represent continuity maximisation) and decision-making methodologies (i.e., MCA, multi-criteria analysis; CBA, cost-benefit analysis; WLCA, weighted life-cycle assessment; MLCA, monetary life-cycle assessment) in a single dynamic framework to operationally match the former with the latter. Normative insights show that MCA and WLCA are most suitable for RT and AT, respectively, whereas CBA and MLCA are most suitable for ST. Management recommendations (i.e., if a wrong static instead of a right dynamic approach must be adopted due to a lack of data, once chosen a tourism typology or goal, ST is the best in terms of level, correlation and likelihood of errors) are provided, and policy recommendations (i.e., if a right dynamic approach is adopted, in choosing among tourism typologies or goals, AT is the best in terms of precaution, ST is the best in terms of correlation, and RT is the best in terms of risk of investments) are suggested for a case study characterized by negative environmental and cultural dynamics. Positive insights show that two and many papers have applied WLCA and MLCA, respectively, to RT, but they did not account for cultural features; many papers have applied CBA to ST, but only one paper applied MLCA; few and no papers have applied MCA and WLCA, respectively, to AT.


2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (10) ◽  
pp. 4093-4115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kharis Erasta Reza Pramana ◽  
Maurits Willem Ertsen

Abstract. Many small-scale water development initiatives are accompanied by hydrological research to study either the form of the intervention or its impacts. Humans influence both the development of intervention and research, and thus one needs to take human agency into account. This paper focuses on the effects of human actions in the development of the intervention and its associated hydrological research, as hydrological research is often designed without adequate consideration of how to account for human agency and that these effects have not yet been discussed explicitly in a systematic way. In this paper, we propose a systematic planning for hydrological research, based on evaluating three hydrological research efforts targeting small-scale water development initiatives in Vietnam, Kenya, and Indonesia. The main purpose of the three cases was to understand the functioning of interventions in their hydrological contexts. Aiming for better decision-making on hydrological research in small-scale water intervention initiatives, we propose two analysis steps, including (1) consideration of possible surprises and possible actions and (2) cost–benefit analysis. By performing the two analyses continuously throughout small-scale hydrological intervention-based initiatives, effective hydrological research can be achieved.


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