Conceptualising uncertainty in environmental decision-making: The example of the EU water framework directive

Abstract

Uncertainty is highly relevant in environmental policy because on the one hand environmental problems are regarded as complex and require a long-term perspective and on the other hand the knowledge available to practitioners and policy makers alike is often fragmentary and not systemised. One key issue arising from this is the challenge to develop scientific decision support methods that are capable of dealing with uncertainty in a systematic and differentiated way, integrating scientific as well as practical knowledge. This paper introduces a conceptual framework for perceiving and describing uncertainty in environmental decision-making. The conceptual framework consists of a general definition of uncertainty along with five complementary perspectives on the phenomenon, each highlighting one specific aspect of it. By using the conceptual framework, decision-makers are able to reflect on their knowledge base with regard to its completeness and reliability and to gain a broad picture of uncertainty from various standpoints. The theoretical ideas presented here are complemented by two empirical studies looking at how uncertainty is dealt with in the implementation process of the EU Water Framework Directive. The rather abstract differentiations are illustrated by a number of examples in the form of interview statements and excerpts from the directive and official EU documents.

Introduction

Every day each one of us is forced to act and to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty – this is true for our private lives as well as our involvement in public affairs. We are unsure as to which goals to pursue or what actions we should consider taking to achieve them, and we cannot predict all the consequences of these various actions. So typically we do not have all the knowledge necessary for a profound decision and, moreover, we are uncertain because we lack confidence in the knowledge we have. Both, lack of confidence in our knowledge, i.e. uncertainty, and lack of knowledge, make it difficult to decide what is best.

In the context of environmental decision-making the problem of uncertainty is particularly severe because of the overwhelming diversity of nature, the countless dynamic natural processes involved – often non-linear and chaotic – as well as the many complex interactions that take place between nature and human beings. In general, good solutions for environmental problems require a large amount of knowledge as a solid foundation for decision-making, but the knowledge available is fragmentary and not systemised (cf. Faber and Manstetten, 2003).

The problem of uncertainty in environmental decision-making has recently received a great deal of attention on the part of scientists as well as of politicians and administrators (e.g. Faber et al., 1992, Handmer et al., 2001, Harremoes, 2003, Morgan and Henrion, 1990, Pahl-Wostl, 2002, Pahl-Wostl, 2007). The standard scientific approach for conceptualising uncertainty is to quantify uncertainty in terms of probabilities following Laplace (classical probabilities), Bernoulli and Venn (frequentistic probabilities) or Bayes (subjective probabilities) (Büchter and Henn, 2005, Laux, 1998, Spies, 1993).¹ Neoclassical economic theory regarding decision-making, which investigates how uncertainty should be dealt with rationally, is also rooted in probability theory (von Neumann and Morgenstern, 1944).² The main important distinction made here tracing back to Knight (1921) is that between ‘risk’-situations where all possible outcomes and all probabilities of these outcomes are (objectively) known, and ‘uncertainty’-situations where all possible outcomes but not all probabilities of these outcomes are (objectively) known. Only in case of ‘risk’ uncertainty (as understood here) can be incorporated quantitatively in the decision-making process.

In recent environmental literature several taxonomies or concepts have been put forward that attempt to tackle the problem of uncertainty acknowledging that probabilities are not well understood by lay people as well as professionals³ and that they are only out one of many possibilities for describing uncertainty (e.g. Brown et al., 2005, Faber et al., 1992, Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1990, Klauer and Brown, 2004, Smithson, 1989, van Asselt, 2000, Walker et al., 2003, Wätzold, 1998, Wynne, 1992).⁴ The target and the viewpoint from which these authors approach the problem of uncertainty are very different. Most of them use the probability theory as standard scientific approach for describing uncertainty as starting point. Furthermore the authors use epistemological categories like the reducibility or irreducibility of ignorance to further differentiate uncertainty. With regard to the problem of dealing with uncertainty in environmental decision-making the existing taxonomies und concepts provide helpful building blocks but a conceptual framework for comprehensively perceiving and describing uncertainty is still lacking.

The aim of our paper is to meet the need for such a conceptual framework. With regard to the question of how to deal adequately with the inevitable uncertainty we identify two separate elements, or stages:

• perceiving and describing uncertainty and

• deciding and acting under uncertainty.

In this paper the focus is on the first stage, where the knowledge base is the main object of reflection with regard to its completeness and reliability. We are convinced that giving sufficient emphasis to the first stage is a prerequisite for making good decisions, particularly in complex situations where politicians or members of competent authorities have a public mandate to act and are therefore obliged to act in a responsible, considered and effective manner for the welfare of all.⁵

The proposed conceptual framework for perceiving and describing uncertainty is composed of a general definition of the term “uncertainty” – including the two extreme forms ‘certainty’ and ‘lack of knowledge’ – as well as of five complementary perspectives on uncertainty. Also here probabilities as the standard scientific approach for describing uncertainty are used as starting point. This multi-perspective approach allows getting a comprehensive and differentiated picture of uncertainty. The conceptual framework is targeted to practical decision-making situations – it aims to enable decision-makers to gain a comprehensive picture of their decisional uncertainty. Thereby the focus lies on uncertainty from the viewpoint of a single decision-maker. The assumption of a single decision-maker constitutes a considerable simplification which means that uncertainties which are specific for group decisions remain neglected.⁶ However, we are confident that in a first approach it is sensible to separate these aspects.

In order to illustrate and substantiate the conceptual framework we use the empirical example of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD). The WFD (EU 2000) came into force in December 2000 and sets the legal framework for the protection and management of water resources in the European Union. It is an interesting case for studying uncertainty in public environmental decision-making because its implementation is a complex matter that is taken very seriously by the EU member states.

Our empirical work is based on

• a textual analysis⁷ of the WFD as well as three so-called ‘guidance documents’ Impress, 2003, Wateco, 2003, Proclan, 2003 which are part of the ‘common implementation strategy’ of the European Commission (cf. Sigel, 2007),

• expert interviews with representatives from German water management authorities who are responsible for implementing the WFD⁸ (cf. Sigel, 2007), and

• the consulting activities of the authors for several German federal states and competent authorities (Klauer et al., 2007, Klauer et al., 2008b).

The paper is organised as follows: first, we outline some basic elements of the WFD and depict the main problems of uncertainty associated with its implementation (Section 2). We concentrate the description of the WFD implementation process on those facts necessary for an understanding of the practical examples of uncertainty in the subsequent sections. In Section 3, we introduce the first part of the conceptual framework for perceiving and describing uncertainty in environmental decision-making, i.e. the definitions of ‘uncertainty’, ‘certainty’, and ‘lack of knowledge’. Section 4 explains and illustrates the five complementary perspectives on uncertainty as second part of the conceptual framework. The paper concludes in Section 5 with some summarising remarks and an outlook.