Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
the assessment process is comprehensive in its coverage of concerns that
policy may give rise to.
Second, assessment involves the review of strategic possibilities for
reducing risks of ecological harm rather than of formal policy proposals.
Accordingly, it gives members of the public a role in shaping the future
rather than reacting to the government
s vision of what this should be.
Third, alternatives assessment at this stage is concerned not with con-
sidering different options for action, but with exploring the effects that
introducing policy over different timescales would have and how differ-
ent packages of policy measures might be used to alleviate potential
impacts. Backcasting has an important role to play in supporting this
process as its iterative nature allows for the preparation of studies
representing different pathways towards an endpoint and different time-
scales for reaching it that would provide a platform for public discussion
and debate of how ecologically oriented policies should be introduced.
117
Decision-makers should, at the completion of policy impact assess-
ment, have suf
'
cient information to form ecologically oriented policies.
Their primary responsibility under the framework would remain to
produce outcomes that satisfy the statutory objectives and principles.
However, the wording I suggest for this objective recognises that the rate
at which social and economic adaptation to an ecological transition
can be achieved should be taken into account in decision-making on
what can be done to advance the ecological agenda and how quickly. The
intended output of this third stage in strategy formation is that policy-
makers should have suf
cient information to judge where these limits lie
and, thereby, to establish programmes for reducing negative impacts on
ecosystem functionality that would allow ecological ends to be achieved
without destroying economic and social functionality.
3.3.5 Public participation in policy-making
Public participation is of central importance to the third stage of strategy
formation and, more generally, for the effective conduct of ecologically
oriented policy-making. It is vital if policy-makers are to produce poli-
cies that are capable of implementation that they should have knowledge
of how measures for ecological risk reduction would affect the public,
how different approaches to reducing risk would be viewed, and whether
117
Dreborg,
'
Essence of Backcasting
'
,815,824;Robinson,
'
Futures under Glass
'
, 822; Quist
and Vergragt,
'
Past and Future of Backcasting
'
, 1031
-
33.
