F R I D A Y , J A N U A R Y 2 7 , 2 0 0 6
BRYAN NORTON
Professor in the School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology
More and more discussions of environmental problems acknowledge the central role of scale in the identification, monitoring, and analysis of environmental problems, and in determination of sustainable policies. Historically, faith in an "objective" world and commitments to cross-scale reductionisms masked the importance of "choosing" the right scale to address problems; consequently, it seemed acceptable to gather data at whatever scale is simplest or intuitively interesting. Unfortunately, however, we now know that there are many and incommensurable scales at which natural phenomena can be characterized and measured, and that the choices we make about scaling and modeling can determine whether we gather the right data with which to address a given problem.
In this presentation, it will be shown that choices regarding the scale of models employed to understand environmental problems cannot be resolved without analyzing the social values that are threatened by a putative problem. This point will be illustrated with a retroactive case study: the reconceptualization of the problem of pollution in the Chesapeake Bay between 1970 and the 1990s. This reconceptualization occurred as a result of new scientific information, but it also embodied a shift in the value orientation of activists and the public. The scientific finding of the importance of non-point source pollution interacted with strongly felt love for the Chesapeake to transform the "model" by which participants understood the pollution problem.
It will then be shown that, despite the importance of value specification in problem formulation, the two main approaches to value analysis available today—economic analysis and appeals to the "intrinsic value" of nature—are simply not adequate to address and clarify scalar aspects of environmental problems. An alternative way of analyzing environmental values will be proposed and sketched, and it will be shown that hierarchy theory, an application of general systems theory to ecological relationships, can provide a useful conceptualization and clarification of this interplay of values and problems. Hierarchy theory thus creates a conceptualization of temporal and spatial relationships in a landscape and, if modified to apply not only to representation of systems, but also to their evaluation, can clarify the appropriate scale at which to address environmental problems. Such determinations can, in turn, guide the gathering and assembly of data bases that are more directly relevant to problems that must be addressed.