Wicked Problems in Environmental Economics

The key challenge for the Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) community is how best to understand work for the purposes of design, and how best to design systems for the purposes of work. The lack of pervasive use of CSCW technologies despite widespread growth of networked computers, and over twelve years of CSCW research, indicates that we are yet to answer the challenge effectively. We suggest that a significant part of what makes building cooperative work support so hard is that CSCW design is a ‘wicked problem’, where there are no definitive solutions, and better solutions can only come about through an ongoing dialogue between understanding and designing activities. Thus far, the dialogue has been hampered by an absence of a set of shared abstractions among the stakeholders (designers, sociologists, users, etc.). Traditional computer science backgrounds do not equip designers to deal with the complexity and unpredictability of the social realm. Traditional social science backgrounds do not equip their proponents to translate descriptions of social life to the needs of technological design. This thesis takes up the challenge of continuing the dialogue between understanding and designing by evolving a new abstraction that can facilitate better communication between the two. Against a background of general CSCW experiences with understanding and designing, we report on our first hand experiences of the difficulties in designing and constructing a spatially-based system called wOrlds, and at the same time trying to understand the nature of work for a group of systems engineers for whom the system was to be deployed. This leads us to critique spatial metaphors in general as a basis for design activities and to search for a more appropriate abstraction that can serve both understanding and designing. For this we draw on our own and the general CSCW experiences, and on sociologist Strauss’ theory of action. The main contribution of this thesis is to present the Locales Framework and its five aspects of locale foundations, civic structures, individual view, interaction trajectory, and mutuality, as a principled approach that allows for construction of shared abstractions among stakeholders. The Locales Framework is based on a metaphor of place, with ‘locale’ as its primary unit of analysis. ‘Locale’ can function as a shared abstraction because it is constituted in the relationship between the interactional needs of a social world (group of people with shared purpose) and the ‘sites and means’ it uses to meet those needs. Hence, locale only makes sense when we understand both the social and the technical. We argue that the Locales Framework can be used in a two phase approach, to understand social worlds and their locales as they exist now, and to design new or enhanced locales to better facilitate social world interactions. We show the use of the framework by applying it to understand the work of a group of distributed researchers, and for requirements analysis and design of a telehealth system connecting three Intensive Care Units. We also discuss a prototype CSCWenvironment called Orbit in which we interpret the implications of the Locales Framework aspects for generic toolkit environments. Finally, we reflect on the usability and usefulness of the framework, and lay out an agenda for future work for its evolution in the ongoing dialogue between understanding the nature of work and designing systems to support that work.

This contribution explores the assertion that climate change may be described as a “wicked problem.” It notes that the term was introduced in the context of the management sciences where a managerial ethos prevailed and where moral connotations were excluded. Subsequent references to climate change as a wicked problem maintained both these features. Yet, if climate change not only poses technological, economic, and political problems but also has moral and, indeed, spiritual challenges—as is widely maintained—then such moral connotations cannot be avoided. The description of a problem as wicked then becomes part of the problem. It is argued that the term is best understood as one used in jest, so that if we seek to define a problem’s wickedness in a conceptually precise way, we are missing the joke. The major moral dimensions of the challenges posed by climate changes should be taken seriously, but perhaps there is no need to take the term wicked problems all that seriously. What should not be laughed off is the managerial ethos that presumes that the challenges posed by climate changes can be addressed “exactly” through climate engineering or even social engineering.

Is there a ‘wicked problem’ of small-scale coastal fisheries in Sierra Leone?

Influencing the perception of what and who is important in ecological economics

This paper develops a systematic assessment of the sustainability of ecosystem services provided by rivers impacted by water storage projects. Given the conflicting preferences amongst stakeholders and the incomplete, uncertain and contradictory understanding about river ecology it is recognized that managing water resources sustainably is a wicked problem. In order to address this wicked problem, the methods of multi-criteria analysis and graph analysis are applied, in accordance with integrated water resource management, to assess the potential of investing in water storage projects and explore for sustainable solutions through the construction of an ecosystem services index.

The thesis comprises three essays that use experimental methods, one about other-regarding motivations in economic behavior and the others on pro-social behavior in two environmental economics problems. The first chapter studies how the expectations of the others and the concern to maintain a balance between effort exerted and rewards obtained interact in shaping the behavior in a modified dictator game. We find that dictators condition their choices on recipients' expectations only when there is a high probability that the the recipient will not be compensated for her effort. Otherwise, dictators tend to balance the efforts and rewards of the recipients, irrespective of the recipients' expectations. In the second chapter, I investigate the problem of local opposition to large public projects (e.g. landfills, incinerators, etc.). In particular, the experiment shows how the uncertainty about the project's quality makes the community living in the host site skeptical about the project. I also test whether side-transfers and costly information disclosure can help to increase the efficiency. Both tools succesfully make the host more willing to accept the project, but they lead to the realization of different types of projects. The last chapter is an experiment on climate negotiations. To avoid the global warming, countries are called to cooperate in the abatement of their emissions. We study whether the dynamic aspect of the climate change makes cooperation across countries behaviorally more difficult. We also consider inequality across countries as a possible factor that hinders international cooperation.

Environmental Economics: The Essentials offers a policy-oriented approach to the increasingly influential field of environmental economics that is based upon a solid foundation of economic theory and empirical research. Students will not only leave the course with a firm understanding of environmental economics, but they will also be exposed to a number of case studies showing how underlying economic principles provided the foundation for specific environmental and resource policies. This key text highlights what insights can be derived from the actual experience. Key features include: Extensive coverage of the major issues including climate change, air and water pollution, sustainable development, and environmental justice; Introductions to the theory and method of environmental economics including externalities, experimental and behavioral economics, benefit-cost analysis, and methods for valuing the services provided by the environment; Boxed ‘Examples’ and ‘Debates’ throughout the text which highlight global examples and major talking points. The text is fully supported with end-of-chapter summaries, discussion questions, and self-test exercises in the book, as well as with multiple-choice questions, simulations, references, slides, and an instructor’s manual on the Companion Website. This text is adapted from the best-selling Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, 11th edition, by the same authors.

Towards a public administration of migration and diversity: What can public administration contribute to and learn from migration and diversity policy? Migration policy and migration-related diversity constitute one of the most complex and contested policy domains of our time. This policy field appears to be in a constant state of crisis, contributing to declining trust in politics and institutions. While the policy debate is often approached from a sociological perspective, public administration provides essential insights into policy dynamics, politicisation and institutional constraints that can help better understand these challenges. This article argues that public administration should play a greater role in the analysis and development of migration and diversity policies. Public administration scholars have the expertise to examine policy dynamics, including the persistent myths shaping policymaking, the role of knowledge in policy and the discursive and political dimensions of migration. Moreover, migration as a policy issue offers valuable insights for the field of public administration itself. It highlights how policies are influenced by politicisation, framing and institutional pathways and how ‘wicked problems’ require a nuanced policy approach. Additionally, public administration can contribute to the analysis of moral dilemmas and target group constructions in migration policy, as well as how policy implementers navigate the complexity and emotional aspects of this domain.

The critical literature review discusses the principles of Participation and Interconnectedness underlying the Triple Helix Model and Learning and Adaptation in the Sustainable Transition Model for their relevance in governing urban climate change adaptation. In this new framing, a secondary literature analysis of Barcelona’s struggle against air pollution is exemplified as a wicked problem caused by diverse stakeholder interests and their different sustainability concepts in socio-economic and environmental development. The paper offers a new perspective on sustainable, transformative pathways in cities which run on participative and adaptive governance principles. The backwards integration into the underlying principles of the meta-theories illustrates the value of triple helix and transition research and the benefit of their integration for examining and designing sustainable transition pathways.

This is the second article in a pair of articles in the Journal of Creating Value which identified the root cause of a group of wicked global problems as the lack of value creation from radical innovation. The root cause has existed over the last four decades following the large number of significant radical innovations that launched and initially propelled the Information Age. The first article described the essential part of a solution which is adoption of a new fourth generation of innovation management (4G) which has emerged as best practice since 2000 because 4G effectively enables radical innovation in addition to more effective and efficient incremental innovation. Radical innovation is required for sustained, adequate rates of economic growth driven by improvements in productivity, quality and cost in industries such as healthcare, education, construction and energy. As a result of inadequate radical innovation over the past four decades, a group of major economic, social and environmental wicked problems are unsolved such as income inequality and global warming and these problems exist in all countries including the United States. 4G is guided by 12 new principles and practices to effectively and efficiently create radical innovation based on new dominant designs while also improving the efficient creation of incremental innovation. The first article, Part 1, described the first four principles of 4G in detail. This article, Part 2, describes the remaining eight principles of 4G in detail.

The percentage of the world population living in urban settlements is expected to increase to 70% of 9.7 billion by 2050. Historically, as cities grew, the development of new water infrastructures followed as needed. However, these developments had less to do with real planning than with reacting to crisis situations and urgent needs, due to the inability of urban water planners to consider long-term, deeply uncertain and ambiguous factors affecting urban development and water demand. The “Smart Water Futures: Designing the Next Generation of Urban Drinking Water Systems” or “Water-Futures” project, which was funded by the European Research Council (ERC), aims to develop a new theoretical framework for the allocation and development decisions on drinking water infrastructure systems so that they are: (i) socially equitable, (ii) economically efficient, and (iii) environmentally resilient, as advocated by the UN Agenda 2030, Sustainable Development Goals. The ERC Synergy grant project tackles the “wicked problem” of transitioning water distribution systems in a holistic manner, involving civil engineering, control engineering, machine learning, decision theory and environmental economics expertise. Developing a theoretical foundation for designing smart water systems that can deliver optimally robust and resilient decisions for short/long-term planning is one of the biggest challenges that future cities will be facing. This paper presents an overview of related past research on this topic, the knowledge gaps in terms of investigating the problem in a holistic manner, and the key early outcomes of the project.

This comprehensive volume describes how ecosystem services-based approaches can assist in addressing major global and regional water challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and water security in the developing world, by integrating scientific knowledge from different disciplines, such as hydrological modelling, environmental economics, psychology and international law. Empirical assessments at the national, catchment and regional levels are used to critically appraise this systemic approach, and the merits and potential limitations are presented. The practicalities of this approach with regard to water resources management, nature conservation, and sustainable business practices are discussed, and the role of society in underpinning the concept of ecosystem services is explored. Presenting new insights and perspectives on how to shape future strategies, this contributory volume is a valuable reference for researchers, academics, students and policy makers, in environmental studies, hydrology, water resource management, ecology, environmental law, policy and economics, and conservation biology.

The concept of a participatory approach to water management on a reservoir in response to wicked problems

Different stakeholders and actors frequently describe environmental challenges as ‘crises’. These crises are often wicked problems that are difficult to resolve due to the complex and contradictory nature of the evidence and knowledge systems surrounding them. Here, we examine a crisis narrative surrounding the IUCN-declared Asian Songbird Crisis (ASC), with its epicentre in Indonesia, where an extensive birdkeeping culture persists. We investigate how bird extinction is perceived by different actors, particularly conservation law enforcement and practitioners working in this space. We unravel local perspectives on the complex relationship between bird trade and extinction through one-to-one interviews and focus groups. Our examination reveals a diversity of attitudes to the ASC, with many law enforcement actors not recognising the crisis label. Market mechanisms result in complex shifts in harvesting pressure onto one or more closely related similar species. The findings challenge the prevailing notion that species extinction significantly affects wildlife trades, emphasising the plastic nature of trade and the coming and going of species fashions. By revealing the divergent views of actors on extinction and the ASC, we highlight the need for shared language, particularly the implications of the ‘crisis’ label, around species extinction.

Traditional scientific policy approaches and tools are increasingly seen as inadequate, or even counter-productive, for many purposes. In response to these shortcomings, a new wave of approaches has emerged based on the idea that societal systems are irreducibly complex. The new categories that are thereby introduced – like “complex” or “wicked” – suffer, however, by a lack of shared understanding. We here aim to reduce this confusion by developing a meta-ontological map of types of systems that have the potential to “overwhelm us”: characteristic types of problems, attributions of function, manners of design and governance, and generating and maintaining processes and phenomena. This permits us, in a new way, to outline an inner anatomy of the motley collection of system types that we tend to call “complex”. Wicked problems here emerge as the product of an ontologically distinct and describable type of system that blends dynamical and organizational complexity. The framework is intended to provide systematic meta-theoretical support for approaching complexity and wickedness in policy and design. We also points to a potential causal connection between innovation and wickedness as a basis for further theoretical improvement.