Learning as an Objective within a Structured Risk Management Decision Process

Abstract

Social learning through adaptive management holds the promise of providing the basis for better risk management over time. Yet the experience with fostering social learning through adaptive management initiatives has been mixed and would benefit from practical guidance for better implementation. This paper outlines a straightforward heuristic for fostering improved risk management decisions: specifying learning for current and future decisions as one of several explicit objectives for the decision at hand, drawing on notions of applied decision analysis. In keeping with recent guidance from two important U.S. advisory commissions, the paper first outlines a view of risk management as a policy-analytic decision process involving stakeholders. Then it develops the concept of the value of learning, which broadens the more familiar notion of the value of information. After that, the concepts and steps needed to treat learning as an explicit objective in a policy decision are reviewed. The next section outlines the advantages of viewing learning as an objective, including potential benefits from the viewpoint of stakeholders, the institutions involved, and for the decision process itself. A case-study example concerning water use for fisheries and hydroelectric power in British Columbia, Canada is presented to illustrate the development of learning as an objective in an applied risk-management context.

Governing long‐term social–ecological change: what can the adaptive management and transition management approaches learn from each other?

“…Berkes and Folke, 1998;Lee, 1999;Milestad and Hadatsch, 2003;Olsson et al, 2004). It has been used across a wide range of environmental contexts to inform the management of social-ecological systems including fisheries (McDaniels and Gregory, 2004;Pinkerton, 1999), agriculture (Tress and Tress, 2003), grasslands (Salwaser, 1999), forests (McGinley and Finnegan, 2003;Gray, 2000) and rangeland grazing (e.g. Clements, 2004).…”

Decision strategies for policy decisions under uncertainties: The case of mitigation measures addressing methane emissions from ruminants

“…It allows for learning from experience about outcomes and values of the provisionally implemented options, as well as about new options, all of which may give reason to reconsider the decision problem. Adaptive management, an example of a concept for dealing with environmental and social problems, is based on semi-closure (Brunner, 2010;Kellon and Arvai, 2010;McDaniels and Gegory, 2004). Semi-closure seems inappropriate if the search for new options is costly or not conducted.…”

Experiences applying the climate resilience framework: linking theory with practice

“…Numerous factors, however, influence the ability of individuals and organisations to learn (Engel and Carlsson 2002;McDaniels and Gregory 2004;Berkhout, Hertin, and Gann 2006). People discount events that are seen as rare, uncertain, or only relevant in the distant future.…”