We compare two strategic policy reviews undertaken for the UK Government on environmental issues: radioactive waste management and climate change.<\/p>\n
These reviews took very different forms, both in terms of analytic approach and deliberation strategy.<\/p>\n
The Stern Review on The Economics of Climate Change was largely an exercise in expert modelling and building, within a cost-benefit framework; an argument for immediate reductions in carbon emissions.<\/p>\n
The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, on the other hand, followed a much more explicitly deliberative and participative process, using a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis model to bring together scientific evidence and stakeholder and public values.<\/p>\n
We ask whether the choice of approach flowed from the underpinning science and the scale of the problem, or the history and policy context of the reviews.<\/p>\n
We conclude that the differences in approach above all reflect differences in history and policy context, although these are partly due to the scale of the problem.<\/p>\n
Since we do not find the underpinning science explains the differences in approach, we go on to ask whether the differences are justified.<\/p>\n
While both reviews are in our view “fit for purpose”, we consider that they would both have been stronger had they been less different: Stern’s grappling with ethical issues would have been strengthened by a greater degree of public and stakeholder engagement, and CoRWM’s handling of issues of uncertainty would have been strengthened by the explicitly probabilistic framework of Stern.<\/p>\n
Simon Dietz and Alec Morton<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n
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