Evaluation of agri-environmental and forestry schemes with multiple objectives

The evaluation of EU policy in the area of rural land use management often encounters problems of multiple and poorly articulated objectives. Agri-environmental policy has a range of aims, including natural resource protection, biodiversity conservation and the protection and enhancement of landscape quality. Forestry policy, in addition to production and environmental objectives, increasingly has social aims, including enhancement of human health and wellbeing, lifelong learning, and the cultural and amenity value of the landscape. Many of these aims are intangible, making them hard to define and quantify. This article describes two approaches for dealing with such situations, both of which rely on substantial participation by stakeholders. The first is the Agri-Environment Footprint Index, a form of multi-criteria participatory approach. The other, applied here to forestry, has been the development of ‘multi-purpose’ approaches to evaluation, which respond to the diverse needs of stakeholders through the use of mixed methods and a broad suite of indicators, selected through a participatory process. Each makes use of case studies and involves stakeholders in the evaluation process, thereby enhancing their commitment to the programmes and increasing their sustainability. Both also demonstrate more ‘holistic’ approaches to evaluation than the formal methods prescribed in the EU Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework.

Contested H2O: science, policy and politics in water resources management in Chile

This paper critically explores the politics that mediate the use of environmental science assessments as the basis of resource management policy. Drawing on recent literature in the political ecology tradition that has emphasised the politicised nature of the production and use of scientific knowledge in environmental management, the paper analyses a hydrological assessment in a small river basin in Chile, undertaken in response to concerns over the possible overexploitation of groundwater resources. The case study illustrates the limitations of an approach based predominantly on hydrogeological modelling to ascertain the effects of increased groundwater abstraction. In particular, it identifies the subjective ways in which the assessment was interpreted and used by the state water resources agency to underpin water allocation decisions in accordance with its own interests, and the role that a desocialised assessment played in reproducing unequal patterns of resource use and configuring uneven waterscapes. Nevertheless, as Chile’s ‘neoliberal’ political-economic framework privileges the role of science and technocracy, producing other forms of environmental knowledge to complement environmental science is likely to be contentious. In conclusion, the paper considers the potential of mobilising the concept of the hydrosocial cycle to further critically engage with environmental science.