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Academia 23
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Indicators of environmental change
Academia Nr: 23 (Juli / luglio 2000)NEIL BAYFIELD, FEDERICO FILLAT
How do we select them?
When a mountain development such as a new ski lift is proposed, decision makers have to argue not only on economic, but also on ecological criteria whether to expand the skiing area or not. Often it is concluded that the impacts of the development will need to be monitored in some way. Key indicators of environmental change need to be identified to show how mountain areas are being altered by social economic and ecological pressures and whether local, national or EU policies are controlling detrimental impacts. But how do we decide which indicators are appropriate? Independent specialists might make the selection but what about the views of local people, farmers, foresters and other land managers? An important question is whether some indicators can be selected to suit all mountain areas.
Research on selection of indicators
Two of the partners of the ECOMONT programme, based in the Cairngorm mountains, Scotland and the Spanish Pyrenees have been exploring how the selection of indicators depends on the people making the decisions, and the issues and concerns in the area being considered.
In each country focus groups were asked to select social, economic and ecological indicators of environmental change. They had to consider three different scales of area, a small locality of about 10 km2 , a medium area of 300 km2 and a region of about 5000 km2 The largest area included the two smaller ones. First they had to identify the main social, economic and ecological issues for each area. These could range from the impacts of ski development to transport links, pollution and the cost of new housing and services. Next they had to identify and prioritise the indicators that might be used to provide information relevant to those issues.
Decision conferencing
The approach used was termed decision conferencing. The focus group of 8-10 people was given a decision tree listing possible issues and indicators at various levels of aggregation. At the coarsest level indicators could be classified into social, economic and biophysical disciplines. Each of these was then subdivided into major topics, issues and then into generic indicators of change. Every level of indicator was clearly defined to avoid ambiguity and reduce discussion time for the participants. A description of each area was provided and the range of land use, policy and environmental issues outlined.
Each member of the panel then independently ranked the relative importance of the elements of the decision tree for each of the areas. After computation scores ranged from 0-100 and those over the arbitrary point of 60 were judged to be key indicators of change for each area. Since each member gave a separate score, the range of opinion could be assessed. When the scores had been compared, further discussion took place, particularly of widely dif-ferent scores. Workshops in Spain and Scotland used the same team of specialists from the two countries to provide consistency. The specialists included ecologists, hydrologists and environmental economists. Then in each country there was a local stakeholders workshop which included planners, farmers, regulators, foresters and recreation managers.
Workshop results
The issues considered important by the focus groups varied greatly from area to area. For example in the Cairngorms, nature conservation, climate change and landscape were important at the small scale, whereas recreation, stakeholders views and forestry were of high importance at the medium scale. At the large scale property ownership and economic activity became more important. Consequently it is not surprising that the indicators varied from area to area.
The results showed that there were substantially more key indicators at the Spanish sites than in Scotland. Interestingly the stakeholders in Scotland identified fewer indicators than the specialists in Scotland but in Spain the opposite was true.
None of the top ten indicators were common to both countries at the small scale but 3 were common at the medium and 5 common at the large scale. Indicators common to both countries and both stakeholders and specialists included habitat condition data, views of stakeholders, visual impacts and key groups or species of plants or animals.
Conclusions
It was clear that stakeholders and specialists had different priorities. The group making the decision about indicators therefore can have a substantial influence on the outcome and this could have both political and resource implications for implementation of environmental monitoring. It is also clear that there is so far only limited scope for identifying indicators that are of similar relevance to mountain areas in different parts of the world. It seems likely that each area will need a unique set of indicators to suit the particular issues identified. Nevertheless comparison with more mountain areas and inclusion of a wider selection of indicators than the top ten might provide progress towards a common set of general purpose indicators, particularly for large mountain areas or regions.
NEIL BAYFIELD
GERALDINE MCGOWAN
Center for Ecology and Hydrology Banchory, Scotland
nb@ceh.ac.uk FEDERICO FILLAT
Instituto Pyrenaico de Ecologia, Jaca, Spain
ffillat@aragob.es
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