Employing Fuzzy Cognitive Maps to support environmental policy development

Environmental problems are complex in nature and are usually exacerbated by unsustainable trends that are driven by anthropogenic, economic and development factors. One of the key challenges of sustainability is the ability to examine the range of possible future paths of combined social and environmental conditions, under consideration of human perceptions, uncertainty and cause-effect factors, with possible feedback. Moreover, policy formulation and evaluation need to be addressed in an integrated and holistic way, where scoping goes beyond specific sectorial interests and includes multi-disciplinary knowledge, involving stakeholders from diverse backgrounds and with different objectives and aspirations. In this work we describe FCMp, a Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping methodology to help experts and lay experts develop, simulate and assess the impact of different policy alternatives on key variables in a particular environmental problem according to multiple perceptions. The FCMp allows for: 1) integration of cross-policy themes by modeling socio-economic and ecological indicators with possible feedback between them, 2) representation of qualitative knowledge using linguistic terms, and 3) stakeholder participation through scenario development and analysis. The FCMp uses “what-if” scenario analysis in order to derive future implications from current states. We demonstrate the usefulness of FCMp using a case study to elaborate and compare scenarios for a specific environmental issue.