Decision making for sustainable development: Selected approaches to environmental assessment and management

Abstract Nine approaches to decision making for environmental assessment planning, and management are reviewed to determine how they support principles of sustainable development. The approaches range from environmental impact assessment to adaptive environmental assessment and management. Examples of the eight principles distilled from the literature on sustainable development include the substantive principles of meeting human needs and maintaining ecological integrity, and the process principles of adaptiveness and integration. The more comprehensive approaches are found to support a broader range of principles. The narrower approaches may play important complementary roles in their more rigorous support for individual principles. While tensions confront simultaneous adherence to all eight principles, full support for sustainable development depends on such adherence. The coordinated application of the nine approaches could well support sustainable development in theory, but important substantive principles would remain neglected. Nontechnocratic approaches such as bioregionalism and comanagement hold an unexplored potential for filling this substantive gap.

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