ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: FRAMEWORKS AND CAUSAL CHAINS ‘Environmental Impact Assessment’ (EIA) is a legal procedure to evaluate proposed activities. At the same time, EIA is a methodological framework; that is, a structure of concepts that prescribes what questions to ask, what data to gather, what models to apply, and so on. Another example of such a framework is ‘LifeCycle Assessment’ (LCA), which is a methodology for studying the impacts ‘embodied’ in industrial
products. Being methodological in nature, these frameworks do not assert how the world is, but how to discover it. This chapter will also be devoted to a framework of this kind. It differs from EIA, LCA and all the others, however, in that it is fully comprehensive. It is applicable to all kinds of environmental problems, and spans all disciplines that relate to them: the physical sciences, the social sciences and the normative sciences (e.g. ethics). It is an instrument for research that runs the whole cycle of the analysis of an environmental problem, of its causes
SUMMARY All environmental problems share a common conceptual structure that is composed of two parallel causal chains: (1) a chain of facts of human activities, their effects on the environment and their further impacts on health, nature, etc., and (2) a chain of values, i.e. assertions about the desired state of health, nature etc., the desired state of the environment and the desired human activities. Problem analysis consists of research into this structure. Environmental problems are set in a causal context, i.e. the chains of causes of the problems. Problem explanation is research into these causal chains, which branch ‘outward’ from the environmental problem. Explanations are (1) normative, connected to the values that co-constitute the environmental problem, (2) physical-scientific, connected to the carrying capacity of the environment, and (3) social-scientific, explaining the human activities from which the problem originates. Socialscientific explanation starts with the actors carrying out the problematic activities, their options and motivations, and proceeds to further actors and factors influencing these options and motivations. By these means, one identifies the target groups and the social options for solving the environmental problem. These, jointly with the technical options identified in the problem analysis, can go into the process of designing and evaluating environmental policies and projects. Problem-in-Context is a methodological framework which brings all this together in an interdisciplinary whole.
ACADEMIC OBJECTIVES The aim of this chapter is to establish familiarity with the common conceptual structure of all environmental problems in their social, physical and policy contexts, and the approach to solving them. On completion of this chapter the student should be able: • to see, roughly but systematically, the interconnection of core concepts such as carrying capacity, environmental
