Applying the heuristic

We now apply the heuristic for sustainability policy developed in the previous chapter to a practical case study in order to illustrate how it works. In the following brief study we examine how political decision makers can manage inland shipping in Germany in a sustainable way – or at least in a way that is more sustainable than at present ¹ . Our main focus at this point, however, is on method. Using this example, we want to demonstrate that the heuristic developed in Chapter 11 can be put to practical use to generate a rough overall picture of a given problem using relatively simple means, to outline the need for action and, where necessary, to gain pointers toward options for action and windows of opportunity for implementing them. The example is also provided by way of illustration in order to make the abstract and rather general description given in the previous chapter easier to understand. There are two things we wish to highlight in particular in this regard:

We deliberately do not describe the process of the heuristic in relation to a real-life situation involving policy advice or decision making.

Given that our main interest lies with the method, we give only a cursory account of inland shipping rather than a detailed one ² . We attempt to show, in ‘short sharp’ fashion, how readily accessible items of information can be pieced together to generate a preliminary but fairly robust picture of inland shipping in Germany.

It is in the nature of a heuristic that the information it helps to generate is neither inevitable nor incontrovertible. Additionally, of course, it is always possible to arrive at the same information by another route, that is, without the heuristic. The heuristic, then, is merely a device designed to help the enquirer move systematically along a path toward sustainable solutions. It cannot, however, be applied in a purely schematic or automatic way but rather requires expert understanding and the faculty of judgement.