ETHICAL DECISION MAKING IN ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF DAMS PROJECTS

摘要

In a previous paper reflecting on the Report of the World Commission on Dams of November 2000, the author argued that the time had come for explicit incorporation of parameters reflecting relevant ethical issues into a decision making model aligned to environmental impact assessment of dams projects. A number of existing multi-attribute assessment methods already contained allowance for environmental factors at both a general and more detailed level, including allowance for social factors at a general level, but there was a need for more explicit treatment of value-laden factors which involved ethical considerations. This paper extends the argument of that paper by showing some suggested ways in which this can be done, while still retaining the essential comprehensibility of existing methods.