IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/riskan/v31y2011i1p129-142.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Strategic Appraisal of Environmental Risks: A Contrast Between the United Kingdom's Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change and its Committee on Radioactive Waste Management

Author

Listed:
  • Simon Dietz
  • Alec Morton

Abstract

In this article, we compare two high‐profile strategic policy reviews undertaken for the U.K. government on environmental risks: radioactive waste management and climate change. These reviews took very different forms, both in terms of analytic approach and deliberation strategy. The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change was largely an exercise in expert modeling, building, within a cost‐benefit framework, an argument for immediate reductions in carbon emissions. The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, on the other hand, followed a much more explicitly deliberative and participative process, using multicriteria decision analysis to bring together scientific evidence and stakeholder and public values. In this article, we ask why the two reviews were different, and whether the differences are justified. We conclude that the differences were mainly due to political context, rather than the underpinning science, and as a consequence that, while in our view “fit for purpose,” they would both have been stronger had they been less different. Stern's grappling with ethical issues could have been strengthened by a greater degree of public and stakeholder engagement, and the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management's handling of issues of uncertainty could have been strengthened by the explicitly probabilistic framework of Stern.

Suggested Citation

  • Simon Dietz & Alec Morton, 2011. "Strategic Appraisal of Environmental Risks: A Contrast Between the United Kingdom's Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change and its Committee on Radioactive Waste Management," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(1), pages 129-142, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:riskan:v:31:y:2011:i:1:p:129-142
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.2010.01484.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2010.01484.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2010.01484.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stern,Nicholas, 2007. "The Economics of Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521700801, October.
    2. William R. Cline, 1992. "Economics of Global Warming, The," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 39, January.
    3. A Morton & L D Phillips, 2009. "Fifty years of probabilistic decision analysis: a view from the UK," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 60(1), pages 33-40, May.
    4. Wilfred Beckerman & Cameron Hepburn, 2007. "Ethics of the Discount Rate in the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," World Economics, World Economics, 1 Ivory Square, Plantation Wharf, London, United Kingdom, SW11 3UE, vol. 8(1), pages 187-210, January.
    5. Phillips, Lawrence D. & Bana e Costa, Carlos A., 2005. "Transparent prioritisation, budgeting and resource allocation with multi-criteria decision analysis and decision conferencing," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 22742, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Bruno S. Frey & Felix Oberholzer-Gee, 1996. "Fair siting procedures: An empirical analysis of their importance and characteristics," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(3), pages 353-376.
    7. Neumayer, Eric, 2007. "A missed opportunity: the Stern review on climate change fails to tackle the issue of non-substitutable loss of natural capital," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 3059, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. Avinash K. Dixit & Robert S. Pindyck, 1994. "Investment under Uncertainty," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 5474.
    9. Sir Nicholas Stern, 2006. "What is the Economics of Climate Change?," World Economics, World Economics, 1 Ivory Square, Plantation Wharf, London, United Kingdom, SW11 3UE, vol. 7(2), pages 1-10, April.
    10. Hood, Christopher & Rothstein, Henry & Baldwin, Robert, 2004. "The Government of Risk: Understanding Risk Regulation Regimes," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199270019.
    11. Keeney, Ralph L. & Renn, Ortwin & von Winterfeldt, Detlof, 1987. "Structuring West Germany's energy objectives," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 352-362, August.
    12. William D. Nordhaus, 2007. "A Review of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 686-702, September.
    13. Martin L. Weitzman, 2007. "A Review of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 703-724, September.
    14. Nicholas Stern, 2008. "The Economics of Climate Change," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 1-37, May.
    15. Spash, Clive L., 2007. "The economics of climate change impacts a la Stern: Novel and nuanced or rhetorically restricted?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(4), pages 706-713, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Simon Dietz & Alec Morton, 2009. "Strategic appraisal of environmental risks: a contrast between the UK�s Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change and its Committee on Radioactive Waste Management," GRI Working Papers 5, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    2. Dietz, Simon & Morton, Alec, 2011. "Strategic appraisal of environmental risks: a contrast between the United Kingdom's Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change and its Committee on Radioactive Waste Management," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 31890, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Helgeson, Jennifer & Dietz, Simon & Atkinson, Giles D. & Hepburn, Cameron & Sælen, Håkon, 2009. "Siblings, not triplets: social preferences for risk, inequality and time in discounting climate change," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-28.
    4. David Anthoff & Richard Tol, 2009. "The Impact of Climate Change on the Balanced Growth Equivalent: An Application of FUND," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 43(3), pages 351-367, July.
    5. repec:bla:opecrv:v:33:y:2009:i:1:p:1-22 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. & Botzen, W.J.W., 2015. "Monetary valuation of the social cost of CO2 emissions: A critical survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 33-46.
    7. Tol, Richard S.J. & Yohe, Gary W., 2009. "The Stern Review: A deconstruction," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 1032-1040, March.
    8. Seth Baum & William Easterling, 2010. "Space-time discounting in climate change adaptation," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 15(6), pages 591-609, August.
    9. Sussman Fran & Weaver Christopher P. & Grambsch Anne, 2014. "Challenges in applying the paradigm of welfare economics to climate change," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, De Gruyter, vol. 5(3), pages 347-376, December.
    10. Johansson-Stenman, Olof & Sterner, Thomas, 2015. "Discounting and relative consumption," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 19-33.
    11. Hepburn, Cameron & Koundouri, Phoebe & Panopoulou, Ekaterini & Pantelidis, Theologos, 2009. "Social discounting under uncertainty: A cross-country comparison," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 140-150, March.
    12. Rick Baker & Andrew Barker & Alan Johnston & Michael Kohlhaas, 2008. "The Stern Review: an assessment of its methodology," Staff Working Papers 0801, Productivity Commission, Government of Australia.
    13. Smith, Kathryn, 2009. "Saving the World but Saving Too Much? Time Preference and Productivity in Climate Policy Modelling," 2009 Conference (53rd), February 11-13, 2009, Cairns, Australia 47619, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
    14. Simon Dietz & Anca N. Matei, 2013. "Is there space for agreement on climate change? A non-parametric approach to policy evaluation," GRI Working Papers 136, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    15. Simon Dietz & Anca N. Matei, 2013. "Spaces for agreement: a theory of Time-Stochastic Dominance," GRI Working Papers 137, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    16. Lawrence H. Goulder & Roberton C. Williams, 2012. "The Choice Of Discount Rate For Climate Change Policy Evaluation," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(04), pages 1-18.
    17. Davidson, Marc D., 2014. "Zero discounting can compensate future generations for climate damage," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 40-47.
    18. Fisher, Anthony, 2014. "Climate Science and Climate Economics," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt746627gz, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    19. Garth Heutel, 2012. "How Should Environmental Policy Respond to Business Cycles? Optimal Policy under Persistent Productivity Shocks," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 15(2), pages 244-264, April.
    20. Simon Dietz & David Maddison, 2009. "New Frontiers in the Economics of Climate Change," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 43(3), pages 295-306, July.
    21. Elizabeth A. Stanton & Frank Ackerman, 2009. "Climate and development economics: Balancing science, politics and equity," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 33(4), pages 262-273, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:riskan:v:31:y:2011:i:1:p:129-142. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1539-6924 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.