objects/democracy-SAM.html

Democracy and Scientific Adaptive Management

tenents of democracy

• regular elections
• individuals are free to vote
• real alternatives are available
• majority decides
• majority can't impinge on rights of minorities

general conditions for environmental problems

• broad public involvement is essential because we are dealing with a natural resource issue that impacts many people
• complex environments may have no identifiable cause-effect relationships
• public's inability to understand uncertainty associated with systems near a threshold
• wicked problems in which the values change with information
• experts are crucial to understanding the problem
  • sophisticated analytical tools that are not based on a shared

characteristics of democracy that are unwieldly or threatened

• public is not part of a single political entity (Or, Calif, Tribes)
• management experiments cannot be interpreted without expert knowledge
• <!-- see list of conditions of democracy -->
• redress
• protection for minorities vs. use of the consensus approach
• three challenges to democracy (Press-1994)
  • social justice
  • technocracy
  • economic limitations
• democracy may not work in resource stressed situations
  • Moral consequences of economic growth
  • Press-1994
  • Ophuls-1977