Difference between revisions of "Societal context of assessments"

Revision as of 11:10, 4 June 2009

This page considers primarily assessments in the field of environmental health, for example in the form of integrated environmental health impact assessments (IEHIA). Most of the content is however generalizable to any kinds of assessments in any field serving as science-based decision support to societal decision making.

Societal role of EHA

Environmental health assessment (EHA) is an endeavour of analysing the relations between environmental phenomena and human health. The purpose of this is to support societal decision making upon actions to control the environmental phenomena or human behaviour in such a way that the adverse impacts are reduced while beneficial impacts are promoted. EHA's may come in many forms and under several titles, e.g. risk assessment (RA), health impact assessment (HIA), environmental impact assessment (EIA), integrated assessment (IA), integrated environmental health impact assessment (IEHIA), benefit-risk analysis (BRA), and cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) just to mention a few. The name of the chosen approach is not important. What counts in whether a particular assessment is to be categorized under the relatively broad title of EHA is if it conforms to the following overarching elements of EHA's:

1. The purpose is to provide answers to practical questions regarding societal needs, and thereby enable actions that effectively promote societal good.
2. The answers to the questions are sought for by means of systematic analysis applying scientific knowledge, means and methods.
3. The target of analysis is relevant to environment and health.
4. The approach in the analysis is such that it reveals and compares the impacts of decisions and actions that are known to be possible options to be undertaken.

As both environment and health are very broad concepts, EHA is by its nature a multi-disciplinary field of practice and it addresses issues that are of at least potential interest to a great number of people having different perspectives. Naturally this includes all the scientific experts appointed to make the assessment task and the policy makers having an obligation to deal with the particular issue at hand, but also representatives of industry and commerce, NGO's and the general public e.g. as consumers or citizens. EHA can thus be perceived as a science-based activity that takes place on the interface between science and society, bridges scientific knowledge and practice with the practical needs of e.g. policy, business and everyday life, thereby providing enlightenment and increased awareness within the society at large.

Stakeholders in EHA

Let us now consider the roles that different parties of interest may occupy in an environmental health assessment. The figure below shows a roughly simplified description of the relatively traditional view of the relations between EHA, societal decision making and stakeholders, as well as the primary spheres of responsibility/interest for assessors (presumably scientific experts), decision makers (presumably politicians) and stakeholders (?).

The risk assessment process (horizontal oval) produces a a risk assessment product (vertical oval) as its output with the intention of feeding it as an input to the decision-making process. The decision-making process then produces a decision, presumably using the risk assessment product as an input alongside other inputs. The decision is then executed leading to specific consequences within the society. The white boxes on the background depict the primary areas of interest and influence of risk assessors (RA), decision-makers (DM) and stakeholders (SH). The other factors nodes refer to all the other influences to the processes along the chain that are primarily out of reach of the influence of the risk assessors and thus may either support or compromise the effectiveness of the risk assessment outputs. The arrows in this diagram describe causal relations.

The diagram above can be considered as distinguishing the groups of actors along the chain and their roles in a relatively traditional way. The risk assessors (RA) could also be replaced with a more general group called the contributors to risk assessment and the distinction between the decision-maker and stakeholder groups can be considered as artificial. The new approaches to risk assessment blur the lines between the roles of these different groups making more or less everyone a stakeholder and also a potential contributor to risk assessment. These views are considered in more detail in mass collaboration and Organizing stakeholder involvement. However, the above diagram represents the currently existing reality and the common perceptions of risk assessment and societal decision making relatively well.

The assessment product is the center of attention when considering risk assessment. It is the manifestation of the assessment process that produces it. Ultimately it is, however, the process of using the risk assessment product and the intended or expected consequences of that, which set the requirements for what the assessment product should be like and how it is to be produced. In other words: the intended use purpose defines the assessment product, which then defines the process of producing it.

Since, normally the risk assessors, or more generally the contributors to risk assessment, can only have direct influence to the assessment product and the process of producing it, but it is anyhow the use process that set the requirements for them, risk assessments can not be carried out in isolation from the societal decision-making. Instead, risk assessment should be seen as interpretation of scientific information for the use of the society. Risk assessment is thus an activity that takes place in the interface between science and society.

In order to be able to address this issue properly it is reasonable to consider the sphere of risk assessments to cover three different individual, but inter-related parts:

• risk assessment process
• risk assessment product
• use process(es), relating roughly to everything from decision-making process onwards

Assessment process is about collecting scientific information and values from various different kinds of sources and synthesizing them into the form of a risk assessment product. An assessment product is a description of a particular piece of reality produced according to the needs it is intended to address. These needs are derived from the use process and translated into the purpose and scope and other structural requirements for the assessment product.

Users and use purposes of the method

A spectrum of different potential users of the new risk assessment method can be described e.g. as:

• A Scientists, risk assessors in administration, or consultants working for administration on the European level.
• B Scientists, risk assessors in administration, or consultants working for administration on the national level.
• C Risk assessors in administration or consultants working for administration on the community level.
• D Authorities involved in managing risks but not actually qualified in making risk assessments (any level).
• E Political decision-makers (any level).
• F Representatives of the industry or business.
• G Representatives of NGOs.
• H Citizens directly affected by the risk assessment outcomes.
• I Anyone interested.

A spectrum of different kinds of use purposes by different users of the method can be described e.g. as in the table. Also tentative priorities have been given for the toolbox to facilitate different uses for different users (XXX = high importance, XX = moderate importance, X = potential importance, empty cell = no identified need or low importance).