5.1 Approaches in environmental ethics for business and engineering  (Page 6/9)

Norton's approach to environmental problem-solving

Wicked problems

• Norton, drawing from Webber and Rittel, characterizes environmental problems as "wicked." This may not be the most felicitous choice of works since declaring problems wicked seems to place them beyond solution. But wicked can be spelled out to show that environmental problems are solvable but require a different, more social and interdisciplinary approach.
• Wicked problems are difficult to formulate because they cover "ill-structured" situations. Specifying them requires the exercise of the structuring capacities of imagination. And it requires recognition that these problems can be brought to determination in different ways.
• Wicked problems are not numerical problems. (Non-computability) They have components or regions that admit of quantification but, as a whole, resist quantification. This requires that environmental problem-solvers go beyond economic and quantitative ecological methods.
• Wicked problems are non-repeatable. This is, perhaps, an indirect way of saying that they are context bound. Because the context shifts from situation to situation, what works in one situation must be reconstructed to fit the specific content of a different, new situation. We learn from the past but the past must be modified to fit the context of the present and future.
• Both wicked problems and their solutions are open-ended. We can distinguish between good and bad problem specifications and good and bad solutions. But there is no uniquely correct problem formulation and there is no uniquely correct solutions. Pragmatists argue that this is due to fallibilism (our efforts to reach the truth always fall short) and experimentalism (our solutions must be tested in the crucible of experience).
• Finally, wicked problems must be approached from an interdisciplinary standpoint. They present economical, ecological, social, and ethical dimensions that must be integrated in the problem-solving process. This is, decidedly not multidisciplinary where the disciplines are present alongside one another but do not interact. In environmental problem-solving these disciplines much engage and challenge one another, work to formulate common problems, and design solutions that integrate the different disciplinary concerns and aims.

Norton's sustainability values

• Community Procedural Values : These are values (reciprocity, publicity, and accountability) that, when adopted by a community, help it to structure a fair and open community deliberative process.
• Economic Values : Economic goods emerge from actual and hypothetical values. (1) Willingness-to-Pay: the instrumental value of a resource is set by the price an individual or group would be willing to pay to acquire the resource; (2) Willingness -to-Sell: because WTP undervalues resources (it ties value to the constraint of disposable income) a more accurate measure of value would be the amount that an individual or group would accept from a bidder to take the resource out of its current use and put it to a different one.
• Risk Avoidance Values : Precautionary Principle--"in situations of high risk and high uncertainty, always choose the lowest-risk option." 238
• Risk Avoidance Values : Safe Minimum Standard of Conservation--"save the resource, provided the costs of doing so are bearable."348.
• Values Central to Community's Identity : Justice, integrity, trust, responsibility, and respect can apply here but they should be taken in their thick as well as thin senses. These values, in their thick sense, depend on the quality of the discourse generated within the community.