Environmental risk assessment issues in the third world

TECHNOLOGICAL FORECASTING AND SOCIAL CHANGE 19, 99-127 (1981)

Environmental Risk Assessment Issues in the Third World B. B O W O N D E R

ABSTRACT This article analyzes environmental risk assessment issues in the third world and provides some examples of major environmental risks. The prevalent low literacy level, the absence of mass media oriented towards environmental issues, poor public awareness, the weak environmental movement, and the lack of institutionalization of environmental concerns are the major constraints working against a proper environmental risk assessment system. Developing a strong educational base, motivating administrators, instituting a strong early warning system, stimulating private property options, and establishing proper links with policy making are the major imperatives if the third world countries are to strengthen and maintain a rational risk assessment system.

Introduction Although environmental risk assessment is an area of concern in the developed countries [1-5] as well as in the third world [6, 7], the third world countries have not formalized and institutionalized technology assessment to carry out the environmental risk assessment function [8]. Most third world countries have increased their developmental activities during the last two decades without environmental protection measures, and environmental quality is becoming a major issue as environmental risks become severe. Environmental risk assessment is the first prerequisite for managing risks. It consists of environmental risk registration, identification, impact analysis, and evaluation [1, 3]. All these are highly complex steps involving subjectivity, cultural biases, judgment, beliefs, institutional linkages, and personality factors. Because the environment is a new area of risk, the third world countries do not have experience and expertise in its risk assessment, which distorts the pattern of risk assessment in those countries. Conversely, the developed countries are well versed in strategic risk assessment [9-11]. This study is an analysis of environmental risk assessment issues. An integrated system for environmental risk assessment has to be developed and institutionalized in the third world, along with environmental planning and environmental education. A number of useful clues can be obtained by comparing measures for risk assessment with the technology assessment movement of the developed world. E n v i r o n m e n t a l Concerns in the Third World In the third world countries environmental degradation is due not to pollution and other developmental activities alone but also to existing poverty, malnutrition, an unavailability of drinking water, illiteracy, unhygienic conditions, and underdevelopment. The third world countries thus have environmental degradation arising from the rare B. BOWONDER is with the Center for Science Policy and Management of Research, Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad, India. © Elsevier North Holland, Inc., 1981

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combination of development to provide for basic needs and from a lack of development and poverty [ 12]. This complicates the whole issue of environmental risk assessment. Cultural differences add to the problem, since poorer sections of the population are averse to risk [13]. As shown by a number of authors [14, 15] cultural factors affect behavior, and hence strong cross cultural variations can be observed in attitudes toward environmentalism. A large population with low levels of literacy, a lack of public policy analysis, administrators with low ecological awareness, politicians with short-term bias, a lack of proper environmental policy, and an absence of public participation constrain the risk assessment function. It is precisely in the developing world that some of the most contradictory and destructive problems of the human environment are to be found [16]. Indeed, one of the very striking aspects of environmental problems in developing countries is their fearsome rate of increase [ 17]. In the eyes of many leaders in Southeast Asia, India aside, facing up to problems of pollution and other appurtenances of the western development process can be deferred until the benefits of development are closer to realization [18]. In Africa, however, there is an increasing awareness of the need for environmental preservation, including forest preservation, pollution prevention, and the exploration of natural resources. Many developing countries feel that they have little need to repair past environmental damage, concentrating instead on less drastic and expensive ways of preventing future damage [6]. Brazil and other developing countries such as South Korea, Singapore, and Mexico consider environmental degradation not as a problem but as an inevitable cost of industrialization [18]. Kenya is one developing nation that has tried to make environmental considerations an integral part of its developmental process [19]. The apparent hostility of the governments of developing countries toward environmental control may mask different attitudes held by nonofficial elements of society. The Phillippines has responded to environment and resource problems in an ambivalent fashion, and there has been a tendency toward overly inclusive administrative solutions to environmental problems [20]. These attitudes all represent a very soft line on environmental protection. This occurs for a variety of reasons to be analyzed below. First, because of their preoccupation with current and immediate economic or other problems, the administrators do not spend time and resources on environmental problems. For example, even though Israel has a fairly well developed environmental planning system, the prominence of its security considerations produced an antienvironmental climate [21]. Second, the existing administrative system and reward practices are designed to promote short-term success and achievements. The administration has been legitimatized by law and tradition and reinforced by career patterns in its public service, by the institutional loyalties of professional workers, and by the interests of civil service and client groups [22]. Third, because a large population in third-world countries is below the poverty line, an analysis of the behavior of the poor in rural India supports the conclusion that the poor are more concerned about immediate risks and problems. Because of the cultural poverty [13] the poor know only their own troubles, local conditions, neighborhood, and way of life. The poor are more present oriented than others [23]. Their hopelessness, isolation, and disorganization, evolving from their condition and culture, offer little prospect for an emergent participatory or civic political culture [ 13]. Further, emerging as pivotal in lower class culture is a demand for immediacy and concreteness, for beliefs that are not abstract, remote, or future oriented. Poverty and environmental degradation go hand in hand, and

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no results can be achieved without removing both. Because the values and patterns of behavior have been internalized over generations of socialization [16] change will of necessity be slow and difficult. The problem is magnified by the existence of cultural polymorphism. This is because the separate subcultures have elaborately developed norms and values that allow young people both to show contempt for and to rebel against the society in which they find no useful place [24]. Fourth, the environmental attitudes are a byproduct of the high growth rate of population and pollution. In the developing world there is as yet no serious action against the population explosion, the basic cause for environmental degradation. In many situations, and the population explosion is one, to be systematically late is to be systematically wrong [25]. Fifth, the conditions that produce unfortunate results and sustain this process are limitations in human communication [26] and an overload of information. Sixth, social time horizons in decision making are depressingly short. There is no major trend to extend social planning horizons in the third world, which have short investment cycles [27]. To conclude, environmental conditions in the third world will continue to deteriorate without cultural, social, and economic changes. Some of the major impending risks for the third world are next examined followed by an analysis of risk assessment issues.

1. Urbanization: Urbanization has been increasing in the third world, and along with increased population and a lack of environmental sanitation, proper physical structure, and housing, this is likely to be a serious risk. Urban growth in developing countries has been twice as rapid as in the more developed nations [28]. Further, today about one-third of city dwellers in the developing countries now live in slums, and half of these people are children [29]. Communicable diseases are widespread in tropics and occur at a much earlier age than in Europe and America. The urban sector expands continuously because of migrations from rural areas. Migration into where, compared to rural areas, renewable resource use is fairly low, nonrenewable resource consumption is substantial, congestion and crowding are high, health, housing, and waste disposal problems are important, and lifestyles require more energy and transportation, increases the resource consumption patterns of a country and reduces the overall availability of resources and funds to the rural poor. Given increasingly high densities in all sectors of the economy, the situation is more or less that of a zero-sum game, where benefits in one sector presuppose losses in another [30]. Further, urbanization without a physical infrastructure causes sociological problems, unrest, and violence. In Columbia demographic balances are threatened by the rapid growth of cities, which double their populations every ten years as the government does little to check the flow of migrants to the cities [18]. In India there are now ten cities with more than a million people, and eight more will attain this size by 1985. These cities are already heavily overburdened, with a totally inadequate social infrastructure [31]. In Indonesia the urban growth rate is very high and the existing water supply is inadequate in all urban areas [32]. The urban population in Egypt continues to increase both in absolute numbers and in relative share of the population [18]. In Malaysia, Brazil, and Iran similar problems exist [32]. Unregulated urban growth caused by the migration of poverty-stricken masses causes overcrowding, unemployment, and the creation of slums. In the developing countries another evidence of environmental degradation has been the twilight zones [22], which spring up on the outskirts of urban areas where mixed land use is indicative of

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unplanned development, insufficient administrative control, and a lack of sound environmental planning. The risks of unplanned growth and increasing urbanization are likely to be catastrophic in the years to come if unattended and neglected. 2. DeJbresmtion: This is another major hazard in the third world and will be discussed in detail separately. 3. Water Pollution: Water pollution and pesticide pollution are getting worse in the third world [33-36]. Water pollution is becoming a serious issue because water requirements are rising fast. This is due to increasing urban, industrial, and irrigation water requirements. The available streams are getting more and more polluted. Particularly distressing aspects of this problem are the following: i. The poorer section of population does not know about and cannot think seriously about pollution. ii. The poor have no alternate water supply when the common streams are polluted. iii. A concentration of trace pollutants, the intermittent discharge of hazardous chemicals, and pesticide runoffs cannot be avoided, because they cannot be separately identified. iv. In summer, when the natural flow is the smallest, the discharge remains the same, indicating that when water is badly needed, it is polluted more. v. A majority of the rural population in the third world is still dependent on an unprotected water supply. Here again, the population pressure and urbanization will intensify the deleterious consequences of water pollution and contamination. The issue is that immediate economic necessities may force the third world countries to continue to postpone solving the problem until the issue becomes unsolvable in magnitude. 4. Bilharzia: Schistosomiasis, bilharziasis, or bilharzia is a disease caused by a water-borne snaillike parasite that infects humans on contact [37-41]. It affects about 200 million people and endangers another 600 million in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. It is a disease of irrigation. There is unequivocal evidence that schistosomiasis is spreading and its severity increasing in many regions. Migration, nomadism, and the spread of irrigation still very common in the developing world, increase the prevalence of the disease, since the snail hosts are generally more widespread than the infection. Although the disease was identified in the early 1970s, no single method for its control is recommended. Because health education, medical care, awareness of population movements, proper sanitation, an adequate water supply, and environmentally safe water development projects are all required, it may be very difficult to contain bilharzia quickly. 5. Damage to the Soil and the Agricultural System: Another major environmental risk is the instability of the agricultural system. Extensive use of chemicals for pest and vector control has dramatically reduced morbidity and mortality from vector-borne disease, but it is causing ecological damage. A large increase in resistant pest species of cotton and rice has been reported, and 223 agricultural pests have become resistant to nine of the major groups of pesticides [42]. The appearance of plant pathogens resistant to newer fungicides illustrates another dimension of the resistance problem. The best solution currently available to pesticide resistance is complex and long term. Although integrated, biological pest control is increasing, the dissemination of this mode of control without adequate information, public awareness, and the training of nonprofessionals is very difficult, especially in the third world.

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Further, the productivity of terrestrial ecosystems is likely to decrease because of soil loss due to erosion and degradation [43]. Soil erosion is on the increase in Africa [44, 45] and Asia [46]. A decline in soil fertility, or even a total loss of land to agriculture due to increasing salinity or alkalinity, occurs in many parts of the world. Without adequate drainage excessive or unwise irrigation can lift salts to the soil surface, and even in the absence of surface salts water logging may reduce fertility. This has happened in Afghanistan, Mexico, India [47], Syria, and Iraq [48]. The problem of soil erosion is severe [38, 49] in E1 Salvador, Java, Nepal, Pakistan, India, and Columbia. The carbon-tonitrogen ratio in soils is decreasing, owing to indiscriminate use of fertilizers and reduced use of organic manure [50]. This is likely to affect long-term fertility and agronomic stability. Micronutrient deficiency has been observed in soils on a large scale [50]. Agricultural production is crucial if Malthusian conditions are to be avoided in the developing countries. Unless planned environmental change is initiated in the third world, there may be severe malnutrition and local social problems. 6. Malnutrition and Health Hazards: More than one-third of the population of the third world is undernourished. Malnutrition, coupled with a lack of sanitation, protected water supplies and sewage systems, causes a number of risky physiological conditions in the third world, and over the years their incidence has been rapidly increasing. The category of bacilliary dysentery, amoebiasis, enteritis, and other diarrheal diseases was the leading identified cause of death in Paraguay, Guatemala, E1 Salvador, and Pakistan and the spread of these is due to the lack of hygienic community water systems [37]. Studies in Sri Lanka, Bangla Desh, and Venezuela [28] have shown that infection rates of roundworms are 5 0 - 7 0 % in preschool children and 90% in children 6 years of age. The main causes of high infant mortality in Niger are infectious and parasitic diseases [29]. In the third world almost one-third of deaths are from communicable disease. As in other developing regions of the world, in Bangla Desh [51] diarrhea is a major cause of mortality among infants and children and morbidity in all age groups; the incidence is 17 cases per 1000 people. Disease-specific rates of mortality have been found to be higher in poor than in rich countries [30]. Apart from all these are a number of deficiency diseases, including night blindness and anemia. These clearly indicate the health risks that require serious attention. The higher overall and infant mortality is caused by unhygienic environmental conditions. Health risks are severe because of the combined incidence of deficiency, parasitic, and communicable diseases. Health risks have a second dimension in the third world. Indiscriminate use of antibiotics is causing drug resistance to certain bacteria, making it extremely difficult to treat diarrheal diseases. In India a very interesting environmental situation has resulted from the sizeable use of DDT. Certain insects are becoming resistant to DDT, and the accumulation of DDT in vegetables, fish, and milk has been continuously rising. DDT cannot be withdrawn in India, even though a number of countries have done so. Withdrawal of DDT from public health use at this time could give rise to immense problems and expose large populations to endemic and epidemic malaria [31]. Of late, malaria resistant to chloroquine has been observed. These kinds of second-order risks are still more difficult to manage: withdrawal of DDT can be achieved in India, but only over a long period of time, and by then the resultant second-order effects would become severe. These six examples of environmental risks likely to affect the third world illustrate the relevant issues. Apart from these and the many other risks faced are other risks [52] common to all countries in the years to come.

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Environmental Risk Assessment In economics risk [53] covers situations where the probability distribution of outcomes is uncertain. The present study considered uncertainty [54] due to lack of information concerning the outcomes as well as the alternative consequences arising from the actions. Four kinds of risk [55] have been identified as most c o m m o n - - r e a l , statistical, predicted, and p e r c e i v e d - - h u t environmental risk may encompass these and all their synergistic combinations. Environmental risk is thus multidimensional, as compared to economic and financial risks. Environmental risk differs from the conventional risks for the following reasons: i. Environmental risk has an impact dimension that is highly anticipatory and hence very difficult to perceive. ii. Environmental risk is multidimensional, conditional, and catastrophic in nature. iii. Environmental risk is a new area that we do not have wide experience in anticipating, assessing, and controlling. iv. Environmental risks are highly interdisciplinary in nature, because of which we lack sufficient information. Environmental risk assessment is complicated, but it is nevertheless needed if we are not to damage irreversibly some future options. It can be easily inferred that the assessment of environmental risk needs new techniques, procedures, and institutions if it is to be effectively coordinated with the developmental process. The major issues will now be analyzed in light of the problem of institutionalizing risk assessment in the third world.

Perceptual and Information Bias Risk registration is the first step in risk perception. It is an act of judgment, and hence highly subjective and value loaded. What one describes depends on what one wants, and the acceptance of the facts is itself a normative judgement [56-58]. Environmental risks are discounted when judgment strongly negates the occurrence of multidimensional and multidisciplinary risks. After the registration of risk, the next step is to identify the impact and estimate the likelihood of occurrence of various alternatives. Since environmental risks are second order and conditional, the anticipatory process has to be multidimensional. Yet the decision making paradigm in the third world is reactive [59], so anticipatory skills and expertise are undeveloped, the more so because identification and impact analysis are a strong function of belief [60] and prior experience [1, 3, 5, 61-64]. There is a serious tendency to discount risks not previously experienced, including environmental risks in the third world, a tendency that is spatial as well as temporal. After the deleterious consequences of the construction of the Aswan dam and drought in Ghana, Asian and African countries have started to consider ecological impact as a major concern in planning. Once an environmental disaster occurs, discounting is considerably reduced, but this may be short lived [23] as human memory relating to unhappy events is temporally discounted at a faster rate. In the case of impact analysis (of information on various possible outcomes), environmental risks cause many more problems. For complex problems the human cognitive mechanism requires a very large information base [54]. Getting at potential impacts is one

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of the knottiest elements, on organizational and conceptual grounds [65]. Projections of the impact of technology are limited by the failure or inadequacy of imagination, particularly in forecasting cumulative effects of scale [66]. Because of the compartmentalization of educational, administrative, and professional activities, our knowledge and information base regarding these risks are weak. When a very large hydroelectric reservoir was built in Nagarjunasagar, India, nobody anticipated the environmental impacts it will generate in totally unrelated areas. The construction of large reservoirs of water in areas endemic to fluorosis has resulted in the appearance of cases of knock knee. Similar cases have been detected in the vicinity of two more large reservoirs in India. Further, all risks cannot be quantified. Social dimensions that elude quantification [67, 68] are neglected in many impact analysis situations. In the interest of analytical integrity, the analyst should not be allowed to hide behind the protective cloak of immeasurability or even data deficiency [69]. Certain risks are linearly additive, whereas others are interactive and multiplicative. When complex risk issues are concerned [70], we lack the cognitive capacity to combine the large amount of information involved in many decisions. Combining various dimensions to derive an integrated risk assessment is another problem area [71-76]. In the third world countries integrated, rational risk assessments are not undertaken because of compartmentalization. Mere linear addition of parts does not produce the whole. In most third world countries environmental impact assessments are almost nonexistent [6], while in countries like Thailand, India [77], Kenya, the Phillipines [20], and Israel [21] they exist in a h i g h l y c o m p a r t m e n t a l i z e d form. W h e r e there is multidimensional uncertainty, the subject often oversimplifies the cognitive structure by focusing on one or two elements [78]. Multidimensional judgments have limitations at the second level of complexity in the combining operations [79]; increasing the number of dimensions decreases the information extracted from each. These two mechanisms reduce ones capacity to perceive multidimensional risks. A combination of risks thus requires conceptual research before its assessment can be meaningfully attempted. A combination of highly specialized technocrats with short-term biased administrators and politicians produces only the most stratified impact statements because of parochialization. Assessments become meaningless owing to fragmentation and parochialization [71, 80, 81]. Risks are further discounted by another p r o c e s s - - a tendency to see the ends of a scale rather than the middle [78]. Social factors affect risk perception and assessment. Human response to risk reflects the near absence of sociological concern regarding long-range human adjustment to the physical environments. Environmental sociology has yet to acquire deep roots even in the developed world, and nothing is known regarding the influence of the physical environment on social change, deviant behavior, stratification, demography, and social psychology [82]. Some sociologists have accepted the " h u m a n exemptionalism paradigm" and discount the environmental crisis. This contributes to the slow growth of environmentalism in the third world as sociologists restrict themselves to the conventional areas of human activity. All these issue~ complicate the perception of risk as well as its identification and evaluation. Situational risk perception includes a mass of factors that are difficult to define, including interpretations of the environmental clues, the observed action and experience of others [57], amounts of breathing time, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity,

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primary group context, role conflict, perceived escape alternatives [63], and training in statistical skills [70]. Under conditions of a high degree of uncertainty [78], as in the case of environmental risk, human beings tend to simplify the outcomes. In other words, ignorance of the possible actions and their outcomes [83] results in solutions that are highly simplified and removed from reality. The basic point is that care must be taken in attempting risk assessment to generate e n o u g h basic data and to identify the multidisciplinary impacts.

Technique Oriented Issues Two groups of issues are technique oriented: one relating to the anticipation of risks and their impacts, the other relating to their assessment and evaluation. Forecasts of likely impacts depend on the technique and skills used. Two major reasons for techniqueoriented errors have been identified: polarization and competition [81]. Here, too, the academic demarcation among disciplines and the difficulty of identifying the most probable impact magnify the dimensions of the problem. In the case of multidimensional risk each group amplifies one aspect of risk and discounts others. Highly specialized impact perception is needed to avoid neglecting certain dimensions of risk, since people react differently to statistical and individual risks [84]. There are large variations among individuals in the rates of adjusting to changes of scale and to stimuli [85]. The observer and the observed stand inseparable, and there is no unique description of a system [86]. Hence to achieve meaningful risk perception we need highly interactive group processes that are devoid of fragmentation. However, real groups seem to be incapable of fully using the contributions of individuals capable of high-quality decisions [87]. We therefore come to a situation where only group processes are useful but where the group process themselves are not fully interactive. The next area of concern is the estimation of risks and the evaluation, comparison, and assessment of impacts. Statistical knowledge reduces the cognitive complexity of assessing situations and improves the quality of risk assessment [88]. Under probabilistic task situations, highly specialized cognitive structures are required for optimal performance [89]. These kinds of statistical decision making skills are yet to be developed extensively in the third world, but they are precisely the skills required for improving policy and decision making. A number of kinds of distortions occur in the use of quantitative methods, some of which bear on risk assessment: i. The subjective measurement of small probabilities is complex and appears to be extremely prone to biasing factors. It seems highly unlikely that people can make reliable, intuitive distinctions between very small probabilities [60]. ii. Human judgments of probability are affected by irrelevant factors and the figures thus obtained may be grossly misleading [60]. iii. Applying quantitative methods to problems of ill-defined structure is potentially hazardous [85]. iv. Low probabilities are often overestimated, and high probabilities underestimated [5, 78]. v. In an ambiguous stimuli, a small amount of available information is sufficient to confirm a very strong hypothesis, whereas a weaker hypothesis may not be confirmed even by the force of considerable evidence [58]. vi. Unless respondents have some basic conceptual training in probability assessment, it is dangerous to assess the distribution of probabilities [90].

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vii. Qualitative and quantitative approaches yield different, sometimes diametrically opposite results [91 ]. viii. In decision making situations there is an apparent trade-off between stimulus frequency and outcome probability [62, 92]. ix. Ambiguity cannot be fully characterized by the range of subjective secondorder probability distributions [93]. x. The mixing of utility and probability assessment is a common occurrence [55, 92]. xi. Low c o n s e q u e n c e - l o w probability combinations are confused for low probability-high consequence outcomes [94]. xii. Without advance knowledge of the numbers of categories into which the alternatives should be classified, the Bayes's equiprobability possibility approach can leave the relevant probability figure completely ambiguous [71]. xiii. A statistically minimal risk, if perceived as threatening, may generate anxiety that is no less real than if the situation actually were threatening [4]. xiv. In cost-benefit analysis, direct, indirect, and altruistic benefits are estimated differently by individuals depending on their social strata [95]. These are cited here not to underestimate the power of quantification but to focus on how to reduce the occurrence of these biases. Conceptual bias, estimation bias, and task bias prevail in all situations involving uncertainty, since the assessment procedure is one of mapping a cognitive structure into a consistent probability distribution function [79, 92]. Technique-oriented distortions become severe when conceptual bias distorts the estimations, further reducing the value of risk evaluation because of faulty chance perception, wrong information processing, and an inability to reduce causal implications. In any assessment, criteria and measurements are closely linked to the type of model chosen, and this constitutes perhaps the most severe restriction in the use of any model [96]. We need systematic efforts through comprehensive training and research to reduce overquantification, nonquantification, and bias creeping into the assessments. Most of these distortions arise from a lack of integrated models for risk assessment. Any aggregation model of risks contains value judgments, and there is therefore no objective procedure for comparing risks [97]. Integrating unidimensional models without real multidimensional cross linkages can produce only distorted or biased assessments. Uncertainty, negative and extreme expectations, redundancy, context effects, inconsistency, and idiosyncratic effects distort information integration in decision making [61], the more so because probability estimates, relative-frequency judgments, and predictive behavior all depend on the memory of individuals [62]. We do not have to wait for scientifically rigorous evidence concerning a particular risk before making a recommendation, but it is best to create a risk assessment based on the best evidence currently available [98]. Hence for objective risk assessment we need forecasting models [99] capable of anticipating and estimating multidimensional risks without strong technique, conceptual, and task bias. This may need highly specialized cognitive structures, a multidisciplinary knowledge base, long-range forecasting models, and comprehensive training in decision making under complex situations. Problem Related Issues Task bias, that is, error of the third kind--solving the wrong problem--is a more fundamental decision making mistake than the usual statistical errors [100-102]. It is

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frequent in the case of complex dynamic systems, since where there are more than eight channels between the various subsystems noise has a tendency to drown out signals [26]. Incomplete understanding of the situation, such cognitive simplification as trivialization, fragmentation, and dissociation of problems can enhance the occurrence of these errors. Problem distortions can also occur i. when data interactions are considered wrongly,

ii. iii. iv. v. vi. vii. viii. ix.

when when when when when when when when

black box models are used, partial solutions are attempted, insignificant parameters receive prominence over the real issues, the problem is not fully known, the solution is not known, wrong and unrealistic assumptions are used in deriving solutions, a solution is forced, and the effect rather than the cause is dealt with.

These are common occurrences in the third world, the more so because third world issues have received attention only in the recent past [27]. The assumptions are a major distorting factor; wrong assumptions may make an impact assessment irrelevant, even if sophisticated techniques and reliable data are used [103, 104]. Uncertainty is higher in the case of environmental interactions, where error due to the assumptions is more probable. Although extensive assessments have been completed [ 105], then assumptions cause some of these forecasts of impact conditional. Similarly, carbon-dioxide build-up is another area where only black box models are available for risk assessment, because our knowledge about the meterological interactions is only elementary and partial. The long- and short-term effects cannot be explicitly differentiated in many techniques. The crude cost-benefit criterion is almost ubiquitous in quantitative assessments but worthless for medium- and long-range planning despite the elaborate time-preference theories discussed in economics [96]. The problem is compounded by most formal forecasting devices [ 106], currently used, which often were derived for short-term forecasting for business or industry. These are all examples of the problems of short-term biased techniques in planning and project appraisal. A detailed understanding of a system and the availability of contained models may thus become prerequisites for comprehensive, unbiased risk assessment.

The Analyst and Risk Assessment Since environmental risks are very complex and conditional in nature, measurement problems are inherent in risk estimation and evaluation. The perception of the riskiness of options is subjective and is in addition to the analyst-dependent risk preference [5], that is, evaluation of the amount of risk one is willing to take. Act preference, knowledge, and the desirability of an outcome are an integrated set of concepts inseparable from personality [56]. In short, personal bias can be a major factor, and methods to reduce this through intensive training have to be systematically pursued. Conditionality, too, is very subjective and depends on the perceptual skills. But perceptual skills are in turn functions of attitudes, values, beliefs, prejudices, emotions, and aspirations [1, 5, 67, 68, 107-110]. Given the gaps in our knowledge and the value-laden nature of issues, it is impossible to recommend a best response to the prob-

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lems posed by the limits of human judgment [70]. Risks are overlooked when they go against strong irrational motivations [ 111 ]. Belief has a strong bearing on risk estimation, and beliefs are perceptual, sensory, intuitive, and experiential in nature and sometimes ambiguous. Further, distortions due to belief are acute and chronic, as cognition is weakened under stress, leading to short-sighted and twisted reasoning [60]. In the case of environmental risk assessment, emotion is very common, notably fear, and distorts the net judgment. Lack of time available for information collection to support decisions, the urgency of developmental projects in the third world, as well as the lopsided reward structure [112, 113] make environmental risk assessments highly biased one way or the other. The long-term effects of pesticide residue accumulations have not been studied extensively, and the risk assessments in this area to date turn out to be mere extrapolations of personal aspirations, values, and judgments. Forecasts are nothing but projections of aspirations [114] and desirable scenarios. Further, perceived uncertainty may vary as a function of individual cognitive processes, individual experience, social expectations, and behavioral response [115]. Social preferences determine the social motives and are dependent on self-interest, self-sacrifice, altruism, aggression, cooperation, and competition [116]. Subjectivity, as well as lack of knowledge and experience, thus complicates risk assessment. Because the available data for defining relationships and specifying coefficients are grossly deficient, some of the more ambitious of the ecological models are clearly doomed to be costly failures [ 117]. Each individual develops techniques for integrating his feelings and experiences [118], and hence the perceptual vividness of stimuli are highly individualistic and unique. Perceptual differences and beliefs thus introduce highly distorting conceptual biases in evaluative judgments. Even among environmentalists there are two groups--ecocentric and technocentric--and their approaches toward risks differ [119]. Risk assessment and technology assessment have to imbibe more understanding of behavioral interactions in order to develop an integrated method of assessment devoid of purely subjective issues. This process may be slow and time consuming in societies oriented toward short-term reward structures. Culture has a strong bearing on perceptual behavior as well as skills. For example, some Indian societies, especially Hinduism and Buddhism, view disasters as fated or predetermined. They consider a disaster something that cannot be avoided and attribute it to supernatural forces. In India a large number of undernourished, little-productive, and aged cattle exist. For religious reasons, their slaughter is not acceptable, which greatly impedes a planned livestock development program. Cattle grazing is one of the initiating factors of desertification in unstable ecosystems [ 120]. Further, developing countries are inhabited by a large number of people living below the poverty line. When people are poor and live on a day-to-day basis their thought horizon is very short. It has been shown [121] that the influence of Christianity on development has been highly positive. Paradigms of perception are determined by the culture, and risk aversion is cultural in nature. Further, cultural variables determine the political structure and decision making system a country inherits [122]. On the whole, culture has a strong bearing on the existence of forwardlooking attitudes, and hence environmentalism. The poor environmentalism of India, Nepal, Bangla Desh, Ceylon, Burma, and Afghanistan may be due to these factors. Most of the people in these countries are, because of their previous cultural habits, interested in risk-free activities and short-term decisions. Because of their preoccupation with trade, agriculture, and short-term thinking in general, they tend to discount issues of long-term interest, like environmental conservation. As shown earlier, cultural changes are extremely difficult to achieve quickly through exogenous change.

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Cultural factors may enforce additional constraints on risk perception. Values, attitudes, beliefs, norms, expressive symbols, traditions, attitude of fatalism, cultural ethnocentrism, pride, dignity [123], and behavior shape the cultural traditions. In India, however, cultural factors were not working as impediments to change, especially environmental protection. Culturally, the Indian system was compatible with living with nature, with protection of rivers, mountains, animals, and trees. A unique characteristic of Indian culture has been the tolerance of different ways of thinking and living. Indians have learned to live with paradoxes because of the prevalence of cultural polymorphism; India is a country with numerous subcultures [124]. This " p a r a d o x i s m " is reflected in present thinking about development, and Indians seem to accept things that contradict the very basis of certain other ideals. However, under economic deprivation people tend to discount environmental, cultural, ethical and social factors. Economic destitution induces indulgence in activities that degrade the habitat and environment [6]. When rural dwellers perceive concrete evidence of new opportunities, they are able to shed at least some of their traditional premises in remarkably short order [123]. Many villagers, peasants, Lingayats, and Muslims are directly influenced by urban styles of living [124]. The increasing urban mentality in a way becomes an influence negating attitudes that support environmental conservation, leading rural people to neglect the major implications of environmental risk. Cultural and ethnic differences [125, 126] amplify and distort risk perception as well as risk anticipation. Temporal and spatial interaction and distortions of magnitude occur in decisions. In some of the third world countries pesticide resistance [42] and the incidence of certain environmental diseases are on the increase. Environmentalists consider these major areas of concern, but administrators have not shown equal concern, owing either to value bias, to perceptual differences, or to belief structure variations. In-house assessments by some agencies [127] have become unidisciplinary and less credible because of internalization by the assessing agencies. Utility differences, uncertainty differences, long- versus short-term objectives, and latent values determine value choices [56]. Environmental risk is very uncertain, long-term oriented, and difficult to conceive and hence unusually value loaded. This again explains the basic differences among various cultures in attitude toward enviromnental protection. Differences in risk and time preferences of the analyst are other factors that distort the assessments. There are social, economic, political, cultural, educational, professional, organizational, and personal reasons for the lack of long-term perspective. The short-term perspective, discounting the future, is very common even in the developed world [23, 128]. We need practice in long-term thinking, but this is not possible because of our short lifespans [129]. The situation is more pathetic in the third world, where decision makers are faced with problems of a complex nature. By their very nature political institutions are short-term oriented; we cannot expect much from these sources [130, 131]. With elections to win, wars to fight, dams to build, and hungry mouths to feed it is hard for any politician or administrator to concentrate funds and attention on a problem that is multidimensional and seemingly long term in nature [ 132]. For example, pollution is not considered a major issue in many third world countries [6]. Unless a problem becomes enormous, administrators give it little attention. We have said repeatedly that emotions distort risk perception and evaluation. In the case of individual risks, the environmentalists who identify the risk are many a time unable to suggest remedies or risk control measures. For example, the danger of radiation risk or climatic variation cannot be easily averted. Humans are such that threatening

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prospects are likely to be ignored, no matter how serious, if no means for reducing that threat are defined along with the emergency warning [113]. This clearly indicates the need for an integrated anticipatory and control system. If they are to be accepted by the decision makers, technology assessments have to include a strong normative component, apart from the anticipative components. Result Oriented Issues Impact assessments are simplified at the final stage. It so happens that the executive summary given is simplistic, and the decision maker has little time to comprehend the impact assessment. In the third world countries, where bureaucracies are very powerful, the decision makers who receive the impact or risk assessment may distort, discount, neglect, interpret, or modify the results. Disagreeable results are not made public by administrators. At all levels of government, not only does the left hand not know what the right hand is doing, but in many instances we do not want it to [71]. In essence, the communication barriers between organizations and among the members of the assessment groups, quantification of the nonquantifiable results, and statistical presentation of the multidimensional data in unidimensional form increase the incidence of such problems. As the complexity of a system increases, our ability to make precise yet significant statements about its behavior [71] diminishes, until a threshold is reached beyond which precision and relevance become almost mutually exclusive characteristics. Unless the results of risk assessment are given widest possible dissemination to the public and politicians at large, administrators and politicians discount the highly complex issues involved. Delusions and subjectivity influence the political decision making process as well [109]. The population explosion, complex and difficult to solve, gets discounted heavily. The problem is still worse in the case of conditional risks. The perception of public risk is highly involved [55, 133, 134], and the conventional political machinery discounts long-term impacts, uncertainties, negative consequences, and second-order effects. Then, too, there is the issue of public acceptance of risk assessments. Thorough factual educational campaigns have not only failed to provide a better public understanding but also heightened uncertainty and confusion in certain cases [l 1 l]. When fears of negative consequences are prevalent in assessments, the public becomes extremely prejudiced against acceptance. This, too, is a subjective factor since executive or political authority is stronger than technical authority. People consider public and individual risks differently. The discounting effect is greater in the case of public risks in the third world countries, which are engrossed in short-term developmental activities and so unconcerned with second-order consequences. Propagating the results of risk assessments will be effective in making people understand the long-term issues. Another major factor that causes discounting is the lack of strong and effective professional forums and societies in the third world. Existing professional institutions are dependent on the government for funds and rarely engage in serious public debate on governmental decisions. This lacuna is compounded by the absence of rational policy analysis procedures, institutions, and professionals. The result-oriented distortions are difficult to remove since educative processes act very slowly. Another major, and probably the most difficult, issue concerns the interaction of risk assessment and corruption. The assessors may distort assessments to suit their personal interests. In the third world countries, unless risk assessment or technology assessment is independent of the legislature, the executive, business, and the judiciary this state of affairs will continue.

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System Related Issues We turn now to the highest hierarchical level in risk assessment. This area is very critical, since it determines the boundaries and interfaces of the political, technical, and ecological systems. Unless we allow the technical process of the risk assessment task to work, it becomes enmeshed in the political process, which is always the larger of the two. When the political and technical processes become intermeshed, the technical information becomes biased and is labeled prejudicial; it becomes mistrusted and, furthermore, the people who purvey it become identified with the issues--they are either " f o r it or against it" depending on the nature of the technical evidence they have produced [ 133]. Risks have structural features that put them in a distinct class, capable of being effectively controlled by neither a purely scientific analysis nor a personal, conservative type of authority [135]. This is a serious problem in the third world, where the decision making process is either purely political or purely bureaucractic, not an integrated political-technical c u m administrative process. In the case of environmental risk, the crises are ambiguous and uncertain. When, in the midst of social complexity, there is doubt about where the steering controls lie, the latent tendencies to avoid risk, present in all institutions, are conspicuously reinforced [112]. Organizations have by nature strong survival tendencies: They resist external pressure for change. In any functioning organization, information tends to be sought only if, in a given interpretive context it reinforces or expands the power already accrued. Organizations tend to resist remaking themselves. Bureaucracies resist internal and external changes in order to survive [137]. A large number of barriers exist that resist the use of policy-relevant information in decision making, particularly resistance to change and to the unfamiliar and improper institutional linkages [73]. These barriers are stronger and the information component weaker in the third world because policy making institutions are not information oriented but nonanalytical, highly subjective, frequently subject to change, and lacking well-defined goals. Technology assessment without institutional analysis is empty; institutional analysis without technology assessment is blind [ 105]. This is true of risk assessment also, since system relationships are concerned with the distributions of power, complicating the whole mechanism [138]. The above deals comprehensively with risk assessment issues in the third world. Taking deforestation as an example, we now detail the steps necessary to strengthen the risk assessment system in light of the experience of the developed world with technology assessment.

Risks from Deforestation Deforestation is a serious problem in third world, as has been identified by UNEP [139], the World Bank [140], and other experts [141-143]. Among the negative consequences of deforestation, agricultural experts consider soil erosion [43] the most deleterious, plant breeders the vanishing genetic resources [144], civil engineers siltation and denudation, and hydrogeologists depletion of water resources and the potential of flash floods. No integrated risk assessments are available because of perceptual differences and compartmentalized administration. In many third world countries more than 80% of wood extraction is for the fuel [ 139]: 88% in Southeast Asia and Oceania, 95% in South Asia, 93% in Western and Central Africa, and 83% in South America. To our dismay we find that illegal extraction is large in a number of countries, including Sri Lanka [145], Thailand [146], Nigeria [147], and India [148]. In other words, deforestation is the combined effect of a number of factors:

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the attitude that " w h a t belongs to everyone belongs to no o n e , " the unavailability of cheap commercial fuels for domestic uses, poor investment in the forestry sector, a lack of regeneration operations and the absence of incentives for regeneration, distorted pricing policy, high-priced fossil fuels relative to fuel wood, the unplanned use of forest resources for the paper, pulp, and rayon industries, the diversion of land to agricultural operations because of population increase, illegal encroachment on forests, and cattle grazing in forests owing to unplanned livestock development programs.

Among these factors, fuel-wood extraction ranks as the major cause of deforestation. Deforestation trends cannot be reversed simply by changing forest regulations: Culturally, the rural population is accustomed to the use of wood as fuel. Although soft coke has been made available to the rural population of India by a Lignite Mining firm, the fuel did not find acceptance for cultural, social, and economic reasons. It was perceived that providing cheap soft coke will reduce the intensity of deforestation, but the program was not successful. Those who extract from forests illegally are precisely those who cannot afford other fuels, so providing soft coke, kerosene, or biogas will not reduce the deforestation. Some experts consider the lack of regeneration and aforestation to be the major reasons for increasing the intensity of deforestation. Here we can see how individual perceptions bias the problem identification itself. This is more a socioeconomic problem than one of energy supply. First one has to deal with the cause rather than the effect. The cause is the need for an economically viable fuel for domestic needs, the effect the deforestation. This problem is an example of the tragedy of commons [149]. When the services of a commonly held resource are available at zero price and there are no restrictions on entry or use, the outcome is easy to predict: overuse, abuse, congestion, and quality degradation [150]. The long-term risks are discounted in all cases of a commonly held resource. In one hilly area, when the effects of deforestation became v i s i b l e - - a s in flash floods, erosion, increased siltation of irrigation lakes, reduction in agricultural yield, and the loss of secondary forest produce like honey or l a c - - t h e local leadership organized itself against deforestation. The visibility of the impact reduced the perception gap. Further, exogenous leaders cannot educate and stimulate the rural poor for joint action because of cultural and social barriers, but endogenous leaders could easily motivate a population against deforestation. Formerly, it was wrongly considered that public ownership of the forest sector reduces deforestation. In India, 96% of forest area is under government control, yet more than 60% is degraded to such an extent that it may be difficult to improve forest quality, and similar events have occurred in other Asian countries. This is mainly because of the task bias of the administrators. In a number of cases private organizations and forests have been taken over by governments on the assumption that they would reduce misuse, but the policy m a k e r s - - t h e m s e l v e s a d m i n i s t r a t o r s - - a r e biased, short-term oriented, monocular in perception, and sometimes corrupt. Before analyzing the issue further, we shall review the extent of forest damage and the impact of deforestation in some major countries. In Nepal the deforestation or destruction of forests is increasing more rapidly each year, and the country is likely to be all but denuded by the end of the century [ 141]. Haiti's problem with deforestation duplicates ecological losses that have occurred in Thailand,

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the Phillippines, Indonesia, Africa, and Brazil [6]. Afghanistan is being deforested at such a rate that it is likely to lose its forests within a period of 10 or 15 years and face desertification [ 141]. After several decades of accelerating deforestation and chronic overgrazing, much of Western and Central India is assuming the appearance of a lunar landscape [132]. The expansion of agriculture to steep hills has led to serious erosion in Indonesia, and the increasing pressure of slash and burn techniques destroying tropical forests has led to desertification in the Sudan [ 151]. Some developmental activities have induced desertification in Tunisia, Chile, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, and Iraq because of ecological disturbances. In Thailand [ 146], swiddeners cultivate their fields to exhaustion, permit fires to spread, burn off indiscriminately, and in fact so destroy the forests that they frequently migrate to new areas, leaving behind instead of forests a tropical grass savanna. Forests have dwindled at an alarming pace during the past three decades in India [148]. Although Indonesia derives a large portion of its foreign exchange from timber exports, nothing serious has been done to increase aforestation operations [144]. Equatorial Africa has witnessed the destruction of more than 1 million square kilometers of rain forests. Further, in Madagascar and Central and South America thousands of square kilometers of forest have been destroyed along with its unique fauna for timber, coffee, local species, cattle, and sugar cane products for export [143]. In India deforestation is aggravating sedimentation, depositing silt into reservoirs, disturbing the regime of ground water levels, and causing flash floods in the streams [47]. Firewood comes overwhelmingly from local sources, and this puts growing pressure on the trees, bushes, and shrubs near population centers; long before the demand for fuel-wood leads to complete destruction of the tree cover, it has markedly degrading environmental effects [139]. In all these it is clear that the severe risk of deforestation was not perceived or reported before 1975 [ 132]. One of the most severe consequences of deforestation is the biological extinction of germ plasm, reducing the material available for breeding [152-155]. In the third world the population growth rates are high, large fossil fuel reserves are lacking, and there is a large rural and poor population. In countries like India, Tanzania, Zambia, Ethiopia, Nepal, Laos, Nigeria, Pakistan, Ruwanda, Somalia, Bangla Desh, Botswana, and the Sudan more than 90% of the wood extraction is for fuel-wood purposes. Under these conditions it is only natural that the pressure on forest lands is likely to increase, and nothing substantial is being done to change the situation. Forest agroecosysterns [ 156] are very complex, and above a certain threshold the destruction is likely to be catastrophic. Ecological risks are very difficult to perceive because the secondary consequences occur without much warning. Deforestation and its consequent ecological disorders are nonhomeorhetic; that is, after a disturbance the system is not able to come to the same stabilized chreodic, or pathway, that it had followed prior to the disturbance. It can be inferred that problems are likely to be perceived as severe where the impact is catastrophic. While a number of risk assessment studies on deforestation have been reported, they do not clearly indicate the catastrophic nature of secondary risks, which may be more damaging since unanticipated. In the Sahel region in Ghana a severe drought occurred whose enduring impact initiated the mechanism of perception in the population. Similarly, when people near the Himalayan region started to experience secondary consequences they became alert. Yet by their very nature environmental risks are so diverse that remedial action will not immediately restore the original condition. These risks are characterized by this severe nonreversibility, due to their catastrophic nature. Catastrophe theory can throw some light on these risks [157].

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Without major educational inputs people tend to discount risks they have not experienced. The environmental disasters of the Aswan dam [ 158, 159], the Sahel region [ 19], the Cante Valley disaster in Peru [160], and the Himalayan region [161] have increased public awareness of environmental risks in certain regions. The only way to educate the population about environmental risks is to bring home known disasters through television, movies, and photographs. We shall discuss the issue of environmental education in detail subsequently. The reward structure in government and administration and the emotional attachment of administrators to their profession cause analysts to discount risks. Administrators are assessed by their short-term contributions, and activities like forest conservation, the preservation of ecological stability, population control, the protection of archeological monuments, wild-life protection, and genetic resource conservation, which may have long-term significance, get the lowest priority in the eyes of the public as well as the politicians. This is the major reason environmental hazards are more severe in the third world. It also explains the slowness of administrators and scientists to take up activities and their tendency to discount long-range risks and rewards likely only in the long term. This again, is a reason for neglected research in forestry. Research in the field of cereals, pulses, tubers, and vegetables will yield quick results, since cropping time is less than a year, while forestry research, which yields results only after 10-15 years, is thus neglected. The structure of the reward systems and of the government and commitment of administrators wields considerable influence on the identification and evaluation risks. Public risks are discounted more seriously than private risks [134]. A large forest sector was converted to a collective farm in the Ernakulam district of India. That area degraded so quickly despite government control and the technical expertise that was available for planning. The degradation was so severe that the government divided it into pieces and gave it to private farmers. A similar experiment in agroforestry was attempted in Gujarat, where waste lands have been given to private holders to grow fast growing trees [162], and this, too, is a success. Another major observation is that conservation and protection education have taken roots only when the villagers and the rural population were motivated to know about ecological damages by an internal conservation movement. In the Tehri Garhwall district near the western Himalayas, serious ecological disasters like landslips, siltation, denudation, flash floods, and erosion became severe. The local inhabitants initiated a movement against deforestation programs. This happened only through education, motivation, and increased public perception and participation. Further, third world countries need paper for educational books and newspapers. The paper requirement has gone up tremendously, but since this growth was not anticipated no long-term forest planning for these requirements were initiated. Because of the unavailability of softwood, hardwoods have been used for paper and pulp manufacture in increasing proportions. Hardwood takes 4 0 - 5 0 years to grow. Here again the failure to anticipate the long-term risks and the lack of integration of long-term planning and environmental conservation have intensified the problem. Third world countries have to take steps for effective long-term planning consistent with environmental balance. To conclude, environmental risks are difficult to perceive because of their multidimensional, conditional, and multiple-order effects. The impact of deforestation and its secondary consequences has not been reported comprehensively. This also indicates that internal assessments tend to be severely biased, since no forest expert has anticipated the seriousness of secondary risks of deforestation. Table 1 gives a corn-

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B. BOWONDER TABLE 1 Impact of Deforestation

Sector Agricultural impact

Impact 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Affect the water resources system adversely Flash floods affect crops Siltation in dams and reservoirs Severity of erosion increases Salinity increases Desertification in unstable ecosystems Laterization Gene-diversity loss reduces breeding potential in agriculture Loss of germ plasm Life of dams and irrigation systems get reduced

Economic impact

I. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Prices of wood products go up Lesser employment in forest sector Higher incidence of corruption in forestry Housing construction rates COllie down Exports decrease Poor people to spend more on fuel Forests will become nonrenewable

Industrial impact

I. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Softwood shortage induces hardwood usage Paper shortage Lac production decreases Paper fiber board pulp/rayon/cost up More recycling of used paper

Environmental impact

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Increase in micro temperature Lack of green belt increases pollution Genetic equilibrium disturbed Loss nf top soil Wild life destruction Lower moisture retention in soils Erratic precipitation Growing monocultures induce ecological instability'

Social impact

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Tribal migration Increase in shifting agriculture Rural unemployment People living on minor forest products lose jobs Poor people have to spend more time to collect firewood More illegal extraction

p r e h e n s i v e s u m m a r y o f the l o n g - t e r m i m p a c t s o f d e f o r e s t a t i o n . Such e x e r c i s e s will imp r o v e the risk i d e n t i f i c a t i o n and a s s e s s m e n t capability. People n e g l e c t public risks, and h e n c e one way to sensitize the p o p u l a t i o n is to project public risks as private risks t h r o u g h e n v i r o n m e n t a l e d u c a t i o n . The public c o n s i d e r s u n e x p e r i e n c e d risks as unreal e v e n w h e n they are i m m i n e n t . K n o w l e d g e o f the severity o f the c o n s e q u e n c e s o f d e f o r e s t a t i o n arose mainly f r o m c o n s e r v a t i o n g r o u p s and e n v i r o n m e n t a l i s t s . Certain i m p a c t s , like v a n i s h i n g genetic r e s o u r c e s and the effect o f d e f o r e s t a t i o n on w a t e r r e s o u r c e s , have b e e n p e r c e i v e d only after the i n c i d e n c e o f the s e c o n d a r y c o n s e q u e n c e s . D e f o r e s t a t i o n is intensely linked to w a t e r r e s o u r c e s d e v e l o p m e n t since tropical forest e c o s y s t e m s are p r o d u c t i v e , p r o t e c tive, and regulatory in function. The m o s t serious s e c o n d a r y and irreversible c o n s e q u e n c e o f d e f o r e s t a t i o n is likely to be the i m p a i r m e n t o f agricultural p r o d u c t i o n in the third w o r l d ,

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since most of the food shortage in Asia and Africa [163] results not because of a shortage of land but because of a lack of water. Deforestation may become a serious catastrophe in the third world because water-forest ecosystems are very delicately linked. The signals of primary damages point to the severity and magnitude of the impending risk.

Information Support The first prerequisite for good risk assessment is a comprehensive information support system. This information system should be anticipatory, multidisciplinary, cross sectoral, international, and broad. Chatel has identified the necessity of having such a system under the United Nations [8]. Goal 2 of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) is the installation of an operational information n e t w o r k - - I N F O T E R R A - that nearly all countries that have registered sources will make use of by the year 1982 [164-166]. If this network is to be effective, all the countries will have to establish national, state, and district networks as well as different discipline-oriented networks to provide information to I N F O T E R R A as well as to disseminate that information at the grass root levels. The scope of I N F O T E R R A has to be extended so as to incorporate environmental risk assessments. If these information systems are to increase the effectiveness of risk assessments, they must be synthesized into one decision making system with concurrent educational [ 167] and R&D systems. Risk assessments should culminate in risk control [168] and management, and for this purpose risk assessment must identify newer options that are less risky to the ecologiical equilibrating parameters. This will be possible only if risk assessment is considered creatively [168, 169] rather than reactively. In effect, risk assessment must be capable of identifying alternative resource consuming options. Hence, it must be intrinsically future-directed and innovative. In effect, information dissemination will result in utilization only if the proper educational base is available. A sense of urgency in mastering the new global complexities is a prerequisite for developing an overall human system [170].

Educational Process and Risk Assessment As specialists we can handle effectively only specialized problems; in part, we lack the overall grasp required to overcome the environmental and social difficulties because the organization of universities according to discipline fails to coincide with the structure of problems we face [138]. The conventional educative process only supports reactive problem solving. Instead, it must cultivate a future-directed-creative-ecosystemic planning and learning paradigm [169]. It must be value sensitive, address causal relations, adopt an ecosystemic hierarchy, and be oriented to system balance. Finally, it must induce interactive problem solving paradigms [170]. The environmental education program should comprise the following fields: i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. vii. viii.

food science; health, sanitation, and hygiene; resource conservation; environmental quality; land use management; renewable resource management; environment design; environmental engineering;

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impact and risk analysis: energy planning and resource economics: recycling management: human settlements: and ecology and environmental management.

Different types of training have to be imparted to different levels of personnel. Detailed curricula and procedures have to be developed for various groups comprising varying mixes of the following types of programs: i. ii. iii. iv.

Education for primary awareness, development of techniques, development of concepts for skills related to integration and coordination, and the organization of professional training.

Primary-awareness-oriented programs should be directed to school children, older youths, and housewives. Technique-oriented programs should include public health engineers, system analysts, resource economists, forest conservators, agricultural engineers, chemical engineers, and so on. Conceptual programs must be directed to administrators, policy planners, risk analysts, policy analysts, and so on. Educative programs at all levels are critical, and concerted action is needed to improve formal, informal, preschool, vocational, professional, primary, elementary, collegiate, administrative, policy analytic, and continuing education covering all aspects of environmental preservation, protection, design, and management. Analyzing the growth patterns of major third world countries, Hicks [171] has corroborated that among the basic inputs into meeting basic needs, primary education appears to be the most important and deserves top priority in any development program. This cross-country study supports the contention that only through education can environmental development be achieved. It has been reported that in the third world very little had been done to train staff for out-of-school environmental education. Very often teachers need additional training, for the interdisciplinarity essential for good environmental education has in most cases been no more than a pious hope [172]. A number of approaches to environmental education have been proposed [173 176], but they may need modification before adoption in the third world. When the literacy level is very low, legislative measures lose their significance. Risk assessment, impact analysis, and the evaluation of alternatives have to be incorporated in the engineering curricula. The most crucial step in risk assessment is educating the government administrators and policy makers. Without attitude changes among bureaucrats nothing can change in the governmental machinery. It is clear from the experience of developed nations [177, 178] that without intellectual and social interaction between the research and the bureaucratic, political communities technology and risk assessments will not be put to use. UNEP [ 165] and UNESCO [ 179] have identified the need for educating and motivating administrators and policy makers, but the need has not been removed. Vertical entry to government service is very limited, and hence the educative process percolates only very slowly. Israel has very successfully developed educative packages l\)r administrators even at the highest policy level [180]. Developing countries have to find their own methods of spreading technology [70] and environmental risk assessment methods.

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The biggest constraint in spreading the assessment mechanisms is the lack of previous successes in the third world. International agencies are aware of the issues [8, 165, 166, 139, 140], but the need for environmental education is so widespread that those most in need will receive it last. This is because of the duality of the education process; the poor who cannot read also cannot afford education. It is time that forecasters, environmentalists, and educators plan for the poorest of the poor.

Public Participation Two types of public participation are possible, first through information and decision making and second through property rights. In this section we shall consider the first issue. A public participative process in either decision making or policy analysis is completely absent in the third world. The developed countries have been experimenting with various public participation mechanisms [181]. It may be easy for the developing regions to adapt successful methods for risk assessment by analyzing the technology assessment process. A number of criteria, such as productive efficiency, power versus income distribution, ecological balance, benefit versus cost equity, possible options, and higher critical thresholds, have been suggested [182] for identifying topics for assessment; a similar process can be constituted for risk assessment. We cannot expect people to support strong environmental protection actions by government until they perceive a clear and present danger [113]. A successful participation program thus requires the strong support of mass media, the leadership, and educators. A citizens group must monitor the entire risk assessment process [80]. Risk consciousness in nuclear engineering is largely the result of the pressure of public opinion [ 183]. In essence, the third world countries have to develop public groups, citizens' forums, and strong professional societies with assessment capabilities. Without proper experience and expertise, such forums will only distort the development process. As the number of components of decision-making systems becomes larger, the costs of coordination and dependence will increase and that of independence and self-reliance will decrease [57]. This is true of public participation in assessment, since too much public participation may delay the developmental process, whereas too little public involvement will distort the decision process. Public participation should be continuous, open, informing, iterative, responsive, evocative, and tied to decisions. Because defective public participation increases the danger that outcomes will be manipulated in favor of particular interests [184], the maximum direct, active participation must be stimulated. A major problem with public participation, however, is a tendency toward splintering, leading to group autonomy and proliferation; each group will demand recognition of its right to influence the destiny of a proposed technological development. The acceptability of risk appears to be roughly proportional to the third power of the real or imagined benefits [4, 55, 134]. The lack of public participation in technology decisions and assessments is a consequence of underdevelopment as well as a cause. Unless this vicious circle is smashed, risk assessments in the third world will only be biased judgments, with their attendant disadvantages. The consensus approach to decision making can make risk assessments more bias free, and for technology assessment [ 185], scientists, regulators, lawyers, and laymen must work together to reconcile the sometimes conflicting values that underline their respective interests, perspectives, and goals. The consensus approach will be helpful in deriving multiorder, multiconstituency impacts through an iterative, multidisciplinary

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process. The third world countries must develop consensus process suitable to their systems but capable of converting qualitative, quantitative, conditional, subjective, and long-term scenarios into integrated images useful as information inputs into decision making systems. Risk assessment should not become degraded to a forum for political consensus [186]. In the third world this danger is particularly strong because most large projects come under the governmental umbrella. If risk assessments are made to order by the governments, it is better not to have such a degraded subsidiary system.

Private Right's Option We have suggested one major alternative to common property disasters that involves stricter governmental control and greater public participation to raise the risk assessment capability. The level of responsibility is then increased by rigid controls at the governmental level to avoid environmental degradation. Yet the status of the environment is not close to ideal in the centrally planned, rigidly controlled economies of the communist world [ 187]. This indicates the need to look into another alternative--more individual involvement through preserving the status of private property. In Gujarat, India, the government has given a large chunk of wasteland to a private entrepreneur for agribusiness. Here private ownership stimulated the use of rapidly growing species to reap higher profits in a shorter time. A number of rural development agencies in India are now adopting the alternative of involving the bottommost level, but this process is slow. Delegating authority amounts to decentralizing decision making and ownership, and this requires widening the information base. In other words, decentralizing environmental planning for rural population involves educating a large number of people, imparting an operating knowledge to rural masses. This may be comparatively easy in the developed world, where literacy levels are high, but in the third world this alternative can be time consuming. If the individual owner can capture grains from efficient resource management, there is reason to expect that he will manage and preserve the resource more efficiently than a public official, but in the third world this may not occur without some institutionalization. Regardless of the economic and social theory prevailing in a society, self-regulation appears to require institutionalization. To stimulate this alternative, an endogenous leadership could motivate, involve, convince, stimulate, and activate the rural masses from within. The success of one tribal movement against deforestation is an example. Cultural impediments and inhibitions can easily be removed from within by endogenous leaders. Private ownership is thus an easily realizable and cheaper option for environmental protection--provided local endogenous leadership is available or created. Developing countries can attempt to implement this alternative for reducing the level of risk assessment "using a system of incentives created by property ownership and individual rights rather than attempting the task of raising the level of capability of a bureaucracy to plan and decide for everyone." This clearly indicates the need for a technology of emotions, behavior, and attitudes and a widening of the base of the environmental movement.

Early Warning Systems Because environmental risk is a new form of risk, there must be strong anticipatory systems capable of improving risk control and preparedness. Laszlo [188] has suggested an international early warning system to bring about a clearer perception of the future prospects of nations, and Dedijer [189] has suggested the establishment of a strong technological intelligence system with integrated capabilities. Such institutions are ahnost

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nonexistent in the third world. There are literally hundreds of institutions in the developed world concerned with technological forecasting or the future of a given country, but not in the most developed of the underdeveloped countries, for example, India or Jamaica [ 189]. Strong impact anticipation and evaluation capabilities are needed to support technology assessment [66, 190]. On similar lines ecological and environmental early warning systems have to be designed and institutionalized. International organizations for the management of the environment will not easily be established because strong pressures for such action are lacking in many countries [190, 191]. The United Nations may be the ideal organization to initiate the establishment of a risk anticipation system under UNEP. In critically irreversible processes immediate and constant action is urgently needed. By the time the third world countries identify such issues it may be too late to initiate the corrective measures. Although the United Nations has established an International Risk Referral system, it does not have the multidisciplinary assessment capability to undertake impact anticipation for the newer technologies. The third world countries need a risk assessment system immediately as they embark on massive developmental projects. The impact of the Aswan dam [158, 159] and irrigation systems in the Mekong delta [192], western India, and Pakistan [48, 193] have become case studies of risk assessment in the third world. The incidence of bilharzia is on the increase in Asia and Africa, as discussed earlier, and no one anticipated such an impact from constructed reservoirs and manmade lakes.

Risk Assessment and Environmental Policy Linkages If an impartial environmental risk assessment system is to be sustained in a developing country, it should be properly linked to environmental policy. A risk assessment system should be oriented positively and have sound technical, educational, social, and administrative support. Integrating risk assessment into the decision making process requires a push in two directions: (1) to broaden the research process beyond its traditional scope so as to include, especially, the interplay of values and (2) to accept that process, suitably packaged, as an integral part of the bureaucratic, political environment [194]. If the risk assessment system is to be properly linked with public policy, then policy generation and impact identification methodologies have to be properly coupled with conventional evaluation methodologies [38]. Since the third world does not have any proper policy analysis institutions or the expertise [180] for public policy making, this must also be coupled with risk assessment. Unless all the hierarchies of public systems are strengthened, the environmental risk assessment function, instituted alone, may be severely distorted. Unless the various capabilities, including (i) public policy analysis, (ii) technology assessment, (iii) environmental risk assessment, (iv) impact assessment, (v) policy implementation, (vi) policy evaluation, (vii) policy review and reformulation, and (viii) long-range environmental planning, all improve, neither will system effectiveness. The weakest link in a system controls the whole chain. Perceptual research and policy analysis must be harmonized with mutual respect and an open mind. All this may not be possible unless the entire reward system is thoroughly reformulated in the third world. Janzen, in analyzing the tropical agroecosystems [129], states that the tropics do not need more randomly gathered, esoteric, or applied agricultural research but a means to integrate what is already known into the process of developing sustained-yield tropical agroecosystems. In the environmental policy area an integrated policy analysis, policy making, implementation, and monitoring system, comprising all major ecosubsystems, must be established at the national level.

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Training and Behavioral Changes The only way to improve anticipatory impact analysis and risk assessment skills is through intensive training. This must involve case studies, sensitivity training, role playing, transactional analysis, and statistical reasoning and analysis. It has been reported that the instrument of chance and skill are similar [195] and that only through experience can decision making capabilities for conditional risks be improved. Statistical knowledge reduces the cognitive complexity of assessing situations and improves the quality of risk assessment. People are overconfident of how much they know. Some judgmental biases have the psychological status of optical illusions [70] and can be improved only by training in decision making skills. Training the politicians is also critical. When politicians are uncertain about the consequences of a decision, they usually do not take these consequences into account [196]. Changing the attitude of politicians can thus be identified as the most important and difficult step. The rate of innovation in futures studies, in both methodology and substantive ideas, is described by a marginally decreasing curve [197], and this is true of environmental risk management. Improving skills alone is not going to be effective unless the people involved integrate these skills with behavioral and attitude changes. This is possible only in a behavioral revolution involving education, training, interpersonal exercises, gestalt analysis, epistemological exercises, and transactional analysis. Management science passed through the stage of improving technical skills and began to learn about attitude changes using techniques of human resources management. Risk assessment has to move from the area of technique to the study of behavioral interaction to be effective. This will be possible only by integrating planning, creativity, epistemological changes [198], futures research, transactional analysis, and risk assessment into one training module. The next step will be to integrate this module with policy sciences through new paradigms to obtain the next higher level model. The creative futuristic paradigm [169] must be extended to the creative and behavioral sciences to be complete. This area of research is best approached jointly by forecasters, environmentalists, and behavioral scientists to yield a new behavioral world order. Risk assessment is still an area open to research.

Conclusions 1. Risk assessment is an area which the third world can no longer neglect. Environmental risk assessment is very complicated because it is intricately linked to culture, prejudice, judgment, beliefs, values, attitudes, and personality. The possible biases that can enter into risk assessments in the third world have been clearly identified. 2. The third world countries do not have experience in decision making when conditional risks are involved. The third world countries have especially to improve their impact analysis capabilities if risk assessments are to become flee of conceptual, task, technique, and personal biases. 3. Information lacunae is yet another dimension of environmental risk that complicates the whole process of risk assessment, risk registration and identification to evaluation and assessment. The third world countries have to establish monitoring and early warning systems encompassing all possible disciplines with wide international links and a national utilization and dissemination network. 4. The decision makers of the third world should undergo extensive training that integrates policy sciences, planning, creativity, futures research, risk assessment, alternative futures, modeling complex systems, environmental research, and behavioral change to create a new world order synthesizing a number of fragmented but highly useful disciplines.

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5. I n t e n s i v e e n v i r o n m e n t a l e d u c a t i o n h a s to b e i n i t i a t e d in t h e t h i r d w o r l d i n c o r p o r a t ing formal, informal, preschool, primary, secondary, collegiate, professional, and policy o r i e n t e d e n v i r o n m e n t a l e d u c a t i o n . E n v i r o n m e n t a l e d u c a t i o n o r i e n t e d to v a r i o u s n e e d s a n d d i f f e r e n t g r o u p s m u s t be p l a n n e d a n d i m p l e m e n t e d . i n p u t if e n v i r o n m e n t a l

B e c a u s e e d u c a t i o n is t h e m o s t c r i t i c a l

p r o t e c t i o n is to be e f f e c t i v e .

The a u t h o r is g r a t e f u l to Dr. T. O r i o r d a n , Dr. O. R e n n , D r . M . Tubiana, Dr. A Wildavsky, Dr. L. S j o b e r g , Dr. J. F. Coates, Dr. A. N. C h r i s t a k i s , Dr. J. P. M a r t i n o , Dr. F. N i e h a u s , Dr. E. E. P o c h i n , Dr. U. Waas, Dr. R. W. Kates, Dr. H. Linstone, Dr. A. K. B i s w a s , Dr. D. W. B u n n a n d Dr. A. V. K n e e s e f o r p r o v i d i n g him with the r e p r i n t s a n d p a p e r s . The a u t h o r w i s h e s to a c k n o w l e d g e the r e v i e w e r s o f the m a n u s c r i p t f o r their v a l u a b l e s u g g e s t i o n s w h i c h have i m p r o v e d the m a n u s c r i p t .

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