Uncertainty

Environmental appraisal presents deeper and wider problems than are typically conceded in policy. Strong political pressures for decision justification routinely force the closing down of due deliberation over the real limits to knowledge. Even technical language can become warped – to imply that all environmental dilemmas are susceptible to apparently precise and definitive probabilistic risk analysis. The inconvenient messiness of less tractable aspects of incertitude (strict uncertainty, ambiguity and ignorance) can thereby be suppressed. Reviewing the most serious problems, this chapter outlines practical methods for resisting these pressures and opening up a more rigorous, robust, transparent – and democratically accountable – environmental politics.