Belausteguigoitia Juan Carlos
GIWA, University of Kalmar, SE-391 82, Kalmar, Sweden.
Ambio. 2004 Feb;33(1-2):7-12.
The Global International Waters Assessment (GIWA) was created to help develop a priority setting mechanism for actions in international waters. Apart from assessing the severity of environmental problems in ecosystems, the GIWA's task is to analyze potential policy actions that could solve or mitigate these problems. Given the complex nature of the problems, understanding their root causes is essential to develop effective solutions. The GIWA provides a framework to analyze these causes, which is based on identifying the factors that shape human behavior in relation to the use (direct or indirect) of aquatic resources. Two sets of factors are analyzed. The first one consists of social coordination mechanisms (institutions). Faults in these mechanisms lead to wasteful use of resources. The second consists of factors that do not cause wasteful use of resources per se (poverty, trade, demographic growth, technology), but expose and magnify the faults of the first group of factors. The picture that comes out is that diagnosing simple generic causes, e.g. poverty or trade, without analyzing the case specific ways in which the root causes act and interact to degrade the environment, will likely ignore important links that may put the effectiveness of the recommended policies at risk. A summary of the causal chain analysis for the Colorado River Delta is provided as an example.
全球国际水域评估（GIWA）旨在帮助建立一个确定国际水域行动优先级的机制。除了评估生态系统中环境问题的严重程度外，GIWA的任务是分析能够解决或缓解这些问题的潜在政策行动。鉴于这些问题的复杂性，了解其根源对于制定有效的解决方案至关重要。GIWA提供了一个分析这些原因的框架，该框架基于确定影响人类与水资源利用（直接或间接）相关行为的因素。分析了两组因素。第一组由社会协调机制（制度）组成。这些机制中的缺陷会导致资源的浪费性使用。第二组由本身不会导致资源浪费性使用的因素（贫困、贸易、人口增长、技术）组成，但会暴露并放大第一组因素中的缺陷。得出的情况是，如果不分析根源因素具体如何相互作用导致环境退化，而只是诊断简单的一般原因，例如贫困或贸易，很可能会忽略一些重要联系，从而可能危及所推荐政策的有效性。作为示例，提供了科罗拉多河三角洲因果链分析的总结。
