Office of Arid Lands Studies, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona, USA; Department of Hydraulics and Environmental Engineering, Centre for Sustainable Urban Development, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Chile.
Department of Ecology, University of Alicante, IMEM, Spain.
J Environ Manage. 2017 Jun 15;195(Pt 1):70-77. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2016.11.041. Epub 2016 Dec 7.
We evaluated the potential of an outranking Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis approach for assisting in the participatory assessment of dryland management actions implemented in the San Simon watershed, in southeastern Arizona, USA. We compared an outranking-facilitated assessment of actions with a simple and direct (baseline) ranking of the same actions by the participating stakeholders in terms of: 1) internal homogeneity of each assessment approach, (2) similarity of individual assessments between methods, and (3) effects of the use of implicit/explicit assessment criteria. The actions assessed combined various management approaches, including livestock management (rotation, resting), vegetation management (grass seeding, brush control), and hydraulic structures (dams, dykes). The outranking-facilitated assessment discriminated better between actions and reduced the variability of results between individual stakeholders as compared with the direct ranking of actions. In general, the two assessments significantly differed in the relative preference of the five management actions assessed, yet both assessments identified rotational grazing combined with vegetation management (grass seeding and brush control) as the most preferred management action in the study area. The comparative analysis revealed inconsistencies between the use of implicit and explicit assessment criteria. Our findings highlight the opportunities offered by outranking approaches to help capture, structure, and make explicit stakeholder perspectives in the framework of a participatory environmental assessment process, which may facilitate the understanding of the multiple preferences involved. The outranking integration process, which resembles a voting procedure, proved simple and transparent, with potential for contributing to stakeholder engagement and trust in participatory assessment.
我们评估了一种基于排序的多准则决策分析方法在协助参与式评估美国亚利桑那州东南部圣西蒙流域实施的旱地管理行动中的潜力。我们比较了一种基于排序的方法对行动的直接评估（基线）与参与利益相关者对同一行动的内部同质性（1）、两种方法之间的个体评估的相似性（2）和隐含/显式评估标准的使用效果（3）。评估的行动结合了各种管理方法，包括牲畜管理（轮牧、休牧）、植被管理（种草、灌木控制）和水利结构（水坝、堤）。与直接对行动进行排序相比，基于排序的方法能更好地区分行动，并减少了个体利益相关者之间的结果差异。一般来说，这两种评估在五个评估管理行动的相对偏好方面存在显著差异，但两者都认为轮牧结合植被管理（种草和灌木控制）是研究区域最受欢迎的管理行动。对比分析揭示了隐含和显式评估标准的使用之间存在不一致。我们的研究结果突出了排序方法在参与式环境评估过程中提供的机会，这些方法可以帮助捕捉、构建和明确利益相关者的观点，从而促进对所涉及的多种偏好的理解。排序集成过程类似于投票程序，简单透明，有助于利益相关者的参与和对参与式评估的信任。
