Appraisal, institutional learning and sustainability: defining a new agenda

Researchers
Susan Owens
Olivia Bina
Tim Rayner

Summary of Project
Project Update
Researcher Profiles
Researcher Contact Details
Publications
Annual progress report - 2003 (pdf format)

Summary

Appraisal of projects, programmes and plans, to identify their implications for the environment and sustainability, has become an increasingly prominent activity. This interdisciplinary study is centrally concerned with the role of appraisal in the political process, and with ways in which it may help to modify the beliefs, values and behaviour of individuals and organisations.

A key objective is to synthesise a substantial body of existing work, including the investigators' own research, in the fields of environmental planning and appraisal. Key themes include: (i) changing conceptions of subjectivity in appraisal; (ii) the quest for legitimacy; (iii) the extent to which even 'technical' appraisal practices provide opportunities for learning; and (iv) the relation of appraisal to different interpretations of sustainable development.

Synthesis, and rigorous analysis of emergent issues, will lead to identification of priorities for future research linking appraisal, policy learning and sustainable development. The study is intended to be agenda-setting and thematic, but within this broad perspective, it will focus on appraisal in the transport sector, where developments have been rapid and significant.

Outputs will include a new theoretical framework, practice that is better informed by the social sciences and an agenda for future research in this important field.

Background and rationale
Assessment and evaluation of projects, plans and programmes are increasingly prominent activities. Their origins lie in recognition that environmental damage often occurs as 'the largely unintended result of a range of interacting trends, situations, perceptions and motivations' (Ekins 2001). Thus attention has turned to sectors such as agriculture, energy and transport whose activities have profound implications for the environment. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for certain projects was a first step towards considering these implications. More recently, and partly in response to the limitations of a project-based approach, Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) has been promoted. Environmental assessment is itself part of a much wider set of techniques and procedures (hereafter referred to generically as 'appraisal') that seek to predict, assess, evaluate and in some cases mitigate the risks and impacts associated with a range of human activities.

This project is predicated on the view that practices of appraisal may influence human behaviour towards the environment in significant ways. The connection may be relatively straightforward; for example, enhancement of non-motorised modes in a transport programme, after appraisal, might effect changes in behaviour by modifying incentives. But the Programme acknowledges two important influences on human action in addition to incentives: the availability of information, and 'underlying beliefs, values and worldviews'. It is proposed that practices of appraisal are relevant to both, so that they may influence behaviour not only directly but in more subtle ways and over extended periods of time. The project seeks to explore such effects, and to propose ways in which they might fruitfully be researched.

Key Research Questions
The project will synthesise and develop existing research to address the following key themes and questions:

1. The quest for civil legitimacy in approaches to informing policy. Available material will be interrogated to investigate how legitimacy can be established, forfeited or regained.
2. The treatment of subjectivity in appraisal theory and practice A key area for enquiry concerns the extent to which the reframing of subjectivity as 'practical rationality' constitutes a significant cognitive shift in the context of appraisal.
3. Technical or deliberative rationality? An important question is whether appraisal practices can contribute to a process of 'learning' whereby beliefs held by individuals or organisations are changed over time.
4. The relationship of appraisal to different conceptions of sustainability. We need new understandings of this relationship, since appraisal cannot be characterised simply as a 'tool' for implementing sustainable development.

The coverage of the proposed project is potentially very wide. It will be important to retain a broad perspective while defining a project that is manageable within a one-year timescale. To this end, the study would pay particular, though not exclusive, attention to appraisal of projects, programmes and policies in the transport sector (see technical annex for recent developments). There are excellent reasons for choosing this domain within which to develop wider ideas. First, it is one in which the applicants' research, experience of assessment practice and engagement with the policy process are fruitfully combined. Second, recent developments in transport appraisal have been rapid and of potentially great significance for the direction of policy. Third, the quest for 'sustainable transport alternatives' itself features among the main themes of the Programme; and finally, a series of key decisions on transport 'problems', informed by new forms of appraisal, is expected over the next 18 months and will call for informed commentary. It is important to stress, however, that the study is intended to be thematic and agenda-setting rather than sector-specific. The issues with which it will engage are germane to a wide range of methodologies, techniques and procedures applicable at different levels, in many policy domains and in diverse national contexts.

Research approach
The research will primarily involve desk study, exploitation of extensive existing material (including primary sources and interview transcripts), new thinking, communication and writing. It will entail only a limited amount of new empirical work, where this is essential in order to follow through some already established line of enquiry. The project will take place in three stages, which will be broadly, but not inflexibly, chronological:

Synthesis of research and thinking on the role of appraisal. This will involve bringing together insights from the applicants' own recent and current work with those of others, based on literature review, characterisation of official discourse, and dialogue with academics, practitioners and policy-makers in this field.

Rigorous analysis of the above material, to address the themes and questions outlined above; to distil key findings; and to identify outstanding questions and new issues.

Development of a new research agenda, with particular attention to the following questions:

1. Where would further research on appraisal most usefully be focused?
2. What are the epistemological gaps?
3. What should be the balance between refining existing approaches and developing new conceptualisations of the role of appraisal and its relationship to sustainable development?

Links will maintained or sought with others working in the fields of appraisal, environmental policy and sustainable development. While retaining a broad perspective, the study will pay particular, though not exclusive, attention to appraisal of projects, programmes and policies in the transport sector.

Intended outcomes
Among the key objectives of the project will be to synthesise the applicants' existing research and to combine the insights of that synthesis with those of others working on similar and related issues. Emerging findings, and burgeoning interest in appraisal, suggest that synthesis and analysis would provide the basis for an exciting new programme of research Major outputs will include a new theoretical framework for appraisal, proposals for appraisal practice that is better informed by social science and makes full use of opportunities for deliberation and learning, and the new research agenda itself. These will be disseminated to academic and policy communities through the network outlined above and through a series of presented and written papers and reports.

Project Update October 2003

Researchers

Dr Susan Owens
Dr Susan Owens OBE, AcSS is Reader in Environment and Policy in the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Newnham College. She has researched and published widely on environmental issues and policy processes, and on interpretations of sustainable development in theory and practice. Her most recent book, Land and Limits: Interpreting Sustainability in the Planning Process (with R. Cowell) was published by Routledge in 2002. Since 1998, she has been a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, which advises government on a wide range of environmental issues. Previously she has served on the Countryside Commission and the UK Round Table on Sustainable Development, and was a member of an expert panel advising the Deputy Prime Minister during preparation of the 1998 Transport White Paper.

Olivia Bina
Olivia Bina is a PhD student in the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, and Associate Fellow of the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP), London. Her PhD thesis proposes a re-conceptualisation of the purpose and potential benefits of Strategic Environmental Assessment. As a lobbyist, consultant and finally researcher, she has published a wide range of policy documents on environmental integration issues and assessment methods. From 1997 to 2000 she was Senior Consultant at Environmental Resources Management (ERM), advising public sector clients (European Commission, other international institutions and national governments) on policy analysis and environmental integration mechanisms. Previously, she spent four years as Policy Officer at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), coordinating research on integrating biodiversity into European transport and regional development policies.

Tim Rayner
Tim Rayner is a Research Associate at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge. His research and publications explore the role of knowledge in environmental and transport policy-making processes. His recently submitted doctoral thesis examines the role pf particular practices of appraisal in shaping developments in UK transport policy, focusing on the emergence of the 'New Approach to Appraisal' and its application in the first of the government's multi-model transport studies. Between 1995 and 1997 he was research assistant on a Leverhulme Trust funded project investigating the role and influence of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, and from 1997-1998 worked at the Environment Directorate of the European Commission.

Contact Details

Dr Susan Owens
Newnham College
Cambridge CB3 9DF

Olivia Bina
Department of Geography
University of Cambridge
Downing Place
Cambridge CB2 3EN

Tim Rayner
Department of Geography
University of Cambridge
Downing Place
Cambridge CB2 3EN

Publications

Project Update (pdf)
October 2003