Structured decision-making to link climate change and sustainable development

Abstract

Structured decision-making concepts and tools have been broadly applied in a wide range of policy contexts to help advance clear, creative and pluralistic decision processes. Policies to link climate change adaptation and mitigation with sustainable development must address a number of complexities which include linkages across scales and irreducible uncertainties. Decision support tools such as objectives networks and influence diagrams are useful for structuring these complex decision problems. These tools and their underlying rationale are described, and then applied to a concrete example to illustrate their relevance for linking adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development decisions. The example used is a major transportation infrastructure programme in British Columbia, Canada, with clear impacts on both climate change and regional sustainability.