Using environmental indicators to quantify the robustness of policy alternatives to uncertainty

Understanding and managing environmental risk is one of the major challenges of our time. The variability of ecological systems, wherein disturbances occur with uncertain frequency and magnitude over time and space, is essential for maintaining ecosystem integrity and resilience. This paper uses sustainable development indicators to improve multiple-objective environmental decision making under conditions of unknown variability. Specifically, the robustness to uncertainty of competing policy alternatives is assessed using multi-attribute value theory and the recently developed information gap methodology. The management of spruce-budworm outbreaks in the forests of New Brunswick, Canada, is used as an illustrative example. Numerical and theoretical results show how the minimum required return and the available prior information determine which alternative can best cope with environmental uncertainty.