Decision-makers often turn to scientists and engineers to assist them to navigate through complex environmental, health and societal challenges pervaded by systemic uncertainty, ambiguity and ethical implications. This course prepares you to meet the requests and demands of current and future decision-makers and in this course, you will analyze ethical challenges associated with environmental dilemmas and apply different decision making tools relevant to environmental management and regulation.
Technology assessment
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來自 Technical University of Denmark (DTU) 的課程
Environmental Management & Ethics
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從本節課中
Decision-support tools
Tools and methods such as cost-benefit analysis, risk assessment, technology assessment often provide support to decision-maker when it making decisions about how to best management the environment and environmental resources. These decision-support tools have different ethical foundations and different set of values embedded in them, which are important to have in mind.
與講師見面
Steffen Foss HansenAssociate Professor
Department of Environmental Engineering
Lauge Peter Westergaard ClausenPhD student
Environmental Engineering
[MUSIC]
Welcome to our course on Environmental Management and Ethics.
Today I would like to introduce you to Technology Assessment.
My name is Steffen Foss Hansen and
I am an associate professor at the Technical University of Denmark at
the Department of Environmental Engineering.
Technology assessment is the study and evaluation of new technologies.
It was developed back in the '70s when it became clear that technological
development had profound implication on humans as well as environment.
Again furthermore, that includes having undesirable social,
occupational, cultural and technical, economical side effects.
The philosophy behind technology assessment is that new developments that
are relevant for the world at large rather than just for this specific
scientific community, that they need to be assessed not just by the sciences
that developed the technology itself, but also by the broader community.
Ethical progress has always been associated with ethical implications.
That's the second kind of premise of technology assessment philosophy.
And finally, that scientists ought to be
careful when passing ethical judgments on their own,
new scientific projects or findings, or work in progress.
Very seldom are the scientists that have actually themselves developed a new
technology.
The appropriate people to actually provide judgements about the ethical
implications of their findings.
There's a number of different kinds of technology assessment.
The first one is what is known as parliamentary technology assessment.
Here, the technology assessment activities
are performed directly by members of a given parliament.
That's something that you very often see in countries such as France and Finland.
Or, it could also be that technology assessment is done on behalf
of the parliament in question.
That could be, for instance in the UK, in Germany, and Denmark.
We also have what is known as expert technology assessment.
Here the technology assessment is carried out by a team of technology assessors or
technical experts with input from various stakeholders in the field.
The third kind of technology assignment is Participatory technology assessment.
Here, the activities associated with the assessment of a given technology actively,
systematically and methodologically involves various kinds of social actors.
Where the purpose of the technology assessment is to include various social
stakeholders and actors to have their input on the given technology,
as well as the input from technical and scientific experts.
Then we have what is known as Constructive Technology Assessment, where the design
of new technology happens through feedback of various technology assessment
activities and has in the actual construction of the technology.
Then we have health technology assessment which is a specialized type
of technology assessment that focuses on the efficiency, the safety,
and cost related to pharmaceuticals and medical treatments.
And then finally we have what is known as Discursive Technology Assessment or
Argumentative Technology Assessment,
which we're going to spend a little bit more time on in this lecture.
This course TA or Argumentative Technology Assessment aims to clarify and
bring under public and political scrutiny the normative assumptions and
visions that very often drive the actors and
various social shaping of science and technology.
It deals overall with the side effects of technological change,
the broader impacts of science and technology and the fundamental normative
questions of why developing a certain technology is considered legitimate and
is also considered desirable from a societal point of view.
There's a number of different fields in which technology assessment has and
is applied to this day and age.
And therefore, it's important that you understand the mechanisms of
technology assessment as well as the ethical questions
that might be relevant to discuss when it comes to technology assessment.
Some of the areas in which the use of technology assessment is quite
wide spread is in regards to information technology, hydrogen technology,
nuclear technology, various kinds of molecular nanotechnology, pharmacology,
organ transplant, artificial intelligence and etcetera and etcetera.
One specific kind of technology
assessment is known as environmental technology assessment.
The environmental technology assessment and the methodology is very nicely
described in a publication by UNEP.
And you can find access to the document via the internet and the link down here.
Environmental technology assessment is based on the same fundamental
principles and approaches as technology assessment in general.
But of course, it focus as the name indicates, it focus on exploring
the environmental consequences of a specific technological option.
And it was developed by UNEP, as I mentioned,
to understand the implications of technological choice, and
UNEP has developed this tool to be used by different stakeholders.
And therefore, it's relevant to take you through and
present you to this tool in this course.
First one thing that is important to have in mind is the definition
that UNEP uses in their document when they talk about environment.
Here, the environment is actually quite broadly defined as
ecosystems in their constituent parts, including people as well as communities.
It includes all natural and physical resources, intrinsic and amenity values.
As well as social, economic, aesthetic, and
cultural conditions which affect the above.
And/or which are affected by the above.
So this means that in the definition of environment, or
the UNEP definition of the environment is very broad, and that's something
that's important to have in mind when using environmental technology assessment.
Environmental technology assessment consists of a number of steps.
Actually there's five steps.
First there's the preparation which is called It's not even a step, but
it's still a step prior to taking the first step.
The first step includes a description of the technology.
The second one is a mapping of the pressures and impacts,
very similar to the deep sea analysis that Laogig Klaussen presents in this course.
The first step is evaluation of impacts,
the fourth is a comparison of the different options that are available.
And the fifth step includes an exploration of whether consensus can be reached and
the development of further policy recommendations.
So, I'm just shortly going to introduce some of the steps for you.
In step 1, you're asked to describe the proposed technology.
This includes identifying the nature and the function of the technology.
Identify and characterize existing and proposed locations of the technology.
Describe the stage of development of the technology in regards to whether it's
a new or an existing technology.
And also, in order to identify important aspect,
identify the principal achievement goals for this technology.
Who benefits from it?
Who are the stakeholders that might be involved and
might have interest in developing this technology further?
The second step requires for
looking at the resulting environmental pressures of the technology.
So, it asks you to list the raw material,
the land, the energy resources required by the technology.
Identify associated environmental pressures is included.
In regards to the waste and any hazardous products that might be produced,
the infrastructure that is required, the supporting technology that is required,
and their associated environmental impacts, the human resource demands.
And also, it asks you to identify where there's environmental pressures
associated with are there any other aspect of the technology
that might not be directly related to the technology itself?
When it comes to this first step, my mental technology framework
proposed by UNEP asks you to come up with a preliminary
judgement in regard to the overall feasibility of this technology.
So this you should base on an assessment of the impacts of the human health and
safety that arise from the pressures identified in the previous step,
which includes identifying the local natural environmental impacts.
The global environmental impact, the sustainability of the resource use,
the social impacts associated with use of the technology,
the economic viability of the proposed technology.
And then very important, a description of the gaps and
uncertainties related to the environmental technology assessment.
Very often, the gaps and uncertainties related to technology assessments
are quite profound, and those you will have to have into
consideration when passing your preliminary judgements.
Is there even sufficient knowledge for you to pass any kind of judgement?
If it's a very new emerging technology,
very seldom would you have all of the information that you actually
need in order to make an informed preliminary judgement.
And that you have to make extremely clear in your environmental technology
assessment.
Because of course, that will have profound implications for
the eventual policy recommendations that you would like to develop and
whether consensus can be reached among different stakeholders.
In Step 4,
you're asked to provide a comparative assessment of alternative technologies.
And here, environmental technology assessment is actually quite different
from the decisions of poor choice that are normally used to guide decision makers.
Because here, Step 4 actually does not really focus on the technology itself.
It focuses on alternative approaches to meeting the same needs
that the technology is trying to need.
So here, you're specifically asked to identify and
briefly describe alternative to the technology being assessed.
Evaluate the degree to which each alternative can meet the goals that
the technology in question are said to meet.
And for each alternate technology, you're asked to compare the potential impacts.
As well as provide conclusions in regards
to the overall applicability of the alternate technology.
Final step, Step 5,
you have to decide whether consensus can be reached in this given field.
Simply answer the question, can a consensus be reached in regards
to the overall environmental viability of the given technology under assessment?
Provide overall summaries of the most significant information and uncertainty
that remain, and summarize the overall suitability of the preferred technology.
Which includes identifying changes that could be made in order to reduce
the environmental impacts and improve the overall acceptability of this technology.
Important, remember to characterize the overall level of uncertainty.
And also, to summarize the consensus recommendations
regarding the preferred technology, should such technology
exist based on the analysis that you have completed.
For workbook and worksheets related to environmental technology,
you can actually go to the UNEP website and
download a worksheet that will gradually guide you through all
the various steps of environmental technology assessment.
Environmental technology assessment has a number of key characteristics.
It's largely qualitative, in contradiction to, for
instance, cost benefit analysis, which requires you
to put monetary values on all the costs and benefits that you have identified.
And in that sense, environmental
quality assessment minimizes the need for
very technical and detailed data on a given technology.
It was designed to facilitate multi-stakeholder dialogue.
But however, some technical, economic, and environmental skills
are needed in order to to fill out the worksheets associated with it.
Consensus decision making is considered a goal
in itself in environmental technology assessment.
And it attempts to provide the documentation, or
the process by which the possibilities of obtaining
consensus can actually be reached.
Technology assessment assumes a very global perspective and is future oriented.
But it's not necessarily anti-technology,
that's something that's very important to realize.
It just asks I think a very reasonable question of
what the implications are of a given technology and
whether there is alternative to meeting the needs of this technology.
Focus is on preventing environmental problems,
rather than solving them after they have become apparent.
There's a number of potential benefits of environmental technology assessment.
And I'm not going to take you through all of them.
But just highlight that table two of the document that we have provided
a link to actually can list a number of the benefits in regards to benefits for
business, benefits for government, and benefits for the public.
Some of the benefits for
business is that it includes avoiding pollution prevention and
cleanup costs, avoiding regulatory problems and legal costs.
Whereas for governments, it also includes reducing healthcare costs
associated with industrial accidents and emissions.
Maintaining an ongoing economic efficiency at a local resource level and etc.
There's a number of ethical aspects that you will have to have
in mind when you use environmental technology assessment.
I mentioned technology assessment, and technology assessment in general,
really strives for
an equal empowerment of the participants that are involved in the process.
But of course, this has to be insured.
It's based upon access to proper information,
which is something that is very seldomly actually the case.
So the fact that lack of access to information is very
often an everyday reality, that's something that has to be kept in mind.
In attempts to be fair with regards to interpersonal relationships and
it also attempts to limit restriction of the scope of various viewpoints.
But in the end, it's actually the people that initiate and
that facilitate the environmental technology assessment.
They are the ones that decide whether
there's a restriction of the scope of viewpoints.
But in itself, the approach actually
opens up for various viewpoints to be expressed.
The processes in itself associated with my mental impact assessment or a technology
assessment, are self-documenting and they strive to be communicative.
But of course, it has to be made in a transparent manner,
and it has to be made publicly, or
semi-publicly available for it to be communicative.
Finally, my mental technology assessment strives to have
all affected communities and all affected parties invited
into the discussions in hope of reaching consensus.
But of course, whether all the affected parties and
all relevant parties have been identified and invited to participate in
the discussions is something that will have to be taken into consideration.
There's some limitations furthermore to
technology assessment that are important to keep in mind.
Very often there's a very simple assumption between technology
development and it's impact on the environment as well as the consequences
of the interactions between a given technology and the environment.
And they very often reflect the current state of knowledge,
in many cases a state where the technology has not been fully implemented yet.
Or that the implications are not fully understood.
In many cases, we end up having what is known as the Collingridge dilemma where
we, on the one hand, do not understand the impact of a new technology or
we cannot predict it before it's extensively developed and used.
But on the other hand, to control and to change that technology in itself
is extremely difficult once the technology is fully developed and
is fully used in our society.
With that, I would like to thank you very much for your attention.
[MUSIC]
