A POLICY PERSPECTIVE ON LAND-USE CHANGES AND RISK ASSESSMENT

Land use changes, as with all other human activities, can be valued on its desired consequences, but also on its potential negative effects. One of these negative effects might be the sudden release of accumula ted agri-chemicals. A change in land use might serve as the trigger fo r a 'chemical time-bomb' to explode. The formulation of policy respons es in a situation when wanted consequences are impeded by possible neg ative side-effects calls for methods that integrate available knowledg e about potential risks. However, this assumes a point of view regardi ng the relevance of (scientific) research for policy decisions. Three distinct views on the relation between science and policy may be disce rned: decisionism, technocracy and pragmatism. These three positions s how a strong relationship with the perceived policy problems that diff er in two dimensions: the level of interests of the stakeholders and t he level of uncertainty in the scientific analysis. If the interests a nd uncertainties are small, scientific research serves as a puzzle sol ver, which fits in well with either a decisionistic or a technocratic approach. If the interests and the uncertainties are more substantial, faith in science as the most appropriate right problem solver dissolv es and a more pragmatic approach is needed. For the generation of mana gement options, or in general to support the policy-making process, th ese observations call for methods of analysis that discriminate betwee n information on value driven preferences and on objective facts drive n scientific information. The different value sets should reflect the dissimilar impacts of uncertainties on stakeholders and the scientific information should indicate the potentials of the system under invest igation. Therefore, these methods will not generate unequivocal answer s to policy problems, but at best they will produce several possible s cenarios linked to different value sets. In this paper such an analysi s is presented. Different scenarios for possible future land use in th e European Union have been set up. These scenarios do not give a strai ghtforward answer to the question which development might be best, but they provide policy makers with information on future possibilities a nd illustrate the trade-offs between different aims and objectives. (C ) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.