LINKING ECOLOGICAL AND DEVELOPMENT OBJECTIVES - TRADE-OFFS AND IMPERATIVES

This paper addresses the too often separated insights of ecologists an d resource managers, linking the biophysical and socioeconomic dimensi ons of some freshwater issues. It begins with a brief exposure of fund amentals of the method of multi-objective analysis, underlining that e valuation of trade-offs between objectives is never a purely mathemati cal or quantifiable undertaking. To varying degrees, it is based on su bjective value judgments reflecting economic, social, cultural, and ae sthetic preferences accorded by a society to different objectives. But how far can different objectives be traded? I attempt to answer this question using as an example the environmental and economic problems o f the Aral Sea Basin in Central Asia. Simple water balance calculation s are presented to illustrate the specific situation of the basin. Nex t, a few critical issues of the Aral Sea Basin are discussed to show t hat linking environmental and economic objectives is not an easy task if one takes a short time perspective.