Raising annoying questions

By Ted Trzyna

California Institute of  Public Affairs Publication No. 105, August 2001 © CIPA 2001
Citation: Ted Trzyna. 2001. "Raising annoying questions: Why values should be built into decision-making." California Institute of Public Affairs, Sacramento, California.

Note: The California Institute of  Public Affairs (CIPA) became InterEnvironment Institute in February  2010. CIPA continues as an activity of InterEnvironment Institute. See the CIPA page for details.
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People  make decisions based less on what they know than what they believe. It  follows that value choices ought to be examined as carefully as facts.
Can consideration of ethical questions be built into decision-making in a systematic way? 

Origins of CIPA's interest

At  the California Institute of Public Affairs, our interest in this  question originated in three strands of thought and activity: 

--  An international project on defining the concept of sustainability,  that I led during my tenure as chairman of the Commission on  Environmental Strategy and Planning of IUCN, the International Union for  Conservation of Nature. One of the main points made in the book that resulted, A Sustainable World, was that sustainability is above all a moral principle: "It is not so much about what is, but what should be. It has to do with value choices."  

 -- The "World  Ethic for Living Sustainably," a seminal document produced by the  Commission's Ethics Working Group, chaired by theologian J. Ronald Engel (Engel 1993). The "World Ethic" was included in Caring for the Earth, a broad-ranging strategy issued in 1991 by IUCN, the United Nations Environment  Programme, and the World Wide Fund for Nature. This, in turn, led to a high-level international effort to adopt an Earth Charter.

 --   CIPA's involvement in organizing and studying policy dialogues and other forms of collaborative decision-making. This has included an international project on "The Power of Convening.”

The "Linking Values and Policy" project

In 1994-95, with support from IUCN, CIPA, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and help from many others listed below, I explored how the next step might be taken: building systematic consideration of ethical issues into decision-making, focusing on the sustainability ethic. After reviewing the small literature on the topic (see the bibliography), I  concentrated on getting the views of thoughtful practitioners and practical-minded scholars from a variety of countries and disciplines (see the list below).   

The result was "Linking Values and  Policy for Sustainable Development: An International Strategy to Build  the Sustainability Ethic into Decision-making" (Trzyna 1995). In  summary, that paper and a subsequent book article (Trzyna 1998) laid out the following argument: 

Why values should be built into decision-making

Those  who speak and write about global problems commonly stress the importance of values in motivating people to care for the world around them. But how do moral ideas translate into policies and decisions that will move the world toward sustainability? Transforming public attitudes and internalizing values through education will be important in the long run, but what will have a direct and immediate impact is institutionalizing the process of taking ethics into account, in other words, ensuring that careful articulation of value choices is an explicit part of policy formulation and decision-making.

In practice, of course, policy decisions are complex. As Ralph Carter observes, they “usually involve tradeoffs between multiple values, and one option rarely emerges as clearly superior to others. Far from the  ideal world of black and white options, the real world of political choice often seems a landscape distinguished by the remarkable variation in shades of gray” (Carter 1988, 287).

The methods of policy  analysis developed in recent years often seem to amount to elaborate  dances around the tough value choices at the crux of an issue.  Environmental impact analysis, risk analysis, fiscal impact analysis, and similar methods concentrate on assembling facts and examining alternatives; they steer clear of looking at what is right and wrong. They are attempts to bring scientific tools to bear on public policy and, as Herman Daly has written, "Nothing makes a scientist more uncomfortable than to be shown to have made a moral assumption" (Daly 1993, 44). 

The main principle underlying policy analysis as it is currently practiced is efficiency, that is, weighing benefits in relation to costs. The announcement for an OECD manual, Project and  Policy Appraisal, exemplifies how this principle is applied:

“The  environmental consequences of any activity should be evaluated in monetary terms, in a cost-benefit framework. How, for example, can the economic values of death or illness due to pollution, amenity losses, or  the destruction of natural resources be evaluated? This manual provides a detailed description of such techniques as the monetary valuation of  environmental damage . . . and the role of discounting” (OECD 1994).  

An  increasing number of writers on public policy assert that efficiency is not a morally adequate principle to inform decision-making. However,  policy analysts usually ignore ethics in spite of strong arguments for their inclusion. According to the political scientist Douglas Amy, the reasons analysts usually give for shunning ethical debate – that it is  impossible, unnecessary, or impractical, or that it injects personal biases into the analytical process – are not the real ones. The real reason is that ethical analysis "conflicts with the practical policies of the institutions that engage in policy analysis." There is a tendency  in ethical analysis to raise annoying questions, and bureaucracies put  an emphasis on consensus and following orders. They are not debating societies, and they are not designed to encourage frank discussion and dissent. Given these institutional realities, there is little incentive for analysts to raise ethical questions.

According to Amy, policy analysts cultivate a professional image as purely technical advisors whose work is value-free and apolitical. The administrators who are their bosses "are reluctant to encourage ethical  investigations both because the inquiry itself might raise questions concerning established program goals and because the style of analysis  conflicts with the technocratic ethos which dominates bureaucratic  politics."

Ethical implications "may often be the subject of informal discussions. But the point is “that such ethical deliberations are ad hoc and they are unlikely to be made public or to be the subject of careful and systematic investigation in formal agency studies and reports." Like policy analysts and administrators, members of legislative bodies also tend to shy away from value questions – in their  case, to avoid alienating fellow legislators and important segments of  their constituencies (Amy 1984, 575-84).

These are powerful arguments for building ethics into decision-making. Value judgments are always made. Incorporating ethics into the policy process, subjecting value choices to the same kind of rigorous analysis as facts, will make those in authority consider the moral implications of their decisions.   

Tools for building values into decision-making

Six techniques for incorporating systematic consideration of ethics into decision-making are: 

Including ethics in policy analysis. Governments, international agencies,  businesses, and other organizations can adopt a requirement that ethical implications be considered as part of policy analysis. Such an action-forcing measure would be analogous to the requirement for an environmental impact statement. In fact, an obvious starting point would  be to encourage governments and agencies that already have a requirement for environmental impact analysis to include consideration of ethical issues in their procedures.

Including ethical analysis  in policy dialogues. Ethics has much to contribute to multi-stakeholder  approaches to decision-making. It is not enough to bring representatives of various interests around a table, even with an expert facilitator. Without the vision of a higher common purpose, such  discussions tend to stay at the level of searching for the lowest common denominator among the participants' special interests. Those interests  usually reflect basic conflicts of values. Ethics can help to clarify the value choices and move the discussion toward higher ground.

Declarations  of principles and ethical codes. These include broad global statements such as the draft Earth Charter; general statements adopted by governments and intergovernmental organizations; and statements specific to professions, businesses, and associations. Such statements are important for two reasons: They set the tone for debate of issues and direction of policy; and those who subscribe to them can be held  accountable to their principles, if not legally, then morally and politically. Ethical statements can be important steps in reforming the  system and should be designed with that purpose in mind. However,  experience shows that they succeed only if they initiate a continuing  conversation within an organization or community. Ethical statements therefore should provide for formally bringing ethics into the decision-making process.   

Organizational units to represent  ethics. One conventional way of ensuring that a viewpoint is taken into account in an organization is to create a formal position or group to  represent it. Ethics might be represented by a staff advisor, an advisory committee, or a dedicated position on the governing body. Any such unit should have as part of its responsibility training and raising awareness throughout the organization. An example of how ethics can be represented in an organizational structure is the Human Fertilisation  and Embryology Authority of the United Kingdom. The Authority was set up in 1990 to regulate treatment and research for assisted conception, and it was recognized from the beginning that ethics would be central to its work. Its twenty-one members are appointed to reflect specified  views and qualifications, including religion, which has been represented by an Anglican bishop and a rabbi. It has working parties on ethical issues. A section of its annual report is set aside to report on such ethical issues as surrogacy and sex selection.  

Informal interventions. Some of the most productive ways of incorporating ethics  in decision-making may well be a variety of informal interventions tailored to specific situations. These would include, for example, experts in ethics working with policy-makers and their staffs, organizing workshops, participating in meetings, and drafting and  reviewing policy documents.

Adversarial methods. Proposals have been made for processes that would deal directly with moral conflicts in ways similar to those used in courts of justice. One such proposal has been made by the political scientist  Kristin Shrader-Frechette. A "technology tribunal" would hold adversarial hearings at which people speaking from different  perspectives could present their cases. Advocates would debate the issues, call and cross-examine witnesses, and defend policy recommendations. The tribunal would then render a formal decision. Such formalized, quasi-judicial methods have serious drawbacks that include  magnifying conflict and focusing attention on procedures rather than real issues (Shrader-Frechette 1985).

Putting the idea into practice

"Linking Values and Policy for Sustainable Development" called for experimenting with these tools in various settings:

Governments and intergovernmental organizations. Candidates included several national and sub-national governments, starting with environmental impact assessment processes; the World Bank, which announced major reforms in 1993; and the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, which deals with such important moral issues as  defining fair and equitable sharing of the benefits of using genetic resources.

The business community. One focus here could be on working through existing efforts to promote sustainable development in the international business community. Another approach would be through the field of business ethics. This has become a large field of activity,  with its own professional societies, consulting firms, journals, and training courses. Business ethics typically deals with the rules of the business game, for example, keeping promises and being fair to competitors. However, there is a trend toward redefining business ethics to include the impact of a company's operations on the world at large.  For instance, some firms are now taking into account the "whole-life" cost of products (Drummond 1994). Some progressive companies are banding together in such groups as Business for Social Responsibility in the  United States. Ethical assessments and similar mechanisms could help to  ensure that proposals are measured against company or industry-wide statements of principles and codes of practice. The ultimate goal must be changing corporate culture. 

The professions. Like codes of  business ethics, the ethical rules of professions commonly define their  members' obligations in terms of integrity and excellence, giving little  or no attention to relevance to social needs. Ashok Khosla, president of Development Alternatives, a leading Indian group working for sustainable development, relates the story of a very senior civil servant in the Ministry of the Environment in New Delhi who was  “fighting tooth and nail against a [bad] project . . . it so happened  that the next morning he was appointed head of the ministry to which that project belonged, so the next day he was telling me how proudly he was fighting tooth and nail for it . . . This was a gentleman who had been secretary of the Ministry of the Environment, who had been advocating the internalization of the environmental dimension into everybody's work, and how each ministry ought to have an environmental capability, and yet he saw it as a professional - his job was to do what the minister said he ought to do” (Khosla 1989, 100).

Khosla  believes professional communities need to develop "value systems,  enforced if possible by their internal mechanisms, to ensure that their work does not undermine the objectives of the wider society within which they operate but rather enforces them" (Khosla 1994, 2).

The  investment community. Little progress will be made toward sustainability unless there is much more private investment in businesses that engage in such activities as sustainable forestry, recycling, and low-input farming. One of the barriers to such investment is the system of ethics governing the investment community. Two officers of a New York foundation quoted as representative the statement of an institutional  investment manager responsible for many hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital portfolios: “As a fiduciary, I have a moral obligation to my investors to maximize return and minimize risk. I simply cannot take into account exogenous factors like social or  environmental impact, or I will reduce the opportunity set and thereby reduce the rate of return” (Tasch and Viederman 1995, 127).

A dialogue is needed with leaders in the investment community about what can be done to promote private investment in enterprises that foster sustainability. This dialogue should include exploring how sustainability as an ethical principle can be included in investment  decision-making. 

Issues and barriers

A number of organizations agreed in principle to participate in carrying out the strategy set out in "Linking Values and Policy for Sustainable  Development," but for several reasons, including my leaving the IUCN  commission chairmanship because of term limits, it has not gone further.  

Almost without exception, those who were consulted about the idea of experimenting with ways of building ethics into decision-making strongly endorsed the approach taken. However, a number of issues were raised: 

Bringing ethics into decision-making will not be easy to sell. For some people, "ethics" seems airy-fairy. To others, it sounds elitist. Still others are threatened by the value shifts that it implies. Many of these comments echoed Douglas Amy's warning, quoted above, that ethics raises "annoying questions." 

Tough cross-cutting tasks are involved. Bridges must be built between scholars and practitioners, between those trained in the sciences and those with backgrounds in the humanities, and among people from a  variety of cultural and religious backgrounds. Any one of these orthogonal tasks is hard enough; facing all of them concurrently compounds the difficulty.   

Such an effort will fail if it has an academic style or moralistic tone. Because it is directed at policy-makers, its style must be the style of the policy arena. Among other things, this means responding quickly to requests and opportunities; politicians and business executives have short time scales. 

Most people don't like to be told to become ethical because they see themselves as being ethical. As Richard Tucker of the University of Michigan pointed out, "many of them would be startled and put off by what I think they would perceive as the implication that ethical issues are not already pervasive in their work." People should not be asked to become ethical but rather, Tucker said, to carry out "more systematic analysis" of ethical issues "on a more consistently explicit level than is yet generally the case." 

The most difficult issue in dealing with ethics in an international context is the problem of unity and diversity. Ronald Engel wrote that “For many, to speak of a global ethic smacks of a forced unity - something that will be imposed by one part of the world on other parts of the world, a new kind of colonialism. And surely, given the course of world history, such fears are justified. On the other hand, there are many who are worried that we are drifting into a situation of ‘cultural relativism’ -  whereby it is assumed that no one, except those who belong to a particular society, can or should say anything about the values of that  society” (Engel 1994, 4-5). Engel believes the answer is to recognize that there can be unity in variety, that it makes sense "to speak at one and the same time of 'a world ethic for living sustainably' and of 'world ethics for living sustainably.'" In other words, there should be global consensus on broad goals, but there can be a variety of ways of achieving them. The required balance can be difficult to achieve in practice.  

Finally, bringing the sustainability ethic into decision-making isn't a panacea. There are limits to what it can accomplish. Considering ethical issues may point to a "right" decision,  but there is no guarantee that such a course will be chosen. Building the process is more important than any individual decision. Raising  ethical issues can start a conversation that will eventually change organizational culture. 

What next?

Based on subsequent discussions  and experience, I believe the most promising tool for starting to link values and decision-making is including ethics in policy dialogues.  However, this must be done with care. The right mix of practical-minded scholars and thoughtful practitioners is needed; meetings can't have an ivory-tower atmosphere.  People able to tease the ethical issues out of the flow of discussion are essential. They might be professional ethicists but could just as well be historians, political philosophers, lawyers, writers, or religious leaders, for example. The most valuable people are frequently those who move easily between the academic and  practical worlds.

NOTE ON DEFINITIONS

The  words "values," ethics," and "moral" do not have single or precise  definitions; their meaning depends on the context in which they are used. In this paper, they are used as follows:

Values:   Core beliefs or desires that guide or motivate attitudes and actions.  Some values, such as the importance persons attach to honesty, fairness,  and loyalty, are ethical in nature because they are concerned with the notion of moral duty - they reflect attitudes about what is right, good, or proper, rather than what is pleasurable, useful, or desirable.

Ethics:   A system or code of conduct based on moral duties and obligations that indicate how one should behave. Ethics deals with the ability to distinguish good from evil, right from wrong, and propriety from impropriety.

The difference between values and ethics:   Since only some values are concerned with ethics, ethics and values are not the same. Individuals tend to develop value systems that provide a  basis for prioritizing competing values. Only those value systems which  subordinate non-ethical values to ethical ones are ethical.

Moral:  Relating to principles or considerations of right or wrong action; proceeding from a standard of what is good and right.

The first three definitions are adapted from those of the Josephson Institute for Ethics (Independent Sector 1991, 22-23).

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

This list includes publications cited and a selection of other material directly relevant to the topic. 

Amy, Douglas J. 1984. Why policy analysis and ethics are incompatible. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 4: 573-591.

Anderson, Charles W. 1979. The place of principles in policy analysis. American Political Science Review 73: 711-723.

Berger, Peter L. 1974. Pyramids of sacrifice: Political ethics and social change. New York: Basic Books.  

Bergerson, Peter J. 1988. Ethics and public policy: An annotated bibliography. New York and London: Garland. 

Bowman, James S., and Frederick A. Elliston, eds. 1988. Ethics, government, and public policy: A reference guide. New York: Greenwood. 

Brown, Donald A. 1990. Integrating environmental ethics with science and law. The Environmental Professional 12: 344-350.

Brown, Donald A., conference director. 1994. The ethical dimensions of the United Nations program on environment and development. N.p.: Earth Ethics Research Group, Inc.

Cohen, Cynthia B. 1990. Ethics committees as corporate and public policy advocates. Hastings Center Report 36.

Daly, Herman E. 1993. Achieving development without growth. Surviving Together (ISAR, Washington, D.C.), Winter: 44-45.

Dorfman, Robert. 1976. An afterword: Humane values and environmental decisions. In When values conflict, ed. Lawrence Tribe. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger.

Drummond, John, and Bill Bain, eds. 1994. Managing business ethics. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Dunn, William N., ed. 1996. Policy analysis: Perspectives, concepts, and methods. Greenwich, Connecticut, and London: JAI Press.
Dunn, William N., ed. 1983. Values, ethics, and the practice of policy analysis. Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington.

Engel, J. Ronald, and Julie Denny-Hughes, eds. 1993. Advancing ethics for living sustainably: Report of the IUCN workshop, April 1993, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, USA. Sacramento, California: International Center for the Environment and Public Policy, for IUCN.

Engel, J. Ronald, and Joan Gibb Engel. 1990. Ethics of environment and development: Global challenge, international response. London: Bellhaven (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991). This  volume, which had its inception in a workshop organized by the IUCN  Ethics Working Group, has contributions by authors from Australia, Canada, China, Finland, India, Israel, Kenya, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uruguay, and Yugoslavia. 

Fischer, Frank. 1980. Politics, values, and public policy: The problem of methodology. Boulder, Colorado: Westview.

Gillroy, John Martin. 1993. Environmental Risk, environmental values, and political choices: Beyond efficiency tradeoffs in public policy analysis. Boulder, Colorado: Westview.

Glasser, Harold, et al. 1994. Ethics and values in environmental policy: The said and the UNCED. In Toward sustainable development: Concepts, methods, and policy, ed. Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh and Jan van der Straaten. Washington: Island.

Goodland, Robert. 1994. Ethical priorities in environmentally sustainable energy systems. In W.R. Shea, ed., Energy needs in the year 2000: Ethical and environmental perspectives. Canton, Massachusetts: Watson.

Goulet, Denis. 1986. Three rationalities in development decision-making. World Development 14: 301-317. The three rationalities, or basic approaches to logic, are technological, political, and ethical.

Hoffman, W. Michael, Robert Frederick, and Edward S. Petry, Jr., eds. 1990. The corporation, ethics, and the environment. Westport, Connecticut: Quorum.

Hutchinson, Roger. 1992. Prophets, pastors, and public choices: Canadian churches and the Mackenzie Valley pipeline debate. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 

Independent Sector. 1991. Ethics and the nation's voluntary and philanthropic community. Washington, D.C. : Independent Sector.

IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature)/United Nations Environment Programme/World Wide Fund for Nature. 1991. Caring for the Earth: A strategy for sustainable living. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN/WWF/UNEP.

Jamieson, Dale. 1992. Ethics, public policy, and global warming. Science, Technology & Human Values 17: 139-153.

Kahn, Peter H., Jr. Resolving environmental disputes: Litigation, mediation, and the courting of ethical community. Environmental Values 3: 211-28.

Khosla,  Ashok. 1989. Organizational design for collaborative decision-making: The experience of Development Alternatives. In Trzyna and Gotelli 1989.

Khosla, Ashok. 1994. Editorial: The greedy professional. Development Alternatives Newsletter 4: 6 (July).

Leys, Wayne A.R. 1952. Ethics for policy decisions: The art of asking deliberative questions. New York: Prentice-Hall.

Rockefeller, Steven C., and John C. Elder, eds. 1992. Spirit and nature: Why the environment is a religious issue. Boston: Beacon. Papers given at  a conference held in part to discuss what became the  "World Ethic for Living Sustainably," this volume includes articles on  the environment from Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, and Jewish perspectives.

Schelling, Thomas C. 1981. Analytic methods and the ethics of policy. In Ethics in hard times, ed. Arthur L. Caplan and Daniel Callagan. New York and London: Plenum.

Shrader-Frechette, K.S. 1985. Science policy, ethics, and environmental impact analysis. Boston: D. Reidel; Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Tasch,  Edward, and Stephen Viederman. 1995. The role of financial institutions: The case of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation. In Steering business toward sustainability, ed. Fritjof Capra and Gunther Pauli. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.

Trzyna, Thaddeus C., ed. 1995. A sustainable world: Defining and measuring sustainable development. Sacramento, California: California Institute of Public Affairs, for IUCN; London: Earthscan.

Trzyna,  Thaddeus C. 1995. "Linking Values and Policy for Sustainable  Development: An International Strategy to Build the Sustainability Ethic into Decision-making." Sacramento, California: Commission on  Environmental Strategy and Planning, IUCN. IUCN/CESP Working Paper No. 6. 

Trzyna, Thaddeus C. 1998. "Sustainable Development: Linking Values and Policy." In Dorinda G. Dallmeyer and Albert F. Ike, eds., Environmental ethics and the global marketplace. Athens, Georgia, and London: University of Georgia Press.

Trzyna, Thaddeus C., and Ilze M. Gotelli, eds. 1990. The power of convening: Collaborative policy forums for sustainable development. Sacramento, California: California Institute of Public Affairs, in cooperation with IUCN and The Claremont Graduate School.

A CONSULTATIVE PROCESS

This  project was conducted through a consultative process involving  increasingly wider circles of IUCN member organizations, councillors,  staff, and commission members, as well as other leaders in  conservation, development, ethics, and international affairs. Between January 1994 and August 1996, the author met with over fifty people and  received comments from forty others. Listed below, they included officials of governments, international agencies, foundations, and national and international nongovernmental organizations, as well as scholars, writers, and consultants - citizens of thirty-two countries.

Persons consulted

Listing  here does not indicate endorsement of the ideas presented above.  Affiliations are as of 1995, when the original paper was published.  *Indicates a meeting was held. Parentheses indicate nationality, when known, if other than the location listed.

*Alicia Bárcena (Mexico), Earth Council, Costa Rica

*Richard Barrett (Canada), The World Bank

*Joanne Bauer, Council on Ethics and International Affairs, USA

*R.J. (Sam) Berry, University College London; Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, United Kingdom

 *Grazia Borrini Feyerabend (Italy), IUCN

 Donald A. Brown, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, USA

 Jeb Brugmann (Canada), International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives

*Lynton K. Caldwell, Indiana University, USA 

John Callewaert, University of Chicago, USA

*Jeremy Carew-Reid (Australia), IUCN

*Erskine Childers (Ireland), former senior official of the United Nations

*Jared Cohon, Yale University, USA

Teresa Pinto Correia (Portugal), Aalborg University, Denmark

 *Angela Cropper (Trinidad and Tobago), United Nations

*Kenneth Dahlberg, Western Michigan University, USA

Irene Dankelman, Netherlands Organizations for International Cooperation

*David Devlin-Foltz, Pew Global Stewardship Initiative, Aspen Institute, USA

*Chad Dobson (USA), Bank Information Center

Strachan Donnelley, The Hastings Center, USA

Nigel Dower, University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom

*Michael Eaton, consultant, USA

*J. Ronald Engel, Meadville/Lombard Theological School and University of Chicago, USA

Richard Falk, Princeton University, USA

*Matthias Finger, Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration

Lloyd Gardner, Ecotech, Jamaica

*Lisa Garbus (USA), Population-Environment Fellow, Burkina Faso

Robert Goodland (Canada), The World Bank

Denis Goulet, Notre Dame University, USA

*Bryn Green, Wye College, University of London, United Kingdom

Eduardo Gudynas, Latin American Center of Social Ecology, Uruguay

*David Hales, United States Agency for International Development

*Eugene C. Hargrove, University of North Texas, USA

Paul Harrison, sociologist and writer, United Kingdom

*Parvez Hassan (Pakistan), IUCN Commission on Environmental Law

*Frits Hesselink (The Netherlands), IUCN Commission on Education and Communication

John Hutton, Africa Resources Trust, Zimbabwe
*Alejandro Imbach (Argentina), Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Ensenanza (CATIE), Costa Rica 
Peter Jacobs, University of Montreal, Canada

N.D. Jayal, Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage

*Yolanda Kakabadse (Ecuador), Fundación Futuro Latinomericano  

Michael Keating, environmental writer, Canada

*Elisabeth K. Kersten, Senate Office of Research, California Legislature, USA

Smitu Kothari, Lokayan, India

*Ashok Khosla, Development Alternatives, India

*Ramon Lastra (Spain and Venezuela), World Wide Fund for Nature International

*Barbara Lausche (USA), United Nations Global Environment Facility 

Enrique Leff (Mexico), United Nations Environment Programme

*Hans Lundberg (Sweden), IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management

Finn Lynge (Denmark), Greenland Home Rule Government 

Kevin Lyonette (United Kingdom), World Wide Fund for Nature International

*David McDowell (New Zealand), IUCN

Jeffrey A. McNeely (USA), IUCN

*Antonio Machado, Canary Islands Government, Spain

*John David Maguire, Claremont Graduate University, USA 

Boyman Mancama, Zimbabwe National Conservation Trust

Michael Marien (USA), Future Survey, World Future Society

*Andrea Matte-Baker (Chile and Canada), United Nations Environment Programme 

*Juan Mayr, Fundación Pro-Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia

*Daniel A. Mazmanian, Claremont Graduate University, USA

*Ricardo Meléndez (Colombia), Fundación Futuro Latinomericano

Judy Messer, Eco-Pol Consultancy, Australia

*Liberty Mhlanga, Agricultural and Rural Development Authority, Zimbabwe

*John Mills (United Kingdom), Commission on Global Governance

Lester Milbrath, State University of New York, USA

*Jill Montgomery (USA), The World Bank

*David  A. Munro (Canada), consultant; formerly United Nations Environment  Programme, IUCN, and IUCN-UNEP-WWF project on Caring for the Earth  

Zev Naveh, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

Jiri Pall, Mendel University, Czech Republic

*Adrian Phillips (United Kingdom), IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas

*Jeremy Pope (New Zealand), Transparency International

*George Rabb, Chicago Zoological Society, USA; IUCN Species Survival Commission 

Sir Shridath Ramphal (Guyana), Commission on Global Governance; formerly Commonwealth Secretariat

*Steve Robinson, The Environment Council, United Kingdom

*Steven Rockefeller, Middlebury College, USA

Barry Sadler, environmental consultant, Canada

*Richard Sandbrook (United Kingdom), International Institute for Environment and Development

*Richard Saunier (USA), Organization of American States

*Fulai Sheng (China), World Wide Fund for Nature

*Paul F. Smith, attorney, USA

*Paul Sochaczewski (USA), consultant, Switzerland

Linda Starke (USA), writer and editor

Stephen Sterling, consultant in environmental education, United Kingdom

*Simon Stuart (United Kingdom), IUCN

M.S. Swaminathan, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, India

Despina Symonds (Greece), European Bureau for Conservation and Development

*François Terrasson, National Museum of Natural History, France

Ken Towle, consultant to Canadian International Development Agency

Richard Tucker, University of Michigan, USA

*Stephen Viederman, Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, USA

Patricia Waak, National Audubon Society, USA

*Sven Wahlberg (Sweden), conservationist, USA

Ernst U. von Weizsaecker, Wuppertal Institute, Germany

*Holly Welles, consultant to President's Council on Environmental Quality, USA

 Laura Westra, University of Windsor, Canada

 Brian Wilkes, Canadian Council of Resource Ministers

*Alonso Zarzar (Peru), Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales

*John Zierold, consultant, USA