Law Commons^™

Justifying Public Decisions In Arctic Oil And Gas Development: American And Russian Approaches, Nicholas E. Flanders, Rex V. Brown, Yelena Andre'eva, Oleg Larichev

Dartmouth Scholarship

Government resource decisions in the Arctic typically involve complex issues; multiple criteria are used to choose among alternatives. This complexity is even greater with petroleum development because of concerns about national energy security, environmental impacts, and economic development. Two decision-aiding techniques may help decision makers clarify their decisions to themselves, the stakeholders, and the general public. The Russian qualitative technique seeks to reduce the number of criteria and find alternative options that may be better than the initial ones. The Western quantitative technique seeks to measure the decision maker* s judgement about the utility and certainty of each option. These …