Journal of Environmental Management 70 (2004) 263273 www.elsevier.

com/locate/jenvman

Incorporating community objectives in improved wetland management: the use of the analytic hierarchy process
Gamini Herath*
School of Business, La Trobe University, Albury/Wodonga Campus, Wodonga, Vic. 3690, Australia Received 7 May 2003; revised 3 November 2003; accepted 9 December 2003

Abstract Wetlands in Australia provide considerable ecological, economic, environmental and social benets. However, the use of wetlands has been indiscriminate and signicant damage to many Australian wetlands has occurred. During the last 150 years one third of the wetlands in Victoria have been lost. A conspicuous problem in wetland management is the paucity of involvement by stakeholders. This paper uses the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to incorporate stakeholder objectives in the Wonga Wetlands on the Murray River. The study shows that the AHP can explicitly incorporate stakeholder preferences and multiple objectives to evaluate management options. The AHP also provides several approaches for policy makers to arrive at policy decisions. q 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Wonga wetlands; Analytic hierarchy process; Stakeholder; Community; Management

1. Introduction Wetlands provide important ecological, economic, and social benets such as improved water quality, ood control, reduced nutrient pollution and habitat for a diversity of plants and animals and recreational opportunities and economic benets to rural communities. However, many wetlands in Australia have been destroyed or degraded due to unsustainable use patterns. Not a single wetland in the Murray region is in its natural condition (Lugg, 1993). During the last 150 years, one-third of the wetlands in Victoria were lost and in the Murray River, over 35% of seasonally inundated wetlands are now degraded (Pressey, 1986; Bennett, 2000). The major constraints to proper management of wetlands are (a) excessive focus on technological approaches that alter the environment (b) lack of knowledge of different stakeholders (e.g. farmers, conservationists, recreationists, etc.) and their values and attitudes (c) conicting multiple objectives of stakeholders and (d) difculties in quantifying economic, environmental and recreational values. All these problems reect the non-involvement of stakeholders in decision-making. An inclusive process that reects
* Tel.: 260583837; fax: 260583833. E-mail address: g.herath@aw.latrobe.edu.au (G. Herath). 0301-4797/$ - see front matter q 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2003.12.011

community interests and provides them with a key role in inuencing planning and management decisions will have a greater chance of success. Community involvement would provide policy alternatives that are more acceptable to the community. If stakeholders are adequately represented in decision-making allowing them to cooperate in an honest and open exchange of views, it is possible to reach agreed positions and minimise conicts, provide in-built controls and incentives for conservation and sustainable use, help reduce negative environmental effects and increase the sustainability of wetlands (Wright, 1997). Participation enhances the legitimacy of the process and conveys to the public the complexities of policy making and the limits of government capacity to respond to public needs and demands. Yet, community participation in wetland management in Australia has been limited to discussions with community leaders or comments on plans prepared elsewhere and stakeholders have little role in identifying issues, developing alternative management options and prioritising choices. Hence, wetland management in Australia is in a state of ux. The existing institutions are becoming strained and less able to perform their historical function of mediating competing demands of wetland services. Today, stakeholders such as recreational users, anglers, logging interests, environmentalists all compete among themselves

264

G. Herath / Journal of Environmental Management 70 (2004) 263273

for the stressed wetland systems. The key to successful wetland management is gaining a thorough understanding of the people and ecological processes unique to wetland systems and using this understanding in the design and implementation of appropriate management strategies. The realisation that traditional technocratic approaches may be incurring unnecessary costs and may not be optimising the benets of wetland management has opened the door for the application of new concepts. By investing up front in understanding the wetland systems, costly mistakes and restoration measures may be avoided in the future. Wetland management is evolving into a multi objective management approach. Technical issues will not dominate decision-making but will provide inputs to a more democratic process of negotiations among various stakeholders. No single group such as irrigators, anglers, indigenous users control the agenda and the management agencies. The diffusion of power among a multitude of stakeholders means that agencies have increasingly less power to resolve conicts by imposing a solution. An approach that can provide explicit information about community objectives, their tradeoffs and attitudes means that the conicts can be better understood (Turner et al., 2000). Several participatory methods including questionnaire surveys, telephone surveys, community workshops, public meetings, public comment opportunities have been used but have been criticised as inadequate. Most of these exercises have been information gathering exercises rather than explicit involvement in decision-making. The main difculty in implementing participatory approaches is the lack of tested methods, which could facilitate stakeholder negotiations and allow greater analytical rigour. New techniques of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) have been found to be particularly useful for improved wetland management. MCDA can simplify and structure the wetland management problem, facilitate explicit incorporation of multiple values and preferences of stakeholders in decision-making (RAC, 1992). A number of applications of MCDA have been reported in Australia. Assim and Hill (1997) applied MCDA techniques to evaluate alternative water management plans in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area and Districts. They found MCDA to be useful in resolving tradeoffs between economic and environmental goals. Deng et al. (2002) used the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to evaluate tourism attributes in Victorian Parks in Australia. They ranked 36 selected state and national parks in Victoria into four levels, ranging from Grade 1 to Grade 4. Qureshi and Harrison (2000) used AHP to evaluate four riparian vegetation options for the Johnston River Catchment in North Queensland with ve stakeholder groups. The use of prompt cards for pairwise comparisons is an innovative feature of this study. Proctor (2000) applied AHP to regional forest planning in Australia. The study focused on the Southern New South Wales forest region. Proctors (2000) study revealed that the two extreme forest use

optionsthe conservation option and the timber industry option are preferred over the middle ground options. The specic objectives of this paper are to: Identify different stakeholder groups in the Wonga wetlands in the Murray River; Identify stakeholder objectives in wetland use; evaluate the relative importance of these objectives among stakeholders using the AHP and incorporate these public values into wetland management options to develop better management strategies.

2. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) MCDA refers to a suite of techniques in which multiple values reecting different objectives are quantied and used to provide a decision outcome, which reects objectives broader than just economic objectives (Gregory, 2000). The important advantage of MCDA is that it can account for multiple criteria of assessment rather than a single criterion such as dollar values. The emphasis on MCDA alters wetland management from one that is dependent on hardware to one that depends on information. MCDA is a rational decision-making framework, which explicitly incorporates multiple objectives of decisions makers. MCDA improves communication and understanding among multiple decision makers and facilitate ways of reaching policy compromises. MCDA is concerned with solving problems where there is a set of proposed options and several conicting objectives. It allows the decision makers to rank objectives, resolve conicts and identify areas of importance. It can be applied to a variety of environmental problems characterised by multiple goals. MCDA is a promising framework for evaluation since they have the potential to take into account conicting, multidimensional, incommensurable and uncertain effects of decisions explicitly (Carbone et al., 2000; Munda, 2000; Omann, 2000). The most widely used multi-criteria methods include the AHP, Multi-attribute Utility Theory (MAUT), Multi-criteria Value Functions (MCVF), outranking theory and goal programming. The MAUT has shortcomings. Russell et al. (2001) found mixed empirical evidence about whether MAUT improved the internal consistency of preference surveys. MAUT also assumes that decision alternatives follow a known probability distribution. The AHP has been widely applied for preference analysis in complex, multi-attribute problems (Varis, 1989). 2.1. The analytic hierarchy process The AHP, developed by Saaty (1980) is a mathematical method for analysing complex decisions. It is a general theory of ratio scale measurement based on mathematical and psychological foundations (Kangas, 1993). The AHP is

G. Herath / Journal of Environmental Management 70 (2004) 263273

265

not grounded on any specic theoretical basis such as neoParetian welfare theory. What it does is to aggregate the separate performance indicators into an integrated performance indicator (Bouma et al., 2000). The AHP facilitates a rigorous denition of priorities and preferences of decision makers and is useful in analysing decisions involving many stakeholders and multiple objectives (Saaty, 1980). In the case of wetlands, the overall goal is to achieve sustainable management. Criteria are then dened by which each option should be considered in meeting the objectives. Each criterion can have sub-criteria. Many options can be constructed each containing different levels of criteria that contributes to the overall objective. The AHP is based upon the construction of a series of pairwise comparison matrices, which compares criteria to one another. Selected stakeholders are asked to carry out the pairwise comparisons of the identied criteria and sub-criteria. Each cell reveals the relative importance of an attribute compared to another. The quantitative weights for criteria are based on the decision makers qualitative comparison of all pairs of criteria. This provides a ranking or weighting of each of the criteria that describes the importance of each criterion to the overall objective. Weights to these sub-attributes are assessed using pairwise comparisons. The method is interactive where a stakeholder or a group of stakeholders indicate their preferences to the analyst. In this approach, the objectives of stakeholders are identied (e.g. biodiversity conservation, recreation, economic activities etc.) which may be further subdivided into a number of subcriteria, and the pairwise comparison is repeated for each level of the hierarchy. In AHP data are obtained from the decision makers through pairwise comparisons among the elements at one level of the hierarchy with respect to an element in the next higher level. In making the comparisons, it is a question of which of the two attributes is more important and how much more important. The decision maker has the option of expressing his or her intensity of preference on a nine-point scale (Table 1). If two criteria are of equal importance, a value of 1 is given in the comparison, while 9 indicates the absolute importance of one criterion over the other. Within each hierarchy there are three types of comparisons:
Table 1 Measurement scale of AHP Intensity of relative importance 1 3 5 7 9 2, 4, 6 and 8 Source: Saaty (1977). Denition Equal importance Weak importance of one over the other Essential or strong importance Demonstrated importance Absolute importance Intermediate values between two adjacent judgements

(a) major categories are compared with each other, (b) criteria within these categories are compared to each other with respect to the categories, and (c) alternatives are compared to each other with respect to each criterion. The overall weights for each alternative are computed from the priority vectors of individual comparison matrices. AHP can deal with qualitative attributes as well as quantitative attributes. When applying AHP, a hierarchical decision schema is constructed by decomposing the decision problem into its decision elements. Numerical techniques are used to derive quantitative values from verbal comparisons (Kurttila et al., 2000). Pairwise comparison data can be analysed using either regression methods or the eigenvalue technique. In the eigenvalue technique, the reciprocal matrices of pairwise comparisons are constructed. Using these pair wise comparisons, the parameters can be estimated. The right eigenvector of the largest eigenvalue of matrix A constitutes the estimation of relative importance of attributes (Eq. (1)), where bi is the importance or desirability of decision element i: In the AHP approach, the eigenvector is scaled to add up to 1 to obtain the weights. 1 0 1 b1 =b2 b1 =bn C B B b =b 1 b2 = bn C C B 2 1 C B C B 1 A aij B C C B C B B C A @ bn =b1 bn =b2 1 Based on properties of reciprocal matrices, a consistency ratio (CR) can be calculated. Saaty (1977) has shown that the largest eigenvalue, gmax ; of a reciprocal matrix A is always greater than or equal to n (number of rows or columns). If the pairwise comparisons do not include any inconsistencies, gmax n: The more consistent the comparisons are, the closer the value of computed gmax to n: A consistency index CI, which measures the inconsistencies of pairwise comparisons is given in Eq. (2). CI gmax 2 n=n 2 1 2

A consistency ratio (CR), given in Eq. (3), measures the coherence of the pairwise comparisons. CR 100CI=ACI 3

where ACI is the average consistency index of the randomly generated comparisons. As a rule of thumb, a CR value of 10% or less is considered as acceptable. The AHP offers a methodology to compare the publics relative values for conservation, recreation and business attributes of wetlands. The methodology has been extended to enable the use of AHP in group decision-making where the single decision maker is actually a group of people. AHP is an easier technique compared to MAUT and the responses are less demanding.

266

G. Herath / Journal of Environmental Management 70 (2004) 263273

Duke (2002) used AHP to examine public preferences for the environmental and agricultural attributes of farmland. There exist relatively few applications of AHP to environmental or natural resource problems. AHP is not a statistically based procedure and theoretically a sample size of one is enough to implement the AHP. Many studies used small number of experts or professionals. Peterson et al. (1994) used ve respondents. Mawapanga and Debertin (1996) used 18 participants. This paper uses a large sample of stakeholders to investigate the preferences for wetland attributes and rank alternative management options.

3. Application of AHP The practical application of AHP involves (a) structuring the decision problem (b) identifying management options (c) identifying criteria (d) identifying the stakeholders and (e) developing the weighting schemes and ranking management options. These are briey discussed in the sections below. 3.1. Identifying stakeholders Stakeholders share a common interest or stake in the wetland. Stakeholders include policy makers, planners, administrators and others. The process of selection of stakeholders has to be open and transparent (Buchy and Hoverman, 2000). Grimble and Chan (1995) suggest that stakeholders be initially identied through reputation, focus groups or demographic analysis. Harrison and Quershi (2000) suggest that the selection process should not be one-shot approach, but rather an iterative approach, where discussions with pre-identied stakeholders reveal other, previously unknown stakeholders. They also question the relevance of probability sampling in multicriteria analysis, where a greater recognition is given to qualitative aspects of the decision problem. A very large number of stakeholder groups however, make the elicitation exercise difcult (Harrison and Qureshi, 2000). 3.2. Structuring the decision problem Identifying the stakeholders and structuring stakeholder objectives in wetland management require careful empirical investigation. Focus must be both on fundamental objectives, which are the attributes that stakeholders genuinely care about, and means objectives, which are ways to accomplish the fundamental objectives (Keeney, 1992). Objective hierarchies can be constructed using this classication. 3.3. Identifying management options and criteria Management options are the available alternative actions that achieve some or all of the objectives of the decision

problem. Often they are represented as discrete choices for easy evaluation. They can be identied from the policy documents or constructed to represent the stakeholder values (Keeney, 1992). Identifying a set of criteria or attributes is critical to evaluate preferences and alternative management plans. The criteria need to be reduced to a few key criteria, representing the major tradeoffs involved in any empirical application of the model. Participatory tools such as In-depth Groups (De Marchi et al., 1998), Negotiation Forums (Eastman et al., 1998), Focus Groups (Keeney et al., 1990; McDaniels and Roessler, 1998), and Citizens Juries (Crosby, 1996) can be effectively employed to elicit the most important criteria for a particular wetland. The main criteria could be aesthetic, environmental conservation, recreation, economic, social and cultural values. 3.4. Weighting schemes Once the decision schema and stakeholder groups are chosen, the weights and preferences of different stakeholder groups should be determined. Two scenarios can be developed (a) equal weights for all stakeholders or (b) unequal weights for stakeholders. In the case of unequal weights, the weights can be obtained from stakeholder groups themselves (self-assessed weights) or they can be determined by the government authority in charge of wetland management or assumed values used in combination with sensitivity analysis. In group decision-making, Aczel and Saaty (1983) proved that the geometric mean is consistent with conditions for synthesis of judgments. If we have m individuals, a composite judgment of their weights is the geometric mean. Using geometric means, a set of numerical values can be calculated to represent the relative degree of importance among the decision attributes. Also a set of numerical values can be computed to represent the relative importance of several individual judgments.

4. Application of AHP to Wonga wetlands 4.1. The Wonga wetlands The Wonga wetlands on the Murray River in Australia is a relatively small wetland but signicant for its specic features. It has 108 ha including 80 ha of lagoons and diverse range of ora and fauna and limited recreational opportunities. The River Red Gum is a signicant feature of the Wonga wetlands. In year 2000, nearly 110 bird species were sighted in the wetlands. During winter the Wonga wetland lls, from both the natural catchment but primarily from the wastewater treatment plant in Albury (which is a unique feature of the Wonga wetland). Many vertebrate species breed in the ephemeral areas, but in summer the wetland dries out which is important for waterbird breeding. In winter, the wetlands act as a reservoir to ensure that no

G. Herath / Journal of Environmental Management 70 (2004) 263273

267

water is discharged into the Murray River. Visits to the wetlands are presently restricted for educational institutions and registered interest groups such as bird observers, eld naturalists, photography/bushwalking groups (Wonga Wetlands, 2001). These groups have availed themselves of this opportunity to experience a unique ecological laboratory in the area. Plans are underway for some nature-based investments in the Wonga wetlands such as nature trails around the lagoon boardwalks, reception centre, bird hides, aboriginal campsites, and an interpretive centre. The proposed investments will cost several million dollars. Funds are being sought from the business community in Albury/Wodonga for these investments. The aim of these investments is to increase tourism ows and enhance nature-based experiences. They are also expected to generate an ecologically sustainable wetland. However, the dilemma the planners are facing can be easily understood from the following: A critical issue is to consider how to make this facility available to all those in the community who want to share the experience of a reconstituted riverine wetland, whilst minimising disturbance to the ora and fauna and any other adverse effects of these investments. (Wonga Wetlands, 2001). This statement reects that the wetland management problem is a classic multi-attribute problem that can benet from MCDA. 4.2. Formulating the decision problem Many wetland management options can be developed which are different combinations of the criteria, which contribute to the attainment of the objectives of stakeholders. The existing option can be used as the base case to assess the other alternative options. The existing option is where no investments have been made as yet and 100% of the conservation value of the wetland is preserved and 2000 recreation visitor days are available. The decision problem was cast as one involving the choice of the best wetland management plan for Wonga wetlands that optimally satises the stakeholders. Focus group interviews were conducted to obtain preliminary information on (a) different types of stakeholders (b) major attributes of importance to stakeholders (c) wetland management options and (d) criteria to assess these alternative options. The focus groups revealed conservation, economic (any commercial advantages arising from advertising due to contributions made towards the investments referred to above) and recreational benets by actually using the wetlands for visiting, walking etc. to be the three major objectives of stakeholders. The conservation objective reects the desire to protect the wetland ecology. The investment objective reects the desire of some to obtain any commercial potential that may be there in the redesigned wetland in terms of advertisements, business promotion etc. The recreation objective would capture the experiential dimension and learning arising from the visits

to the wetland. Each of these objectives can be reected in several sub-attributes as shown in Table 2. For example the environmental attribute can be reected in terms of the number of species of birds or the presence of the River Red Gum trees. Table 2 presents a useful objective hierarchy for the Wonga wetlands developed by examining relevant documents, consultation with ofcials in the Albury City council and the focus group interviews. A decision model for the problem is given in Fig. 1. The model contains four levels: the most general objective of wetland management and planning is considered as maximising overall utility at level 1. Level 2 consists of stakeholder groups. Three main stakeholder groups namely the conservation group (main objective is conservation of the wetland), and recreational user group (would like to maximise the recreational benets from the wetland) and small business groups (would like to benet by providing investment funds to the City Council) are considered the most relevant for this analysis. Level 3 gives the attributes of the decision problem. The attributes can be further subdivided into more detailed decision attributes. For example, the decision attribute wetland conservation could be decomposed into the extent of old River Red Gum reserved and/or the number of bird species protected. Level 4 consists of alternative wetland management options, which are different combinations of the three decision attributes. When there are a large number of indicators, pairwise comparisons may become tedious to the respondent and hence only the three most important attributes are considered. Hence only three indicators, one for each attribute was used for the options in order to keep the respondents task manageable. The attributes chosen for the conservation attribute was the percent of bird species. Only three management options were constructed for evaluation although theoretically many options can be developed. These were constructed taking into account the status quo as the base case (Option 1). The second option involved reducing the conservation objective and adding the business and recreation objectives as well. Some subjectivity is involved here and this was due to the non-availability of any information on the trade offs involved among the three attributes. Thus a linear relationship is assumed among
Table 2 An objective hierarchy for the Wonga Wetlands Aim Sustainable management of wetlands Goals Economic goals Criteria Investment (returns from advertising and promotional effects) Ecosystem conservation protection of fauna and ora species Water quality Visits educational values

Conservation goals

Recreational goals

268

G. Herath / Journal of Environmental Management 70 (2004) 263273

Fig. 1. A decision model to evaluate wetland use options.

the three attributes. Any business investment is considered to lead to a decline in the bird population and increase in visitor numbers and many respondents concurred with this observation. Changes were made to the base plan to obtain the other two options.1 A million dollar investment is considered 100% investment. An arbitrary 100% increment in investment was made in option 2 and this was assumed yo cause a 25% decline in the conservation value but will increase the number of visits to 5000. This is because business investment will produce other attractions as well and also will remove any limitations currently imposed on visitor numbers. While the direction of change in the attribute levels is logical, the extents are not since not much information is available to use a more objective approach. These can however be rened as and when more information is available. The number of bird species reected conservation value, recreation is measured using recreation visitor days and investment is measured in terms of dollars but the indicator was the percent investment (one million dollars investment is considered 100% investment). Table 3 summarises the wetland management options hypothesised for the Wonga wetlands. 4.3. Survey procedure Two hundred and sixty residents of Albury/Wodonga selected on a stratied random basis (stratied according to
Alternative management strategies can be based on simulation and optimising models (Kangas et al. 2000) and they should take technical feasibility and national reserve criteria into account.
1

particular interest) were interviewed to reveal their collective preferences for the Wonga wetlands using a pre-tested questionnaire. The pairwise questions were presented as follows: Preserving bird species is 123456789 4

more important than business investment Business investment is 123456789

more important than preserving bird species The respondent is asked to choose the attribute that should be given more importance (or priority) and then to circle the appropriate strength of preference (either on the rst or the second line) after referring to either the verbal or numerical preference scale. Then the attribute levels of the three hypothetical options were compared pair wise with respect to one attribute at a time. For example, the pairwise comparison of option 1 (OPT 1) and option 2 (OPT 2) with
Table 3 Wonga Wetlands management options Indicators Conservation value Business investment ($ million) Recreation visitor days Extent of river red gum (percent area) No. of bird species Option 1 100% Nil 2000 100% 110 Option 2 75% $1.0 5000 75% 82% Option 3 90% 0.5 3500 90% 99%

G. Herath / Journal of Environmental Management 70 (2004) 263273

269

respect to conservation is as follows: OPT 1 is 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 more important than OPT 2 or

Table 4 Weights of decision objectives by Stakeholder Groups Weights

OPT 2 is 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 more important than OPT 1 5 The above procedure is repeated for the other two attributes. An impact table or effects table, which details the consequences associated with the chosen level of decision attributes, is often used when making pairwise comparisons (Proctor, 2000). However, in this study development of a comprehensive impact table was not feasible mainly due to lack of data on critical inter-relationships. A total of 221 usable questionnaires were analysed. Some of the questionnaires were removed from the analysis because of interviewer perceptions that they were not satisfactory or that they are incomplete. The conservation-oriented group was the largest with a total of 120 respondents; the business group came second with 65 respondents. The recreation group had a total of 36 respondents. The selection was made using the telephone directory for Albury/Wodonga. Each respondent was asked to classify himself into an appropriate group and this was used as the basis to allocate a given respondent into a particular group. Many of the respondents knew the Wonga wetlands and were aware of wetland functions. The survey also revealed that the investment plan of the city council was known by around 40% and the rest were unaware of the proposal. Most respondents found it easy to grasp the objectives of the survey because it is a small wetland and almost everyone knew about it and its various features. Some respondents had difculties in trading-off these attributes and qualities. Some of these difculties are normal and often arise because some goods have public goods characteristics. After explaining the procedure the respondents were asked to make pair wise comparisons and rank the intensity of their preferences. 4.4. The results The information on attributes and options were used to examine the preferences and goals among the population. The analysis revealed what sort of management options would be acceptable to the majority and is sustainable and how policy decisions could be modied to better suit the particular wetland region. 4.4.1. Pairwise comparisons Since the problem has been structured as a hierarchy, the relations between elements in succeeding levels are obtained by making pairwise comparisons The Expert Choice Computer Model was used to analyse the pairwise comparison. By using the eigenvalue technique in the AHP (Section 2), the weights, describing the importance of each attribute for a given stakeholder can be computed. These values are not presented in the paper due to space considerations. The values for a particular group are then
Option 1 Option 2 Option 3 Business group Recreation group Conservation group Conservation 0.2604 0.3520 0.6333 Visits 0.2544 0.4060 0.2088 Investment 0.4847 0.2421 0.1578

summed and averaged over the sample to obtain the weights given in Table 4. Table 4 shows that overall for the business group, the weight of the investment attribute is 0.4847 compared to 0.2544 for the visits attribute indicating that investment is almost twice as important as the recreation objective. A given attribute can also be compared across the different stakeholder groups. For example, the environmental conservation attribute has weights of 0.2604, 0.3520 and 0.6333 for the business, recreation tourism and conservation groups, respectively. The AHP ranks the options based upon the pair wise comparisons. Table 5 provides the group analysis (where combined pair wise comparison of the groups is used) commonly referred to as the local priorities. The local priorities and ranking of the three management options in Table 5 show that for the business group, option 2 and option 3 are ranked rst and second, respectively. For the conservation group, option 1 and option 3 are ranked rst and second, respectively. The recreation group ranked option 3 and option 1 as the rst and the second, respectively.
Table 5 Local priorities and ranking for wetland alternatives by Stakeholder Groups Alternative/group Business group Recreation group Priority 0.3110 0.2690 0.4200 Rank 2 3 1 Conservation group Priority 0.4040 0.2130 0.3820 Rank 1 3 2

Priority 0.2520 0.3880 0.3600

Rank 3 1 2

Fig. 2. Most preferred wetland options by groups.

270

G. Herath / Journal of Environmental Management 70 (2004) 263273

Fig. 3. Ranking of wetland options by group.

The ranking of wetland management options by the three groups is given in Fig. 2. Fig. 2 gives the results of the individual analysis where the individual pairwise comparisons are analysed and the results are then used to examine the distribution of the rankings. Fig. 2 shows that for the conservation group, close to 30% preferred option 1, 10% preferred option 2 and 12% preferred option 3. For the business group, 18% preferred option 2, 3% preferred option 1 and 4% preferred option 3. In the recreation group, 9% preferred option 2, 2% option 1 and 1% option 3. When all groups are considered together, as shown in the fourth part of Fig. 2, 37% preferred option 1, 42% preferred option 2 and 19% preferred option 3. These results show that the preferences for the options differ for the three groups. For the conservation groups, the predominant choice is option 1 where no investment is made and 100% of the conservation value of the wetland is maintained. For the business group, the most preferred choice is option 2 where the maximum investment is made. The ranking of the options for the total sample is shown in Fig. 3 and Table 6. It shows that 26% of the conservation group preferred option 1 to option 2 and 3. In the business group, 16% preferred option 2 to option 3 and 1. Eight percent of the recreation group preferred option 2 to option 1 and 3. When the total sample is considered 35% preferred option 2 over option 1 and 3. These results have important policy implications. Policy makers can strike a better balance between competing stakeholder interests thereby minimising conicts. It is
Table 6 Ranking of wetland management options by group Ranking Conservation group 4 26 2 8 4 6 50 Business group 1 2 2 16 4 1 26 Recreation group 2 3 2 8 1 2 18 Total sample 5 32 5 35 12 6 94

interesting to note that conservation of the wetlands was considered an overriding priority. Policy makers should give careful consideration to the conservation effort by further evaluating the extent of the conservation values that must be preserved. This is particularly so because of the small sized nature of the wetland. The business attribute was fairly important but the recreation attribute was the least important. This may be because alternative venues for recreation are easily available. The research indicates that the stakeholders should be closely involved as partners in decision-making and incorporating their preferences enhance the City Councils capacity to formulate better plans. The present study should provide a useful starting point for comparing the options for wetlands in a meaningful, systematic and stakeholder-focused way. 4.4.2. Policy options The above scenarios do not provide the policy maker the nal policy option AHP can be used to resolve such difculties. Here the policy makers can impose their own preferences in obtaining the nal option. In this case policy makers can use their own relative weights for the three stakeholder groups. These global priorities can be calculated on the basis of these weighting schema for the stakeholder
Table 7 Global ranking of wetland options using different weighting schemes Weighting scheme (i) Equal weighting (B:C:T) (0.33:0.33:0.33) Option Option 1 Option 2 Option 3 Option 1 Option 2 Option 3 Option 1 Option 2 Option 3 Option 1 Option 2 Option 3 Option 1 Option 2 Option 3 Rank 836 2 3 1 2 3 1 3 2 1 3 1 2 1 3 2

(ii) (0.40:0.30:0.30)

(iii) (0.53:0.23:0.23)

1.2.3 1.3.2 2.1.3 2.3.1 3.2.1 3.1.2 Total

(iv) (0.88:0.6:0.6)

(v) (0.086:0. 828:0.086)

G. Herath / Journal of Environmental Management 70 (2004) 263273

271

Fig. 4. Performance sensitivity of options (business group).

groups, the importance of objectives from the point of view of the stakeholder groups and the relative priorities of decision alternatives with respect to the objectives. Following Kangas (1994), the global priority of a wetland management option can be given as: " #) ( 5 3 X X GPi LPSGj LPOkj LPMSik 6
j1 k 1

where GPi is global priority of option i; LPSGj is local priority of stakeholder group j; LPOkj is local priority of objective k from the point of view of stakeholder group j; LPMSik is local priority option i with respect to objective k: Table 7 gives policy outcomes for a range of different weights for the stakeholder groups that policy makers can assign which are called the global priorities. We initiate the analysis assuming that a policy maker considers all three stakeholder groups to be equally important and hence assign equal weights of 0.33 for each

group. The global rankings show that with equal weights, alternatives 1, 2 and 3, are ranked second, third and rst, respectively. Thus a policy maker should adopt option 3 as the option that should be implemented. The weights are then changed by increasing the weights for the business group to 0.4 and there is no change in the ranking due to this change. The weight for the business group is then changed until a change in the ranking occurs. This occurs when the weight for the business group is raised to 0.88. At this point option 2 becomes the number one option. Hence if the policy maker believes that the business group is very important and that they would assign a weight of 0.88 or more, then option 2 should be implemented. This is repeated for the conservation group. When the weight for the conservation group is changed there is no change in the ranking until the weight is increased to 0.82. Hence if the conservation group is very important for the policy makers and that they like to assign a weight of 0.82 or more, then option 1 becomes the best option and should be implemented. With respect to

Fig. 5. Gradient sensitivity for conservation objective (business group).

272

G. Herath / Journal of Environmental Management 70 (2004) 263273

the recreation group no increase of the weight from an initial equal weight scenario causes any change in the ranking. 4.4.3. Sensitivity analysis of options Fig. 4 shows the response of the options with respect to each objective as well as overall objective for the business group. The y-axis in Fig. 4 gives each objectives priority (based on the decision-makers paired comparisons). For example, for the conservation and the recreation objective the best choice is option 3 and it means that option 3 is the most preferred only if we take one attribute say recreation or conservation. For the business group, the best option is option 2 if we take only the investment objective. Overall the best choice is option 2. Fig. 5 shows that when conservation has a weight of 0.2, option 2 is the best choice, and option 3 becomes the second choice for the business group. However, if the weight for the conservation attribute is 0.3, option 3 is the best choice and option 2 becomes the second choice. The results show how the different weights given to conservation attribute can change the options chosen and hence the sensitivity. The result shows that a minor change of the weight from 0.22 to say to 0.3 causes a change in the options selected showing a higher degree of sensitivity. If the weight changes to about 0.6, then option 3 is the best choice. The sensitivity analysis can be repeated for the other stakeholder groups as well although they are not all reported here. The implication of high sensitivity is that the weights have to be more carefully assessed because even small errors can cause major errors in the results.

providing credible answers to the questions posed. However, many empirical studies on AHP are needed before we generalise its wider adoption.

References
Aczel, J., Saaty, 1983. Procedures for synthesizing ratio judgments. Journal of Mathematical Psychology 27, 93102. Assim, F., Hill, C., 1997. Multi-criteria analysisa tool for wetland management decision making. Paper Presented to the 41st Annual Conference of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, Broadbeach, Gold Coast, Queensland. Bennett, B., 2000. Hydrotherapy. Ecos 102, 2029. Bouma, J., Brouwer, R., Van Ek, R., 2000. The use of integrated assessment methods in Dutch water management: a comparison of cost-benet and multi-criteria analysis. Paper Presented to the Third International Conference of the European Society for Ecological Economics, May 3 6, Vienna, Austria. Buchy, M., Hoverman, S., 2000. Understanding public participation: a review. Forest Policy and Economics 1, 1525. Carbone, F., De Montis, A., De Toro, P., Stagl, S., 2000. MCDA methods comparison: environmental policy evaluation applied to a case study in Italy. Paper Presented to the Third International Conference of the European Society for Ecological Economics, May 3 6, Vienna, Austria. Crosby, N., 1996. Creating an authentic voice of the people. Deliberation on democratic theory and practice. Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago. De Marchi, B., Funtowicz, S., Gough, C., Guimaraes Pereira, A., Rota, E., 1998. The ULYSSES Voyage: Report EUR 17760EN, The ULYSSES Project at the Joint Research Centre, Ispra: European Commission. Deng, J., King, B., Bauer, T., 2002. Evaluating natural attractions for tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 29, 422 438. Duke, J.M., Aull-Hyde, R., 2002. Identifying public preferences for land preservation using the analytic hierarchy process. Ecological Economics 42, 131145. Eastman, R.J., Jiang, H., Toledana, J., 1998. Multi-criteria and multiobjective decision making for land allocation using GIS. In: Beinat, E., Nijkamp, P. (Eds.), Multicriteria Analysis for Land-Use Management, Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht. Gregory, R.S., 2000. Valuing environmental policy options: a case study comparison of multiattribute and contingent valuation survey methods. Land Economics 76, 151 173. Grimble, R., Chan, M.K., 1995. Stakeholder analysis for natural resource management in developing countries: some practical guidelines for making management more participatory and effective. Natural Resources Forum 19, 113124. Harrison, S.R., Qureshi, M.E., 2000. Choice of stakeholder groups and members in multi-criteria decision models. Natural Resources Forum 24, 1119. Kangas, J., 1993. A multi-attribute preference model for evaluating the reforestation chain alternatives of a forest stand. Forest Ecology and Management 59, 271 288. Kangas, J., 1994. Incorporating risk attitudes into comparison of reforestation alternatives. Scandinavian Journal of forest Research 9, 297 304. Keeney, R.L., 1992. Value-Focused Thinking: A Path to Creative Decision Analysis. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Keeney, R.L., Winterfeldt, D.V., Eppel, T., 1990. Eliciting public values for complex policy decisions. Management Science 36, 10111030. Kurttila, M., Pesonen, M., Kangas, J., Kajanus, M., 2000. Utilizing the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) in SWOT analysisa hybrid method and its applications to a forest certication case. Forest Policy and Economics 1, 4152.

5. Concluding remarks Quantifying stakeholder preferences in wetland management is a complex task. This paper uses AHP in evaluating the planning options for the Wonga Wetlands in the Murray. The AHP permits explicit participation by stakeholders, which is important in dealing with situations where several stakeholder groups are present. This study shows that the conservation group will predominantly prefer option 1 where no investment is made and the wetland is maintained in its pristine condition. The business group predominantly prefers option 2 where maximum investment can be made. The recreation group predominantly prefers option 3 where some investment is also made. AHP can accommodate policy maker preferences as shown in this study especially where they have particular weights for the different stakeholder groups. It was shown that if the policy makers weigh heavily the concerns of the conservation group, and that they are prepared to assign a high weight above 0.82, then the policy maker should implement option 1 and no investment on the wetland should be considered. The success of the method depends on the way the decision problem is structured and how the pair wise comparisons are carried out. It also depends on the ability of respondents

G. Herath / Journal of Environmental Management 70 (2004) 263273 Lugg, A., 1993. Wetland Management, Guidelines for Local Councils in the Murray Region of NSW. Department of Natural Resources and Management, Sydney. Mawapanga, M.N., Debertin, D.l., 1996. Choosing between alternative farming systems: an application of the analytic hierarchy process. Review of Agricultural Economics 18, 385401. McDaniels, T.L., Roessler, C., 1998. Multiattribute elicitation of wilderness preservation benets: a constructive approach. Ecological Economics 27, 299 312. Munda, G., 2000. Conceptualising and responding to complexity. Policy research brief, no. 2. In: Spash, C., Carter, C. (Eds.), Environmental Valuation in Europe, Cambridge Research for the Environment, Cambridge. Omann, I., 2000. How can multi-criteria decision analysis contribute to environmental policy making? A case study on macro-sustainability in Germany. Paper Presented to the Third International Conference of the European Society for Ecological Economics, May 36, Vienna, Austria. Peterson, D.L., Silsbee, D.G., Schmoldt, D.L., 1994. A case study of resource management planning with multiple objectives and projects. Environmental Management 18, 729742. Pressey, R.L., 1986. Wetlands of the River Murray below Lake Hume. Proctor, W., 2000. Laying down the ladder: a typology of public participation in Australian natural resource management. Australian Journal of Environmental Management 9, 205 218.

273

Qureshi, M.E., Harrison, S.R., 2001. A decision support process to compare riparian revegetation options in Scheu Creekcatchment in north Queensland. Journal of Environmental Management 62, 101 113. Resource Assessment Commission, 1992. Multicriteria analysis as an assessment tool. Research Report no. 6, Canberra, Australia. Russell, C., Dale, V., Lee, J., Jensen, M.J., Kane, M., Gregory, R., 2001. Experimenting with multiattribute utility survey methods in a multi-dimensional valuation problem. Ecological Economics 36, 87 108. Saaty, T.L., 1977. A scaling method for priorities in hierarchical structures. Journal of Mathematical Psychology 15, 234281. Saaty, T.L., 1980. The Analytic Hierarchy Process. McGraw-Hill, New York. Turner, K.R., Jeroen, C.J.M., Soderquist, T., Barendregt, A., van Stratten, J., Maltby, E., Van Ierland, E.C., 2000. Ecological economic analysis of wetlands: scientic integration for management and policy. Ecological Economics 35, 723. Varis, O., 1989. The analysis of preferences in complex environmental judgementsa focus on the analytic hierarchy process. Journal of Environmental Management 28, 283 294. Wonga Wetlands., 2001. Unpublished Report, Albury City Council, Albury. Wright, P., 1997. Liquid gold: Australias wetland wealth. Habitat Australia 25, 1321.