Ecological Economics 86 (2013) 129135

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Ecological Economics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon

Analysis

Conicting values and public decision: The Foz Ca case

Maria de Ftima Ferreiro , Maria Eduarda Gonalves, Ana Costa
Dinamia-CET, Centre for Socioeconomic and Territorial Studies, ISCTE Lisbon University Institute, Avenida das Foras Armadas, 1649-026, Lisbon, Portugal

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 17 May 2011
Received in revised form 15 October 2012
Accepted 20 October 2012
Available online 23 December 2012
Keywords:
Foz Ca dam
Public decision
Environmental impact assessment
Conicting values
Environment
Cultural heritage

a b s t r a c t
This article considers public decision involving conicting values and interests by presenting a case (Portugal,
1990s) where the construction of a dam already under way following an Environmental Impact Assessment
procedure (EIA) was abandoned in order to preserve prehistoric rock engravings. The Foz Ca case illustrates
the methodologies currently adopted under European Union law in the support of public decision concerning
large infrastructures with signicant impact on the environment and/or the cultural heritage, highlighting
their limitations when confronted with the complexity and the plurality of values commonly at stake in
such circumstances. We assume that the reasonableness of a public decision is meant to emerge from a process through which the various and conicting reasons for acting are brought together, implying the opening
of ends, and not only of means, to discussion and inquiry, a deliberative perspective which is put in contrast
with the monistic methodologies supporting public decision-making under the EIA procedure. Some broader
lessons may be drawn from the analysis of this case, we argue, regarding the conditions under which a regulatory system should tackle the diverse and conicting values involved in public decision that affects today's
highly-prized values like the environment or the cultural heritage.
2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

For the rst time ever in the world an economic investment of such
importance already under way, passed over the cost-benet calculus
in favor of the protection and promotion of pre-historic art. (Jean
Clottes, 1998)
1. Introduction
The decision taken in the early 1990s by the Portuguese government
to build up a dam in the estuary (foz) of the Ca river, an afuent of
the Douro river, following an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)
procedure in accordance with European law, was eventually subverted
by a broad social movement engaging a large spectrum of social and
professional groups. This movement, claiming that the prehistoric engravings revealed during a survey carried out as a follow-up of the EIA
should be safeguarded in its proper environment, led the government
empowered in 1995 to suspend and later abandon the dam in order
to preserve Ca's cultural heritage. This choice was made despite the
inherent nancial loss and the opposition of powerful vested economic
and political interests. Thus, the question comes out, what factors may
account for this atypical, and surprising outcome?
The research was partially funded by Fundao para a Cincia e Tecnologia (FCT) under
the project Choice beyond (in)commensurability: controversies and public decision
making on territorial sustainable development (BeCom) (PTDC/CS-ECS/099630/2008).
Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 5919316313.
E-mail addresses: fatima.ferreiro@iscte.pt (M.F. Ferreiro), mebg@iscte.pt
(M.E. Gonalves), ana.costa@iscte.pt (A. Costa).
0921-8009/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2012.10.006

This paper examines this case through an analytical approach that

envisages the presentation of the main facts and processes involved in
the political decision to build up the Foz Ca dam, including the normative framework (Environmental Impact Assessment) supporting the
decision and the factors that may explain its reversion. This case study
will provide the background for discussing methodologies such as the
EIA procedure, commonly used in public decision-making involving
conicting values, and their limitations.
In recent decades, public policy has been more and more confronted with challenges brought about by the need to conciliate economic growth with the protection of highly esteemed values such as
the quality of the environment or the cultural heritage. The notion of
regulation has been generally used to name the legislative and administrative measures via which the state, directly or through delegation,
determines, controls or shapes the behavior of economic or social
agents with a view to prevent harmful effects of such behavior to socially well-regarded interests or values and guide them into directions
that are socially desirable (Baldwin and Cave, 1999; Majone, 1996). In
the eld of environmental policy in particular, under the European
Union (EU) impulse, the dynamics of regulatory policy-making at
the member states' level created a race toward the top with governments often competing among them and with the EU by issuing standards that better protect the environment. It was in that context that
the Council Directive of 27 June 1985 on the assessment of the effects
of certain public and private projects on the environment (85/337/
EEC) was adopted by the European Community imposing the prior
evaluation of the impact of public and private projects which are likely

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M.F. Ferreiro et al. / Ecological Economics 86 (2013) 129135

to have signicant effects on the environment (hereafter the EIA

procedure). 1
In this domain as elsewhere, the search for the rationalization of
public policy decisions under EU inuence has put pressure on states'
regulatory systems to ground decision-making on technical evaluation.
This move led the administrations to rely increasingly on quantitativelike methodologies, the general assumption being that all values have
to be compared and weighed ones against the others.
Yet, the drawbacks of procedures so designed became manifest
particularly in public decision entailing threats to the environment
and/or the cultural heritage. Compared to other sorts of values, both
generate especially passionate public reaction these days.
The question might then be raised of the extent to which existing
institutions and procedures are tailored to the ensuing challenges to
public decision making given not only the plurality and conicting
nature of values at issue, but also the uncertainties that often coat
impact or risk evaluation in such contexts.
These challenges look especially acute in a country like Portugal.
Whereas the imperative coming from EU policies and institutions
for member states' policy-making to better ground and rationalize
environmental decisions goes tougher, leading to place emphasis
on measurable factors, a traditionally backward and somehow inert
society undergoes a process of rapid modernization showing higher
levels of consideration for immaterial values, less prone to technical
assessment, as well as higher levels of political activism.
The Foz Ca rock art engravings' affair provides an archetypal
illustration of these developments. The singularity of the Foz Ca
case has been underscored (Gonalves, 2001). Jean Clottes, a
well-known French archeologist, observed, for the rst time ever
in the world an economic investment of such importance, already
under way, passed over the cost-benet calculus in favor of the protection and promotion of pre-historic art. (Clottes, 1998). Yet, we
argue, some broader lessons can be drawn from this case regarding
the pre-conditions for a regulatory system to respond more adequately to the typically diverging and conicting values involved in
public decision-making affecting the protection of the environment
or of the cultural heritage.
We start by summarizing the history of the Foz Ca case. Special
attention will be given to the Foz Ca dam's EIA procedure. The next
section exposes the methodologies supporting public decision-making
under the EIA procedure, and discusses these methodologies in the
light of their capacity to take in and ponder the various and conicting
reasons for acting. Finally, some lessons are drawn from the analysis
with a view to a framing of public decision and its procedures more in
line with the demands of contemporary society, as we perceive them.
2. Upside Down: How and Why a Political Decision May End Up
Reversed by Public Debate
It was only in November 1994 that the discovery of a series of
pre-historic rock engravings in the valley of the Ca River, in Northern Portugal, was publicized. This discovery had been made during
prospecting carried out under the auspices of IPPAR, the Portuguese
Institute for the Architectonic and Archaeological Heritage, following
recommendations contained in the Environmental Impact Assessment
(EIA) of a dam projected for the Ca River by Electricity of Portugal
(EDP), a public company. One had to wait for March 1993, at a time
when this project had already been approved and the construction of
the dam initiated, for EDP and IPPAR to sign the protocol designed for
the archeological study (Baptista and Gomes, 1995).
It is worth recalling that the Ca dam's project was just a piece of a
long-term hydraulic plan dating back to the 1940s. Thus, the decision
1
Council Directive of 27 June 1985 on the assessment of the effects of certain public
and private projects on the environment (85/337/EEC), Ofcial Journal nr. L 175, 05/
07/1985, p. 4048.

by the Portuguese government to launch it in the 1980s was somewhat taken for granted. The need to subject the project to prior environmental impact assessment had only become mandatory following
transposition of the EIA European Directive into domestic legislation,
four years after Portugal joined the European Communities (Decree
Law nr. 186/90, 6 July).
According to this legislation the impacts to be assessed should include not only impacts on nature (man, fauna and ora, soil, water,
air, climate, landscape, and the interaction of these elements) but
also on material goods and the cultural heritage. The EIA's objective
is dened broadly as that of guaranteeing the diversity of the species
and preserving the characteristics of the ecosystems as irreplaceable
natural heritage, as well as a means to protect the communities'
human health and quality of life. A company of consultants contracted
for this purpose by the public entity or economic agent proposing
the undertaking usually carries out the technical assessment. The EIA
study, as well as a technical summary, is rendered public in order to
give interested parties and the public at large the opportunity to express their views. Based on the EIA study and the results of the public
consultation, an evaluation commission appointed by the Minister of
the Environment provides its advice to the government.
Typically, environmental impact assessments imply an appraisal
and a balancing of the project's economic and social benets, and of
their potential adverse effects on the environment, understood in its
physical as well as cultural and human dimensions.
The EIA study on the Foz Ca dam's project proceeded to a description and a grading of the project's impacts 2 according to their
importance, probability of occurrence, duration, term, and effect on
the project. On the positive side it considered hydroelectric energy
production and river regularization as the most important impacts
(graded + 3). Effects on esthetics and the landscape were among
the impacts graded of moderate importance (+2), reference also
being made to favorable impacts on touristic, sports and leisure activities in the region (+ 1). On the negative side, the major consequences
would be the submersion of land, in particular of region's vineyards, of
archeological and historical remains, and of natural habitats and bird
communities ( 2) (EDP, 1991: 174).
For the EIA's authors, however, the negative impact on the cultural
heritage, in particular, could be attenuated or even compensated by
the means of corrective measures such as a survey and a study of
the elements of the cultural heritage (EDP, 1991: 177). Indeed, in the
view of the experts, the purpose of the EIA consisted in minimizing the
negative impacts, while maximizing the positive impacts through their
integrated assessment (DGRN, 1992b: 2), meaning that a rejection of
the dam was hardly conceivable.3
No doubt, a wide variety of impacts, from economic and social
to environmental and cultural were considered. Some could be, and
were quantied, namely, EDP's investment in the undertaking and
energy production expected from the dam's operation. The estimated
levels of hydroelectric production were considered signicant when
compared to the main hydroelectric undertakings in the Douro watershed. Power (in MVA) was estimated to be 150, and energy (in GWh)
was estimated to be163. In reality, this value was the second lowest
when compared with energy production from other dams in the
Douro watershed, at a great distance from the majority (e.g. 1095 for
Bemposta; 1050 for Picote; 525 for Pocinho) (EDP, 1991: 145).
For other impacts, namely on economic activities like tourism, no
quantied estimations were presented. This did, however, not prevent the EIA study to grade and rate them. As a matter of fact, though
a cost/benet analysis stricto sensu was not employed, the grading of
the various values at stake, including the immaterial ones (e.g., the
preservation of the habitats and of the archeological remains), and
2
This procedure adopts the Table of Environmental Impact Assessment of the International Council of Large-scale Dams (EDP, 1991).
3
Italic added.

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their rating were based on a numerical matrix implying the assumption that all those values could be so assessed and compared. Furthermore, the criteria upon which the grading and the rating relied were
not explained or justied, especially regarding the natural and the
immaterial resources, something that the Evaluation Commission
contested later. The Evaluation Commission also regretted, in its report, that The whole analysis lay on a unique solution: no alternative
had been presented, namely a zero alternative meaning the scenario
of not building the dam. (DGRN/INAMB, 1992a,b: 3) The Evaluation
Commission further rejected as inappropriate that the stated purpose
of this study was to back the project's implementation. The function
of the EIA should not be to justify the work, the Commission stressed,
but rather to assess to what extent its impacts could perhaps lead to
its rejection. Rather arbitrary seemed, in particular, the understanding that corrective measures like the archeological survey and the
displacement of rock art engravings to a local museum be presented
as a positive impact.
The commitment to the establishment of a hierarchical order
meant to guarantee that the positive impacts plus the corrective
measures could compensate for the negative impacts limited the
room for consideration of social, environmental and cultural concerns, which involve essentially qualitative dimensions. Indeed, the
grading of the impacts and their ordering ended up biasing in some
way the EIA procedure, since it favored the features more prone to
quantication. Accordingly, the EIA report let certain concerns that
were more easily quantiable, not only the estimated energy production, but also local infrastructures to be built or the annual revenue
to be paid by EDP to the municipality, prevail over values not easily
accountable in terms of monetary gains or losses, namely cultural
and environmental values. The public inuence in the whole process
has likely suffered as a result.
The public consultation procedure lasted for one month (December
1991 to January 1992). Few written opinions were received and attendance of the public hearings was scarce. Around 30 people, mainly
from the local administration and vineyard landowners were involved
(DGRN/INAMB, 1992a: 3). Remarkably, archeologists and their associations were not among those invited to participate. The shortcomings of
the consultation may be viewed as a consequence of the way the EIA
procedure was formally devised, and of the dominant role played by
technical expertise and cost-benet analysis, thus reducing the scope
for considering cultural values that are literally priceless, and weakening their weight in public decision.
Despite its criticisms of the methodology followed by the EIA, the
conclusion of the Evaluation Commission left no doubt about the path
recommended: in the view of the Commission, the side-effects of the
planned undertaking were not serious enough to justify the project's
rejection (DGRN/INAMB, 1992b: 7). Based on this advice, the government's decision to build up the dam was taken in 1993, though subject
to certain conditions. One of these conditions was that an archeological
survey be carried out. The archeological survey was, therefore, a classic
case of rescue archeology. The IPPAR archeologist was assigned the task
of identifying remains which could be recovered and then recorded and
transferred to the municipal museum, selectively and as much as possible (DGRN/INAMB, 1992b; EDP, 1991: 190 ff).
Somewhat paradoxically, this survey was to pave the way for a
huge public debate, which ultimately led a newly empowered government to decide to preserve the archeological heritage in situ, entailing
the reversal of the project to build up the dam. By offering the opportunity for the rock art engravings to be discovered, which had not been
noticed in the preliminary study, the archeological survey ended up
generating an amazing social dynamics exerting a powerful impact
on the political process.
In fact, in November 1994, the archeologist in charge drew the
attention of some of his colleagues to the engravings he had found.
Very impressed by what she had seen, one archeologist passed the
news to the media and to foreign colleagues through the Internet.

131

The suspicion that a treasured rock art engravings heritage risked to

be submersed, and that IPPAR might be responsible for hiding these
valuable archeological remains played a role in drawing the attention
of the mass media and of foreign specialists. This was the starting
point of an exceptionally wide and intense public controversy and a
broad social movement in which archeologists and their professional
associations played a key part. Portuguese archeologists were keen to
take advantage of these circumstances to raise the importance of
archeological science to the attention of both the public and competent authorities. At the time the Foz Ca controversy surfaced, archeology lacked status and funding, in Portugal. At IPPAR, archeologists
lamented the predominant role of architects, to the detriment of archeology (Gonalves, 2001: 39 ff).
At an early stage of the public debate launched at the end of 1994,
archeologists claimed simply that the dam be suspended to allow for
the archeological survey. This attitude was compatible with the stances
of the government and the EDP: pursuing with the dam and preserving
the rock art engravings could be reconciled, the proponents maintained,
through the cutting off of slices of rocks containing the engravings and
moving them to a museum.
Yet, with the spread of the social movement in support of the protection of the rock art to other sectors of Portuguese society, and to
the international archeological community, their claim was gradually
reshaped as one of preserving the Ca cultural heritage in its proper
environment and landscape, what would inevitably imply abandoning
the dam entirely.
Hence the dynamics of the public debate entailed not only an
upgrading of the worth assigned to the cultural heritage as its value
became recognized nationally and internationally, but also its redenition as encompassing the engravings within the respective environment. A consequence of this reconguration was to render the two
projects, the dam and the engravings, incompatible.
In the end, following a change in government (in October 1995,
the Social-Democratic Party, in power since 1985, lost the general
election to the Socialist Party), the decision was taken by the new
government to interrupt the construction of the dam. 4 Resolution
Nr. 4/96 of 17 January recognized that the discovery of archeological
remains, which had not been identied during the EIA preceding the
construction of the dam, required an innovative solution compatible
with the national interest. The government requested a serious, extensive evaluation of the real value and size of the Ca valley's heritage. The report, by a team of archeologists, was published in May
1997 and, on that basis, the government formally classied the Ca
cultural heritage as a national heritage (Decree Law Nr. 32/97, 2
July). A request was submitted to UNESCO for the site to be classied
as world heritage, and this decision was approved at an extraordinary
speed, in 1998, based on the exceptional concentration of rock engravings from the Upper Paleolithic period, from 22,000 to 10,000 BC,
regarded as the most outstanding example of the early manifestation
of human artistic creation in this form anywhere in the world. 5
3. The Preservation of the Environment and of the Cultural
Heritage: Legal Instruments and Methodological Approaches
Since its inception in the 1960s and 1970s, environmental policies
were driven by pressure by public opinion and the ecological movement. This largely explains the adoption of the principle of public
participation in environmental law by the Single European Act that
modied the Treaty of Rome establishing the European Economic

4
Questioned by us about the sunk costs of the Foz Ca dam's project when it was
abandoned, Electricity of Portugal (EDP), the promoter of the project, did not provide
any answer. In fact, it proves to be not possible to have accurate information about
the amount of these costs.
5
See UNESCO World Heritage Committee Adds 30 Sites to World Heritage List, December
2, 1998, http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/164. [accessed April 2012].

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M.F. Ferreiro et al. / Ecological Economics 86 (2013) 129135

Community (EEC), in 1985. That was also the year when the EEC rst
adopted the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive. 6 As
pointed out, the aim of the EIA procedure is to identify the probable
consequences that the implementation of the projects being assessed
may have on the environment including the natural and cultural
heritages and the people's health and well-being. A technical study,
at the charge of the project's proponent, is a central piece in this procedure. Based on the EIA study and a public consultation, the Evaluation Commission designated by the Minister for the Environment
submits its recommendations to the government.
Thus, three types of argument are normally channeled into this
process: a technicalscientic argument, from the authors of the assessment study, a technicalbureaucratic argument, from the assessment committee, and a public or civic argument from those private
entities holding a stake in the process and the citizens who express
their opinion (Jamison and Ostby, 1997). Our assumption is that these
arguments are produced, as suggested by Foucault (1970), in ways
that are controlled, selected, organized and redistributed through a
set of procedures for controlling and eliminating their powers and
dangers, as well as random factors. The relative power of the three
kinds of argument will ultimately depend on the way the authority to
decide on the relevant questions and the procedures for controlling
and circumscribing the role of the various social actors which are legally
and institutionally regulated.
Actually, as noted, the way the authority to dene the relevant
questions is distributed within the EIA procedure gives a clear privilege
to the projects' promoters as well as to expert knowledge and judgment. Jasanoff's comment according to which scientists are expected
to inject a much-needed strain of competence and critical intelligence
into a regulatory system that otherwise seems too vulnerable to politics ts the EIA procedure perfectly (Jasanoff, 1990: 1). The underlying
assumption is that technical assessment enables the evaluation of all
the impacts and the balancing of the respective costs and benets.
However, the EIA regime has also been instrumental in the growing incorporation of stakeholders and public concerns in environmental decision-making through the public consultation referred to
above. Described in general terms in the pertinent EU directives, the
EIA procedure has, nevertheless, been implemented in a more or
less wide-ranging way, as a recent EC report explicitly admitted. 7 In
fact, the EIA Directive has generated specic national dynamics;
some member states built on the minimum requirements of the Directive and went beyond them by introducing more stringent provisions, aiming to ensure better environmental protection and more
transparency, while others kept implementation to minimum requirements. But, notwithstanding its contribution to the rise of public
participation in environmental debates across Europe and especially in
countries with traditionally low levels of social activism like Portugal,
the EIA procedure has been criticized due to the seeming prejudice of
expert advisors who are mandated by the project's proponent to draft
the EIA study, in addition to the unsatisfactory input of stakeholders
(Jesus, 1998: 4647; Meulemann and In't Verd, 2009: 5456).

6
The EIA Directive of 1985 has been amended in 1997, in 2003 and in 2009: Directive 97/11/EC brought the directive in line with the UN ECE Espoo Convention on EIA in
a Transboundary Context. It widened the scope of the EIA Directive by increasing the
types of projects covered and the number of projects requiring mandatory environmental impact assessment. It also provided for new screening arrangements, including
new screening criteria for Annex II projects, and established minimum information requirements. Directive 2003/35/EC sought to align the provisions on public participation with the Aarhus Convention on public participation in decision-making and
access to justice in environmental matters. Directive 2009/31/EC amended Annexes I
and II of the EIA Directive by adding projects related to the transport, capture and storage of carbon dioxide (CO2).
7
Report from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the European
Economic and Social Committee, and the Committee of the Regions on the application
and effectiveness of the EIA Directive (Directive 85/337/EEC, as amended by Directives
97/11/EC and 2003/35/EC), COM (2009) 378 nal 2009, Brussels, 23.7.2009, p. 4.

Although the EIA procedure itself does not ignore the need to
consider social, cultural or ethical value-implications of industrial or
technological projects since they may in some way enter the decisionmaking process by the means of the public consultation, the latter is
normally not structured in a way amenable to render such value considerations explicit nor to enable public perceptions and views to effectively shape the political choices.
Value pluralism actually is a pervasive feature of human activity,
ranging from individual to public action. In public policy the value
dimension is always present, even if implicitly, whenever the consequences of a specic decision and its desirability are assessed. This
fact gives emphasis to the issue of what values and ends could and
should be pursued by public action in order to achieve the desired
scenarios.
Whenever public infrastructures or economic projects interfere
with the environment various potential sources of value conict can
be at issue: the protection of biodiversity and of landscape, the protection of cultural heritage, touristic and employment opportunities,
etc. Social values often relate to attachments of various communities
or groups of interest to certain contexts and to their historical or cultural signicance. The presence of such conicting values in choice
entails the existence of distinct reasons for adopting a certain course
of action among several alternatives.
Decision making procedures and devices, such as the EIA procedure, by circumscribing and balancing the role of the various social actors and of technical and scientic expertise, as well as giving salience
and making effective some values, when others are undermined, are
critical for both the effectiveness and the legitimacy of public decision.
These devices tend to rely on a certain conception of what is meant
by deliberation and rationality the ontology of deliberation and
rationality having then a framing effect in how the decision making process is unfolded and effectiveness and legitimacy of public
decision are achieved. Cost-benet analysis, as key guiding criteria
for environmental impact assessment, relies on the assumption of
value commensurability, meaning the possibility of reducing all values,
by reference to which the different possibilities of action are to be compared, to a common measure. 8 The assumption of value commensurability has its roots in utilitarianism and stands on rational choice
theory. Underlying this conception appears to rest the idea that value
plurality and value conict are just incompatible with rational choice.
In fact, by admitting the possibility of evaluating all the impacts
related to the project's implementation and of balancing the respective costs and benets, the EIA procedure is meant to supply a hierarchical scale of those negative and positive impacts. An integrated
assessment of costs and benets is sought whereby environmental,
social and economic values are balanced and weighted against each
other in terms of a certain ordinal scale of measurement.
However, ends being determined by the project's promoters,
the EIA procedure tends to be conned to the selection of the best
means, according to which negative impacts could be minimized
while positive impacts are maximized, in order to enact those ends.
The EIA procedure thus resides on a dichotomy between ends and
means; ends tend to be exempt from the judgment about their desirability or worth and means are only assessed from an instrumental
perspective, i.e. in terms of their efcacy to guarantee xed ends.
Ends to be pursued are determined independently of the conditions
for their achievement and no matter the consequences on other ends.
Accordingly, the EIA procedure also tends to rely on the idea that it
is always possible through the implementation of corrective measures to guarantee that negative impacts are solvable.

8
O'Neill (1993) distinguishes between the concepts of strong commensurability
meaning the possibility of reducing all the dimensions of value to a common measure
on a basis of a cardinal scale of measurement and weak commensurability meaning
the possibility of establishing an ordinal scale of measurement by which the various dimensions of value are assessed.

M.F. Ferreiro et al. / Ecological Economics 86 (2013) 129135

As pointed out above, the submersion of archeological and historical remains could be attenuated, the Evaluation Commission of the
Foz Ca hydroelectric undertaking admitted, by the means of an
archeological survey and the recovery and record of the vestiges to
a museum. The submersion of land, in particular of vineyards, and
the loss of natural habitats and bird communities could be compensated by the means of measures committed to the preservation of
other natural habitats and/or some other animal species.
However, this idea of compensation 9 is likely to generate lock-in
decisions, meaning that the project's promoters are, in fact, in a position of advantage and their ends are more prone to be made effective.
Accordingly, the opponents to the dam's project would have to deal
with the burden of proving that the threats to the cultural heritage
could be so serious as to imply a reconguration of the ends underlying the project's undertaking, not just compensatory measures. This
happened in fact through the informal controversy, which followed
the public revelation of the engravings, making the case so singular.
As shown, the Foz Ca dam was, rstly, assumed as an unquestionable design. Clearly committed with the notion of compensation, the
EIA procedure undermined consideration of those values that countered the aimed-to project, the dam, specically the archeological heritage. However, under the pressure of the social movement, the (new)
government was led to balance the stakes in a different way.
In the end, the pre-historic engravings, regarded as means in the
course of the EIA procedure, ended up as ends as a consequence
of the claims of the archeologists and the social movement. Then
the political debate became centered on the costs and benets of preserving the archeological remains compared to construing the dam,
two options that proved hard to evaluate, and weigh up. In particular,
the hydroelectric energy production estimations put forward as a
central justication for the project were eventually dismissed as inadequate to justify the dam as a priority even from the hydroelectric
supply standpoint (Lopes, 2001: 7980).
Moreover, the public debate evidenced the plurality, complexity
and conicting nature of the values involved, which the EIA procedure
had in actual fact concealed: the government and some of its ministerial departments (Industry, Planning) and the EDP then insisted that
a major objective of the projected dam was to resolve the problem
of water regularization in the Douro river, besides increasing electric
energy production; for the archeological community at stake was
above all the defense and the preservation of an outstanding cultural
heritage, the Paleolithic rock art engravings in the open air; the local
population was divided into the agricultural producers, namely the
owners of the vineyards in danger of being submerged, and the residents who hesitated between the various options in terms of their
contribution to local progress; the mayor, whose position evolved
throughout (initially in favor of the dam, he afterwards became a supporter of the Paleolithic art preservation); and the Foz Ca's secondary
school, its students and teachers, who argued for the protection of the
engravings from the outset.
Interestingly, as the political and public debate progressed, the
value conict appeared as an opposition between two paradigms: on
the one hand, a growth-centered, industrialist, approach which
tended to value the electric energy production and the expectations
of an expansion of local economic activity; and, on the other hand, a
local-based development approach committed to cultural heritage
preservation values. Actually, this value conict was translated into a
confrontation between the dam and the engravings. Remarkably,
both the supporters of the dam and of the rock art engravings used
economic, quantitative-like argumentation to defend their stances.
Labor posts, wealth creation, on the side of the dam; number of
9
Along with some theoretical contributions from moral philosophy, this notion of
compensation is clearly at odds with acknowledging that there could be tragic
choices, that is, situations in which all the choice alternatives in confront have undesirable consequences from a moral point of view (Nussbaum, 2000; Stocker, 1990).

133

visitors of a future archeological park, trade impacts, on the side of

the rock art engravings (Amaro, 2001: 212).
Quantitative calculus and commensuration may after all seem natural or even intuitive as part of an argumentative discussion between
groups competing for opposing goals and projects. The signicant
fact was that, in the Foz Ca case, technical commensuration leading
to the objectication of the reasons to act, although attempted, was
later on questioned as different and contrasting viewpoints about
the worth of ends to be achieved and the values to be preserved
emerged in the public sphere.
Why so, one might ask? Actually, behind the volte-face of the initial governmental decision seems to lay the way archeologists, backed
by the social movement, dened their claim. Once this claim was
reshaped as the rock art engravings in their environment, implying
that the dam be abandoned, the conict between the industrial project and the cultural heritage became more evident. Incommensurability and the need to protect some values from being tradable then
emerged as a practical consequence of the way the values at issue,
and particularly the pre-historic art, were (re) dened by the relevant
actors, rather than as an intrinsic feature of the cultural heritage in
itself.
Another remarkable phenomenon was the effect of the public debate, as an informal process, on the opening up of the reasons to choose.
The social controversy evidenced the plurality, variety and conicting
nature of the values at stake, showing the inadequacy of the formal
public consultation procedure to render them explicit and to pay due
consideration to them. What is more, private entities holding a stake
in the process and citizens were called upon to pronounce their opinions concerning the impact assessment on an ex-post basis.
The methodologies prevailing in monistic decision-making devices
such as the EIA procedure in the EU have been critically appraised, giving
rise to propositions for alternative, multi-criteria based and deliberative
decision making (Gmez-Baggethum et al., 2010). Transparency is improved, it has been argued, whenever multi-criteria decision-making
methods apply since the different evaluative criteria are maintained in
their own units rather than being reduced to some common measure,
like a monetary one or an impact grading numerical matrix (MatinezAllier et al., 1998). Besides, recurring evaluation procedures facilitate
the development of learning processes through which technical teams
may be faced and enriched with the consideration of a variety of participatory and interactive devices engaging the relevant actors (Gamboa
and Munda, 2007; Munda, 2004).
Comparison of reasons and their justication are indeed critical
to pluralistic, deliberative perspectives on decision-making, and a
condition for both effectiveness and legitimacy of public decision.
Articulating the reasons for policy decisions is a requirement of political legitimacy []. Consequently, governmental decision-makers
undermine their legitimacy when they fail to base policy on a comparison of reasons, Warner underlines (Warner, 1998).
In accordance with pluralistic decision-making devices, effectiveness and legitimacy thus require that: (a) plural, incommensurable
and conicting values are handled; (b) choice be interpreted as evidence of the possibility of overcoming conict without relying on
commensuration; and that (c) an intelligent decision encompasses
both the means and the ends of action, entailing the exposure of
value conicts, not its dissolution. Participatory approaches are therefore a necessary condition for a stronger engagement of people and
relevant social actors in collective action. 10 At the end of the day,
a participatory approach can also simply be an educational tool to
learn what democracy is (Munda, 2004, 671).
In sum, the pertinent question is how to decide in a more intelligent, reasonable basis without having to reduce the values present
in public decision to a unique, common measure (Costa, 2008; Costa

10

See O'Neill (2007) for a critical assessment of deliberative democracy devices.

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M.F. Ferreiro et al. / Ecological Economics 86 (2013) 129135

and Caldas, 2011). Whereas monistic decision-making devices always

require some sort of calculation and commensurability, a pluralistic
approach stems from the idea that rationality is justifying choice.
Choice is rational when it is the result of a process of articulating
the reasons justifying choice, not implying the reduction of all values
(ends) to a single dimension (Bromley, 2006; Dewey, 1922; Pildes
and Anderson, 1990; Richardson, 1997; Thacher and Rein, 2004).
In the realm of collective deliberation, harmonizing different evaluative perspectives entails some important prerequisites in terms
of communication and public participation. Thus the rationality of
public decision should be assessed by reference to the justifying reasons of particular decisions or decrees to the larger community,
entailing the giving of reasons for the decision reached (Bromley,
2004: 93). Bromley's contention that policy is simply choice and
action in which groups of individuals work out what seems better
(what seems reasonable), at the moment, to do remits both to the
context of action and to the way values at stake are recongured
and combined.
The Ca River case provides valuable insights in this respect. The
discovery of pre-historic rock art engravings and its repercussion
through the mass media were crucial for the beginning of a very
broad process of public discussion and action. In the absence of institutionalized decision-making devices for true collective deliberation,
the articulation of the reasons justifying the options in confrontation
(the dam versus the rock art engravings) developed largely in the
public sphere. Along this process, arguing and reasoning involving
various social and professional groups were instrumental in pushing
public policy into a new direction. A new set of values, and so of
ends, committed to the protection of the cultural heritage, to be pursued through public policy, came out and took the lead. In fact, the
public revelation of the engravings and the suspicion that valuable
archeological remains risked to be submerged thus constituted a
compelling reason for reconguring the values (ends) present in action.
Furthermore, as noted above, the argument relying on the hydroelectric
energy production estimations proved to be too fragile. Hence the democratic merits of a public controversy were substantiated (Callon et al.,
2001).
A fundamental challenge then is to structure the EIA procedure, its
rules and institutions, in ways that allow for the plural and diverse
values at stake to come out in an explicit manner, made possible by
true communication and pluralistic deliberative devices. In the end,
instead of viewing the existence of incommensurable and often conicting values like environmental or cultural ones as a shortcoming,
a menace to rationality, their recognition ought to be just part of
a process of achieving better, reasonable solutions to public policy
problems.

valley, which had not been duly taken into consideration by the EIA
study; and the political arena, by the spread of a social movement
which claimed that the pre-historic engravings be preserved in its proper environment, implying the abandonment of the dam. Archeologists,
who had been initially neglected, turned out to be critical protagonists
of the social movement. Cultural and environmental values, underrated
by the EIA report, then came up to the fore.
Another remarkable feature of this case was the effect of the
public debate, as an informal process, on the opening up of the reasons to choose. The controversy evidenced the plurality, variety and
conicting nature of the values involved in the public decision to
launch the Ca dam. The way the EIA procedure was structured and
deployed had not allowed this complexity and the latent value plurality to surface. Indeed, by not acknowledging the conict between
plural and incommensurable values, the emergence of an intelligent
deliberative process, through which environmental, social and economic considerations could be recongured and combined, had been
undermined.
As pointed out, xed ends combined with technical commensuration, at a rst stage of this process, contrasted with the later explosion
of various and differing viewpoints about the worth of ends and the
values to be preserved. What is more, cultural and environmental
values were ultimately cherished higher than certain economic values.
This changing process of valuation started with the social movement
and within the archeological community before inuencing the political
authorities.
One general lesson to be drawn from this affair is that due regard
should be taken of the particular social and political contexts of any
public decision. In the end, attempts to reduce the inherent complexity by the means of methodologies relying on commensuration, in
line with the convictions of rational choice theory, may prove ineffective when society at large or specic social, including professional
groups perceive strongly held values to have been misrepresented.
The results of our analysis thus remit to an alternative conception
of rationality according to which a public decision ought to emerge
from a process where the various reasons for choosing and acting
are brought together and discussed with implications on the redenition of ends. Reformatting the EIA procedure by considering pluralist
and more participative approaches in the assessment of the values at
stake in public decisions may enable it to respond more accurately to
the challenges of a society seeking sustainable modes of managing
economic and social development and the protection of the environment and the cultural heritage.

4. Conclusion

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Callon, Michel, Lascoumes, Pierre, Barthe, Yannick, 2001. Agir dans un monde incertain.
Essai sur la dmocratie technique. Le Seuil, Paris.
Clottes, Jean, 1998. Rapport sur la dcouverte de Foz Ca (destin l'Unesco et l'IPPAR).
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The Foz Ca case provides an exemplary illustration of the tensions that may arise out of public decisions with impact on socially
sensitive matters such as the environment and the cultural heritage,
which tend to be grounded, nonetheless, on technical, predominantly
quantitative tools precluding the open discussion of the ends and the
confrontation of the values at stake.
The limited scope and relevance of the public consultation carried
out as part of the EIA procedure did not allow these values, even less
the proposed project's ends, to be exposed to effective scrutiny.
Moreover, the privilege given to technical, quantitative-like criteria
for impact assessment led to overemphasizing economic impacts
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measurement. Consequently, the Foz Ca dam's EIA failed to provide
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In the end, the government's option to build up the dam was challenged on two interrelated arenas: the technical arena, by the revelation of the valuable pre-historic rock engravings discovered in the Ca

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