SPECIAL ISSUE SOCIAL PROCESSES OF ENVIRONMENTAL VALUATION Pathways for environmental evaluation: a walk in the (Hanging) Gardens of Babylon

The paper gives a methodological overview of The VALSE Project, which was a European programme of research into valuation procedures for aiding the formulation and evaluation of sustainability policy. A notion of ‘valuation from the point of view of Complexity’ is built up through emphasising the permanent co-existence of multiple perspectives and, more particularly, the permanent possibility of shifts in perspective. Scientific enquiries and analyses are ‘tested’ — validated or invalidated — partly by reference to ‘internal’ norms of coherence and rigour, and partly by reference to ‘external’ considerations relating to the particular social and ecological context of the enquiry. Through reference to the four VALSE case studies, it is shown how the application of a chosen method of analysis structures the enquiry, while the researcher also learns about the reality through listening to what is said about the situation and about the research method itself from ‘other points of view’. This demonstrates an approach to the design and implementation of environmental valuation studies that fully reconciles scientific and political dimensions of a social science process. © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.