Linking ecological and development objectives: Trade-offs and imperatives

This paper addresses the too often separated insights of ecologists and resource managers, linking the biophysical and socioeconomic dimensions of some freshwater issues. It begins with a brief exposure of fundamentals of the method of multi-objective analysis, underlining that evaluation of trade-offs between objectives is never a purely mathematical or quantifiable undertaking. To varying degrees, it is based on subjective value judgments reflecting economic, social, cultural, and aesthetic preferences accorded by a society to different objectives. But how far can different objectives be traded? I attempt to answer this question using as an example the environmental and economic problems of the Aral Sea Basin in Central Asia. Simple water balance calculations are presented to illustrate the specific situation of the basin. Next, a few critical issues of the Aral Sea Basin are discussed to show that linking environmental and economic objectives is not an easy task if one takes a short time perspective.