Environmental decision making with conflicting social groups: A case study of the Lar rangeland in Iran

Rangelands around the globe characteristically provide a diversity of services to local communities, and in this way contribute effectively to the well-being of societies worldwide. In light of the ever increasing rate of consumption of natural resources, instating sustainable management policies is a crucial matter for these regions of great ecological importance. In order for a management policy to be sustainable, it needs to be socially acceptable, which is rendered more difficult when a diversity of services (and corresponding diversity of preferences) is involved. Socially acceptable decision making is only possible by taking into account each stakeholder's preferences in a tractable way. To enable rangeland managers to take into account stakeholders' conflicting preferences in an acceptable manner, we present a decision making method that uses each stakeholder's preferences when determining social intensities of preferences to be processed by an outranking method. The supplied social intensities will benefit the rangeland manager, who is responsible for instating a management plan that guarantees rangeland conservation, as these social intensities provide an increased insight into the prevalent interest in each of the services. This will enable a more easily communicated justification of the final decision. We illustrate the applicability of this approach for the Lar rangeland in Iran.