Participatory decision-making in land use planning: An application in Costa Rica

The economic, social and environmental implications of electricity generation for land use planning are a significant and complex problem in many countries. One reason for this complexity is the existence of several stakeholders with very different views or perceptions of the different criteria underlying the decision-making process. Therefore, the aggregation of individual stakeholder preferences into a single collective preference is a crucial problem. In this paper, this type of problem is addressed with the help of a methodology based upon the definition of a consensus within a distance-based framework. The methodology is applied to a case study in Costa Rica at two levels: at a national level and at a river basin level. The River Birrís was chosen because the conflict of interests between agricultural production and electricity generation are especially significant in this basin.