Transboundary air pollution in Europe: An interactive multicriteria tradeoff analysis

In this paper, the acid rain problem in Europe is discussed, stressing the transboundary tradeoffs between abatement costs of sulphur emission reduction and corresponding deposition levels in the different countries. An interactive decision support methodology is proposed which utilizes a powerful nonlinear multicriteria software package to evaluate various scenarios and tradeoffs. This methodology provides a more appropriate tool for policy making than single-objective minimization of costs with given target deposition levels, because in the latter the tradeoffs cannot be analyzed directly. The results from a tradeoff analysis using previously published data suggest that reasonable deposition levels can be reached with limited transfers of funds between countries. The extent of these transfers can be controlled by selecting appropriate target levels for the criteria across countries.