World-Australia modelling: a basis for Australian resources and environmental assessment

The scope and nature of an exploratory World-Australia modelling project in progress in the Department of Environment, Housing and Community Development is described relative to similar work in Australia. This project is seen as a precursor to a more comprehensive Commonwealth study of the impact of world demographic, trade and associated change on Australia's environment and natural resources aimed at developing an analytical framework within the political process, which will guide long-term policy decisions of global-national significance. Possible roles for policy-makers, policy analysts and modellers in developing and using these models are examined. A rationale for the exploratory project emphasizes the significance of being in a position to use overseas developments, the benefits resulting from modelling and the basis that would be created for simulating the dialogue between policy analysts currently developing a wide range of national models. Other aspects considered relate to the developing usefulness of these models overseas, getting around the objections to the high levels of aggregation used, the problem of validation and allowing for uncertainty in model parameters. The project is based on world model developments made by the UK Department of Environment and is compared with other World-Australia modelling projects which are based on the M.I.T. models and the large scale model developed by Mesarovic and Pestel. Central to the proposals for involving policy-makers as well as policy analysts in the World-Australia modelling process is the role that they might play in specifying the structure of the model and scenarios to be evaluated. The resulting benefits that might be produced by this dialogue are considered at length