Impressions from a CBA-symposium

Den Haag, Circustheater

The CBA symposium was as promised a gathering of the usual CBA-suspects. The guys from KiM, CPB with a big delegation, Rijkswaterstaat, the ministry of infrastructure, 'Plan Bureau voor de Leefomgeving' and many CBA-consultants. Off course some of our consortium members were present too: Fokko Kuik, Bart van der Heiden, Niek van der Heide, Johan Visser, Erik Verroen.

The morning was filled with elements of indoctrination by the politician Adri Duivesteijn, the initiator of the symposium. In a personal story he pointed out that he was not against the CBA. However, the instrument was not of any help when his plan of the IJmeer connection between Amsterdam and Almere was analyzed. He showed ten goals on which the plan had to contribute according to the municipality. The CBA could only tell for three out of ten how well the plan scores in relation to these goals. On the other seven goals the CBA remained blank. This formed his argumentation to use the Multi Criteria Analysis, but it remained unclear if this should be instead or complementary to the CBA. Still, it was a slightly remarkable plea, because the same Adri Duivesteijn argued in 2004 to favor the CBA over the MCA in his former job as the chairman of the temporary committee of infrastructure. The real indoctrination, however, was brought by two speakers from abroad: the Danish success-story of the Oresund bridge between Copenhagen and Malmo and the reconstruction of the London Docklands. Both presented as big visionary plans with great desirable outcomes. To what extent it is possible to compare these cases with the Amsterdam-Almere-area was apparently out of the question.

During the workshop the discussion could go more in-depth and I found out that there are more contradictions than I knew when it come to CBA's. Not only visionaries versus calculators or planners versus economist, but also: Believers versus non-believers; CBA-experts versus CBA-victims; Rationalists versus 'emotionalists'; Rationalists versus 'irrationalists'; and finally the OEI-community versus the OEI-surrounding. This final distinction puts the Dutch CBA-manual OEI central. Apparently even in relation to this manual the insiders distinct themselves from the outsiders, or the other way around. The focus on these contradictions brought Arjen 't Hoen (KiM vice-director) to state that he suddenly started to doubt his discipline: As an economist and econometrist he always though that he was dealing with welfare, and that this includes everything, but apparently and based on the discussion he needs to revise that thought. So the symposium caused at least one eye-opener.

The workshop I attended had a process focus and contained several pleas for integrating elements of joint-fact-finding within or as an extension of the CBA. Moreover it seemed as more or less accepted that 'soft effects' are not (well) calculable in the CBA and that this is alright if the CBA is part of a broader context of consideration to insure that these effects will get the same weight in the decision-making process as the effects which can be calculated. So I brought into the discussion that because it appeared that everybody agrees, why don't we just do it?

But the agreement I signalized in the smaller workshop discussion, disappeared in the plenary discussion between Maarten van Poelgeest, Amsterdam politician, Jan-Hendrik Dronkers, DG of Rijkswaterstaat and Maarten Hajer in his position as head of the 'planbureau van de leefomgeving'. There, the idea of joint-fact finding and early participation of stakeholders suddenly did not seem to be attractive anymore, because it would create false expectations. Furthermore Maarten Hajer stated that PM-posts should be eliminated as soon as possible by improving the calculations of these effects. “We moeten af van die PM-posten!” He gave the impression that the calculations of these effects are not a problem, only a matter of time. Luckely, Maarten van Poelgeest made the statement that he doubted if this is possible at all and argued that it should not be pretended that the CBA can handle everything. It is not easy to accept this according to van Poelgeest, because “many politicians find it hard to have an opinion without three reports that support it”. He pleas for a change of culture. Another plea was to use the CBA earlier in the planning process: “that is possible and can possibly create an enrichment”, according to mr. Dronkers of Rijkswaterstaat. Furthermore they brought forth that the gap between economists and planners should be narrowed.

All together, the symposium was a bit superficial. For example, a good problem statement at the start of the conference was lacking with as a result strange misunderstandings what actually was the topic of the symposium. Also, many good-old arguments where exchanged. But for me, it was nice to know that apparently we are on the right track with our CBA-process research. Its only the gap between practice and science that is in our way!