This abstract is adapted from Avi Zevin et al., Building a New Grid Without New Legislation: A Path to Revitalizing Federal Transmission Authorities, 48 Ecology L.Q. 169 (2021), and used with permission, and was discussed on a public webinar hosted by the Environmental Law Institute.
In How Algorithm-Assisted Decisionmaking Is Influencing Environmental Law and Climate Adaptation, Ziaja provides a useful framework to analyze whether an algorithm-assisted decisionmaking (AADM) tool and its design process is procedurally equitable. Ziaja’s framework contains several different questions advocacy groups can use to analyze the AADM tools that are increasingly used for environmental resource governance, such as the INFORM and RESOLVE algorithms discussed in the article, which guide the allocation and distribution of water and energy resources.
Environmental, natural resource, and energy planning will continue to rely on increasingly complex algorithms. Are these processes then also doomed to be inaccessible to key stakeholders? Hopefully not. There are multiple steps to ensuring process and participatory equity. There is ease of access to the process, access to necessary information, and then there is the matter of having the right information to be able to meaningfully impact outcomes of algorithm-assisted decisionmaking processes.
Agencies responsible for water and energy systems increasingly rely on algorithm-assisted decisionmaking to regulate these systems and shepherd them through climate adaptation. Legal scholars, attorneys, and environmental equity advocates should care about this fundamental change in governance for three reasons. First, climate adaptation depends on these tools. Second, algorithmic tools are not policy-neutral; rather they embed value-laden assumptions and biases. And third, the “rules” of this new forum impede equity and democratic participation, without deliberate countermeasures.
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