Conflicting and non-conflicting objectives

The objectives to be satisfied for a decision may be complementary or conflicting in nature. On the one hand we might want to allocate land for both wildlife conservation and recreation use. This is an obvious case of non-conflicting objectives, we would select areas that satisfy both objectives to the maximum degree possible. On the other hand, in some cases the land could only be assigned to one use, but not to both. In our use case, such a situation would arise when conflicting objectives were introduced by a strong shepherds’ lobby. Even if peaceful ways of coexistence between shepherds and wolves are possible, let us assume that we have here conflicting objectives, competing for the available land. The rest of this unit illustrates one possible approach to solving such a problem.

Other typical examples of conflicting objectives would be:

• Areas suited for industrial development vs. wildlife preservation,
• Industrial development vs. agriculture.