A more comprehensive and quantitative approach to corporate sustainability

This study proposes a new quantitative methodology and extendable framework to assess corporate sustainability more comprehensively and to capture interrelationships across the multiple domains of sustainability. A case study from the mining industry is presented to demonstrate the application of this new approach and its ability to extract meaningful insights regarding the company's progress towards sustainability. The comprehensive sustainability target method (CSTM) is a novel extension to an existing environmental burden sustainability assessment technique with additional focus on impacts within and across the societal and social justice domain. CSTM extends sustainability assessment recognizing planetary limits from human activity and relevant societal and community-based targets by formalizing assessment to include social and environmental beneficial impacts, as well as the interdependencies between the economic, environmental and societal domains. Outcomes from the mining industry case study reveal new insights into the sustainability of corporate operations as the comprehensive assessment framework provides a deeper and more extensive evaluation as compared to traditional sustainability assessments and corporate disclosures. In addition to maximal earth carrying capacity estimates for environmental burden targets, this study proposes that companies should assess sustainability for minimal limits applying to social beneficial impacts and maximal limits for social burden impacts. The overall theoretical construct and framework are presented to illustrate the robustness and extendibility of the technique to broadly incorporate various sustainability domains, assessment boundaries, and temporal considerations.     

Estimating the environmental and economic impacts of widespread adoption of potential technology solutions to reduce water use and pollution: Application to China's textile industry

Numerous technologies are emerging to reduce water use and pollution in China's textile industry, including several that are promoted by the China National Textile and Apparel Council as cleaner technologies in their five-year development guideline published in 2016. Though these technologies appear promising, the complexity of the industry makes it difficult to predict and compare the environmental and economic impacts of widespread adoption of these technologies. We draw on existing studies to estimate the potential scale of applicability of these technologies, and then estimate the potential economic and environmental benefits of encouraging their widespread adoption. Several of them, if implemented on a large scale, could drastically reduce water use and pollution with a payback of less than a year. Our approach to estimating the environmental and economic impacts of widespread adoption of promising technologies is also relevant for impact assessment in other complex industries with a wide range of products and processes.     

Assessing corporate project impacts in changeable contexts: A human rights perspective

Project-level impact assessment was originally conceived as a snapshot taken in advance of project implementation, contrasting current conditions with a likely future scenario involving a variety of predicted impacts. Current best practice guidance has encouraged a shift towards longitudinal assessments from the pre-project stage through the implementation and operating phases. Experience and study show, however, that assessment of infrastructure-intensive projects rarely endures past the project's construction phase. Negative consequences for environmental, social and health outcomes have been documented. Such consequences clarify the pressing need for longitudinal assessment in each of these domains, with human rights impact assessment (HRIA) as an umbrella over, and critical augmentation of, environmental, social and health assessments. Project impacts on human rights are more closely linked to political, economic and other factors beyond immediate effects of a company's policy and action throughout the project lifecycle. Delineating these processes requires an adequate framework, with strategies for collecting longitudinal data, protocols that provide core information for impact assessment and guidance for adaptive mitigation strategies as project-related effects change over time. This article presents general principles for the design and implementation of sustained, longitudinal HRIA, based on experience assessing and responding to human rights impact in a uranium mining project in Malawi. The case study demonstrates the value of longitudinal assessment both for limiting corporate risk and improving human welfare.     

A Global Model Tracking Water, Nitrogen, and Land Inputs and Virtual Transfers from Industrialized Meat Production and Trade

Rising populations and incomes throughout the world have boosted meat demand by over 75% in the last 20years, intensifying pressures on production systems and the natural resources to which they are linked. As a growing proportion of global meat production is traded, the environmental impacts of production become increasingly separated from where the meat is consumed. In this paper, we quantify the use of three important resources associated with industrial livestock production and trade—water, land, and nitrogen—using a country-specific model that combines trade, agronomic, biogeochemical, and hydrological data. Our model focuses on pigs and chickens, as these animals are raised predominantly in intensive systems using concentrated, compound feeds. The results describe the geographical patterns of environmental resource use due to meat production, trade, and consumption. We show that US feed, animal, and meat destined for export require almost as much nitrogen and land, and 20% more water, than products destined for domestic consumption. Model results also demonstrate that among various production factors, improvements in crop yields and animal feed conversion efficiencies result in the most significant reductions in environmental harm. By explicitly tracking the externalities of meat production, we hope to bolster suppliers’ accountability and provide better information to meat consumers.

Adapting social impact assessment to address a project's human rights impacts and risks

We address the weaknesses inherent in the social risk assessments undertaken for business, especially in the extractive industries. In contrast to the conventional approach that considers consequence to the company rather than to impacted communities, conformance with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights requires that consequence to affected communities has precedence. In order for social risks to be properly assessed, we consider that: companies need to know and understand the human rights impacts of their activities; contemporary approaches to project impact and risk assessment need to be adapted to consider human rights; and environmental impact assessment (EIA) and social impact assessment (SIA) methods need to be adapted to give greater attention to impacts on human rights. Using an example from the mining, oil and gas sector, we provide a method that differentiates social risks from business risks, and we position impact assessment as an instrument that actively facilitates the improved identification, analysis and management of social risks. Practical adaptations to SIA activities and risk assessment processes are provided. Taking human rights impacts into account and using the dimensions of gravity, extent, vulnerability and remediability, we nominate criteria to assess the significance of negative social impacts.     

Assessing human rights impacts in corporate development projects

Human rights impact assessment (HRIA) is a process for systematically identifying, predicting and responding to the potential impact on human rights of a business operation, capital project, government policy or trade agreement. Traditionally, it has been conducted as a desktop exercise to predict the effects of trade agreements and government policies on individuals and communities. In line with a growing call for multinational corporations to ensure they do not violate human rights in their activities, HRIA is increasingly incorporated into the standard suite of corporate development project impact assessments. In this context, the policy world's non-structured, desk-based approaches to HRIA are insufficient. Although a number of corporations have commissioned and conducted HRIA, no broadly accepted and validated assessment tool is currently available. The lack of standardisation has complicated efforts to evaluate the effectiveness of HRIA as a risk mitigation tool, and has caused confusion in the corporate world regarding company duties. Hence, clarification is needed. The objectives of this paper are (i) to describe an HRIA methodology, (ii) to provide a rationale for its components and design, and (iii) to illustrate implementation of HRIA using the methodology in two selected corporate development projects—a uranium mine in Malawi and a tree farm in Tanzania. We found that as a prognostic tool, HRIA could examine potential positive and negative human rights impacts and provide effective recommendations for mitigation. However, longer-term monitoring revealed that recommendations were unevenly implemented, dependent on market conditions and personnel movements. This instability in the approach to human rights suggests a need for on-going monitoring and surveillance.     

Climate Impact Response Functions for Terrestrial Ecosystems

We introduce climate impact response functions as a means for summarizing and visualizing the responses of climate-sensitive sectors to changes in fundamental drivers of global climate change. In an inverse application, they allow the translation of thresholds for climate change impacts (‘impact guard-rails’) into constraints for climate and atmospheric composition parameters (‘climate windows’). It thus becomes feasible to specify long-term objectives for climate protection with respect to the impacts of climate change instead of crude proxy variables, like the change in global mean temperature. We apply the method to assess impacts on terrestrial ecosystems, using the threat to protected areas as the central impact indicator. Future climate states are characterized by geographically and seasonally explicit climate change patterns for temperature, precipitation and cloud cover, and by their atmospheric CO₂ concentration. The patterns are based on the results of coupled general circulation models. We study the sensitivity of the impact indicators and the corresponding climate windows to the spatial coverage of the analysis and to different climate change projections. This enables us to identify the most sensitive biomes and regions, and to determine those factors which significantly influence the results of the impact assessment. Based on the analysis, we conclude that climate impact response functions are a valuable means for the representation of climate change impacts across a wide range of plausible futures. They are particularly useful in integrated assessment models of climate change based on optimizing or inverse approaches where the on-line simulation of climate impacts by sophisticated impact models is infeasible due to their high computational demand. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Current legal regime for environmental impact assessment in areas beyond national jurisdiction and its future approaches

In 2004, the United Nations launched an Ad Hoc Open-ended Informal Working Group to study issues relating to the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. Since then, the topic of governing marine areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) has been widely discussed by politicians, policy makers and scholars. As one of management tools to protect marine biodiversity in ABNJ, environmental impact assessment (EIA) has been widely recognized and accepted by the international community, however, the biggest challenge is how to effectively implement the EIA regime in ABNJ. This paper explores the impacts of anthropogenic activities in ABNJ on marine ecosystems, reviews the existing legal regime for EIA in ABNJ and discusses possible measures to strengthen the implementation of EIA in ABNJ.     

An Analytic Network Process approach for the environmental aspect selection problem — A case study for a hand blender

Life Cycle Assessment is a tool to assess, in a systematic way, the environmental aspects and its potential environmental impacts and resources used throughout a product's life cycle. It is widely accepted and considered as one of the most powerful tools to support decision-making processes used in ecodesign and sustainable production in order to learn about the most problematic parts and life cycle phases of a product and to have a projection for future improvements. However, since Life Cycle Assessment is a cost and time intensive method, companies do not intend to carry out a full version of it, except for large corporate ones. Especially for small and medium sized enterprises, which do not have enough budget for and knowledge on sustainable production and ecodesign approaches, focusing only on the most important possible environmental aspect is unavoidable. In this direction, finding the right environmental aspect to work on is crucial for the companies. In this study, a multi-criteria decision-making methodology, Analytic Network Process is proposed to select the most relevant environmental aspect. The proposed methodology aims at providing a simplified environmental assessment to producers. It is applied for a hand blender, which is a member of the Electrical and Electronic Equipment family. The decision criteria for the environmental aspects and relations of dependence are defined. The evaluation is made by the Analytic Network Process in order to create a realistic approach to inter-dependencies among the criteria. The results are computed via the Super Decisions software. Finally, it is observed that the procedure is completed in less time, with less data, with less cost and in a less subjective way than conventional approaches.     

An evidential reasoning-based AHP approach for the selection of environmentally-friendly designs

Due to the stringent environmental regulatory requirements being imposed by cross-national bodies in recent years, manufacturers have to minimize the environmental impact of their products. Among those environmental impact evaluation tools available, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is often employed to quantify the product's environmental impact throughout its entire life cycle. However, owing to the requirements of expert knowledge in environmental science and vast effort for data collection in carrying out LCA, as well as the common absence of complete product information during product development processes, there is a need to develop a more suitable tool for product designers. An evidential reasoning-based approach, which aims at providing a fast-track method to perform design alternative evaluations for non-LCA experts, is therefore introduced as a new initiative to deal with the incomplete or uncertain information. The proposed approach also enables decision makers to quantitatively assess the life cycle phases and design alternatives by comparing their potential environmental impacts, thus effectively and efficiently facilitates the identification of greener designs. A case application is carried out to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach.     

Life cycle assessment of a railway tracks substructures: Comparison of ballast and ballastless rail tracks

The increase of train speed and axle load is an essential goal to make the railway transport more and more competitive for passengers and freights. On this basis, the unevenness of the railway track is crucial for the safety of the railway due to the high speed of the vehicle. Although ballasted tracks represent by far the most used railway track substructure, in recent years the modernization process has led the development of the ballastless track substructures.In deciding between the use of ballasted or ballastless track substructure there are many important technical, economical and environmental factors that have to be addressed. Based on the above, the principal objective of this study was to evaluate the environmental impact of different railway track substructures including ballast, cast-in sleeper and embedded track systems on the short, medium and long term. To accomplish this task, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out throughout the entire life cycle of the railway infrastructure by using the ReCiPe (H) method. Although such approach is commonly included in the environmental assessment of building products and buildings, it was rarely applied in the analysis of the environmental impacts of railway track substructure.Thus, the result of these LCA showed that ballasted tracks cause the lowest environmental impact for service lives of up to 75 years. On the other hand, the embedded track beds cause the highest environmental impacts, regardless of their service life. The highest contributor for the environmental impacts of the track beds was the steel production.The results of this study will provide relevant environmental information for engineers and decision makers to select the most adequate railway track substructures for addressing issues related to the pursuit of sustainable development.     

Conceptualizing strategic environmental assessment: Principles,approaches and research directions

Increasing emphasis has been placed in recent years on transitioning strategic environmental assessment (SEA) away from its environmental impact assessment (EIA) roots. Scholars have argued the need to conceptualize SEA as a process designed to facilitate strategic thinking, thus enabling transitions toward sustainability. The practice of SEA, however, remains deeply rooted in the EIA tradition and scholars and practitioners often appear divided on the nature and purpose of SEA. This paper revisits the strategic principles of SEA and conceptualizes SEA as a multi-faceted and multi-dimensional assessment process. It is suggested that SEA can be conceptualized as series of approaches operating along a spectrum from less to more strategic – from impact assessment-based to strategy-based – with each approach to SEA differentiated by the specific objectives of SEA application and the extent to which strategic principles are reflected in its design and implementation. Advancing the effectiveness of SEA requires a continued research agenda focused on improving the traditional SEA approach, as a tool to assess the impacts of policies, plans and programs (PPPs). Realizing the full potential of SEA, however, requires a new research agenda — one focused on the development and testing of a deliberative governance approach to SEA that can facilitate strategic innovations in PPP formulation and drive transitions in short-term policy and initiatives based on longer-term thinking.     

A new intelligent electronic nose system for measuring and analysing livestock and poultry farm odours

This paper introduces a new portable intelligent electronic nose system developed especially for measuring and analysing livestock and poultry farm odours. It can be used in both laboratory and field. The sensor array of the proposed electronic nose consists of 14 gas sensors, a humidity sensor, and a temperature sensor. The gas sensors were especially selected for the main compounds from the livestock farm odours. An expert system called “Odour Expert” was developed to support researchers’ and farmers’ decision making on odour control strategies for livestock and poultry operations. “Odour Expert” utilises several advanced artificial intelligence technologies tailored to livestock and poultry farm odours. It can provide more advanced odour analysis than existing commercially available products. In addition, a rank of odour generation factors is provided, which refines the focus of odour control research. Field experiments were conducted downwind from the barns on 14 livestock and poultry farms. Experimental results show that the predicted odour strengths by the electronic nose yield higher consistency in comparison to the perceived odour intensity by human panel. The “Odour Expert” is a useful tool for assisting farmers’ odour management practises. Supported by Ontario Pork, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food (OMAF) of Canada.     

A proposed impact assessment method for genetically modified plants (AS-GMP Method)

An essential step in the development of products based on biotechnology is an assessment of their potential economic impacts and safety, including an evaluation of the potential impact of transgenic crops and practices related to their cultivation on the environment and human or animal health. The purpose of this paper is to provide an assessment method to evaluate the impact of biotechnologies that uses quantifiable parameters and allows a comparative analysis between conventional technology and technologies using GMOs. This paper introduces a method to perform an impact analysis associated with the commercial release and use of genetically modified plants, the Assessment System GMP Method. The assessment is performed through indicators that are arranged according to their dimension criterion likewise: environmental, economic, social, capability and institutional approach. To perform an accurate evaluation of the GMP specific indicators related to genetic modification are grouped in common fields: genetic insert features, GM plant features, gene flow, food/feed field, introduction of the GMP, unexpected occurrences and specific indicators. The novelty is the possibility to include specific parameters to the biotechnology under assessment. In this case by case analysis the factors of moderation and the indexes are parameterized to perform an available assessment.     

The value of long-term environmental monitoring programs: an Ohio River case study

As a subset of environmental monitoring, fish sampling programs have been an important part of assessing the potential impacts of water withdrawals and effluent discharges on fish populations for many years. New environmental regulations often require that adverse environmental impacts to fish populations be minimized. Without long-term field data, population evaluations may incorrectly indicate adverse impacts where none exist or no impact where one is likely to occur. Several electric utility companies have funded the Ohio River Ecological Research Program, which has been in existence for over 40 years and consists of fish, habitat, and water quality studies at multiple power plant sites on the mainstem Ohio River. Sampling includes seasonal night-time electrofishing and daytime beach seining at three upstream and three downstream locations near each plant. The long-term nature of the program allows for the establishment of aquatic community indices to support evaluations of technology performance, the collaborative development of compliance metrics, and the assessment of fish population trends. Studies have concluded that the Ohio River fish community has improved in response to better water quality and that power plant fish entrainment and impingement and thermal discharges have had little or no measureable impact. Through collaboration and the use of long-term data, $6.3 million in monitoring costs have been saved during recent fish impingement studies. The ability to access a multiyear fish abundance database, with its associated data on age, growth, and fecundity, improves the quality of such evaluations and reduces the need for extensive field sampling at individual locations.     

Externalities of Fugitive Dust

It is known that fugitive dust can cause human health and environmental problems, alone or in combination with other air pollutants. These problems are referred to as ‘external costs’ that have been traditionally ignored. However, there is a growing interest towards quantifying externalities to assist policy and decision-making. With this in mind, the present study aimed at discussing the environmental regulations that deal with fugitive dust, the impact of fugitive dust on human health and global climate system, and the available methods for calculating fugitive dust externalities. The damage cost associated with human health and global environmental problems was predicted based on the environmental strategy priority model. The damage cost estimated by the model ranged from 40 to 374 EUR/kg of emitted fugitive dust with a mean value of 120 EUR/kg of emitted fugitive dust. It was also found that PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ have contributed to about 60% and 36% of the estimated damage cost, respectively. The remaining 4% was attributed to both nitrate and sulfate aerosols.     

How does stakeholder involvement affect environmental impact assessment?

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) processes are grounded on the assumption that producing information about environmental impacts will yield better environmental decisions. Despite the ubiquity of EIA as a policy tool, there is scant evidence of its environmental, social, or economic impacts. Focusing on Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) prepared for water and energy-related projects under the US National Environmental Policy Act, this analysis addresses two questions: (1) What is the balance of environmental impacts associated with infrastructure decisions?; and (2) How does the content of stakeholder feedback received during the review phase differ from draft EIS content, and does this correspond to any changes in the final EIS? We demonstrate the use of automated text mining approaches to identify the distribution of impacts, measure the content of public comments, and observe whether values reflected in comments are associated with a shift in emphases between the draft and final EIS. EISs are shown to convey evenly distributed focus across multiple impact areas. However, we observe no substantive change in focal emphasis between draft and final issuances. This calls into question assumptions about the role that public participation plays in bringing new information to light or changing the course of action.     

Assessing cumulative impacts within state environmental review frameworks in the United States

Cumulative impact assessment (CIA) is the process of systematically assessing a proposed action's cumulative environmental effects in the context of past, present, and future actions, regardless of who undertakes such actions. Previous studies have examined CIA efforts at the federal level but little is known about how states assess the cumulative impacts of nonfederal projects. By examining state environmental review statutes, administrative rules, agency-prepared materials, and a national survey of the administrators of state environmental review programs, this study identifies the legal and administrative frameworks for CIA. It examines current CIA practice, discusses the relationship between CIA policy and its implementation, and explores the opportunities for improvement. The results of the study show that twenty-nine state environmental review programs across twenty-six states required the assessment of cumulative environmental impacts. More than half of these programs have adopted specific procedures for implementing their policies. Some programs assessed cumulative impacts using a standard review document, and others have created their own documentations incorporated into applications for state permits or funding. The majority of programs have adopted various scales, baselines, significance criteria, and coordination practices in their CIA processes. Mixed methods were generally used for data collection and analysis; qualitative methods were more prevalent than quantitative methods. The results also suggest that a program with comprehensive and consistent environmental review policies and procedures does not always imply extensive CIA requirements and practices. Finally, this study discusses the potential for improving existing CIA processes and promoting CIA efforts in states without established environmental review programs.     

Evaluating the environmental sustainability of biomass-based energy strategy: Using an impact matrix framework

A roadmap for a more sustainable energy strategy is complex, as its development interacts critically with the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. This paper applied an impact matrix method to evaluate the environmental sustainability and to identify the desirable policy objectives of biomass-based energy strategy for the case of Alberta. A matrix with the sustainability domains on one axis and areas of environmental impact on the other was presented to evaluate the nexus effect of policy objectives and bioenergy production.As per to our analysis, economic diversification, technological innovation, and resource conservation came up as the desirable policy objectives of sustainable development for Alberta because they demonstrated environmental benefits in all environmental impact categories, namely climate change, human health, and ecosystem. On the other hand, human health and ecosystem impacts were identified as trade-offs when the policy objectives for sustainability were energy security, job creation, and climate change. Thus, bioenergy can mitigate climate change but may impact human health and ecosystem which then in turn can become issues of concern. Energy strategies may result in shifting of risks from one environmental impact category to another, and from one sustainable domain to another if the technical and policy-related issues are not identified.     

Using E-PRTR data on point source emissions to air and water—First steps towards a national chemical footprint

There is a great need for indicators to monitor the use and potential impacts of hazardous chemicals. Today there is a huge lack of data, methods and results and method development and studies should be given urgent priority. The aim of this paper was to develop and test an approach to calculate the potential environmental impacts of chemicals for a whole country using the E-PRTR (European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register) as a database and Sweden as an example. Swedish data from 2008 on emissions to air and water for 54 substances from point sources were retrieved from an open database. The data were transformed and aggregated using USEtox, a life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method for calculating potential human toxicity and ecotoxicity, both from industrial emissions directly and after input–output analysis (IO analysis) to reallocate emissions to product categories. Zinc to air and water contributed most to human toxicity followed by mercury to air. The largest contribution by industry to potential human toxicity came from the metal industry, followed by the paper and paper product industry. For potential ecotoxicity, zinc, fluoranthene and copper contributed the most. The largest contributions by industry came from the paper and paper products manufacturing sector, followed by the basic metals manufacturing sector. The approach used here can be seen as the first step towards a chemical footprint for nations. By adding data from other countries and other sources, a more complete picture can be gained in line with other footprint calculations. Furthermore, diffuse emissions from, for example, transport or emissions of pesticides could also be added for a more holistic assessment. Since the area of chemicals is complicated, it is probably necessary to develop and use several indicators that complement each other. It is suggested that the approach outlined here could be useful in developing a method for establishing a national chemical footprint.