Taking an environmental ethics perspective to understand what we should expect from EIA in terms of biodiversity protection

As a globally mandated decision-support tool, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has the potential to contribute to the protection of biodiversity, which is increasingly under threat because of human activities. Concern over its ability to do this, however, has led to the addition of trade-off rules, Ecosystem Services Assessment (ESA), and biodiversity offsets. But given that EIA is set in a political decision-making context, what is reasonable to expect of EIA? In this paper we seek to explore what level of biodiversity protection we can expect EIA to support (and therefore whether these additions are worthwhile). Our point of departure is that EIA supports its political context and associated societal goals, and those goals typically (explicitly or implicitly) reflect some form of sustainable development. Given that the appropriate level of biodiversity protection is a moral consideration, we take an environmental ethics perspective to explain how different levels of protection are associated with different ethical positions on a spectrum from anthropocentrism (where only humans have intrinsic rights) through to ecocentrism (where all individuals of all species have intrinsic rights). We then investigate how different sustainable development discourses, one economic (on a spectrum from weak to strong sustainability) and one ecological (on a spectrum from shallow to deep ecology) map against the environmental ethics spectrum. We find that the economic discourse on sustainable development, which tends to prevail in political decision-making, is heavily anthropocentric, whereas an ecological discourse has some potential to deliver ecocentrism, but only where a deep ecology interpretation is adopted. We then show that the practise of EIA (with or without the addition of other approaches) maps against, and is bounded by, an economic discourse on sustainable development. The reality is, therefore, that EIA can do no more than contribute to delaying incremental biodiversity loss. If EIA were legislated to protect biodiversity using a deep ecology discourse, then only brownfield development would be possible.     

可持续发展导向的环境规划研究

在论述可持续发展与环境规划之间关系的基础上，指出环境规划的指导思想是环境与经济、社会的可持续发展。针对可持续发展的实质，提出了环境承载力变化趋势是衡量可持续发展的依据，从而为区域可持续发展提供了量化的依据。并以长春技术开发区环境规划为例进行了案例分析，验证结果合理、可行。     

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.     

A new method to assess the sustainability performance of events: Application to the 2014 World Orienteering Championship

Nowadays an increasing attention of public and private agencies to the sustainability performance of events is observed, since it is recognized as a key issue in the context of sustainable development. Assessing the sustainability performance of events involves environmental, social and economic aspects; their impacts are complex and a quantitative assessment is often difficult. This paper presents a new quali-quantitative method developed to measure the sustainability of events, taking into account all its potential impacts. The 2014 World Orienteering Championship, held in Italy, was selected to test the proposed evaluation methodology. The total carbon footprint of the event was 165.34 tCO₂eq and the avoided emissions were estimated as being 46 tCO₂eq. The adopted quali-quantitative method resulted to be efficient in assessing the sustainability impacts and can be applied for the evaluation of similar events.     

Reliability-based maintenance optimization of corrosion preventive designs under a life cycle perspective

Sustainability is of paramount importance when facing the design of long lasting, maintenance demanding structures. In particular, a sustainable life cycle design for concrete structure exposed to aggressive environments may lead to significant economic savings, and to reduced environmental consequences. The present study evaluates 18 different design alternatives for an existing concrete bridge deck exposed to chlorides, analyzing the economic and environmental impacts associated with each design as a function of the maintenance interval chosen. Results are illustrated in the context of a reliability-based maintenance optimization on both life cycle costs and life cycle environmental impacts. Maintenance optimization results in significant reductions of life cycle impacts if compared to the damage resulting from performing the maintenance actions when the end of the service life of the structure is reached. The use of concrete with 10% silica fume has been shown to be the most effective prevention strategy against corrosion of reinforcement steel in economic terms, reducing the life cycle costs of the original deck design by 76%. From an environmental perspective, maintenance based on the hydrophobic treatment of the concrete deck surface results in the best performance, allowing for a reduction of the impacts associated with the original design by 82.8%.     

A Strategic Project Appraisal framework for ecologically sustainable urban infrastructure

Actors in the built environment are progressively considering environmental and social issues alongside functional and economic aspects of development projects. Infrastructure projects represent major investment and construction initiatives with attendant environmental, economic and societal impacts across multiple scales. To date, while sustainability strategies and frameworks have focused on wider national aspirations and strategic objectives, they are noticeably weak in addressing micro-level integrated decision making in the built environment, particularly for infrastructure projects. The proposed approach of this paper is based on the principal that early intervention is the most cost-effective and efficient means of mitigating the environmental effects of development projects, particularly macro infrastructure developments. A strategic overview of the various project alternatives, taking account for stakeholder and expert input, could effectively reduce project impacts/risks at low cost to the project developers but provide significant benefit to wider communities, including communities of future stakeholders. This paper is the first exploratory step in developing a more systematic framework for evaluating strategic alternatives for major metropolitan infrastructure projects, based on key sustainability principles. The developed Strategic Project Appraisal (SPA) framework, grounded in the theory of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), provides a means of practically appraising project impacts and alternatives in terms of quantified ecological limits; addresses the neglected topic of metropolitan infrastructure as a means of delivering sustainability outcomes in the urban context and more broadly, seeks to open a debate on the potential for SEA methodology to be more extensively applied to address sustainability challenges in the built environment. Practically applied and timed appropriately, the SPA framework can enable better decision-making and more efficient resource allocation ensuring low impact infrastructure development.     

Regulators' perceptions of environmental impact assessment (EIA) benefits in a sustainable development context

The costs of conducting Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) are well known. Yet the benefits of EIA are much more intangible, leading to a situation where some question its value as the tool of choice for informing decision makers of the sustainability consequences of their actions. Exponents of EIA have thus called for more research on the benefits of EIA in order to provide better evidence on its costs versus benefits, and therefore its value as a decision-making tool. This paper contributes to this evidence by exploring the perceived potential benefits and perceived realised benefits of EIA from a regulators' perspective in the context of sustainable development. Using South Africa as a case study, one third of all the officials responsible for EIA review and decision-making (referred to in this paper as the “regulator”) were surveyed to identify their perceptions of the benefits of EIA, and their ideas on how to bridge the gap between potential benefits and realised benefits. The paper contributes suggestions for the analysis of benefits in a sustainable development context, and identifies some additional benefits currently missing from the literature. In a South African context, the key potential and realised benefits as perceived by regulators are the protection of biodiversity, public participation, access to information, mitigation of environmental impacts, and legal compliance and enforcement.     

An environmental pressure index proposal for urban development planning based on the analytic network process

This paper introduces a new approach to prioritize urban planning projects according to their environmental pressure in an efficient and reliable way. It is based on the combination of three procedures: (i) the use of environmental pressure indicators, (ii) the aggregation of the indicators in an Environmental Pressure Index by means of the Analytic Network Process method (ANP) and (iii) the interpretation of the information obtained from the experts during the decision-making process.The method has been applied to a proposal for urban development of La Carlota airport in Caracas (Venezuela). There are three options which are currently under evaluation. They include a Health Club, a Residential Area and a Theme Park. After a selection process the experts chose the following environmental pressure indicators as ANP criteria for the project life cycle: used land area, population density, energy consumption, water consumption and waste generation. By using goal-oriented questionnaires designed by the authors, the experts determined the importance of the criteria, the relationships among criteria, and the relationships between the criteria and the urban development alternatives.The resulting data showed that water consumption is the most important environmental pressure factor, and the Theme Park project is by far the urban development alternative which exerts the least environmental pressure on the area. The participating experts coincided in appreciating the technique proposed in this paper is useful and, for ranking ordering these alternatives, an improvement from traditional techniques such as environmental impact studies, life-cycle analysis, etc.     

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.     

Good governance for sustainable development goals: Getting ahead of the pack or falling behind?

This article extends previous sustainability literature by demonstrating the effectiveness of good governance in rebalancing the economic, environmental, and social components of sustainable development. Good economic, political, and institutional governance are considered as conditional variables, which allow rebalancing these three components in the case of 20 selected MENA economies for the period 1996–2014. Using simultaneous-equation modeling approach, we find that (i) political and institutional governance positively contribute to the three components of sustainable development; (ii) there exists a two-way linkages between human development and economic growth, meaning that they are interrelated and may very well serve as complements to each other; (iii) increased economic growth conducts to further emissions, which, in turn, decreases economic growth; (iv) enhancing human development conducts to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, which, in turn, negatively affects human development; (v) improving both political and institutional governance permits MENA governments to moderate both the negative impacts of carbon emissions on economic growth and human development and the positive impact of economic growth on increasing emissions, and as a result sustainable development.     

Estimating air quality impacts

LEONARD ORTOLANO has written a textbook, Environmental Planning and Decision Making, that is ideal for introducing undergraduates to the field of environmental planning. His three chapters on environmental impact assessment (from 16 chapters overall) present a range of impact assessment methods in a helpful decision-making context. Specific techniques for considering biological factors in planning, evaluating the visual qualities of the environment, assessing noise impacts, assessing air quality impacts, and assessing impacts on water resources are also covered in five additional chapters. Professional planners and engineers should find this introduction to the approaches employed by specialists of various kinds helpful. With the permission of the publisher, John Wiley and Sons, we here reprint Chapter 15, “Estimating Air Quality Impacts,” from Ortolano's excellent book. This straightforward presentation of a six-step process for establishing the air quality impacts of proposed development projects is a model of clarity.     

Cost-Benefit Analysis and the environment: The time horizon is of the essence

Cost-Benefit Analysis is a key tool for evaluating welfare gains or losses from an investment. It is now well established that environmental impacts are crucial to consider the full welfare implications of a project. Debate has focussed on approaches to improve the valuation of environmental impacts, and controversy in the discounting of future impacts to present values. The issue of the time horizon of analysis is frequently overlooked. The framing of the time horizon has major implications, as environmental costs and benefits often accrue in the long-term. The technical aspects of setting the time horizon are reviewed, along with updates to practice guidance, noting the longer time horizons now becoming typical. It is demonstrated that the time horizon can have a considerable impact on results, even more substantial than the discount rate. While uncertainty is noted as a technical challenge to longer-term analysis, the use of scenarios and sensitivity testing are noted as an appropriate response. For projects with long-term environmental effects, such as those related to air pollution, climate change and ecosystem damages, it is recommended to use timescales of 100+ years for economic evaluation of the impact. Failing to fully capture these long-term welfare gains and losses will distort analysis with a bias towards those projects that are more carbon-intensive, or environmentally damaging. Such a bias would undermine not only the evaluation, but welfare and sustainable development in general.     

The development and practices of Strategic Environmental Assessment in Shandong Province, China

Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), a newly-developed decision-making support tool, has been used in many developed and developing countries for predicting and evaluating potential environmental impact of policies, plans, and programs (PPPs), as well as for providing alternatives to avoid, mitigate, or compensate for these impacts. Unfortunately, due to the complexity and flexibility of SEA, to date there has been no consensus on a system which could be suitable for the contexts of different regions or countries. Different requirements and practices are observed in the different typical stages of SEA. Controversial areas include the appropriate indicators to apply in the early baseline setting stage, suitable methodologies for the impact assessment, and appropriate procedures for the SEA process. Given this, it is important to review and refine the SEA system specific to the context but informed by internationally agreed norms. As an illustration, this study reviews and proposes steps to refine the SEA system in Shandong Province, an economically powerful province of China, aiming to achieve sustainable development. Supported by the Environmental Impact Assessment Law of the People's Republic of China, Shandong Province employed SEA to reform the traditionally economy-oriented decision-making and incorporate consideration of environmental consequences into government deliberation on proposed PPPs. This paper illustrates the developmental process, procedures, and legal support for SEA in Shandong Province. By analyzing five SEA cases carried out by Shandong Province Environment Protection Bureau (SEPB) and Shandong University, problems in the SEA system were identified, and recommendations were made for improving the SEA system not only in Shandong Province but also other similar regions or countries.     

Urban water resource management for sustainable environment planning using artificial intelligence techniques

In the current era, water is a significant resource for socio-economic growth and the protection of healthy environments. Properly controlled water resources are considered a vital part of development, which reduces poverty and equity. Conventional Water system Management maximizes the existing water flows available to satisfy all competing demands, including on-site water and groundwater. Therefore, Climatic change would intensify the specific challenges in water resource management by contributing to uncertainty. Sustainable water resources management is an essential process for ensuring the earth's life and the future. Nonlinear effects, stochastic dynamics, and hydraulic constraints are challenging in ecological planning for sustainable water development. In this paper, Adaptive Intelligent Dynamic Water Resource Planning (AIDWRP) has been proposed to sustain the urban areas' water environment. Here, an adaptive intelligent approach is a subset of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) technique in which environmental planning for sustainable water development has been modeled effectively. Artificial intelligence modeling improves water efficiency by transforming information into a leaner process, improving decision-making based on data-driven by combining numeric AI tools and human intellectual skills. In AIDWRP, Markov Decision Process (MDP) discusses the dynamic water resource management issue with annual use and released locational constraints that develop sensitivity-driven methods to optimize several efficient environmental planning and management policies. Consequently, there is a specific relief from the engagement of supply and demand for water resources, and substantial improvements in local economic efficiency have been simulated with numerical outcomes.     

Application of data envelopment analysis in environmental impact assessment of a coal washing plant: A new sustainable approach

The main problem of traditional methods of environmental impact assessment (EIA) is that in most of the existing algorithms and methods, such as Leopold, Folchi and RIAM, the main attention is to the destructive effects of the proposed plan, and the advantages of the industrial project are less noticeable. This has led to a permanent challenge between environmental organizations and industrial stakeholders. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a new approach of assessing the industrial units. Besides, it considers the positive economic and social impacts of the project and provides a comprehensive assessment of the industrial unit. With this approach, the environmental impacts of an industrial unit have been considered as “inputs” and its positive economic and social impacts considered as the “outputs” of the DEA models. Therefore, the problem of impact assessment changes into a DEA model. In the present study, the Alborz Sharghi Coal washing plant in northern Iran has been considered as a case study for implementing the DEA-EIA approach, and 19 plant activities and 11 environmental components have been used to evaluate the environmental effects of the plant. To solve the EIA problem, two commonly used DEA approaches, called CRS (constant returns to scale) and VRS (variable returns to scale), have been used. The DEA results identified the critical environmental components of the plant that should be considered seriously. Also, drawing the “potential improvement” diagram in the DEA method is an effective tool for determining the high risk activities of the factory and applying them in development plans. Besides, using the VRS model with maximize-output approach showed that some of the plant activities had the most differences with optimal mode and these components should be considered in future development plans. Finally, it can be concluded that, assessing the environmental impacts of the mineral industries with VRS maximize-output approach, is closer to the concept of sustainable development and cost-benefit analysis.     

The Costa Rican Experience with Market Instruments to Mitigate Climate Change and Conserve Biodiversity

Two decades of developing relevant legal and institutional regimes for the sustainable and nondestructive use of natural resources have framed Costa Rica's pioneer approach to mitigate climate change and conserve its rich biological diversity. This policy framework provides an appropriate context for the actual and proposed development of market instruments designed to attract capital investments for carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation, and allows the establishment of mechanisms to use those funds to compensate owners for the environmental services provided by their land. As a developing economy. Costa Rica is striving to internalize the benefits from the environmental services it offers, as a cornerstone of its sustainable development strategy.     

Modeling contractors' ecological protection efforts determination for expressway construction projects

The negative impacts of expressway construction projects (ECPs) on ecosystems have raised serious concerns globally. While ECP contractors are selective in implementing sustainable construction, they have rarely been informed of making reasonable efforts to address the concerns. This study aims to map out a quantitative analysis approach to aid contractors in determining ecological protection efforts. Four latent variables are included: project features, project perceptions, ecological impact evaluation, and ecological protection decision-making. It is revealed that project perceptions serve as a foundation for effort determination. The determination is built on the relationship between ecological impacts and the intensity of construction activities. Furthermore, the main effort decision is resource consumption. This study addresses decision-making issues pertained to the uptake of sustainability principles in the ECP sector and contributes a three-step framework for anticipating ecological protection efforts in the area of environmental studies.     

Project justification and EIA: Anything goes?

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) incorporates environmental aspects into decision-making, but sometimes it is not effective in rejecting projects with dubious justification, significant impacts and little social utility, especially when they have political support. EIA is expected to achieve sustainable development, but without calling development into question; however, it should be able to ask the question of whether development is really necessary. Although EIA is political, as a part of the decision-making process, politicization must be limited to prevent it from becoming a mere instrument for giving an “environmental veneer” to development. Some measures thar can help avoid unjustified projects are: adopting administrative justice approach to EIA; minimising politicization of EIA agencies; improving transparency in decision-making and proportionality of EIA procedures; carrying out pre-feasibility studies; increasing the scope of SEA; allowing more than one SEA or EIA procedure for the same development throughout the planning process; strengthening the justification of the project in EIA documents; or making the scoping phase mandatory at least for major projects.     

Environmental economic impact assessment in China: Problems and prospects

The use of economic valuation methods to assess environmental impacts of projects and policies has grown considerably in recent years. However, environmental valuation appears to have developed independently of regulations and practice of environmental impact assessment (EIA), despite its potential benefits to the EIA process. Environmental valuation may be useful in judging significance of impacts, determining mitigation level, comparing alternatives and generally enabling a more objective analysis of tradeoffs. In China, laws and regulations require the use of environmental valuation in EIA, but current practice lags far behind. This paper assesses the problems and prospects of introducing environmental valuation into the EIA process in China. We conduct four case studies of environmental economic impact assessment (EEIA), three of which are based on environmental impact statements of construction projects (a power plant, a wastewater treatment plant and a road construction project) and one for a regional pollution problem (wastewater irrigation). The paper demonstrates the potential usefulness of environmental valuation but also discusses several challenges to the introduction and wider use of EEIA, many of which are likely to be of relevance far beyond the Chinese context. The paper closes with suggesting some initial core elements of an EEIA guideline.     

Healthcare Building Sustainability Assessment tool - Sustainable Effective Design criteria in the Portuguese context

Tools and methods to improve current practices and quality in the healthcare building sector are necessary to support decision-making at different building life cycle phases. Furthermore, Healthcare Building Sustainability Assessment (HBSA) Methods are based on criteria organised into different levels, such as categories and indicators. These criteria highlight aspects of significant importance when designing and operating a sustainable healthcare building. To bring more objectivity to the sustainability assessments, the standardisation bodies (CEN and ISO) proposed core indicators that should be used in the evaluation of the environmental, societal and economic performances of buildings. Nevertheless, relying on state of the art analysis, it is possible to conclude that there are aspects of major importance for the operation of healthcare buildings that are not considered in the HBSA methods.Thus, the aim of this paper is to discuss the context of sustainability assessment methods in the field of healthcare buildings and to present a proposal for the incorporation of Sustainable-Effective Design (SED) criteria in a new HBSA method. The used research method is innovative since in the development of the list of sustainability criteria it considers the opinion of main healthcare buildings' stakeholders, the existing healthcare assessment methods and the ISO and CEN standardisation works in the field of the methods to assess the sustainability of construction works. As a result, the proposed method is composed of fifty-two sustainability indicators that cover the different dimensions of the sustainability concept to support decision making during the design of a new or retrofitted healthcare building in urban areas.