Disparate perceptions about uncertainty consideration and disclosure practices in environmental assessment and opportunities for improvement

The need to better address uncertainties in environmental assessment (EA) is well known, but less known is how those involved in, or affected by, EA processes understand and perceive uncertainties and how uncertainties are considered and disclosed. Based on a survey of 77 Canadian EA practitioners, regulators, and interest groups, this paper explores uncertainties in the EA process, uncertainty consideration and disclosure in EA practice and decision-making, and opportunities for improved disclosure. Nearly 80% of participants indicated that all EAs contain uncertainty; however, uncertainty disclosure was described as poor. Only 15% indicated that uncertainties are sufficiently acknowledged in practice and, when disclosed, considered by decision makers. Perceptions about uncertainty differed significantly between those who conducted EAs compared to those potentially affected by development, suggesting that either communication about uncertainty is poor, or participants' understandings about what is considered ‘good’ practice are very different. Almost half of the participants believe that there is overconfidence in impact predictions and mitigation measures, and the majority indicated that if uncertainties were more openly reported then EA would be a better tool for informing decisions. Most participants did not believe that EAs that openly disclose uncertainties lack credibility; and contrary to proponents' tendencies to limit disclosure, participants perceived limited risk of disclosure in terms of project approval. The majority of participants did not believe that there was sufficient guidance available on how to report uncertainties, or on how to use that information in decision-making. Results indicate a substantial need to better understand how uncertainties are viewed and dealt with in EA; the importance of uncertainty disclosure and consideration in EA; and the risks and benefits of uncertainty disclosure to proponents, decision makers, and the public. We identify several opportunities for improving the practice of uncertainty consideration and disclosure.     

Environmental assessment in The Netherlands: Effectively governing environmental protection? A discourse analysis

Environmental assessment (EA) aims to enhance environmental awareness and to ensure that environmental values are fully considered in decision-making. In the EA arena, different discourses exist on what EA should aim for and how it functions. We hypothesise that these discourses influence its application in practice as well as its effectiveness in terms of achieving the above goals. For instance, actors who consider EA as a hindrance to fast implementation of their projects will probably apply it as a mandatory checklist, whereas actors who believe that EA can help to develop more environmentally sound decisions will use EIA as a tool to design their initiatives. In this paper we explore discourses on EA in The Netherlands and elaborate on their implications for EA effectiveness. Based on an innovative research design comprising an online survey with 443 respondents and 20 supplementary semi-structured interviews we conclude that the dominant discourse is that EA is mainly a legal requirement; EAs are conducted because they have to be conducted, not because actors choose to do so. EA effectiveness however seems reasonably high, as a majority of respondents perceive that it enhances environmental awareness and contributes to environmental protection. However, the ‘legal requirement’ discourse also results in decision-makers seldom going beyond what is prescribed by EA and environmental law. Despite its mandatory character, the predominant attitude towards EA is quite positive. For most respondents, EA is instrumental in providing transparency of decision-making and in minimising the legal risks of not complying with environmental laws. Differences in discourses seldom reflect extreme opposites. The ‘common ground’ regarding EA provides a good basis for working with EA in terms of meeting legal requirements but at the same time does not stimulate creativity in decision-making or optimisation of environmental values. In countries characterised by less consensual political cultures we may expect more extreme discourses on EA, the consequences of which are reflected upon in this paper.     

Experiences of voluntary early participation in Environmental Impact Assessments in Chilean mining

Citizen participation should ideally occur as early as possible in a project, especially throughout the course of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) study. In Chile, participation occurs after the EIA study has been completed and presented to authorities for evaluation. However, voluntary early participation has become an extended practice in large mining projects for financial and conflict-reduction reasons. The purpose of this study was to explore a variety of these early participation processes happening in large mining projects from 2001 to 2010 and analyze how well these practices measured up to standards and objectives defined in the EIA and participation literature. Beyond the legal implications of such practice, we sought to understand the role of this voluntary procedure within the EIA process and citizen engagement in projects. We found a wide range of objectives, approaches and results, primarily driven to facilitate approval and implementation of the ten projects analyzed. The underlying objective of voluntary participation processes analyzed (whether it seeks to inform, to note or to engage), determined the information presented, participants included, area of influence considered, time devoted to the process and influence of the information collected on EIA and project mitigation measures. Few of the principles for best practice in the literature were present in the ten projects examined. Moreover, given the voluntary and unregulated nature of these processes, purposes and outcomes were often mixed-up with the Indigenous Consultation required under ILO provision 169, or Corporate Social Responsibility programs. This finally revealed that contrary to expectations, an unregulated and early voluntary participation is not having a clear impact in the definition of projects mitigation measures, participants are at risk of being unsatisfied with the resulting agreements and moreover, it does not assure projects implementation or the avoidance of socio-environmental conflict.     

Coal mining and the resource community cycle: A longitudinal assessment of the social impacts of the Coppabella coal mine

Two social impact assessment (SIA) studies of Central Queensland's Coppabella coal mine were undertaken in 2002–2003 and 2006–2007. As ex post studies of actual change, these provide a reference point for predictive assessments of proposed resource extraction projects at other sites, while the longitudinal element added by the second study illustrates how impacts associated with one mine may vary over time due to changing economic and social conditions. It was found that the traditional coupling of local economic vitality and community development to the life cycle of resource projects—the resource community cycle—was mediated by labour recruitment and social infrastructure policies that reduced the emphasis on localised employment and investment strategies, and by the cumulative impacts of multiple mining projects within relative proximity to each other. The resource community cycle was accelerated and local communities forced to consider ways of attracting secondary investment and/or alternative industries early in the operational life of the Coppabella mine in order to secure significant economic benefits and to guard against the erosion of social capital and the ability to cope with future downturns in the mining sector.     

Capacity strengthening for environmental assessment in Benin

For over three decades, environmental assessment (EA) has gained increasing international recognition as a means of ensuring sustainable development. In light of environmental challenges, Benin has endorsed the principle that a healthy environment is a human right. This concern is manifested by the creation of many institutions for managing environmental issues. But until today, environmental problems are still on the rise and getting worse day by day because of Benin's limited experience in the field of EA. If EA is to be perceived as an instrument of sustainable development, it is important to take into account the achievements and the needs of the country in this field; because we cannot respond properly and adequately in the field of capacity strengthening in EA without first be familiar with what exists, what is fact, and what is needed. In this study, we address and analyze the status of existing resources in the field of EA in Benin with the purpose of identifying the needs for capacity strengthening to enhance environmental assessment effectiveness in the country. The detailed presentation of the results shows that the legislative and institutional resources are available and represent a strong element in the system of environmental management in Benin. However, there is still a room for improvements towards environmental governance before it becomes a solid system of decision supporting all sectors of intervention because the effective application of those laws and texts still constitute big challenges. Below are the main reasons that explain the particular situation: majority of the laws are put in force very late or taken without implementing decree at all; the organizational capabilities have large gaps; the absence of a mechanism for evaluating the needs for strengthening capacity for EA. Recommendations pinpointed three types of needs which must be filled to enhance the effectiveness of EA in Benin: upstream needs of the structure of EA; implementation and enforcement needs; and, maintenance and efficiency needs.     

Integrating SDGs in environmental assessment: Unfolding SDG functions in emerging practices

Debates concerning the relation between Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and environmental assessment (EA) have long suggested their integration in some form. The purpose of this paper is to go beyond conceptual debates to explore practices of environmental impact assessment and strategic environmental assessment in terms of how they change in response to the Agenda 2030. A thorough web search for EA reports integrating SDGs resulted in 45 cases from five continents, which were then analyzed using a framework on levels of integration to examine and reflect on practice. The results show that in the majority of reports, SDGs are merely mentioned with no further function, that there is a trend towards focusing on positive impacts and that there is a high variation in how contributions to SDGs are assessed and displayed. The paper concludes by identifying key directions for further research, such as ways to further understand practices and to close the gap between theoretical considerations and EA practice.     

Space for action: How practitioners influence environmental assessment

This article contributes to understanding of how change occurs in the field of environmental assessment (EA). It argues that the integration of new issues in EA, such as human health, is significantly influenced by how practitioners' understandings shape their actions, and by what happens when those, possibly different, interpretations of appropriate action are acted out. The concept of space for action is developed as a means of investigating this relation between understanding and action. Frame theory is also used, to develop a sharper focus on how ‘potential spaces for action’ are created, what these imply for (individuals') preferred choices and actions in certain situations, and what happens in practice when these are acted out and ‘actual spaces for action’ are created. This novel approach is then applied in a Swedish case study of transport planning. The analysis reveals the important work done by practitioners, revealing just how EA practice is decisively shaped by practitioners. Analysis of practice using the lens of spaces for action offers an important new perspective in understanding how the field adapts to new challenges.     

Social cost in construction projects

Despite the fact that completion of construction projects has a direct positive impact on the growth of national and local economies as well as humans' wellbeing, construction projects, especially in the urban areas, generate serious environmental nuisances for the adjacent residents and have unintentional adverse impacts on their surrounding environment. Construction causative adverse impacts on the neighbouring communities are known as the social costs. This study aims to present a state-of-the-art overview of social costs in construction industry in terms of definition, consideration, classification and quantification. Furthermore, it is aimed to bring the construction social cost phenomenon for the agenda of Environmental Impact Assessors.     

Understanding why impact assessment fails; a case study of theory and practice from Wafi-Golpu,Papua New Guinea

From an instrumental or management perspective, impact assessment (IA) is a process of identifying impacts, finding solutions and achieving project approval. A recipient community, however, has a completely different perspective. For them the IA is about living with impacts, individually and collectively, perhaps over generations, and contested processes of self-determination, consultation and exclusion. IA practitioners live in a third space, usually bound to the proponent but also aware of responsibilities to communities and eco-systems. Seeking to better understand how IA is practiced and experienced, we explore the proposed Wafi-Golpu mine, located in the Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea. Determinably focused on local effects we situate the proposed mine within the context of the national mining experience and discuss how IA practices see local and/or Indigenous communities. We find that the Wafi-Golpu IA is blind to local ways of being and seeing the world, with an opaque and arbitrary assessment that reflects its technical and Western basis and bias. We finish with observations about the proposed Wafi-Golpu mine and IA that is relevant to the approval process, as well as making a decolonial, Southern contribution to IA theory and practice, extractive industry regulation and mining-affected communities elsewhere.     

Environmental management zoning for coal mining in mainland China based on ecological and resources conditions

The purpose of this research is to establish an environmental management zoning for coal mining industry which is served as a basis for making environmental management policies. Based on the specific impacts of coal mining and regional characteristics of environment and resources, the ecological impact, water resources impact, and arable land impact are chose as the zoning indexes to construct the index system. The ecological sensitivity is graded into three levels of low, medium, and high according to analytical hierarchy processes and gray fixed weight clustering analysis, and the water resources sensitivity is divided into five levels of lower, low, medium, high, and higher according to the weighted sum of sub-indexes, while only the arable land sensitive zone was extracted on the basis of the ratio of arable land to the county or city. By combining the ecological sensitivity zoning and the water resources sensitive zoning and then overlapping the arable-sensitive areas, the mainland China is classified into six types of environmental management zones for coal mining except to the forbidden exploitation areas.     

The assessment of aesthetic and perceptual aspects within environmental impact assessment of renewable energy projects in Italy

The main aim of this paper is to explore how perceptual and aesthetic impact analyses are considered in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), with specific reference to Italian renewable energy projects. To investigate this topic, the paper starts by establishing which factors are linked with perceptual and aesthetic impacts and why it is important to analyze these aspects, which are also related to legislative provisions and procedures in Europe and in Italy. In particular the paper refers to renewable energy projects because environmental policies are encouraging more and more investment in this kind of primary resource. The growing interest in this type of energy is leading to the realization of projects which change the governance of territories, with inevitable effects on the landscape from the aesthetic and perceptual points of view. Legislative references to EIA, including the latest directive regarding this topic show the importance of integrating the assessment of environmental and perceptual impacts, thus there is a need to improve EIA methodological approaches to this purpose. This paper proposes a profile of aesthetic and perceptual impact analysis in EIA for renewable energy projects in Italy, and concludes with recommendations as to how this kind of analysis could be improved.     

Generation and Quantification of Hazardous Dusts from Coal Mining in the Indian Context

The increasing trend of opencast coal mining in India tends to release huge amounts of dust. But there is no well-defined method of estimating dust emission due to different coal mining activities. This paper examines the sources of dust emission due to coal mining activities, and focuses on the quantification of dust emission with the development and use of emission factors. Because of their site-specific nature, emission factors developed for one site may not give the correct results for another site. In the present investigation, prediction equations are utilized for the development of emission factors. For the applications of this concept, one large opencast coal project of Bharat Coking Coal Ltd. (BCCL) was investigated, and the total amount of dust emitted due to different mining activities was calculated by the utilization of emission factor data, which was estimated to be 9368.2 kg/day. This paper also focuses on the significance of this study in the field of environmental protection and likely impacts of such study. The paper concludes that once the amount of dust generation is estimated, the impact on air quality can be assessed appropriately and a proper air-pollution control strategy can be developed.     

Meaningful and efficient? Enduring challenges to Aboriginal participation in environmental assessment

This paper explores the underlying practice-based challenges to meaningful and efficient Aboriginal participation in environmental assessment (EA) - participation that provides meaningful opportunities for Aboriginal communities to shape EA, yet assures a degree of efficiency for project proponents who need to obtain EA approvals in a timely and financially viable manner. We do so based on an analysis of the EA policy community's experience with uranium exploration and mining in Saskatchewan, Canada. Many of the challenges to meaningful and efficient Aboriginal participation that emerged are multi-dimensional, often concerning participation processes, decision-making, and relationships. Although scholars have explored many of these issues and have proposed numerous solutions, challenges persist in practice. Several other issues also emerged from our study that have received limited attention, including the non-commitment to early and ongoing participation by smaller project proponents, and the EA exemption of exploration projects; the limited availability of information to project developers on local right holders and Aboriginal interests; expectations about the integration of traditional knowledge and land use in EA not aligning with the information that is available to proponents; confusion about who is responsible for initiating early participation and consultation processes; the lack of early relationship building with potentially affected communities, particularly by governments; and the lack of other viable avenues, outside EA, for Aboriginal communities to raise more strategic issues of concern that affect traditional lands and treaty rights.     

Impact significance determination—Pushing the boundaries

Impact significance determination practice tends to be highly variable. Too often insufficient consideration is given to good practice insights. Also, impact significance determinations are frequently narrowly defined addressing, for example, only individual, negative impacts, focusing on bio-physical impacts, and not seeking to integrate either the Precautionary Principle or sustainability.This article seeks to extend the boundaries of impact significance determination practice by providing an overview of good general impact significance practices, together with stakeholder roles and potential methods for addressing significance determination challenges. Relevant thresholds, criteria, contextual considerations and support methods are also highlighted. The analysis is then extended to address how impact significance determination practices change for positive as compared with negative impacts, for cumulative as compared with individual impacts, for socio-economic as compared with bio-physical impacts, when the Precautionary Principle is integrated into the process, and when sustainability contributions drive the EIA process and related impact significance determinations. These refinements can assist EIA practitioners in ensuring that the scope and nature of impact significance determinations reflect the broadened scope of emerging EIA requirements and practices. Suggestions are included for further refining and testing of the proposed changes to impact significance determination practice.     

Validating health impact assessment: Prediction is difficult (especially about the future)

Health impact assessment (HIA) has been recommended as a means of estimating how policies, programmes and projects may impact on public health and on health inequalities. This paper considers the difference between predicting health impacts and measuring those impacts. It draws upon a case study of the building of a new hypermarket in a deprived area of Glasgow, which offered an opportunity to reflect on the issue of the predictive validity of HIA, and to consider the difference between potential and actual impacts. We found that the actual impacts of the new hypermarket on diet differed from that which would have been predicted based on previous studies. Furthermore, they challenge current received wisdom about the impact of food retail outlets in poorer areas. These results are relevant to the validity of HIA as a process and emphasise the importance of further research on the predictive validity of HIA, which should help improve its value to decision-makers.     

Reconceptualizing public participation in environmental assessment as EA civics

Notwithstanding the considerable attention placed on creating meaningful opportunities for public participation in environmental assessment (EA), many participants and those who have reviewed participation processes often find practice sorely wanting. This reality stands in stark juxtaposition to future environmental governance needs, which will require increased openness, deliberation and transdisciplinary knowledge in order to deal with environmental change that is ever more uncertain, complex and conflictual. In this paper, our purpose was to consider how to meet those needs through reconceptualizing public participation as EA civics, founded on an active citizen base, deliberative in nature and orientated toward learning. We do this through developing a new conceptual model of next generation participation processes that is relevant at multiple spatial scales and institutional levels, is applicable to the entire assessment cycle and spans temporal scales through feedback loops. Our EA civics model builds on the “civics approach” to environmental governance and “action civics” by extending their core ideas to participation in EA. We did this by conducting an integrative literature review (including numerous papers we have contributed over the years) and reflecting on our own experiences as EA participants. We apply current thinking on public participation design to our EA civics conceptualization and highlight important design features that have received scant attention. We conclude that EA civics holds promise for fairer and more robust participation processes if all aspects of the model are considered and the actions related to each are implemented.     

Assessing health impacts in complex eco-epidemiological settings in the humid tropics: Modular baseline health surveys

The quantitative assessment of health impacts has been identified as a crucial feature for realising the full potential of health impact assessment (HIA). In settings where demographic and health data are notoriously scarce, but there is a broad range of ascertainable ecological, environmental, epidemiological and socioeconomic information, a diverse toolkit of data collection strategies becomes relevant for the mainly small-area impacts of interest. We present a modular, cross-sectional baseline health survey study design, which has been developed for HIA of industrial development projects in the humid tropics. The modular nature of our toolkit allows our methodology to be readily adapted to the prevailing eco-epidemiological characteristics of a given project setting. Central to our design is a broad set of key performance indicators, covering a multiplicity of health outcomes and determinants at different levels and scales. We present experience and key findings from our modular baseline health survey methodology employed in 14 selected sentinel sites within an iron ore mining project in the Republic of Guinea. We argue that our methodology is a generic example of rapid evidence assembly in difficult-to-reach localities, where improvement of the predictive validity of the assessment and establishment of a benchmark for longitudinal monitoring of project impacts and mitigation efforts is needed.