Evaluation of Environmental Aspects Significance in ISO 14001

The methodological framework set by standards ISO 14001 and ISO 14004 gives only general principles for environmental aspects assessment, which is regarded as one of the most critical stages of implementing environmental management system. In Estonia, about 100 organizations have been certified to the ISO 14001. Experience obtained from numerous companies has demonstrated that limited transparency and reproducibility of the assessment process serves as a common shortcoming. Despite rather complicated assessment schemes sometimes used, the evaluation procedures have been largely based on subjective judgments because of ill-defined and inadequate assessment criteria. A comparison with some similar studies in other countries indicates a general nature of observed inconsistencies. The diversity of approaches to the aspects’ assessment in concept literature and to the related problems has been discussed. The general structure of basic assessment criteria, compatible with environmental impact assessment and environmental risk analysis has also been outlined. Based on this general structure, the article presents a tiered approach to help organize the assessment in a more consistent manner.     

Environmental Impact Assessment and Environmental Audit in Large-Scale Public Infrastructure Construction: The Case of the Qinghai–Tibet Railway

Large-scale public infrastructure projects have featured in China’s modernization course since the early 1980s. During the early stages of China’s rapid economic development, public attention focused on the economic and social impact of high-profile construction projects. In recent years, however, we have seen a shift in public concern toward the environmental and ecological effects of such projects, and today governments are required to provide valid environmental impact assessments prior to allowing large-scale construction. The official requirement for the monitoring of environmental conditions has led to an increased number of debates in recent years regarding the effectiveness of Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) and Governmental Environmental Audits (GEAs) as environmental safeguards in instances of large-scale construction. Although EIA and GEA are conducted by different institutions and have different goals and enforcement potential, these two practices can be closely related in terms of methodology. This article cites the construction of the Qinghai–Tibet Railway as an instance in which EIA and GEA offer complementary approaches to environmental impact management. This study concludes that the GEA approach can serve as an effective follow-up to the EIA and establishes that the EIA lays a base for conducting future GEAs. The relationship that emerges through a study of the Railway’s construction calls for more deliberate institutional arrangements and cooperation if the two practices are to be used in concert to optimal effect.     

Applying Ecological Risk Principles to Watershed Assessment and Management

Considerable progress in addressing point source (end of pipe) pollution problems has been made, but it is now recognized that further substantial environmental improvements depend on controlling nonpoint source pollution. A watershed approach is being used more frequently to address these problems because traditional regulatory approaches do not focus on nonpoint sources. The watershed approach is organized around the guiding principles of partnerships, geographic focus, and management based on sound science and data. This helps to focus efforts on the highest priority problems within hydrologically-defined geographic areas. Ecological risk assessment is a process to collect, organize, analyze, and present scientific information to improve decision making. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sponsored three watershed assessments and found that integrating the watershed approach with ecological risk assessment increases the use of environmental monitoring and assessment data in decision making. This paper describes the basics of the watershed approach, the ecological risk assessment process, and how these two frameworks can be integrated. The three major principles of watershed ecological risk assessment found to be most useful for increasing the use of science in decision making are (1) using assessment endpoints and conceptual models, (2) holding regular interactions between scientists and managers, and (3) developing a focus for multiple stressor analysis. Examples are provided illustrating how these principles were implemented in these assessments.     

Development of a decision support system for Prioritization of multimedia dischargers

In 1990 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began sponsoring several pilot projects in its regional offices to examine the potential benefits of adopting a multimedia approach to facility management. This approach differs from traditional practices at EPA in that facilities (dischargers regulated under permits issued by the agency) are managed based upon their cumulative impacts to all media: air, water, and land. Currently, facilities are managed by separate programs at EPA that evaluate environmental impacts from a single-media perspective. One aspect of discharger management is the necessity to allocate limited financial resources in a way that will minimize risk to human health and the environment. A careful, risk-based prioritization of facilities is one means of providing insight to the most effective strategy of allocating monitoring, inspection, and enforcement resources. Prioritization from a multimedia perspective is particularly difficult, however, since it requires translation and integration of medium-specific facility performances, management objectives, and perceptions of risk into a cumulative rating. A computerized decision support system (DSS) designed to guide management through the prioritization process from a multimedia perspective was identified as a potentially valuable tool for use in the pilot projects. This article describes the development of such a prototype, outlines the features of the completed system, and discusses its potential for use at EPA.     

Ecological Risk Assessment and Problem Formulation for Lake Uluabat,a Ramsar State in Turkey

Unlike the United States and the European Union, developing countries do not have sufficiently structured legal and institutional systems to apply certain environmental management tools such as ecological risk assessment. However, it is important for countries with valuable environmental and ecological resources to have appropriate tools and to strengthen their environmental management capabilities and capacities for the sake of those resources. The case study described in this paper attempts to be a case study towards developing environmental management plans, especially in developing countries. The problem formulation step of Ecological Risk Assessment applied in this study contributed to the basic elements of an environmental management plan including the following: the partnership-building process, prioritization of the problems and issues of the ecosystem, and development of the action plan. Based on the information provided by participants from a series of workshops held to develop an environmental management plan for Uluabat Lake, ecosystem risks were ranked and an action plan was formed. The results obtained with the aid of fuzzy set theory provided a base for identification of the action steps by allowing scientific information to be included in the process. The degree to which Uluabat Lakes problem formulation fits into the existing legal framework of Turkey is also analyzed in this paper.     

“A Kiss Here and a Kiss There”: Conflict and Collaboration in Environmental Partnerships

Multistakeholder collaboration in the environmental realm has been increasing steadily over the past decade. This trend is responding to several stimuli, including dissatisfaction with current regulatory regimes, a liberal economic climate emphasizing global competitiveness and short-term returns, and the growing roles of the business and nongovernmental organization sectors in the environmental policy arena. This paper grows out of ethnographic research conducted between 1994 and 1998 with four environmental partnerships in Europe and the United States. The research found all of these partnerships to be marked by practices of conflict minimization and diffusion. Drawing upon illustrative data from one of these case studies, a European Union level initiative aimed at enabling sustainable development in Europe, the paper asks why this was the case, especially given the diverse political and economic interests at stake and the history of contentious relations between the sectors in other venues. Employing a theoretical perspective highlighting the sociohistoric factors involved in these processes, the paper suggests that this proclivity toward nonconfrontational behavior stems in part from two sources: a prominent cultural model that conceptualizes the partnership process as fundamentally nonconflictual in nature, and the promotion of the discourse of ecological modernization over other competing discourses. The paper explores some of the implications of this finding and concludes that environmental partnerships characterized by such nonconfrontational practices risk inadvertently encouraging the delegitimization of conflictual approaches to environmental action and engendering a retreat from radical thinking and innovative environmental solutions.     

Environmental Justice,Local Knowledge,and Risk: The Discourse of a Community-Based Cumulative Exposure Assessment

While risk assessment continues to drive most environmental management decision-making, its methods and assumptions have been criticized for, among other things, perpetuating environmental injustice. The justice challenges to risk assessment claim that the process ignores the unique and multiple hazards facing low-income and people of color communities and simultaneously excludes the local, non-expert knowledge which could help capture these unique hazards from the assessment discourse. This paper highlights some of these challenges to conventional risk assessment and suggests that traditional models of risk characterization will continue to ignore the environmental justice challenges until cumulative hazards and local knowledge are meaningfully brought into the assessment process. We ask whether a shift from risk to exposure assessment might enable environmental managers to respond to the environmental justice critiques. We review the US EPA's first community-based Cumulative Exposure Project, piloted in Brooklyn, NY, and highlight to what extent this process addressed the risk assessment critiques raised by environmental justice advocates. We suggest that a shift from risk to exposure assessment can provide an opportunity for local knowledge to both improve the technical assessment and its democratic nature and may ultimately allow environmental managers to better address environmental justice concerns in decision-making.     

Risk Management of Sediment Stress: A Framework for Sediment Risk Management Research

Research related to the ecological risk management of sediment stress in watersheds is placed under a common conceptual framework in order to help promote the timely advance of decision support methods for aquatic resource managers and watershed-level planning. The proposed risk management research program relies heavily on model development and verification, and should be applied under an adaptive management approach. The framework is centered on using best management practices (BMPs), including eco-restoration. It is designed to encourage the development of numerical representations of the performance of these management options, the integration of this information into sediment transport simulation models that account for uncertainty in both input and output, and would use strategic environmental monitoring to guide sediment-related risk management decisions for mixed land use watersheds. The goal of this project was to provide a sound scientific framework based on recent state of the practice in sediment-related risk assessment and management for research and regulatory activities. As a result, shortcomings in the extant data and measurement and modeling tools were identified that can help determine future research direction. The compilation of information is beneficial to the coordination of related work being conducted within and across entities responsible for managing watershed-scale risks to aquatic ecosystems.     

Treatment of risk in environmental impact assessment

Risk assessment and environmental impact assessment have developed as separate traditions. While environmental impact assessment is a broad field that includes all activities that attempt to analyze and evaluate the effects of human and related actions on the environment, risk assessment has been concerned with the relatively well-defined regulatory problems and employs formal quantitative analysis of the probability of specific undesired events, such as cancer. Risk analytic approaches, particularly the explicit treatment of uncertainty, can significantly contribute to environmental assessments. This article discusses the type and sources of uncertainty in environmental assessments, techniques for their quantification, and ways to use uncertainty estimates to calculate probabilities of effects or probabilities of exceeding environmental standards and to determine the need for mitigation or additional research.This article was presented at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis, Task Force Meeting on Risk and Policy Analysis under Conditions of Uncertainty, Laxenburg, Austria, November 1985.     

Environmental protection in Hong Kong amidst transition: Is Hong Kong ready to manage its environment by law?

Within the context of political democratization, this article explores environmental protection in Hong Kong since the government lauched a ten-year program to “save the environment” in 1989. Examining environmental management by law from a social-choice perspective, it argues that the government has yet to reach an integrative policy orocess. Hence the preconditions for an integrative set of environmental legislation are absent. Institutionally, without a comprehensive green policy, the current arrangements lack a vision as an integrative force to promote effective coordination among various sectoral environmental coordination among various sectoral environmental programs. The dominant approach of policy and law enforcement through consultation has rendered impossible strict enforcement of environmental rules and regulations as local economic growth enjoys a priority over environmental protection. At a time of environmental awakening, the people of Hong Kong are not yet prepared awakening, the people of Hong Kong are not yet prepared to participate in environmental management in a strict legal manner. The overall observation is that Hong Kong has yet to see more mature political, legal, administrative, and social conditions for managing its environment within a legal framework.     

Science, Policy, Stakeholders, and Fish Consumption Advisories: Developing a Fish Fact Sheet for the Savannah River

In recent years there has been a startling rise in the issuance of fish consumption advisories. Unfortunately, compliance by the public is often low. Low compliance can be due to a number of factors, including confusion over the meaning of advisories, conflicting advisories issued by different agencies, controversies involving health benefits versus the risks from consuming fish, and an unwillingness to act on the advisories because of personal beliefs. In some places, such as along the Savannah River, one state (South Carolina) had issued a consumption advisory while the other (Georgia) had not, although at present, both states now issue consumption advisories for the Savannah River. Herein we report on the development of a fish fact sheet to address the confusing and conflicting information available to the public about consuming fish from the Savannah River. The process involved interviewing fishers to ascertain fishing and consumption patterns, evaluating contaminant levels and exposure pathways, discussing common grounds for the provision of information, and consensus-building among different regulatory agencies (US Environmental Protection Agency, South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, Georgia Department of Natural Resources) and the Department of Energy. Consensus, a key ingredient in solving many different types of “commons” problems, was aided by an outside organization, the Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP). The initial role for CRESP was to offer scientific data as a basis for groups with different assumptions about risks to reach agreement on a regulatory response action. The process was an example of how credible science can be used to implement management and policies and provide a basis for consensus-building on difficult risk communication issues. The paper provides several lessons for improving the risk process from stakeholder conflicts, through risk assessment, to risk management. It also suggests that consensus-building and risk communication are continuing processes that involve assimilation of new information on contaminants and food-chain processes, state and federal law, public policy, and public response.     

Environmental impact assessment: An international evaluation

Experiences with environmental impact assessment (EIA) in a number of countries are discussed in the light of both explicit and implicit goals and objectives. Adequate environmental information is not always available to decision makers because of failure to apply EIA to all relevant decisions, the continuing inadequacies of prediction and evaluation techniques, the failure to consider alternatives adequately, and the bias of some EISs. EIA frequently results in changes to proposals and may result in stricter environmental management conditions in some cases, but some people regard it as a failure because it has not stopped development. Generally, EIA leads to better integration of environmental factors into project planning. Open procedures and freedom of information encourage responsiveness to EIA procedures, which can be weakened by discretionary powers and lack of access to the courts by public interest groups. However, legal standing may have side effects that offset its advantages. EIA can encourage cooperation and coordination between agencies but does not ensure them. Similarly, it can have a limited role in coordinating interstate and international policies. In the long term, the success of EIA depends on adequate monitoring, reassessment, and enforcement over the life of the project. EIA has generally opened up new opportunities for public participation, and may help to reduce conflict. EIA procedures need to be integrated with other environmental protection and development control programs, and various means exist for reducing its cost to developers and the public.     

Effective Regulations with Little Effect? The Antecedents of the Perceptions of Environmental Officials on Enforcement Effectiveness in China

Enforcement gaps are an especially vexing problem in China due to pervasive "pro-growth" local government priorities, the weak administrative capacity of environmental agencies themselves, and relatively weak levels of societal support for a cleaner environment. This study seeks to examine this problem from the perspective of the local enforcement officials by empirically examining the relationships between these and other influences on their perceptions of enforcement effectiveness. Using samples of enforcement officials from the fast-growing cities of Chengdu, Dalian, and Guangzhou, this study finds that many of the more commonly cited problems related to regulatory enforcement were not as influential in accounting for variations in perceptions of enforcement effectiveness than the current literature might suggest. Moreover, this study also finds that the pattern of influences varies greatly across jurisdictions, with only the officials' belief in the legitimacy of the governments' policies being significant in all three samples. Strong influences on perceptions of enforcement effectiveness in two of the three samples include the environmental values of enforcement officials, their perceptions of organizational capacity for enforcement, and their assessment of government support for environmental protection. Although government support was found to be a strong predictor of enforcement effectiveness in two of the three samples, the influence of societal support had a somewhat mixed and more complicated effect. In addition, this study suggests that further improvements in enforcement effectiveness may be possible by cultivating or selecting enforcement officials with strong environmental values and beliefs in the legitimacy of the government's environmental policy to take charge of enforcement. Because it is generally accepted that local environmental protection bureaus are generally upgrading their organizational capacity for improvement as the result of increasing central government support for environmental protection and institutional restructuring, and because environmental awareness in China is growing, this study suggests that some incremental progress is likely in China's efforts to close the enforcement gap. Unfortunately, such improvements are likely to be masked by the steep trajectory of economic growth, the narrow scope of regulatory control (i.e., with scant attention paid to nonindustrial sources), and the migration of industrial pollution to rural areas.     

Cumulative environmental change: Conceptual frameworks,evaluation approaches,and institutional perspectives

Cumulative environmental change or cumulative effects may result from the additive effect of individual actions of the same nature or the interactive effect of multiple actions of a different nature. This article reviews conceptual frameworks of cumulative environmental change and describes analytical and institutional approaches to cumulative effects assessment (CEA). A causal model is a common theoretical construct, although the frameworks vary in their emphasis on different components of the model. Two broad approaches to CEA are distinguished: one scientific and the other planning oriented. These approaches should not be interpreted as competing paradigms but rather different interpretations of the scope of CEA. Each approach can provide a distinct but complementary contribution to the analysis, assessment, and management of cumulative effects. A comparison of the institutional and legislative response to CEA in Canada and the United States shows that Canada is following the American example of incorporating the analysis and assessment of cumulative effects into regulatory actions and administrative procedures that also govern environmental impact assessment.     

PROFILE: Indigenous Institutions and Environmental Assessment: The Case of Ghana

/ The search for sustainable development provides the impetus forexamining the role of indigenous institutions and their ecological knowledgein environmental assessment and local sustainability. This paper attempts totrace the evolution of environmental assessment in Ghana. Focusing on theAshanti Region, the paper further discusses the nature and operations ofindigenous institutions, their ecological knowledge, beliefs, practices, andsocial norms that are relevant to environmental assessment process in thecountry. Some of the challenges that emerge from the discussions arehighlighted. There is a need to establish environmental assessment andcooperative management boards that would include representatives ofindigenous institutions. In addition, the introduction of technicaldictionaries and training manuals based on indigenous ecological knowledgeand their humane environmental practices will further improve theenvironmental assessment process in Ghana.KEY WORDS: Environmental assessment; Indigenous institutions; Indigenousecological knowledge; Sustainable development; Environmental assessmentboards     

Old problems and new dilemmas: the conundrum of environmental management reform in China

ABSTRACT

Underpinning China’s severe and continuing environmental degradation is a stubborn gap between environmental regulation and regulatory enforcement at the local level. In the past, scholars have sought explanations for the causes of this implementation gap by interviewing frontline environmental officials. Due to the fact that the self-perception data used in most of those existing studies were gathered prior to 2012, the possible factors contributing to the compromised effectiveness of local environmental enforcement from 2012 onward remain largely unknown. This empirical weakness should not be overlooked, as the prevailing institutions governing China’s local environmental management practices have been experiencing many frame-breaking transformations since 2012. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with leaders of environmental law enforcement teams in all administrative districts of Guangzhou in 2017, this paper not only summarizes pervasive elements which negatively impact the current effectiveness of environmental regulatory efforts, but also provides qualitative evidence and theoretical accounts for three enforcement dilemmas stemming from reform measures taken by the central government.     

环境法视域下的生物安全风险规制

生物安全领域的环境风险包括科技风险、生态风险和环境健康风险三种类型。我国目前尚未形成健全的生物安全风险规制制度体系,科技风险规制机制不健全、生态风险规制忽视生物多样性保护、环境健康风险规制领域尚存空白等问题依然存在。为此,应确立多元化的立法目的体系,推动风险规制的类型化制度安排,有效衔接生物安全立法与环境保护法律规范,以最大限度地预防和降低生物安全风险可能带来的损害。     

Food risks and the environment: changing perspectives in a changing social order

Risks related to food production and consumption are not a recent phenomenon. Through agricultural practices, the transport of agricultural and food products, the processing of food, its storage, and finally the consumption of food, risks have been externalized, mediated, contested and ingested. But agrofood systems have also been paralleled by routinized practices and institutions that attempt to reduce risks and sustain trust among the many actors involved in these food regimes. However, both the (definition of) food risks and the institutions and discourses used to dispel anxiety and build trust are far from stable throughout time. In the contemporary modern world-order, food risks and the practices and institutions dealing with these risks reflect the significant transformations in the agrofood system, the changing nature of the risks involved in food production and consumption, and the modifications in scientific risk assessment and risk management. This article provides an overview of the current debates, discussions and practices on actual and potential institutional transformations that parallel the emergence, assessment and management of food risks in reflexive modernity. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Priority screening of toxic chemicals and industry sectors in the U.S. toxics release inventory: a comparison of the life cycle impact-based and risk-based assessment tools developed by U.S. EPA

Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) and Risk Assessment (RA) employ different approaches to evaluate toxic impact potential for their own general applications. LCIA is often used to evaluate toxicity potentials for corporate environmental management and RA is often used to evaluate a risk score for environmental policy in government. This study evaluates the cancer, non-cancer, and ecotoxicity potentials and risk scores of chemicals and industry sectors in the United States on the basis of the LCIA- and RA-based tools developed by U.S. EPA, and compares the priority screening of toxic chemicals and industry sectors identified with each method to examine whether the LCIA- and RA-based results lead to the same prioritization schemes. The Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other environmental Impacts (TRACI) is applied as an LCIA-based screening approach with a focus on air and water emissions, and the Risk-Screening Environmental Indicator (RSEI) is applied in equivalent fashion as an RA-based screening approach. The U.S. Toxic Release Inventory is used as the dataset for this analysis, because of its general applicability to a comprehensive list of chemical substances and industry sectors. Overall, the TRACI and RSEI results do not agree with each other in part due to the unavailability of characterization factors and toxic scores for select substances, but primarily because of their different evaluation approaches. Therefore, TRACI and RSEI should be used together both to support a more comprehensive and robust approach to screening of chemicals for environmental management and policy and to highlight substances that are found to be of concern from both perspectives.     

Role of Adaptive Management for Watershed Councils

Recent findings in the Umpqua River Basin in southwestern Oregon illustrate a tension in the rise of both community-based and watershed-based approaches to aquatic resource management. While community-based institutions such as watershed councils offer relief from the government control landowners dislike, community-based approaches impinge on landowners' strong belief in independence and private property rights. Watershed councils do offer the local control landowners advocate; however, institutional success hinges on watershed councils' ability to reduce bureaucracy, foster productive discussion and understanding among stakeholders, and provide financial, technical, and coordination support. Yet, to accomplish these tasks current watershed councils rely on the fiscal and technical capital of the very governmental entities that landowners distrust. Adaptive management provides a basis for addressing the apparent tension by incorporating landowners' belief in environmental resilience and acceptance of experimentation that rejects “one size fits all solutions.” Therefore community-based adaptive watershed management provides watershed councils a framework that balances landowners' independence and fear of government intrusion, acknowledges the benefits of community cooperation through watershed councils, and enables ecological assessment of landowner-preferred practices. Community-based adaptive management integrates social and ecological suitability to achieve conservation outcomes by providing landowners the flexibility to use a diverse set of conservation practices to achieve desired ecological outcomes, instead of imposing regulations or specific practices.