Clive George

Testing for sustainable development through environmental assessment

The potential of environmental assessment as a sustainability instrument has long been recognized, but the criteria against which development proposals traditionally are judged are not necessarily criteria for sustainable development. Meanwhile, Agenda 21 identified the need for indicators of sustainable development for use in decision-making, but those that have been developed are not easy to apply in project level environmental assessment. These problems are addressed by returning to the fundamental principles of sustainable development and relating them to the principles of environmental assessment. In this way, 18 criteria have been derived, all of which must be satisfied if a development proposal is to be classified as sustainable development. These criteria have been tested against a number of actual environmental assessments to identify the likely consequences for project approval.

Sustainability appraisal for sustainable development: integrating everything from jobs to climate change

The United Kingdom Governments objectives-based approach to sustainability appraisal is critically examined, and is shown to create difficulties in distinguishing between what is appraisal and what is planning. A criterion-based variation is described, which is based on the principles of sustainable development as set out in the Rio Declaration. This offers promise of considerably simplifying the appraisal process, and at the same time focusing it more sharply on key sustainable development issues. The modified approach highlights those aspects of sustainable development that are particularly difficult to achieve in practice.

Environmental assessment in developing and transitional countries : principles, methods, and practice

Introduction (N. Lee & C. George).EA PRINCIPLES, PROCESSES AND PRACTICE.Environmental Assessment in its Developmental and Regulatory Context (N. Lee).Comparative Review of Environmental Assessment Procedures and Practice (C. George).Screening and Scoping (C. Wood).Environmental Impact Prediction and Evaluation (C. George).Economic Valuation of Environmental Impacts (C. Kirkpatrick).Social Impact Assessment (F. Vanclay).Reviewing the Quality of Environmental Assessments (N. Lee).Methods of Consultation and Public Participation (R. Bisset).Integrating Appraisals and Decision-making (N. Lee).Environmental Monitoring, Management and Auditing (C. George).COUNTRY AND INSTITUTIONAL STUDIES OF EA PROCEDURES AND PRACTICE.Country Studies of EA in Chile, Indonesia and the Russian Federation (L. Contreras, et al.).Country Studies of EA in Nepal, Jordan and Zimbabwe (R. Khadka, et al.).Environmental Assessment in Development Banks and Aid Agencies (C. Rees, et al.).Strengthening Future Environmental Assessment Practice: An International Perspective (H. Abaza).Index.

A Methodology for Assessing National Sustainable Development Strategies

At the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 governments undertook to develop and adopt national sustainable development strategies as a key component of implementing the goals of Agenda 21. Only partial progress was reported at the 2002 World Summit in Johannesburg, with uncertainty as to the effectiveness of those strategies that had been introduced. This paper describes a methodology for assessing a countrys progress in implementing a national sustainable development strategy (NSDS) and for identifying potential areas for improvement. Five key principles of sustainable development and strategic planning are identified, and a set of assessment criteria are proposed for testing their implementation. The results of applying the methodology in two Eastern European countries, Belarus and Slovakia, are reported. These case studies suggest that the proposed NSDS assessment methodology has considerable potential for strengthening sustainability planning at the national level. The effectiveness of the NSDS assessment methodology in strengthening national processes for sustainable development and strategic planning will also require greater transparency and accountability in governance practices. This suggests that progress in improving the quality of NSDS processes is likely to be conditional on broader considerations of institution building and governance reform.

Sustainable Development and Global Governance

The difficulties of achieving sustainable development reflect several internal tensions in the three-pillar approach: The adoption of economic development as a separate pillar from social development challenges the view that the purpose of one is to achieve the other; economic valuation of the environment removes the distinction between environmental and economic goals; and no distinction is drawn between the development of developing countries and the development of developed ones. These tensions are shown to be symptomatic of difficult issues being avoided. A closer examination revives doubts about whether the conservation of the global commons and the development of developing countries can both be achieved without major changes in economic structures and governance systems, nationally as well as globally. It is concluded that the development of more appropriate systems requires imaginative research in every discipline of the social sciences, with a vital role for cooperation between American and Chinese institutions.

Methodological Issues in the Impact Assessment of Trade Policy: Experience from the European Commission?s Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) Programme

Since 1999, the European Commission has subjected its external trade negotiations to a sus-tainability impact assessment (SIA) study. These studies have been undertaken by independent experts using a standard methodological framework developed at the University of Manchester. This paper provides a critical evaluation of the SIA programme over the past seven years, draws a number of good-practice lessons, and highlights the areas where further refinement and development of the methodology is needed.

Assessing global impacts at sector and project levels

Abstract The assessment of global impacts must account for effects that would be insignificant on their own, but which may be highly significant in combination with many others like them. This can in principle be dealt with by requiring that any adverse impact by fully mitigated, either within the action being assessed or in conjunction with other activities. More commonly, global impacts are not mitigated fully, and so some measure is needed of the extent to which an impacts magnitude is consistent with global sustainability objectives. This may be achieved by defining a time-dependent target for the overall impact and apportioning it, using criteria of global equity for apportionment between countries, and simple measures of project benefit for apportionment between individual projects. Quantified significance criteria can then be derived. Examples are given for greenhouse gas emissions and habitat loss in industrial and developing countries.

Capacity building for trade impact assessment: lessons from the development of environmental impact assessment

This paper examines difficulties in creating capacity to undertake impact assessments of trade policy and possible approaches to overcoming them, particularly in developing countries. The assessment of trade agreements and related policies can be a highly complex task, involving many different specialist disciplines. Also, many hurdles have to be overcome to integrate an effective impact assessment process into policy- formulation and decision-making mechanisms. Difficulties in some ways similar, in other ways different, have been encountered in developing effective environmental impact assessment (EIA) systems. This paper reviews experience with EIA capacity-building, and considers how the lessons learned might be applied to initiatives to build capacity for the impact assessment of trade policy.

SUSTAINABILITY IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF TRADE AGREEMENTS: FROM PUBLIC DIALOGUE TO INTERNATIONAL GOVERNANCE

In common with the governments of the United States and Canada the European Commission subjects its trade policy to a publicly conducted impact assessment process. The EC approach differs from the others in assessing economic and social impacts as well as environmental ones, in other countries as well as domestically. In principle this can contribute to stengthening international governance. In practice difficulties are encountered in integrating the studies into the decision-making process. This paper examines the experience that has been accumulated in the EC programmme, with particular reference to studies at the global level for World Trade Organisation negotiations and regionally for the Euro-Mediterranean Free Trade Area. These two examples offer pointers for how the impact assessment process might be adapted or extended to make a stronger contribution to international governance at both regional and global level.

Impact Assessment and Sustainable Development: An Introduction

The United Nations (UN) Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 successfully established the concept of sustainable development as an underlying principle for strategic policy and planning. But the translation of the principle of sustainable development into practice has presented new challenges in finding workable solutions to the complex trade-offs that can arise between the different, and often conflicting, dimensions of sustainable development. The growing complexity of policy-making in terms of the goal of sustainable development has encouraged a growing interest among researchers and practitioners in developing a practical and evidence based approach to public policy appraisal and evaluation. As a result, impact assessment, defined as the systematic assessment of the potential or actual effects of a public intervention on the economic, social and environmental ‘pillars’ of sustainable development, is now used as a tool for policy-making in the European Commission, most member states of the European Union (EU), other OECD countries, and in a growing number of developing countries and transitional economies.1