Tomás B. Ramos

Environmental indicator frameworks to design and assess environmental monitoring programs

Monitoring is fundamental to environmental impact assessment (EIA) both to assess adherence to standards and to support management options. The use of indicators assures that a monitoring program addresses only the key variables associated with significant environmental impacts and also improves monitoring communication and reporting processes. This paper develops a conceptual framework to design and assess an environmental post-decision monitoring program under EIA procedures - INDICAMP. It also discusses how current indicator frameworks can be used to design and evaluate the performance of environmental monitoring programs in projects. A coastal infrastructure case study demonstrates the usefulness of this methodology.

Ecological risk assessment of sediment management areas : application to Sado Estuary, Portugal

The purpose of this work was to integrate different methodologies to assess the potential ecological risk of estuarine sedimentary management areas, using the Sado Estuary in Portugal as case study. To evaluate the environmental risk of sediment contamination, an integrative and innovative approach was used involving assessment of sediment chemistry, sediment toxicity, benthic community structure, human driving forces and pressures and management areas organic load levels. The basis for decision-making for overall assessment was a statistical multivariate analysis appended into a score matrix tables, using a best expert judgment. The integrated approach allowed to identify from the 19 management areas analyzed, three with no risk but other three with high risk to cause adverse effects in the biota, related with the contaminants analyzed. The methodologies used showed to be effective as a support for decision making leading to future estuarine management recommendations.

Sustainability Assessment: The Role of Indicators

There are many ways to assess sustainable development, each of which provides potentially useful, though different, insights for distinct audiences. Despite the abundance, specific features and diversity of methods and tools for assessing sustainability, indicators are one of the most used approaches. In fact, sustainability indicators, have been at the forefront of many political, academic, scientific, and community debates for the past decades. Nevertheless, there is a dearth of research on synthesizing indicator approaches, frameworks, trade-offs, advantages, and drawbacks, at different operational and strategic scales and contexts. Therefore, the aim of this chapter is first to develop an integrative analysis of existing sustainability indicator approaches, frameworks, and different initiatives in scope and scale. In the second place, it aims to present insights and critical dilemmas about how indicators could be adopted and tailored for higher education institutions that want to assess sustainability performance. The roles and potential values of sustainability indicators should be clarified; more than “empty” or “miraculous” assessment tools, they need to be considered as steering processes able to change organizational and cultural dimensions of higher education institutions, their education and research structures, and the way they relate to society.

Integration of ecosystem services in spatial planning: a survey on regional planners' views

Spatial plans shape land-use changes, which in turn are main drivers of anthropogenic ecosystem alterations, therefore influencing the ecosystem services (ES) delivered by a given territory. However, integration of the ES concept in policies and plans is reported as poor in literature. The main goal of this research is to gain insight on the views and perceptions of Portuguese regional spatial planners regarding the ES concept and its integration in spatial plans. For that we designed and administered a questionnaire survey aimed at practitioners and decision-makers from Portuguese regional spatial planning authorities. The survey focused on issues such as the level of awareness and knowledge of the ES concept among planners, the perceived level of current ES integration in regional spatial plans and corresponding strategic environmental assessments, the main factors that either facilitate or obstruct that integration, or the level of importance given to ES integration in the planning process. Findings show that planners know the ES concept, they consider it as important to be integrated in spatial planning and, interestingly, that it is already rather integrated in existing plans. They believe that planning teams and authorities have skilled human resources for ES integration. However, they revealed a low knowledge on the main initiatives intended to push ecosystem services into the political agenda, like for example the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. The questionnaire used can be easily transferred into other spatial planning contexts to draw, e.g. a broader European picture on ES integration in spatial planning.

Sustainability reporting in public sector organisations: Exploring the relation between the reporting process and organisational change management for sustainability

Sustainability Reporting has become a key element in different organisations. Although there have been a number of academic publications discussing the adoption of sustainability reports in the public sector, their numbers have been quite low when compared to those focussing on corporate reports. Additionally, there has been little research on the link between sustainability reporting in Public Sector Organisations (PSOs) and Organisational Change Management for Sustainability (OCMS). This paper focuses on the contribution of sustainability reporting to OCMS. A survey was sent to all PSOs that have published at least one sustainability report based on the GRI guidelines. The study provides a critical analysis of the relation between sustainability reporting and OCMS in PSOs, including the drivers for reporting, the impacts on organisation change management, and the role of stakeholders in the process. Despite still lagging in sustainability reporting journey, PSOs are starting to use sustainability reporting as a communication tool, and this could drive organisational changes for sustainability.

Towards effective scoping in strategic environmental assessment

The scoping phase in strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is considered a central issue for the effectiveness of the whole SEA process, enhancing decision-making. Understanding SEA should be context-specific and scoping is paramount for a robust SEA; the main goal of this research was to develop a framework for the evaluation of the procedural effectiveness of the scoping stage in a specific political and planning system context – Portugal. The framework developed comprises a set of 21 criteria divided into six broad themes and was applied to 20 Portuguese SEA scoping reports, through content analysis. Overall, it was found that mandatory issues in the Portuguese SEA context were met and the scoping reports used mainly national guidelines. However, issues of public participation are often discarded and there is no evidence that scoping starts early in the decision-making process, or if it is done concurrently. Nonetheless, the framework developed establishes best practice for the SEA scoping phase, needing to be adapted to the different political and planning system contexts in order to reflect legal and institutional specificities.

Use of indicators in River Basin Management Planning and Strategic Environmental Assessment processes

Abstract River Basin Management Planning (RBMP) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) processes often rely on the use of indicators to assess the sustainability of planning options, to communicate with stakeholders and to support decision-making. The aim of this research was to investigate the adoption of indicators to support these processes and to analyse indicators integration between them. A conceptual framework was adopted to support a qualitative content analysis of the Portuguese RBMP and corresponding SEA reports. The main findings showed that indicators are generally used in SEA and planning reports. The analysed documents used a large number of indicators, mostly quantitative, and adopted very different approaches for their organization, selection and validation. Usually no participatory process was used in this context. The research supported the identification of areas for improvement, such as the need to promote a stronger stakeholder engagement in the indicator development process, the relevance of using standardized cross-cutting indicators and the call for the identification of a set of critical indicators to be used in both processes.