The revised EIA Directive – possible implications for practice in England

Whilst environmental impact assessment (EIA) in England overall can be said to be of a good to satisfactory quality, we believe that the revised EIA Directive will be able to strengthen it further by addressing gaps with regards to the consideration of alternatives, climate change mitigation and adaptation, the consideration of accidents and disasters along with human health, land and biodiversity. Some challenges, however, are likely to remain, for example, with regards to penalties for non-compliance and a scoping stage that will remain optional. The biggest unknown at the time of writing this article however is whether or not the UK will remain in the EU, giving rise to some considerable uncertainties

Educating for urban sustainability: A transdisciplinary approach

An understanding of sustainability issues should be a key component of degree programmes. It is widely regarded as being a central attribute to professional practice and responsible global citizenship, arguably more so for the training of teachers since they potentially influence their students. This issue was brought to the fore when responsibility for delivering the 'design and the environment' course was transferred to the building discipline at the University of Newcastle in Australia as a result of restructuring. The attractiveness of the subject as an elective, the need to make it accessible to distance learning students and the desirability of applying transdisciplinary approaches to solving environmental problems presented the course designers with both challenges and opportunities, particularly in devising an assessment context within which students from multiple disciplines could be exposed to, and learn from each other's professional environmental evaluation norms. This paper describes an innovative holistic, multi-criteria problem-solving course design that allows a diverse mix of undergraduates to develop a transdisciplinary understanding of sustainability issues through the use of learning contracts. It reports the experiences of staff and students involved with the course, highlighting the beneficial outcomes

Evaluating strategic environmental assessment in the Netherlands: Content, process and procedure as indissoluble criteria for effectiveness

To assess the effectiveness of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) we distinguish between its contribution to the quality of the ultimate policy choice (usefulness, applicability), the procedural quality of the planning process (transparency, timeliness) and the quality of stakeholder participation in the planning process (openness, equity, dialogue). In the context of two case studies involving Dutch planning practice, we argue that when and how an SEA is applied is crucial to understanding its e

A game theory perspective on Environmental Assessment: what games are played and what does this tell us about decision making rationality and legitimacy?

Game theory provides a useful theoretical framework to examine the decision process operating in the context of environmental assessment, and to examine the rationality and legitimacy of decision-making subject to Environmental Assessment (EA). The research uses a case study of the Environmental Impact Assessment and Sustainability Appraisal processes undertaken in England. To these are applied an analytical framework, based on the concept of decision windows to identify the decisions to be assessed. The conditions for legitimacy are defined, based on game theory, in relation to the timing of decision information, the behaviour type (competitive, reciprocal, equity) exhibited by the decision maker, and the level of public engagement; as, together, these control the type of rationality which can be brought to bear on the decision. Instrumental rationality is based on self-interest of individuals, whereas deliberative rationality seeks broader consensus and is more likely to underpin legitimate decisions. The results indicate that the Sustainability Appraisal process, conducted at plan level, is better than EIA, conducted at project level, but still fails to provide conditions that facilitate legitimacy. Game theory also suggests that Sustainability Appraisal is likely to deliver ‘least worst’ outcomes rather than best outcomes when the goals of the assessment process are considered; this may explain the propensity of such ‘least worst’ decisions in practice. On the basis of what can be learned from applying this game theory perspective, it is suggested that environmental assessment processes need to be redesigned and better integrated into decision making in order to guarantee the legitimacy of the decisions made

The place of strategic environmental assessment in the privatised electricity industry

The private sector has given relatively little attention to the emergence of strategic environmental assessment (SEA); even recently privatised utilities, where SEA might be deemed particularly appropriate, and whose activities are likely to fall within the scope of the European Union SEA Directive, have shown less interest than might be expected. However, the global trend towards the privatisation of state-owned enterprises makes the adaptation of SEA towards these industries all the more pressing. This paper addresses the place that SEA might take within the electricity sector, taking the privatised UK electricity industry as an example. Particular challenges are posed by the radical restructuring of the industry, designed to introduce competitive behaviour, making the development of comprehensive SEA processes problematic, and requiring SEA to be placed in the context of corporate environmental policy and objectives.</p

Transport infrastructure: making more sustainable decisions for noise reduction

There is a global and growing sustainability agenda for surface transport yet there are no specific means of assessing the relative sustainability of infrastructure equipment. Transport noise reduction devices are a significant part of the surface transport infrastructure: they specifically address environmental and social needs, have a high economic impact, and involve a wide range of raw materials raising multiple technical issues. The paper presents an account of the bespoke tool developed for assessing the sustainability of transport noise reduction devices. Regulatory standards for noise reduction devices and the relevant sustainability assessment tools and procedures adopted worldwide were reviewed in order to produce a set of pertinent sustainability criteria and indicators for NRDs projects, which were reviewed and edited during a stakeholder engagement process. A decision making process for assessing the relative sustainability of noise reduction devices was formulated following the review of the literature. Two key stages were identified: (1) collection of data for criteria fulfillment evaluation and (2) multi-criteria analysis for assessing the sustainability of noise reduction devices. Appropriate tools and methods for achieving both objectives are recommended

New Faces and New Masks of Today's Consumer

In 1995, we proposed that consumption and contemporary consumerism could not be studied or understood separately from the world of work and production. We proposed that contemporary consumerism was built on the back of what we referred to as `the Fordist Deal'. This deal, pioneered by Henry Ford for his employees, was the promise of ever increasing standards of living in exchange for a quiescent labour force accepting alienating work. Since that deal was struck, consumerism came to signify a general pre-occupation with consumption standards and choice as well as a willingness to read meanings in material commodities and to equate happiness and success with material possessions. In this sense, Ford may be seen as the father both of mass production and mass consumption. Since the Fordist high noon of consumerism in the West, mass consumption is widely seen as having fragmented into a proliferation of highly individualized niche products. For its part, a considerable part of mass production has migrated to countries with lower wages and looser environmental and social controls, fueling their own variants of consumerism. In this article, we examine the gradual erosion of the Fordist Deal in the light of developments in the last 10 years or so, seeking to assess the future of consumerism at a global level. We also seek to identify and discuss some emerging conceptualizations of the consumer, some of the new faces and masks assumed by the archetypal character of our types. We analyse some of the tensions and contradictions lurking behind these conceptualizations and try to envisage some of the real choices facing consumers today and some of the processes of social change that hinge on the outcomes of these choices. The article identifies a fundamental paradox between the ubiquity of the consumer in contemporary discourses and the virtual impossibility of generalizing about consumers. We suggest, then, that the consumer may be viewed as one of those `essentially contested concepts' proposed by Gallie that defy domestication. The consumer, we argue, is unmanageable, both as a concept, since no-one can pin it down to one specific conceptualization at the expense of all others, and as an entity, since attempts to control and manage the consumer lead to the consumer mutating from one impersonation to another. It is precisely this paradox that we seek to capture in our article's title. The article concludes with a consideration of three basic challenges that are liable to lead to fundamental reorientation of consumption and production, as well as of our conceptualizations and theorizing about them. These challenges are the outcomes of environmental, demographic and social factors that, we argue, make the current situation unsustainable and will bring about its dissolution

The local socio-economic impacts of major power station projects

The Impacts Assessment Unit (IAU) at Oxford Brookes University has pioneered research on the local socio-economic impacts of major power station projects. Resultant insights have included: • Increasing focus on socio-economic impacts in the assessments of such projects; • Use of associated planning techniques and mitigation measures; and • Use of the research by wide range of stakeholders, including developers, local communities, local authorities and various agencies (e.g. health, education etc). Within the REF period these insights have been deployed in new power station impact research, recently (2011-2013) forming part of the successful EDF (international electricity utility company www.edf.com) application to the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) (now National Infrastructure Directorate within the UK Planning Inspectorate (PINS)) to build a new nuclear power station Hinkley Point C (Somerset), plus consultation studies for a new nuclear power station Sizewell C (Suffolk)