Sustainability Assessment

by Gibson, Robert B.; Hassan, Selma; Holtz, Susan; Tansey, James; Whitelaw, Graham

• ISBN13: 9781844070503
• ISBN10: 1844070506
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-09-30
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

* The first book to tackle the complexities of sustainability assessment and provide practical solutions * Comprehensive analysis, guidance, and criteria for impact assessment professionals and policymakers at all levels and in all circumstances * Applicable to the new EU Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive and other international assessment systems Many governments express commitments to sustainability, yet until now assessing sustainability in projects, plans, programs, and policies has been largely limited to traditional environmental assessment (EA) with an imperfect attempt to staple on biophysical and socio-economic considerations. While traditional EA focuses on mitigating negative effects, achieving true sustainability demands that each new undertaking make a positive contribution to desirable and durable futures. This onerous goal can only be achieved if decisionmakers are able to consciously and publicly specify and use sustainability-centered criteria to justify options and to weigh trade-offs. Sustainability Assessment covers all aspects of the core requirements of sustainability including the creation of basic criteria, handling trade-offs, practicalities in application, implications for process design and uses in decisionmaking as well as examining the range of tools and innovative examples available to assist implementation of sustainability assessment.

Author Biography

James Tansey is a research associate at the Sustainable Development Research Initiative, University of British Columbia. Robert B. Gibson is professor of environment and resource studies at the University of Waterloo in Ontario and Editorial Board Chair of Alternatives Journal.

Table of Contents

List of Figures, Tables and Boxes	vii
Preface	viii
Acknowledgements	xiii
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations	xiv
1 Beginnings: Stumbling Towards Sustainability Assessment	1	(13)
Beginning in Labrador	1	(10)
Specifying the higher test	11	(3)
2 Assessment: Thirty-some Years of Environmental Assessment	14	(24)
Growing up in a difficult world	14	(1)
Basic and more advanced approaches	15	(6)
Development stages and growth trends	21	(15)
Maturing assessment and emerging sustainability	36	(2)
3 Sustainability: The Essentials of the Concept	38	(28)
A necessary and difficult idea	38	(1)
Old sustainability	39	(2)
Groundwork for a new sustainability	41	(6)
The second coming of sustainability	47	(4)
Debating the concept	51	(8)
The essentials	59	(3)
Initial implications for assessment regimes	62	(4)
4 Practice: Sustainability in Illustrative Initiatives	66	(22)
Theory and practice	66	(1)
Stories	67	(15)
Lessons from the stories	82	(6)
5 Criteria: Sustainability Requirements as the Basis for Decision Making	88	(34)
The need for decision criteria	88	(7)
Requirements for progress towards sustainability	95	(20)
Characteristics, strengths and limitations of the requirements as decision criteria	115	(7)
6 Trade-offs: Facing Conflict and Compromise	122	(20)
Pursuing sustainability in a messy world	122	(1)
Unavoidable trade-offs	123	(2)
Trade-offs of substance and process	125	(5)
Trade-off rules	130	(8)
Beyond the rules	138	(4)
7 Processes: Designing Sustainability Assessment Regimes	142	(23)
How versus what	142	(2)
Basic process principles	144	(1)
Components of a sustainability assessment law	145	(17)
Transitions	162	(3)
8 Decisions: Applying Sustainability-based Criteria in Significance Determinations and Other Common Assessment Judgements	165	(15)
Decisions and significance	165	(3)
Applying sustainability-based criteria in significance judgements	168	(12)
9 Continuations: The Way Ahead	180	(9)
Proliferation	180	(1)
The fundamentals and the variations	181	(4)
Getting there	185	(4)
References	189	(17)
Appendices	206	(42)
Index	248