Sustainabilitybased Criteria and Significance Judgements

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Sustainability-based Criteria and Significance
Judgements

• Robert B. Gibson
• Environment and Resource Studies, University of
  Waterloo
• Sustainable Development Research Institute,
  University of British Columbia
• Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency
• Research and Development Seminar Series
• Vancouver, British Columbia
• March 1, 2002

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Seven sustainability principles

• Integrity
• Sufficiency and opportunity
• Efficiency
• Equity
• Democracy and civility
• Precaution
• Immediate and long term integration

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• Integrity
• Build human-ecological relations to maintain the
  integrity of biophysical systems in order to
  maintain the irreplaceable life support functions
  upon which human well-being depends.
•  
• Sufficiency and opportunity
• Ensure that everyone has enough for a decent life
  and that everyone has opportunities to seek
  improvements in ways that do not compromise
  future generations' possibilities for sufficiency
  and opportunity.

4

• Equity
• Ensure that sufficiency and effective choices for
  all are pursued in ways that reduce dangerous
  gaps in sufficiency and opportunity (and health,
  security, social recognition, political
  influence, etc.) between the rich and the poor.
• Efficiency
• Reduce overall material and energy demands and
  other stresses on socio-ecological systems.

5

• Democracy and civility
• Build our capacity to apply sustainability
  principles through a better informed and better
  integrated package of administrative, market,
  customary and personal decision making practices.
• Precaution
• Respect uncertainty, avoid even poorly understood
  risks of serious or irreversible damage to the
  foundations for sustainability, design for
  surprise and manage for adaptation.

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• Immediate and long term integration
• Apply all principles of sustainability at once,
• seeking mutually supportive benefits.
• Implications
• need positive steps in all areas, at least in
  general and at least in the long term and
• need to resist convenient immediate compromises
  unless they clearly promise an eventual gain.

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Environmental assessment components involving
significance considerations

• Designing the process setting legislated
  purposes specifying process components
  (coverage, scope, levels, openness, guidance,
  decisions and enforceability).
• Applying the requirements exclusion/inclusion,
  allocation to assessment streams.
• Planning and assessing possible undertakings
  determining case specific purposes, needs,
  alternatives, scope, study design, effects and
  uncertainties, mitigations and enhancements,
  preferred alternative, overall implications.
• Making and implementing approval decisions
  determining acceptability, terms and conditions,
  monitoring and adaptation requirements.

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Environmental assessment components involving
significance considerations (contd)

• One key underlying element is concern about the
  significance of potential or predicted effects
  (David Lawrence presentation).
• Second key underlying element, especially
  important in environmental assessment when
  sustainability matters the significance of trade
  offs.

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Compromises and trade-offs in assessment for
sustainability

• Positive improvements are needed on all fronts
  (integration principle).
• But compromise and trade-offs are practically
  inevitable.
• Which ones are significant if contribution to
  sustainability is the objective?
• Which ones are acceptable?

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Examples of compromises and trade-offs (1)

• Compensations and substitutions
• Direct and indirect compensation for, rather than
  full mitigation of, negative effects, e.g.
• later rehabilitation of aggregate mining
  operations on somewhat degraded agricultural
  lands (substitution in time)
• constructed wetland to replace relatively natural
  one (substitution in place) and
• new community recreational facilities
  compensating for risks to traditional hunting and
  trapping (substitution in kind).

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Examples of compromises and trade-offs (2)

• Net gain and loss calculations
• Aggregation of net gain and no net loss
  calculations, e.g.
• reduction of near term ecological damage risks
  from surface storage of high level radioactive
  wastes balanced against smaller but very long
  term risks from deep geological disposal
  (differences in time)
• major damages to the interests of tribal people
  displaced by a new dam balanced against more
  material security for larger numbers of poor
  farmers downstream (differences in place) and
• efficiency gains from industrial process
  improvements balanced against associated job
  losses (substitution in kind, across principles).

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Practical determinations

• Justified in the circumstances" (e.g. the
  Cheviot case)
• Sustainability assurance" (e.g. the Voisey's
  Bay case)

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Trade-off rules and decision processes

• These include trade-offs within and between
  requirements of individual principles.
• Explicit and transparent decision making is
  required.
• Some general trade-off rules may be acceptable
  (the rule of positive contribution) and may be
  required (e.g. for specifying grounds for
  "justified in the circumstances").
• Perhaps few set rules will be appropriate for all
  cases (different communities, ecologies,
  stresses, aspirations, etc.).
• Also need processes for deciding which trade-offs
  are or may be significant (worthy of careful
  attention) and which ones are or may be
  acceptable.

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General rules for decisions about trade-offs and
compromises (basic options)

• No "significant" compromises and trade-offs are
  permitted.
• OR
• No "significant" compromises or trade-offs are
  permitted, unless approved by all relevant
  stakeholders.
• Make all "significant" compromises and trade-offs
  explicit and chose the most desirable option
  among the alternatives.

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General rules for decisions about trade-offs and
compromises (illustrative examples)

• Compromises and trade-offs in (all or specified)
  sustainability-related matters are undesirable
  unless proven otherwise the burden of proof
  falls on the proponent of any compromise or
  trade-off.
• Only undertakings that are likely to provide
  neutral or positive overall effects in each
  principle category (e.g. no net efficiency
  losses, no net additional inequities) can be
  acceptable.
• No significant adverse effects in any principle
  category can be justified by compensations of
  other kinds, or in other places (this would
  preclude cross-principle trade-offs such as
  ecological rehabilitation compensations for
  introduction of significantly greater
  inequities).
• No displacement of (significant, net, any)
  negative effects from the present to the future
  can be justified .

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General rules for decisions about trade-offs and
compromises (more illustrative examples)

• No enhancement can be accepted as an acceptable
  trade-off against incomplete mitigation if
  stronger mitigation efforts are feasible.
• Only compromises or trade-offs leading to
  substantial net positive long term effects are
  acceptable.
• No compromises or trade-offs are acceptable if
  they entail further declines or risks of decline
  in officially recognized areas of concern (set
  out in specified official national or other
  sustainability strategies, plans, etc.).

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Key process design implications of sustainability
in environmental assessment

• Explicit commitment to sustainability objectives
  and to application of sustainability-based
  criteria
• Broad definition of environment or other means of
  ensuring attention to social, economic, cultural
  and cumulative as well as individual biophysical
  effects, and all their systemic interrelations
• Mandatory justification of purpose
• Mandatory evaluation of reasonable alternatives

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Key process design implications of sustainability
in environmental assessment (contd)

• Attention to positive as well as negative effects
  and enhancements as well as mitigations
• Provisions for adaptive design and adaptive
  implementation of approved undertakings
• Links with other sustainability-defining and
  applying processes and
• Provisions for transparency and effective public
  involvement throughout the process.

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Four main generic needs

• Explicit and effectively imposed requirements for
  careful, open attention to sustainability
  principles in the conception, planning, approval
  and implementation of all important undertakings
  at the strategic and project levels, in all
  jurisdictions
• Strong generic guidance on the relevant
  sustainability objectives, priorities and
  criteria, for all the main kinds of undertakings
  and locations, and covering all the main steps of
  environmental assessment
• Well developed process guidance for the
  development of case-specific, contextual
  frameworks for applying sustainability
  objectives, priorities, criteria, and trade-off
  rules, and understanding their implications for
  the relevant decisions and
• Well tested methodologies for sustainability
  deliberations, plus baseline data, indicators,
  systems depictions, desired future scenarios and
  approaches to addressing trade-offs.

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Illustrative applications

• General
• Review current sustainability indicators to
  determine their adequacy and applicability for
  environmental assessment application (given the
  principles above, or other formulations).
• Identify the most appropriate processes and
  process rules for developing context-specific
  sustainability objectives and criteria, for
  assessment of specified types of undertakings and
  specified locations.
• Specify indicators and processes for significance
  judgements.
• Elaborate implications for assessment in
  particular sectors (e.g. mining) and areas (e.g.
  through regional planning or area assessments).