Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management

The ability to utilise corporate environmental reports to benchmark environmental performance requires the development and inclusion of standardised environmental performance indicators. Most systems for benchmarking corporate environmental reports are measures of environmental activities rather than performance. The UK Water Industry has considerable experience in measuring and reporting standardised environmental performance indicators to the regulator and publishing corporate environmental reports. An analysis of corporate environmental reports shows that the inclusion of industry standardised environmental performance indicators is patchy and inconsistent. Moreover, slight differences in units of measurement make comparisons very difficult. A new set of standardised environmental performance indicators developed by the water industry itself, shows similar findings when compared against corporate environmental reports. At the current time corporate environmental reports cannot be used to benchmark performance. There is no reason why corporate environmental reports could not be adjusted to include the two sets of standardised environmental performance indicators examined. In their absence there seems to be little purpose in benchmarking corporate environmental reports.

For municipalities to fulfil their role in a nation's work for a healthy environment, and ultimately for sustainability, there is a need for better information about the pressures society puts on the environment, as well as about the underlying causes of these pressures. At present, information about society's pressure on the environment is most often provided by inventories of emissions of different pollutants. In this paper, which takes its point of departure in Sweden, it is argued that such an approach is too narrow. Regional material flow analysis (MFA) is presented as an alternative to emissions inventories. The paper ends with a thorough discussion on the role of materials accounting (incorporating MFA) in municipal environmental management. It is suggested that an early application of this "tool" can promote a change of environmental management towards regional materials management, as a means for reaching sustainability, and further into regional environmental management.

The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) is the legislation used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate releases of genetically engineered microorganisms. The rule defining the scope of the notification requirements for releases of microbial products of biotechnology was published in April 1997. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had some latitude regarding the extent to which various categories of microorganisms would be regulated, but the agency was constrained by requirements of TSCA and an interagency agreement about how to regulate products of biotechnology. This paper investigates the extent to which the scope of oversight is based on risk. A risk-based rule is defined as one where the reporting requirements are based on potential for exposure or expected adverse effects. The evolution of the rule is described, and risk-based components are discussed. In conclusion, the scope of oversight of microbial releases is determined to be based on risk to the extent that legislation and institutional constraints permit.

The discussion is about the validity of long-term environmental impact assessment (EIA) and its role in the licensing process for radioactive waste disposal in Slovenia. Owing to uncertainties associated with long-term evaluations an alternative approach is suggested for site selection for the repository. The idea behind the new approach is to integrate environmental planning with the optimisation of land-use as a basis for identifying the best site for the repository. This approach is to complement or, eventually, substitute the existing strictly regulatory concept relying upon criteria compliance tied with the performance assessment of the disposal system. It is expected that the new approach will more effectively build confidence among professionals and the public toward siting of radioactive waste disposal. The new approach suggests not to use dose and risk as individual numerical indicators for deciding about acceptability of the proposed disposal system, since they may vary greatly given the large uncertainties connected to future societal characteristics and human exposures. Instead, a concept of reasonable assurance together with the evaluation of interests and potentials for future land-use in the particular environment is suggested.

For environment assessments to provide a positive contribution to official decision making in planning, the resulting environmental statement (ES) needs to exhibit such qualities as veracity, completeness and understandability; therefore the planning authority should "review" the ES to establish whether this is indeed the case and then move on to utilising the information contained therein. This research surveyed a sample of British local planning authorities to discover how they "assess the assessments" and use the information supplied. The literature suggests that planners use the "statutory consultation" system to achieve many aspects of a review, and therefore, a sample of consultees was asked about their treatment of ESs. From the surveys, it is clear that planners do in fact place great reliance on the consultees to review, verify and summarise at least parts of ESs. However there is some mismatch between the expectations of consultee review on the part of planners against the objectives of the consultees themselves. This then throws into question how useful the information is in the actual decision making processes. The paper goes on to examine the alternatives available for reviews and proposes the development of an independent review body which can ensure that ESs are "fit for purpose".