Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management

This paper addresses the disparity and conflict between scientific meaning and the contextualised interpretation of (predominately) empirical indicators. This disparity arises due to the difficulty that the scientific community experiences when attempting to communicate with the political and planning community whose perspective remains outside the scope of both the indicator and the tools used.

We suggest that for empirical science to be communicated effectively to a policy oriented audience it must be transformed through both theoretical and virtual contexts. The significance of this approach is that at every stage communication becomes possible through a common negotiated reference point, or set of reference points. We highlight a mismatch between the science and the response, emphasising the value of an integrative approach to assessing environmental change and the need for accessible decision support tools in formulating responses to changes in the human-environmental balance.

We propose a framework which directly addresses the perceptual, empirical, theoretical and virtual dimensions of indicators and through which the conflicts between the science and the interpretation of socio-natural change may be overcome.

A significant body of evidence now exists that examines the motivations behind public opposition to the siting of waste or hazardous facilities. Some of these contributions have made a distinction between private and social determinants of opposition to a facility. The contribution of the current paper is to examine the statistical importance of variables that characterise this debate in the context of a proposal to build a landfill facility around Val Vibrata in Italy. While some roles are found for social motives such as ideas about fairness in explaining opposition, in this case, it is also found that the degree of social concern "decays" with distance lived from the site. One interpretation could be that respondents' stated public motives could be a way to articulate private concerns. At the very least, these findings suggest that it can be far from straightforward to unbundle explanations of opposition.

Based on the possibility that different stakeholders have different views and aspirations about public involvement in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), a study was carried out to test whether this was the case, and whether the urban/suburban public might have different views on involvement of local residents (who are considered to be stakeholders) in EIA to the rural public and whether the views of those with experience of such involvement differ from the views of those without such experience.

A questionnaire survey was carried out of UK EIA consultants and residents of one rural village and one urban area in the UK. The questions were structured in relation to seven issues relating to local residents involvement in EIA: importance; when (at which EIA stage); when (with respect to development sector); when (with respect to impact areas, e.g. air, fauna); to what extent; who; and for what purpose. Chi-squared tests were carried out to identify significant differences between pairs of results.

Significant differences were found between the views of the consultants (who would organise the local residents involvement) and the local residents themselves, for many of the issues investigated. There were also some differences in views between the views of the rural and urban/suburban public for a limited range of issues and some, but not many, differences between the views of those with experience of local residents involvement and those without.

Bearing in mind the limited nature of the survey, the results indicate that there is potential, even where consultants design what they consider to be very good public involvement programmes, for poor acceptance from the local residents and a lack of confidence in the programme. Consultants need to be aware of the range of views of stakeholders in order to develop successful public involvement programmes.

Life cycle oriented methods are increasingly used for environmental assessments (EAs) of the built environment. However, many assumptions are made in such assessments, potentially influencing the results and making the assessment more ambiguous. To increase the reliability of EAs, consequences of the assumptions made have to be better understood. Since energy use in the operation and maintenance phase is an important factor decisive for the overall environmental performance of a building, the purpose of this study is to investigate how the selection of heat and electricity mix affects the assessed environmental performance of buildings. It also aims to suggest how to choose heat and electricity data in EAs of the built environment in general.

Applying four different modes of electricity production and two different modes of heat production in a case study of three different buildings with different technical solutions for heat and electricity supply, the study show that choices of heat and electricity mix have significant influence on the final results of the EA. Regarding the choice of heat and electricity mix in an EA of buildings and the built environment, it is argued that both average and marginal data on electricity production should be used in general. As for data on district heat production, it is recommended to use data on the average production in the specific, local district heating system in general. Finally, it is argued that consequences of the assumptions made should be explicitly communicated in the EA report, so as to let the decision-makers rather than the analysts make the evaluation.

The cement industry constitutes a major source of air pollution and its environmental impacts have historically raised considerable public concern. This paper presents a health-based economic assessment of reducing particulate and sulfate emissions from a cement industrial complex. The economic valuation of the potential decrease in mortality and morbidity rates due to emissions reduction was conducted using a human capital approach and a cost of illness approach, respectively.