Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management

This editorial introduction takes an overview of the policy and technical context for evaluation methods and tools, as applied to regional sustainable development (RSD). The papers are drawn from the European expert workshop of the REGIONET Thematic Network project. The papers were grouped into four themes to reflect the structure of the workshop: current practice; technical tools; social processes; and integrated frameworks. Each of these demonstrates different aspects of the current "landscape" of evaluation in theory and practice, and the future developments in prospect. One emerging theme is the tension between a policy orientation and a technical orientation, and the many current experiments on this interface.

In May 2002 and 2003, two EuroConferences on "Evaluation of Sustainability" took place in Vienna. The key objectives of the two conferences were to support an international and interdisciplinary exchange of experience, to provide training opportunities to young researchers and to build capacities for evaluations in the context of sustainable development. In the course of the series young researchers carried out country surveys, analysing the state of Sustainable Development (SD) Evaluations in their home countries. In addition, a meta-evaluation of 106 evaluation reports analysed the extent to which evaluation standards are considered. Based on the surveys conducted in 10 countries by young researchers and the findings of the meta-evaluation, the article provides a market analysis, showing the fields of application in which SD-evaluations are conducted and which driving forces may lead to a better institutionalisation of SD-evaluations. Based on the presentations and discussions at the two conferences, future research questions and policy recommendations are identified. A new "Governance by Evaluation" policy style is outlined as a concluding recommendation.

The paper outlines how the sustainable regional development evaluation process is integrated within the planning and management cycle in the French context. Among the regions that have established reliable evaluation systems, some have tried to incorporate issues relating to sustainable development, thereby complying with European and national demands. But an overview of experiments made in the different French regions shows a wide variety of situations, with no single coordinated procedure allowing comparisons to be drawn. By way of example, the way this integration is implemented in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region is presented. In this region, political backing, due largely to the presence of green representatives in the regional council, enabled considerable upstream work to be carried out, notably concerning strategic environmental evaluation and policy evaluation with regard to sustainable development. Finally, the paper presents the outcomes of the evaluation process with regard to sustainable regional development: an effect of inter-institutional decompartmentalisation leading to greater transversality have been noticed, as well as a process of an active awareness-raising. But a gap between technical and political levels is still noticeable.

Despite recent reforms intended to restore confidence in them, appraisal practices used to develop and assess the desirability of interventions in the UK transport sector remain contested, constituting arenas where competing problem definitions are likely to come into conflict. Through a detailed case study of the first of a new generation of "multi-modal transport studies", this paper explores the politics of the "new approach to appraisal" and subsequent decision-making, examining a number of factors that contributed to the failure in this case, and more widely, to reach consensual decisions. Ambiguities in guidance documents and government policy, and mismatches in the timescales of important policy and plan development processes, combined with inherent uncertainties, are shown to have contributed to a climate in which conflicting local discourses could not be reconciled. Finally, the ultimate outcome of the Hastings study — rejection by central government of a series of bypass proposals — is discussed in terms of its implications for current debates over sustainability appraisal.

Integrated planning for regional development is relatively new in Poland, following the reform of the territorial administration in 1999. The strategic plans now produced by the regional parliaments are crucial research documents, particularly for their orientation to environmental and regional sustainable development objectives. This research developed and tested an assessment framework of issues for each regional plan. This was framed first in terms of internal regional objectives, and second in terms of their role in national level plans and policies. Such vertical integration of planning systems is a major challenge for European multi-level systems of governance. The assessment framework uses a system of indicators and indices, comparing regional versus national conditions and trends, based on a simple rational/maximal model. The methodology was designed to be transferable to other territorial levels, and may become a practical tool for evaluation of structural funding in similar regions across the EU. The methodology will benefit from further enhancements, in particular for the indicator set used for the 2000–2010 regional sustainable development model. However, at this stage in the development of Polish strategic planning, it aims to provide a starting point for sustainability impact assessment of all major policy proposals, in the spirit of the Göteborg principles for European sustainable development.

This paper is an attempt to develop a holarchical paradigm for regional sustainability assessment based on a critic of the epistemology of sustainability, seen as between two polar opposites that make up a unified system.

On the one hand we find what can be described as a representationalist view, for which sustainability is the result of juxtaposing certain economic, social and environmental aspects of reality. However, complexity and uncertainty are the most relevant epistemological results of trying to define sustainability as an "objective" entity derived from an analytical perspective.

On the other hand, complexity and uncertainty lead to the conclusion that sustainability cannot be expressed and, therefore, the problem of what to do does not depend so much on the description of the object we want to act on, but on how we decide what to do. This is the procedural epistemology of sustainability.

The methodological and epistemological proposal that has guided the development of the Sustainable Development Strategy for the Region of Murcia, for instance, is equidistant from these two options. It is based on the belief that it is necessary and possible to constitute sustainability as an analytically coherent (i.e. non-arbitrary) object of knowledge, which is at the same time autonomous from the analytical–fragmentary descriptions that comprise standard scientific knowledge. In the centre of this epistemology is a systemic understanding of "reality" that tries to grasp the hierarchical inter-existence of the outer world, and focuses primarily on contingent management from a dynamic viewpoint rather than that of certainty.

This epistemological dual perspective has many implications for evaluation practice, both in the framing of technical analysis, and in the management of social participation.

The Australian "Committing to Place" Research Project investigates the potential of outreach activities and educational programmes to increase community commitment to natural resource management. New communication technologies offer tools for enhancing participation — in terms of a deeper commitment from communities and participation of a wider range of groups — through their interactive qualities and capacity to link people in different places. The research project evaluates the piloting, by the National Museum of Australia, of several innovative outreach activities which use information and communication technologies specifically for community capacity building and developing platforms for change. With an understanding of evaluation as research to inform decision-making at all phases of project design, the Research Team is evaluating: (1) the effectiveness of each outreach activity in meeting stakeholder objectives, including community participants; (2) the potential each activity has to increase participation in the activity and other activities associated with cultural heritage or natural resources; and (3) progress towards "the higher purpose", that is, the potential for such activities to affect natural resource management outcomes in the long run. The research project is an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant involving the University of Tasmania, the National Museum of Australia, and the Murray–Darling Basin Commission.

Trade induces not only the exchange of money and goods and services between nations. Both directly and/or incorporated in traded goods, resources and environmental pressures are exchanged. It is the aim of this paper to present a way of linking the environmental pressure related to trade, to flows of money and products between nations. After a brief introduction of the Sustainable Economy Indices — a set of indices measuring macroeconomic sustainability — the method of the environmental–economic balance of payments is presented. The accounting system underlying the environmental–economic is outlined and accounts for Austria are calculated.

Evaluation practice, "regional development" and "sustainability" are each complex and contentious. Each shows rapid trends and transitions, and opportunities to be gained for more integrated governance and regional development. This paper takes a case study approach, based on the "Evaluation Workshop" of the EU thematic network project REGIONET. The case studies each concerned the restructuring and modernization process: one in an industrial conurbation, another in an agricultural region and a third in a peripheral region. For each case study, the workshop sessions explored in depth the current evaluation practice, the technical tools, the social processes and the trends and prospects in sight.

The results of this exploration highlight the rapid transitions emerging in several areas — in technical tools, in social participation and in multi-level governance. The implications are for a new kind of evaluation toolkit, a "meta-information system", which helps to link between existing methods and tools. They also point towards an evaluation approach that is based on a proactive "opportunity building", as much as a reactive "impact assessment".