Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management

Making sustainability operational within organisational practice requires dealing with three interrelated questions: A "what-question", an "attribute-question" and a "who-question". The complexity of these questions needs a tailor-made interpretation of sustainability. This paper provides a framework that can be used for obtaining such a tailor-made interpretation of sustainability. This framework is based on the notion that staff members somehow need to make sense of sustainability. By taking a cognitive mapping approach, a multidimensional space of sustainability can be deduced. The interpretation of the dimensions of this space can then provide a definition of sustainability. We illustrate the framework by obtaining an image of sustainability for a firm of consulting engineers.

Given the SMEs a heterogeneous group in the Chinese society due to their inherent characteristics, this paper takes a preliminary step to look into the complicated and dynamic environment for engaging China's SMEs in corporate sustainability. It aims to provide insight into how China's SMEs perceive and practice sustainability, and to explore key drivers and barriers behind their environmental and social engagement. Findings reveal an apparent contradiction in the current status of China's SMEs towards sustainability: a high level of concern vs. a low level of engagement. The most important motivator appears to be improving corporate image, followed by governmental legislation. While barriers hindering SMEs' sustainable engagement vary, predominant problems involve a lack of awareness and perception, insufficient financial resources and insufficient or ill-suited external support. Accordingly, the paper highlights three areas for China's SMEs' further improvements: education, communication and cooperation.

Research for this paper was undertaken with the aim of revealing perceptions of a select group of environmental assessment experts with experience in wind power regarding public opinion. The multi criteria decision making (MCDM) software was used to quantify the expert perceptions of what made a wind turbine site publicly acceptable. Seven environmental experts experienced in wind farm environmental assessment were interviewed using the 'Expert Choice' software. The software recorded and tested interviewee decisions regarding acceptable site types and the criteria that would make them acceptable in terms of public opinion. The need for this research was that historically many environmental expert reports used by wind power site developers that attempted to meet the various criteria for planning permission provided little or no information on public opinion regarding the proposed site that could later lead to it being opposed locally.

Assessing the potential impact of development projects in the Sudan dates back to the study of the Equatorial Nile Project conducted in the last century during the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) studies commenced in the early eighties of the last century with the establishment of the Institute of Environmental Studies in the University of Khartoum. The practice gathered momentum with the recent activities in the oil and roads sectors. Although the practice of (EIA) has only recently been legalized by the passing of the Environment Protection Act of 2001, the performance of EIA is often poor due to flaws in legislative, administrative, institutional and procedural frameworks. Effective implementation of the EIA process in the Sudan requires the institutionalization of the process within the legislative, administrative, political and education system in the country. Special emphasis is needed for the federal system of governance. Other issues include accreditation, sectoral regulations, establishing of a National Centre of EIA for advising the government and for training of human capacities. The paper calls for more involvement of stakeholders via effective popular participation in all steps of EIA. The expected influx of foreign investors following the Comprehensive Peace Accord of 2005 and the concentration of oil reserves in the ecologically rich and sensitive regions, call for an urgent improvement in the legislative, institutional and procedural aspects of the process.

South Africa is regarded as a leading developing country in terms of SEA practice. However, the lack of empirical research to evaluate and learn from this wealth of practical experience can be considered a major lost opportunity not only for South Africa but also for the development of our understanding of SEA in the developing world. This paper provides the research results of an effectiveness review of six high profile SEA case studies within the South African context. Measured against four key performance areas (KPAs) and nine key performance indicators (KPIs) the research results show a high degree of ineffectiveness across all six cases in terms of 'direct outputs'. The main areas of weakness were the inability to influence the contents of plans and programmes as well as decision making in general. It can thus be concluded that based on the 'poor' direct effectiveness results SEA is not achieving its objectives within the South African context. However, certain 'indirect outputs' also emerged such as highlighting deficiencies and gaps in existing policy as well as examples where SEA facilitated capacity building and raised awareness of sustainability issues. Moreover, SEAs also contributed significantly to information generation and sharing. The research results suggest that practitioners need to either redefine the purpose of SEA, or fundamentally rethink the way in which SEA is being applied within the South African context. The paper concludes by making proposals for future international research.

This paper deals with conceptual and methodological issues arising in ex post environmental impact assessment of agricultural research. It presents a case study of approaches used (and not used) and challenges associated with the ex post assessment of environmental impacts of research supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The paper illustrates the difficulty of tracking the global effects of agricultural research on natural resources due to a diffused and complex set of decision variables effecting intensification and expansion of land in agriculture, primarily in developing countries. The central point in ex post impact assessment concerns costs and benefits (in terms of relevant budget constraints and time frame for decision) of in-depth empirical versus qualitative analysis. Within this context we conclude that the empirical counterfactual approach ("with" and "without" research) is not an option. As a second best alternative, it is inferred from cases and global statistics that: in specific instances the introduction of high yielding varieties did have unintended impacts on natural resources, in part due to policy distortion and in part due to unforeseen chain reactions in the ecosystems. But on net balance, increased yields attributable to international agricultural research have had positive environmental impacts in the form of net land saving.

All the United Nations' members have already committed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to reduce by half the proportion of 1.1 billion people without sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2015. The problem is that with all the limiting capacities, which half should be prioritized and what kind of policy intervention can be used to achieve the goal.

This paper proposes a methodology on water supply vulnerability assessment, specifically for meeting basic human needs. Based on the impacts to the five assets owned by a certain household and the causes of the lack of access, the policy intervention can be tailored made as to what problems the community faces. Hopefully the method can be used by multilateral donors or agencies and all levels of government to focus on a certain community or area that should be prioritized to meet the MDG target.