Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management

An unregulated Environmental Control Officer (ECO) industry is currently validating compliance to sustainability commitments made during the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process of projects across South Africa. This paper follows an action research routine and explores the need and drivers for regulating professionalism of this industry. A self-administered survey questionnaire and interviews were used to generate empirical data from environmental practitioners. A total of 171 survey questionnaires were completed, and four interviews were conducted with key stakeholders. The data gathered were analysed and categorised in relation to theoretical perspectives on drivers for regulating verification professions within the context of attributes (or criteria) of a profession. To achieve the transition from an occupation to a profession, a six-step process is laid out tailored to meet the needs of the industry. This paper provides international environmental practitioners with insight to the need for regulating environmental verification industries such as ECOs.

Numerous publications have emerged relating to the Site C dam on the Peace River in northern British Columbia, Canada. This paper focuses on a recently published study that examined the effectiveness of Indigenous peoples’ participation in the environmental impact assessment of the dam. Although the study identifies several important deficiencies, it is incomplete with a number of inconsistencies and suggests a path that is unlikely to be a sufficient remedy. The objective of this paper is to address key shortcomings that could foster crucial misunderstandings. Environmental decisions and actions were organised based on the typologies of impact assessment for context and to identify interconnections and sources of ineffectiveness. Results confirm that the effectiveness framework has considerable utility and improves measurement accuracy. This paper also presents supplemental insights into engagement, consent, legitimacy as a dimension of impact assessment effectiveness when Indigenous peoples are involved, and concludes with suggestions for future research.

The United States only accounts for 0.2% of the global offshore wind installed capacity despite a potential technical resource four orders of magnitude greater. A cumbersome permitting process is one of the challenges in implementing new projects. Part of this process requires biological data in order to inform assessments of environmental impacts; yet these data may be lacking for particular taxa at the required scale. Marine spatial planning (MSP) is a process that often includes data identification, collection, collation and analyses components. In this paper, we conduct a collective case study of three areas with offshore wind projects located in waters managed by marine spatial plans, focusing on how data efforts inform MSP and offshore wind development. Our study finds that MSP can facilitate data efforts during the permitting phase of offshore wind projects, but that other initiatives, particularly renewable energy policies and zoning, appear critical towards establishing offshore wind.

This paper discusses a specific source of noise, which is generated by household waste collection trucks. Two areas in the city of Curitiba were chosen for evaluation, one of them a densely populated residential neighborhood and the other in downtown Curitiba. A noise map was created for each area. The evaluation, which was carried out in the daytime in the residential area and at night in the downtown area, revealed noise levels exceeding the limits established by Curitiba Municipal Law No. 10625. The regular use of utility vehicles that generate high noise levels, such as garbage trucks, during nighttime hours in residential areas is thus not sustainable from the standpoint of noise protection laws. Nighttime hours in Curitiba are 10pm to 7am, but nighttime garbage collection begins at 7pm and goes on until 4am. Therefore, changes in this schedule are advisable, given the noise impact caused by garbage collection trucks.

This study is an attempt to empirically determine and analyse the factors that significantly influence the perceptions of and vulnerability to an earthquake disaster that struck a community located in the Hazaribagh area of Dhaka South City, Bangladesh. The empirical results reveal a significant relationship between a number of sociodemographic factors and the community’s perceptions of and level of vulnerability to an earthquake disaster. The critical factors we have determined as significantly influencing these community perceptions and sense of vulnerability to earthquake disaster include: “level of education”, “preserve the drinking water, “uncovered drainage system”, “unplanned commercial and business apartments”, “unplanned tannery”, “first aid equipment”, and “family size”. We argue that while an earthquake disaster is a natural phenomenon, people’s vulnerabilities to it are in most cases caused by their societies and the governments” actions and inactions when facing such a situation.