Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management

Energy efficiency is an important element of Europe's Climate and Energy scheme to meet the target of a 20% reduction in energy demand by 2020. To achieve this goal, it is essential to transform to low-carbon economy and much of required transformations take place at the local and regional level, while regional authorities have the tools to influence and encourage this process.

The paper presents the results of a survey relating to the energy efficiency projects conducted among councilors at the regional level. The paper investigates local councilors' attitudes about the impact of energy efficiency projects, prerequisites for successful implementation of energy efficiency projects and preconditions for efficient public procurement in the field of energy efficiency. Survey results could provide some useful insights for policy recommendations in the field of energy efficiency.

Multi-criteria analysis (MCA) is a group of analytical approaches allowing us to compare criteria or alternatives when making complex decisions. It can be applied in Strategic Environmental Assessment for supporting the integration of environmental, social and economic aspects into the development of strategies, policies, plan and programme making. This paper reports on an application of analytical hierarchy process (AHP) as one of MCA approaches to assess Gilan Tourism Development Plan in Iran. Here, the Global Sustainable Tourism criteria were weighted by AHP on the basis of experts’ opinions. The extent to which development options for Gilan Tourism Development Plan were likely to be sustainable was assessed using a list of weighted criteria. The evaluation of the findings suggests that the plan has not met all the sub-criteria of sustainable tourism.

This paper examines the role of participation and learning in Kenyan strategic environmental assessments (SEAs) of urban plans that include a solid waste management (SWM) component. Two SEA cases were studied using 40 semi-structured interviews and two focus groups. Data are analysed qualitatively employing NVivo software. Participation is assessed using ideal conditions of learning derived from Transformative Learning Theory, and operationalised for this study. Strengths of SEA participation are freedom from coercion and equal opportunity to participate. Notable weaknesses include inaccessibility of SEA documents, inadequate participant funding, and lack of feedback and transparency about the SEA findings. Participants exhibited numerous learning outcomes and associated social actions on urban SWM including waste sorting, recycling and composting (instrumental learning), sharing values and community collaborations on cleanup and recycling (communicative learning), and altering conventional viewpoints from ‘waste for disposal’ to ‘waste as a resource’ (transformative learning), including for livelihood opportunities.