Josianne Claudia Sales Rosa and Luis E. Sánchez have published a new paper on “Is the ecosystem service concept improving impact assessment? Evidence from recent international practice” in Environmental Impact Assessment Review (Volume 50, January 2015, Pages 134–142). You can assess the full paper online here and find the abstract copied below.
Abstract
Considering ecosystem services (ES) could foster innovation and improve environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) practice, but is the potential being fulfilled? In order to investigate how ES have been treated in recent international practice, three questions are asked: (i) were the tasks of an ES analysis carried out? (ii) how is such analysis integrated with other analysis presented in the ESIA? (iii) does ES analysis result in additional or improved mitigation or enhancement measures? These research questions were unfolded into 15 auxiliary questions for reviewing five ESIA reports prepared for mining, hydroelectric and transportation infrastructure projects in Africa, Asia and South America. All cases incorporated ES into ESIA to meet a requirement of the International Finance Corporation’s Performance Standards on Environmental and Social Sustainability. It was found that: (i) in only three cases most tasks recommended by current guidance were adopted (ii) all reports feature a dedicated ES chapter or section, but in three of them no evidence was found that the ES analysis was integrated within impact assessment (iii) in the two ESIAs that followed guidance, ES analysis resulted in specific mitigation measures. Few evidence was found that the ES concept is improving current ESIA practice. Key challenges are: (i) integrating ES analysis in such a way that it does not duplicate other analysis; (ii) adequately characterizing the beneficiaries of ES; and (iii) quantifying ES supply for impact prediction.
Dear Marianne
Your Biodiversity offset Blog is quite timely and the concept that you have dissaminated to us on the Ecosystem services concept improving is also very relavant.However the protection and conservation has became an outdated theory and the use of Environmental Impact Assessment itself is not sufficient to achieve sustenability as has been indicated by the out come of the appication of ESIA for last 30 years.However, the greatest treat to humanity is the prevaling poverty.SO why not connect ecosystem services for the reduction of the poverty by proper management of ecosystem resources and its services. Now this is the time to go for developing more effective economy through the proper management of Ecosystem services and help to reduce worlds poverty in a comprensive ways. In this case I have written a concept for Nepal and included in linkedin post.
Ram Khadka
Dear Ram,
Many thanks for your detailed reply and reasoning! While it is certainly (and sadly) true that EIA alone cannot achieve sustainability (for me, it is not the most important tool to do so, rather part of a “toolbox”), I wouldn’t consider protection and conservation an outdated theory at all. What we certainly need is a new understanding of the complexity of our environment and our own actions. This cannot concentrate on one thing, but has to include conservation and protection as well as restoration and impact mitigation — and possibly most importantly it must focus on the interlinkages (e.g. between less environmentally damaging practices and poverty reduction). But we should be aware that the maximum achievable are compromises and a more or less outbalanced situation between the three pillars of sustainability — and nothing such as economic boom or bloom (if we’re at that point, you can’t really talk sustainability).
Anyway, “proper management of ecosystem services” sounds simple but is actually a hard task — so I’ll very much appreciate if you could share your experiences. Can you post the link to your LinkedIn post?