Standards and Thresholds for Impact Assessment

Standards and thresholds play an important role in the whole EIA process — they are the criteria against which the degree of significance of potential impacts of a development action (generally a project, but more recently also plans and programmes) are assessed. But what are standards and thresholds? They have many, and often overlapping dimensions. What roles do they play in the EIA process? They do play vital roles in many stages of the EIA process — ranging from initial screening as to whether a project/plan etc requires an assessment at all, through many other steps in the process, including decision making and the continuing but often underplayed monitoring of project/plan implementation. This chapter seeks to provide an introduction to standards and thresholds in EIA, by addressing such questions.

This chapter aims to discuss the German practice of environmental regulation, in particular setting environmental standards and thresholds. In almost all fields in German Environmental Law, the use of standards and thresholds is commonly practiced. Therefore a selection is necessary, and the topic will be discussed with particular reference to the more European- influenced Emission Control Law and the typical national sector of Soil Protection Law.

This chapter aims to discuss Ukrainian practice of environmental regulation (i.e. setting environmental norms) in the context of applying environmental assessment procedures — EIA and SEA. For highly polluted areas, which are plentiful in Ukraine, the development of standards and thresholds is of key importance for the successful application of modern methods of environmental assessment, since the adaptation of these methods can help provide a higher level of protection for the environment. The main focus of this chapter is to discuss the necessary changes in Ukrainian practice of environmental regulation, which can contribute to a more environmentally thoughtful management of the economy. It provides an example of how a major environmental problem, in this case air pollution, can be a driver of change in environmental standards. It also reflects a concern to improve environmental performance to meet international standards, in particular EU standards.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have become a key action-forcing agenda and baseline for performance, goals, targets and indicators (Annan 2005; Johnson 2005; UN 2003, 2001). Several policies, programmes, plans and projects have been created to meet the MDGs and others re-formulated to integrate the MDGs. This paper argues for a need and a conceptual framework to buttress MDGs in national standards and thresholds in order to provide a more comprehensive long-term framework for strategizing, planning and implementation beyond 2015. For convenience MDG targets on poverty and HIV/AIDS are used for illustration although the same argument applies to most MDGs. The key argument is anchored on the concept that standards and thresholds are critical to guiding the strategizing, planning and implementation processes; facilitate a more rationalized decision making process and a cost-effective allocation of resources in the long term. In the context of Part I, the chapter illustrates the importance of international goals in driving progress on key quality of life standards and thresholds.

This chapter widens the scope of legal thresholds and standards from EIA to sustainability, and illustrates this with the case of Portugal.

Economics “...studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses” (Robbins 1932 p.15 cited in Baumgärtner et al. 2003 p.5). In analyzing the effects of environment conservation measures (e.g. to set a threshold), it is generally understood that the role of the natural sciences is to describe the ecological effects of measures. The economist then would use his tools to determine the optimal choice among the possible alternatives to achieve a planned output. If this sequence is accepted, the first task of the economist is to determine scarcity, or costs and benefits, as well as to define human ends or target functions.

Quality management as an integrated part of EIA procedures is an important current challenge to focus on. Even those countries, where EIA is already implemented in national law and has become a standard instrument to assess the environmental effects of projects, plans or programmes, need requirements to ensure good EIA quality. For example, the European Commission stresses the need of quality assurance in their third 5-years report, reviewing the operation of the EIA directive, adopted in 1985 (EU Commission 2003):

“The quality of the EIA process, and especially the EIS, are the key for an effective EIA. The Commission urges those Member States that have yet to do so to introduce formal provisions for the review of the environmental information supplied by the developer to ensure strict compliance with the terms of the EIA Directive. Such measures could comprise the establishment of expert pools, guidelines on the coordination of experts, clear instructions about responsibilities, the use of independent external expert review etc. Another tool of quality control could be the introduction of an efficient post-decision monitoring system.”

Furthermore, the EIA Directive Guidance Group emphasis the need of quality management in their “Topic — Quality assurance - best practices”, published in April 2005. An essential conclusion is, that good and efficient EIAs need both

an efficient EIA procedure comprising a systematic participation of all concerned authorities, experts, stakeholders, NGOs and the public and

an understandable Environmental Impact Study or Environmental Impact Statement considering all significant likely effects.

Municipal waste landfills represent a viable and quite commonly used method for domestic waste disposal even though the method has been used for centuries. Municipal waste landfills, at the same time, pose potentially adverse environmental impacts that need to be considered during the site selection process, landfill design, operational and post closure phases. An Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) study represents an effective tool built into the legislative process of many countries and institutions that can be used to identify potential adverse effects on human health, environment impacts and ecologic risks. The decision makers are able to review all the necessary data on potential impacts prior to project approval. In this manner appropriate remedial measures can be identified and implemented prior to the project start-up.

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the standards and thresholds that are effective to control wastewater discharges in Mexico. The Mexican Official Standards (NOMs) to the control of wastewater discharges are:

(a)

NOM-001-SEMARNAT-1996. It establishes the maximum pollution limits for municipal and industrial wastewater discharges to water bodies.

(b)

NOM-002-SEMARNAT-1996. It specifies the maximum pollution limits for wastewater discharges to urban or municipal sewer systems.

(c)

NOM-003-SEMARNAT-1997. It establishes the maximum pollution limits for the reuse of treated wastewater.

(d)

NOM-004-SEMARNAT-2002. This regulation specifies the maximum pollution limits for the use and final disposition of sludge resulting from the wastewater treatment.

This chapter is divided as follows: section 9.2 presents the historical evolution of standards on wastewater discharges in Mexico, section 9.3 introduces the NOM-001-SEMARNAT-1996, section 9.4 presents the NOM-002-SEMARNAT-1996, section 9.5 examines NOM-003-SEMARNAT-1997, section 9.6 studies NOM-004-SEMARNAT-2002, section 9.7 analyses the results of ten years of application of these technical regulations, and finally, section 9.8 includes some conclusions and recommendations.

The setting up of an adequate legislation for the protection of the quality of water resources is a crucial point in the environmental development of all countries. The transfer of written codes from the paper into really practicable guidelines, which are used not merely for enforcement, but mainly as an integral part of the environmental protection policy, has been a challenge for most countries.

This chapter presents current standards for establishment and evaluation of small dams in Yemen. Starting with a brief introduction on the needs for a construction of small dams in Yemen, the Sect. 11.2 describes some natural and anthropogenic causes of water quality deterioration in Yemen and effects of water quality deterioration on human and animal health. Sect. 11.3 presents available guidelines that are related to dams’ water quality in connection with the common uses of dams’ water in Yemen. Before ending with conclusion and recommendation, the role of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) as a standard for establishment and evaluation of small dams is highlighted with a case study for EIA in practice at Public Works Projects (PWP) in Yemen.

Achieving sustainable development requires greater responsibility of each single person to take care the ecosystems on which all life depends, for the generations that will follow our own (Annan 2005). We can wait until a crisis forces us to do something. Or we can commit to working together, and start by asking the tough questions: How do we meet the needs of the developing world and those of industrialised nations? What role will recycling-oriented product/society play? What is the best way to protect the environment? Whatever actions we take, we must look not just to next year, but to the next 50 years (O’Reilly 2005).

The economic use of the oceans for marine mining, for extracting gravel and sand, laying cables and pipelines and, more recently, installing wind energy plants is increasing. The call to implement spatial structure plans for marine areas has therefore become louder (Molitor 2005 p.66 et seq.). In taking account of various economic, social and ecological interests, such plans aim to identify and resolve potential conflicts at an early stage. Spatial planning is needed not only within the 12 nautical mile zone in the North and Baltic Seas (i.e. in territorial waters), but also within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), where, for example, most German offshore windfarms are planned (BSH 2006). For this reason, a legal basis for spatial planning in the EEZ (Section 18a Federal Spatial Planning Act, Raumordnungsgesetz, ROG) was established in Germany in July 2004. The applicability of the ROG has been extended to the EEZ, and the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs (Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Bau- und Stadtentwicklung, BMVBS) has been empowered to set targets and principles for the German EEZ in the Baltic and North Seas. According to Sections 18a, (7) and 5 ROG, spatial structure planning in the EEZ includes strategic environmental assessment (SEA) as an important component. SEA is an integral part of official procedures implemented by public authorities, governments, and legislative bodies for establishing and changing plans and programmes. It is the purpose of the SEA to ensure that the implications of the plan or programme are comprehensively determined, described and evaluated by means of standardized principles at an early stage and that the results of the evaluation are taken into consideration in establishing and changing plans.

Renewable Energy (RE) sometimes referred to as ‘clean energy’ or ‘green power’ can be defined as any energy source that is naturally occurring and that cannot, in theory, be exhausted. RE sources include solar energy, biomass, tidal, wind or wave power, geothermal energy (English Dictionary Online 2003). Renewable energy is obtained from sources that are essentially inexhaustible. The reverse is true for non renewable such as fossil fuels, of which there is a finite supply (NATSOURCE 2005).

Mining includes many different technologies used in searching and exploiting mineral resources in the form useful for their further use. Apart from obviously associated with mining underground mining enterprises (hard coal, lignite, metal ores, chemical resources), the objects running mining activities also include: open cast mines (hard coal, lignite, metal ores, sulphur, chemical resources), quarries and bore-hole mines (water, mineral waters, natural gas, oil, salt, sulphur). Mining technologies are also applied in searching for and identifying deposits and in tank-free storing of resources and wastes in the rock mass.

Tourism is a highly heterogeneous industry sector, and different environmental planning tools are applied at different scales and in different jurisdictions. In most countries only certain components of the tourism industry, and particular types of tourism development, are subject to project-scale environmental impact assessment. Precisely because of its diffuse distribution and variable scale, tourism can provide a useful tool to test the effectiveness of EIA systems. Tourism can also illustrate the dilemmas involved in designing EIA systems which are both effective and efficient, in the sense that they require just enough environmental information, commensurate with the scale of each individual proposal, to make well-considered development control decisions. Currently, there are many cases where identical tourism development proposals in adjacent legal jurisdictions would yield very different EIA requirements (Warnken and Buckley 1995, 1996). This is perhaps an indication of how difficult it can be to set thresholds and standards for tourism EIAs.

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the importance of socio-environmental efficiency indicators for Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in spatial development planning. Although environmentally inefficient settlement development structures are resulting in an ongoing unsustainable use of land-resources, even the new instrument of SEA has its limitations to promote the necessary structural changes in spatial development planning. The chapter starts with a description of the spatial development trends in Germany and introduces the national sustainability target concerning efficiency of land-use for settlements and traffic. Based on current urban growth research, Section 17.3 offers a detailed overview of available indicators that can describe the efficiency of regional and urban spatial structures in relation to land use and land consumption. Section 17.4 verifies the relevance of these indicators in relation to contrasting urban development models. Section 17.5 gives conclusions and recommendations for the German spatial planning framework, promoting the use and integration of indicator-related socio-environmental data to assess the efficiency of zoning of new developments for residential areas and traffic infrastructures in SEA procedures in regional planning.

Forests and its ecosystem dynamics constitute nature’s most bountiful and versatile natural resource. Tropical forests epitomises its diversity. These are vital assets that provide a wide range of environmental, economic and socio-cultural benefits and services to local communities, national economies and the global environment at large. However, unsustainable use of the resources over the decades has now been a major cause of global concern. Areas under tropical forest continue to dwindle at alarming rates to the detriment of its productive and protective functions.

The concept of critical loads and levels, a method to estimate sensitivity towards stress factors and environmental risks to ecosystems, is introduced here with Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) as its legal frame. The concept has been very much stimulated by environmental issues developing simultaneously in North America and in Europe: vegetation damage and acidification of lakes and rivers on the Canadian Shield and in various regions of northern and central Europe became known to a broader public. Dramatically reduced salmon population in Scandinavian rivers and regional forest dieback in remote European mountain regions were suspected to be caused by far reaching emission of acidifying components of industries and coal firing.

There are two completely different perspectives under which standards and threshold values for soil related parameters are defined in the context of environmental protection. The different views arise, due to the fact that soil is a dynamic system, containing by definition living organisms as part of an ecosystem. A soil can be degraded, or even destroyed, gradually or rapidly changing its functionality in the ecosystem. It is therefore considered as an object of environmental protection

per se

. In Germany the Federal Soil Protection Act forms a legal frame for this protection.

Registering the actual condition of soil as regards pollutants plays an important role within the framework of implementing the legislation on soil protection. It is decisive for the characterisation of the soil functions and forms the basis for deriving specific background values. In this regard, the assessment of the condition of the soil focuses on dealing with existing substance-related soil pollutions and restricting new harmful entries of materials into soil.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Ramsar Convention, and the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) recognize Impact Assessment as a significant decision-support tool that assist planning and implementation of development with biodiversity “in mind.” Article 8 of the Biodiversity Convention gives justification for the application of impact assessment toward protection of ecosystems and natural habitat IAIA (2005). In order words, CBD require impact assessment to identify possibilities to quantify land cover characteristics or indicators that influence habitat transformations in an ecosystem. Ecosystem structure, a considered level of our assessment, concerns the organisation of various biological units in space and time.

Air pollutants have detrimental effects on the environment and human health. The 1979 Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP) is regarded as a pioneering instrument, which has brought about tangible results in reducing emissions and improving the environment by delivering legally binding protocols (UNECE 2004). There is increasing scientific evidence that current levels of particulate matter (PM) lead to a wide range of acute and chronic health problems and its long-range transport contributes significantly to these effects. PM also leads to other environmental problems such as corrosion and soiling of materials, heavy metals and climate change (figure 23.2). Guidelines to address human health risks exist at local and regional levels, but PM is currently not directly included in any of the Convention’s protocols.

Water protection policy of the European Union (EU) dates back to 1970s, especially to Paris Summit in 1972, where commitment was made to introduce common EU wide environmental policy that included protection of water resources (European Parliament 1972). Since then, several water quality acts have been passed, mostly regulating water pollution. As environmental issues took more important place in the political agenda and EU water policy was rather fragmented, consisting of many complex individual and fragmented regulations, the European Commission (EC) stressed out the need for an integrated approach to water resources covering both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the policy, management of both surface water and groundwater, environmental protection and the links with other policies (EC 1994). The Water Framework Directive (WFD), proposed in 1994, was finally adopted in 2000. It applies to all water in the natural environment - rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters as well as groundwater.

The objective of this chapter is to discuss the problems related to methods of landscape ecological systems impact assessment, with special emphasis on the issue of protected areas. The problems in question will be presented for the example of Poland, where the system of protected areas is particularly well developed and covers 32.5 % of the total territory of the country (Grzesiak and Domanska 2005).

Noise standards aim to protect people from being annoyed or physically harmed. They thus try to translate an essentially subjective response by individuals (“I can’t concentrate because of the traffic noise”) into quantitative measures that can be applied to either the noise source or the ambient environment.

What hazards do humans face when exposed to water, either through drinking it or through recreational activities? How well do we understand their relative impact on human health?

➔Before reading any further, try to write down 5–7 hazards that come to your mind when you think about drinking water from the kitchen tap in your home town, and when you think about going swimming at your favourite lake or beach. Next, try to rank these in order of priority, putting those you think pose the greatest risk on the top of your list. As third step of this exercise, try to assess which of the hazards you noted also endanger aquatic ecosystems, and which are specific to human health. Most likely, in trying this you found that you feel uncertain about criteria for ranking hazards according to risks, and in the third step you probably noticed that not all hazards to human health also endanger aquatic ecosystems and

vice versa

. This exercise highlights the demand for objective, scientific criteria for assessing risks caused by different hazards to different target organisms or whole ecosystems. This chapter outlines the current state of the art towards meeting this demand, highlighting the issue with the example of setting guidelines and standards for hazardous agents in drinking-water and discussing how human health targets relate to Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for aquatic systems.

Dams or systems of dams can significantly change the properties of river basins, such as flow, retention or the management of the water resources in general. Furthermore, dams and their management are known to show relevant impacts on the environment, economic activities and social structures in their very neighbourhood, upstream and downstream. Taking into consideration that nowadays numerous dams in Middle Europe are being operated as multifunctional/multipurpose installations, their impact assessment should start with a broadly scoped analysis with regard to the hydrological, environmental, social and economic properties of the particular river basin. This ambitious undertaking is in fact not that easy to exercise while looking at new dams projects. Due to forced environmental impacts up and down stream, social concerns about i.e. resettlement and complex interest and conflict lines between beneficiaries and non- beneficiaries quite often new dams projects lack mainly social acceptance despite of proven positive economic benefits.

Technological deployment has aided humankind immeasurably in raising living standards, controlling disease, and expanding our resource base. Successful use of new and efficient technologies is an important component of most future sustainability strategies. As such, research aims to develop innovative compounds and products that can significantly enhance product performances and inevitably the quality of life for consumers. This is what research into Nanotechnology hopes to achieve.

According to the definition of the German medicine law (AMG 2001), pharmaceuticals are, amongst other things, intended to heal, to mitigate or prevent in their application in the human or animal body, diseases, suffering, body damage or pathological burdens. The undisputed positive purpose of pharmaceuticals and the question of cost budgeting has, in the recent past, limited the room to critically consider, from an environmental perspective, the possible unwanted side effects arising from medicament consumption in Germany. In the German Federal state in 1999 alone the five most important and available pain and rheumatism drugs had approximately 39 tonnes of active substances which, in pharmaceuticals for humans, contained 2.1 tonnes of active antibiotic substances (Abbas and Kratz 2000; BLAC 2001). These biologically high-activity materials are partly converted after intake in the human body and separated afterwards into original and converted forms (BLAC 2001). Within the sewage waters, these residues arrive at the sewage treatment plant, at which point they are often undesirably, incompletely mitigated or held back in surface waters (BLAC 2001).

Oxygenology has been defined as the scientific discipline related to the presence and the role of oxygen in nature on earth (Stepniewski and Stepniewska 1998; Stepniewski et al. 2005). It is a branch of environmental sciences comprising issues of oxygen generation, absorption, turnover, storage, transport, functions and measurement in the environment.

This chapter gives an insight into the methodology and derivation of assessment thresholds during an INTERREG IIIA pilot project on a transborder SEA of the regional plan of Upper Lusatia-Lower Silesia (OL-NS) in Saxony (called Trans-SEA) (see Figure 32.1; Helbron and Schmidt 2007; regional planning authority of OL-NS: http://www.rpvolns.homepage.t-online.de/frame3.htm).

Monitoring deals with the collection, analysis and use of information to support informed decision-making (EC 2004). Monitoring is usually an internal management responsibility and as a rule ongoing. It is carried out to check progress, take remedial action and to update plans. In the following, monitoring is applied to the implementation of measures to mitigate negative environmental impacts of a project. A project is understood as a series of activities aimed at bringing about a specified objective within a defined time-period and budget (EC 2004). Infrastructure projects are such to improve transportation, energy and water supply (house-hold, irrigation), as e.g. roads bridges, dams, canals etc.

The effectiveness of Environmental Assessment (EA) depends on its ability to effect change in the way human activities impact the environment. Unfortunately, environmental professionals are all too familiar with a gap between protecting the environment ‘

on paper

’ (e.g. in the EIS and related documents) and destroying it ‘

on the ground

’ where the activities undergoing EA are implemented. To bridge this gap, EIA follow up contains the management component defined as “

making decisions and taking appropriate action in response to issues arising from monitoring and evaluation activities”

(Morrison-Saunder et al. 2003). Environmental Management Plans (EMPs) and Environmental Management Systems (EMS) are the main management tools which can improve EIA effectiveness during followup. This section considers the rationale for and the experience of using EMPs and EMS in the context of EIA and SEA with particularly attention to the role of standards and thresholds.

This paper presents a discussion about how conditions for efficient and effective mitigation, follow-up and post-auditing are influenced by uncertainty in EIA predictions, lack of communication about such uncertainty and lack of transparency in prediction processes. As a conclusion, it is discussed how better communication about uncertainty and more transparent prediction processes can improve the conditions for efficient and effective follow-up and post-auditing, and thereby also for protection of the environment.

In this article we examine the role of environmental quality standards (EQS) and thresholds as a tool in environmental governance and the strive for sustainable development in Sweden. Such standards, as opposed to emission standards, are a relatively new addition to the environmental policy tools in Sweden. The role of EQS is ultimately to operationalise an approach that is described in Sweden’s National Strategy for Sustainable Development: “The society of the future must be formed within the limits set by nature, environment and human health (...)” (Gov Bill 2003/04:129) The point of departure is thus environmental quality in determining acceptability of development proposals, programmes and plans and industrial projects rather than emissions. Sweden has introduced EQS of different kinds as tools for governance and the effectiveness of different types can thus be examined. Standards, especially the National Environmental Objectives structure with its system of quantified targets is accorded a prominent role in policy.