Prioritising the Environment in Sustainable Development: Lessons from Australian Environmental Impact Assessment

It is a truism that to be effective, the concept of sustainable development (SD) needs to be functionally operational. Environmental impact assessment (EIA) provides such an opportunity; yet EIA also presents decision-makers with a vast array of competing criteria compelling decision makers to prioritize and make trade-offs. Moreover, legislation provides little guidance on how to prioritize these criteria and still achieve SD. Using the Australian state of New South Wales as a case study, the discussion evaluates the relationship between policy, legislation and the weight given to SD. The topic is important for policy makers, decision-makers, proponents of development and conservationists. The paper draws on two bodies of work: the literature on prioritising and trade-offs in decision-making by authors such as Brownlie and Retief et al.; and the paradigms and models of science identified by Cashmore. It proffers a means of curtailing the wide discretion available to decision-makers using civic science, which to be effective, needs to be legislatively-based.