Sustainable indicators for strategic environmental ... · Sustainable indicators for strategic...

Sustainable indicators for strategic environmental assessment in Taiwan

M.-L. ~ i o u ' , N.-W. KUO* & Y.-H. yu3 '~raduate Institute of Environmental Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taiwan, ROC 2 Graduate Institute of Tourism and Health Science, National Taipei College of Nursing, Taiwan, ROC 3 Graduate Institute of Environmental Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taiwan, ROC

Abstract

The legislation and implementation of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) in Taiwan are currently at an early stage. As the legal system for SEA in Taiwan needs to be improved in many aspects, it was argued that the scope of policies should be expanded; the SEA review committee should be promoted; a retroactive mechanism for SEA needs to be implemented; and indicators for sustainable development should be incorporated. Based on the Policy Environmental Assessment Act promulgated in 2001, eleven items of policies are required to conduct SEA. It was also regulated that the environmental impacts of the policies should be assessed by employing an impact matrix, i.e., an indicator system that contains 8 components, 24 corresponding indicators and over 50 assessment items (variables). For each of the indicators, its significances in the regional, national, and global level were valued as an integer score between -2 to +2. Thus, the environmental impacts in terms of the 8 components, i.e., carrying capacity of the environment, natural ecological system, public health and safety, natural resource use, water resources and their uses, the cultural assets and harmony of natural landscapes, international environmental rules, and others, can be demonstrated for further evaluation or discussion. These three-tier indicator system needs to be reconstructed according to comprehensive revision of the SEA framework to make it fit to the essential criterion of a SEA system, namely ability of supporting sustainable development, to a higher extent.

Transactions on Ecology and the Environment vol 63, © 2003 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3541

In this study, the Delphi Method was employed to carry out this task. A peer group composed of 33 experts, scholars, government officials, NGO leaders, and legislators answered questionnaires at two stages. Consistency tests were conducted for reaching the final solution. Thus, a new indicator system for SEA was proposed. It was concluded that, because of more integrated and comprehensive consideration of the SEA system, the revised indicator system bears more strength in reflecting the driving force, state, and response for sustainable development in the context of SEA

l Introduction

The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been implemented in many countries in the world for many years. However, since various political, socio-economic, and cultural conditions, limitations were found with respect to their practices. Moreover, because conventional project-EIAs were generally carried out at later stages and in a lower level, their effects to the whole project were also constrained. Thus, in recent years, the framework of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) implemented and promoted in the international society was aimed to be supplementary to traditional project-EIAs so that the deficiency in EIA can be alleviated. SEA is the systematic and integrated environmental assessment to policies, plans, and programs. It was originated in the United States, but later relatively successfully put into practice in European countries.

The Environmental Impact Assessment Act of Taiwan was passed in 1994 and later in 1997 the Administrative Regulations of Environmental Impact Assessments of Governmental Policies was promulgated, which presented the legal base for SEA of governmental policies. It was indicated in the document that for nine policy categories that contains eleven items, SEA was required. However, so far only three SEA case studies, one for industrial policy, one for water resources development, and another for land use policy, have been implemented. For these case studies, the policy level, targets, and scale of influence differ in many aspects. It was also argued that their frameworks and methodologies need to be improved.

It was also indicated in the Act that the environmental impacts of the policies should be assessed by employing an impact matrix, i.e., an indicator system that contains 8 components, 24 corresponding indicators and over 50 assessment items (variables). For each of the indicators, its significances in the regional, national, and global level were valued as an integer score between -2 to +2. Thus, the environmental impacts in terms of the 8 components, i.e., carrying capacity of the environment, natural ecological system, public health and safety, natural resource use, water resources and their uses, the cultural assets and harmony of natural landscapes, international environmental rules, and others, can be demonstrated for further evaluation or discussion.

According to the trend that the idea of sustainable development should be incorporated into the framework of indicators in the environmental and other aspects, it has also been discussed that indicators for SEA ought to be modified


so that the essence of sustainable development can be promised, as the ultimate goal of SEA is sustainable development of the human society [l]. Thus, by taking into account the essence and idea of sustainable development, the indicators used in the current matrix as stated in the related regulations in Taiwan were also revised by employing ad-hoc approaches, so that the applicability of Taiwan's SEA regulations would be improved.

2 The current status of SEA and related indicators in Taiwan

2.1 Background

In 1997, the Administrative Regulations of Environmental Impact Assessments of Governmental Policies was promulgated, in which it was designated that SEA should be carried out for nine categories of governmental policies, containing eleven items, having the potential in causing environmental impacts (Table 1). Later in 1998, the Administrative Regulations of Environmental Assessment Statements were then announced, in which it was stated that the matrix approach should be employed to evaluate the significances of corresponding environmental impacts in the local, regional, and national level. The indicator system contains 50 main variables and 24 corresponding indicators, categorized as 8 components including carrying capacity of the environment, natural ecosystems, public health and safety, natural resource use, water resources systems and their uses, cultural assets and harmony of natural landscape, international environmental rules, and "others".

The environmental impacts should be assessed based on these indicators. For "essentially positive" environmental impacts, a "+" would be marked; for "significantly positive" environmental impacts, a "++" would be marked. On the contrary, "-" and "--" are used to mark "essentially negative" and "significantly negative" environmental impacts, respectively. "-" is employed to indicate "no" environmental impact in terms of an indicator. Table 2 demonstrates a part of the

Table 1 : The categories and items of policies required to conduct SEA.


Table 2: The indicators related to air quality in the SEA matrix in Taiwan.

Suspended particulates (TSP and PM I 0) sulfur dioxide (SO,)

matrix corresponding to "air". Environmental impacts in local, regional, and national levels need to be assessed and the alleviating strategies should be stated. Finally, an overall score will be given.

2.2 Problems in practice

One of the main problems of the matrix system is that there existed no assessment or evaluation criteria based on well-defined and objective quantification measures. When employing the indicator matrix to conduct SEA, the practitioners need to incorporate suitable indicators implicitly or explicitly by themselves and simultaneously determine the resulting impact levels. Hence, SEA committees composed of different members tend to make different conclusions and this means subjective evaluations may be brought about.

Another problem of the matrix method is its ability of measuring sustainability. As SEA serves as the anticipatory tool for measuring feasibility and integration of a policy/plan/program, its ultimate goal is to promote sustainable development of a nation/regionflocal unit. Thus, the extending issues such as optimum resource use, total maximum load management, environmental carrying capacity, environmental assessment at the plan stage, accumulative/large scale environmental impacts differ from those in the traditional later-staged project-EIA. However, the current matrix system for SEA is similar to that for project-EIA and hence cannot reflect the characteristics associated with the issues mentioned above.

According to the three SEA case studies in Taiwan, fuzziness of the regulations and lack of common and scientific evaluation approaches led to differences among the cases in assessment and alternative selection techniques. In addition, since the baselines for the carrying capacities of various environmental variables were not available, there existed no criteria for assessing the sustainability in terms of each of the corresponding environmental impacts.

3 Establishing sustainability indicators for SEA in Taiwan

3.1 Basics for sustainability indicators

Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the concept of sustainable development and related activities such as Agenda 21 has thrived around the world. Thus, "sustainable development indicators" or "sustainability indicators" have also been developed and implemented in many countries, e.g., the U.S. [2], the U.K.


[3], and Germany [4]. Many important international organizations such as United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development (UNCSD), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), World Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Environment Statistics Unit (EuroStat), and Friend of the Earth (FOE) [5] have also endeavored to develop sustainable development indicators. Among these, most of them were developed based on the fundamental "Pressure-State-Response" (PSR) system proposed by OECD, which were later modified by the United Nations Department for Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development (UN DPCSD) and re-announced it as a "Driving Force-State-Response" (DSR) system. In addition, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has proposed an "Environmental Sustainability Index" system for conducting cross-national comparisons on five major components [6]. In Taiwan, there have also been many indicator systems for measuring sustainability, e.g., "Sustainable Taiwan" [7] and "Sustainable Taipei" [8].

3.2 Incorporating the concept of sustainability into SEA

The ultimate goal of SEA is to assess the impacts of the policy/plan/programme on sustainability of a nation/region/local context. Hence, in the framework of SEA, the function of the indicator matrix is for carrying out "Strategic Sustainability Appraisal" (SSA). Partidhi0 and Clark [9] argued that indicators used in the regime of environmental studies can be briefly classified into two categories, i.e., "traditional indicators" and "indicators of sustainability". The former are referred to as life quality or environmental indicators, which can also be implemented in the framework of sustainable development. In contrast, indicators of sustainability are those introduced with clearly identifiable targets or "thresholds" of sustainability and bear more strength in demonstrating the extent of sustainable development of the target region or nation.

They further argued that the criteria for selecting and applying "sustainability indicators" or "sustainable development indicators" can be summarized as follows: l. Criteria for sustainability must be established and incorporated in key steps

of decision making. 2. Targets for fulfilling the criteria for sustainability should be clearly defined. 3. Offering flexible mechanisms that can make decision makers able to apply

them to relative decision levels (local, regional, or national) in prior to launch of the planning and decision making processes.

4. Based on the criteria and targets of sustainability, there should be some mechanisms for marking a "red zone", i.e. the situation that the sustainability thresholds are exceeded.

Thus, when implementing sustainability indicators in the framework of SEA, the theme/topic/category, meaning, criterion, and target of each of the indicators should be stated clearly in order to promote the convenience of using these sustainability evaluation systems. Table 3 illustrates some examples.


Table 3: Examples of the topics, targets, and indicators used in SEA.

Definition

Example

SEA topics

General issue

Air pollution

3.3 The case in Taiwan

region

There have been many indicator systems designed for measuring sustainable development of the nation in the last decade. Some of the important ones include "Sustainable Taiwan" [7] and "Sustainable Taipei" [g] mentioned above. In 2001, the National Science Council of Taiwan proposed the "Evaluation System of Sustainable Development for Taiwan" [IO], which is the first system that was officially accepted by the government as over fifteen national-level departments have been involved in a plan to development detailed variables and find corresponding values for the 83 indicator system. Thus, those indicators in this system suitable for measuring sustainability were taken into consideration when modifying the current indicator matrix for SEA. In addition, by referring to Table 2, it can be understood that actually only "items" instead of operational "indicators" were listed in the indicator matrix. The targets and approaches to measuring sustainability were also absent. Therefore, based on the four criteria for incorporating the idea of sustainability into SSA, we would define indicators explicitly and try to identify the targets associated with them, so that quantitative evaluations can be carried out through employing this matrix system.

According to the background information and analysis offered in the preceding, the following are the tasks to be accomplished: 1. Clearly define the indicators and make them quantifiable. 2. Associated with each of the indicators, try to identify the criterion and target

(threshold) for sustainability and offer some explanations. 3. Incorporating those indicators in the "Evaluation System of Sustainable

Development for Taiwan" that fit the purposes of SEA. 4. Adding in other suitable and operational indicators while keeping the basic

framework of the matrix system.

SEA indicators

Measures monitor the extent of achievement

SEA targets

the topic Decrease [NOx] in a

3.4 The Delphi Method for indicator selection

directional General, related to

burces: Partidario, 2002 and this study

reduced to 10% of that in 1997

The Delphi Method was employed to select appropriate indicators for the modified SEA matrix system. A questionnaire for the first run was designed based on the criteria mentioned above and distributed to an ad-hoc committee composed of 33 professors, experts, and officials. There were totally 98 candidate indicators listed in this questionnaire and a score between 0 and 5 ,

quantitative Detailed, related to the topic

By 2002, [NOx] in the area should be

five monitoring stations in that region

of the targets The average value of [NOx] measured by the


Forming the ad-hoc committee

I f , Design and distributing thefirst-round questionnaire

Data collection, computation, and analysis

+ Design and distributing the next-round questionnaire

Result analysis and interpretation

Figure 1: The conceptual flowchart of the Delphi Method employed in this study.

corresponding to "very unsuitable" to "very suitable", was requested for each of the indicators. The scores obtained from the first-round questionnaire were then calculated (averaged). Only those indicators with a score no less than 4.0 can be chosen as a candidate for the second round. In the real case, most of the first-round scores were between 3.2 and 4.7, and 73 out of the 98 candidate indicators were qualified to be re-considered. In the second-round questionnaire, the average score of each of the indicators was shown for the purpose of reaching consensus. The questionnaire was then sent to the ad-hoc committee members again and the data were gathered when possible. Afterward, a consistency test was performed to determine if further questionnaires were needed. In this case, the test was past successfully and a modified indicator system for SEA was obtained. The conceptual flowchart for this approach was illustrated as Figure 1.

The indicators for measuring sustainability in the SEA framework obtained in this study were presented in the following. The average score for each of them was also attached, which can become the basic information for further computation if relative weights of these indicators were desired:

Area I : Carrying capacity of the environment Category 1 - 1 : air Indicator 1 - 1 - 1 : annually averaged [PM 101 (4.0) Indicator 1-1-2: ratio of days with PSI > 100 annually (4.5) Indicator 1-1-3: annual C02emission (4.2)

Category 1-2: water bodies Indicator 1

1 1 1 1 1

Indicator Indicator Indicator Indicator Indicator

-2-1: ratio of meeting water quality standards in rivers (4.3) -2-2: ratio of meeting water quality standards in reservoirs (4.2) -2-3: ratio of meeting water quality standards in lakes (4.0) -2-4: ratio of meeting water quality standards in ocean (4.0) -2-5: ratio of meeting water quality standards in groundwaters (4.3) -2-6: ratio of major reservoirs with TSI > 50 (4.3)


Indicator 1-2-7: total (domestic, industrial, livestock) BOD emission (4.2) Indicator 1-2-8: total SS emission (4.0) Indicator 1-2-9: ratio of not meeting drinking water standards (4.7)

Category 1-3: soil Indicator 1-3-1: amount of pesticides used per unit area (4.2) Indicator 1-3-2: amount of chemicals used per unit area (4.0) Indicator 1-3-3: heavy metals in soil (4.3)

Category 1-4: waste Indicator 1-4- 1: daily solid waste generation per person (4.1) Indicator 1-4-2: proper treatment rate of solid waste (4.3) Indicator 1-4-3: ratio of recycled recyclable waste (4.2) Indicator 1-4-4: proper treatment rate of industrial waste (4.6) Indicator 1-4-5: growth rate of industrial waste (4.1) Indicator 1-4-6: growth rate of weakly radioactive waste (4.1)

Category 1-5: noise and vibration Indicator 1-5-1: equivalent noise level (4.1) Indicator 1-5-2: maximum noise level (4.1) Indicator 1-5-3: percentage of unsatisfactory monitoring ambient noise (4.2)

Area 2: Natural Ecosystems Category 2-1: terrestrial ecosystems

Indicator 2-1- 1: diversity index of the terrestrial fauna (4.0) Indicator 2-1-2: diversity index of the terrestrial flora (4.0) Indicator 2-1-3: extent of change of the dominated terrestrial fauna (4.2) Indicator 2-1-4: extent of change of the dominated terrestrial flora (4.2)

Category 2-2: aquatic ecosystems Indicator 2-2- 1 : diversity index of the aquatic fauna (4.1) Indicator 2-2-2: diversity index of the aquatic flora (4.0) Indicator 2-2-3: diversity index of the benthonic biota (4.0) Indicator 2-2-4: extent of change of the dominated fauna (4.2) Indicator 2-2-5: extent of change of the dominated flora (4.1) Indicator 2-2-6: extent of change of the dominated benthonic biota (4.0)

Category 2-3: aquatic ecosystems Indicator 2-3-1: irreversible damage of important habitats (4.6)

Area 3: Public Health or Safety Category 3-1: terrestrial ecosystems Indicator 3-1-1: annual consumption of toxic chemicals (4.2) Indicator 3-1-2: annual emission of toxic industrial waste (4.5) Indicator 3-1-3: morbidity of pollution-induced diseases (4.2) Indicator 3-1-4: testing values of dioxin (in soil, milk, and blood) (4.0) Indicator 3-1-5: the average ratio of satisfactory samples of the health-related heavy metals regulated in the National Environmental Protection Plan (4.1)

Category 3-2: Radioactive or chemical hazards Indicator 3-2-1: number of leakage events of radioactive materials (4.0) Indicator 3-2-2: population impacted by radioactive pollution (4.1)


Indicator 3-2-3: growth rate of lowly radioactive fixed wastes (4.0) Indicator 3-2-4: frequency of occurrence of chemical pollution events (4.2) Indicator 3-2-5: casualties due to chemical hazards (4.1)

Area 4: Use of Natural Resources Category 4- 1 : forest resources Indicator 4-1- 1 : annual deforestation area (4.0) Indicator 4-1-2: ratio of forest not damaged (4.3)

Category 4-2: mineral and soilhock resources Indicator 4-2-1: annual consumption of cement (4.0) Indicator 4-2-2: annual mining amount of sandhock (4.4) Indicator 4-2-3: recycling ratio of wasted reinforced concrete (4.1)

Category 4-3: water resources Indicator 4-3- 1: per capita daily water consumption (4.4) Indicator 4-3-2: total water consumption (4.2) Indicator 4-3-3: total effective amount of water resources (4.3) Indicator 4-3-4: ratio of effective use of water resources (4.1) Indicator 4-3-5: consumption ration of groundwater (4.0) Indicator 4-3-6: average number of days when reservoir storages are low or

severely low (4.0) Category 4-4: biota resources Indicator 4-4-1 : field population of specified species (4.1) Indicator 4-4-2: distribution of adventive species (4.1)

Area 5: Water Resources and Uses Category 5- 1 : targets, demand, and supply of water uses

Indicator 5-1-1: balance of supply and demand of water resources (SI) (4.2) Indicator 5-1-2: industrial water use efficiency (4.3)

Category 5-2: allocation of water resources Indicator 5-2-1: changes of S1 for agricultural, industrial, and domestic water uses(4.1)

Area 6: Cultural Assets and Harmony of Natural Landscape Category 6- 1 : geological landscape Indicator 6-1-1: area ratios for landslide and debris flow (4.2)

Category 6-2: ecological landscape Indicator 6-2- 1: extent of change in vegetation (4.0) Indicator 6-2-2: whether server impacts to environmentally sensitive area will result in (4.4)

Category 6-3: cultural heritage Indicator 6-3-1: whether irreversible damages to important cultural assets will result in (4.4)

Area 7: International Environmental Rules Category 7- 1 : the Montreal Protocol Indicator 7- 1-1: consumption of CFCs (4.3)


Category 7-2: United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC)

Indicator 7-2-1 : annual emission of C02 (4.1) Indicator 7-2-2: total weighted emission of greenhouse gases (4.4)

Category 7-3: Base1 Convention Indicator 7-3-1: import of hazardous waste (4.0)

Category 7-4: CITES Indicator 7-4-1: export of conserved biota and products (4.1) Indicator 7-4-2: import of conserved biota and products (4.1)

Category 7-5: Convention on Biological Diversity Indicator 7-5-1: area of various reserves (4.0) Indicator 7-5-2: biodiversity index (4.3)

4 Conclusion

In this study, the current indicator system for SEA in Taiwan has been modified by taking into account the concept of sustainable development. The idea of Strategic Sustainability Appraisal was employed in revising the indicator system. The Delphi Method was applied to carry out the processes of indicator selection. 73 out of the 98 candidate indicators were selected. The final scores associated with them obtained from the approach can serve as the base for further computation if relative weights of these indicators were desired. These indicators were designed as sustainability indicators instead of traditional ones through more comprehensive and integrated consideration of the SEA system. Thus, they bear more strength in reflecting the driving force, state, and response for sustainable development in the context of SEA.

Further tasks can be carried out with respect to the indicators proposed at this stage to establish a robust tool for evaluating sustainability in SEA practices. The threshold or target for each of the indicators needs to be specified through following studies. Also, as tradeoffs exist between flexibility and definitude of the indicator system for SEA, a well-defined mechanism incorporating the rules and basic requirements of some specified SEA case studies can be developed to enhance the applicability of the indicator system.

References

[l] Yu, Y-H & C-T Huang, Establishment of Techniques for Governmental SEA, EPA of Taiwan, ROC, 2002.

[2] Seattle, Sustainable Seattle 1993: indicators of sustainable community. Seattle, WA: Sustainable Seattle, 1993.

[3] The Department of Environment ,Transport and the Regions on line, UK, 1997. htt~://www/detr.gov.uli/doe/envir/esr,im/indics/index.html.

[4] Walz, R., "Development of Environmental Indicator Systems: Experiences from Germany", Environmental Management, 25(6), pp. 613-623,2000.

[5] Friends of the Earth Europe, Towards sustainable Europe: The study, London: FOE, 1995.


[6] World Economic Forum, 2002 Environmental Sustainability Index, 2002. http://www.ciesin.columbia.edulindicatorslESU.

[7] Yu, Y-H, Indicators for Sustainable Taiwan, CEPD of Taiwan, ROC, 1997. [8] Huang S-L, R-H Liao, and T-C Chen, "Establishment and Evaluation of

Sustainability Index for Taipei City", City and Planning, 24(1), 1997. [9] Partidkio, M. R. and R. Clark (ed.), Perspective on Strategic

Environmental Assessment, Lewis Publishers, USA, 2000. [l01 Yeh, J-R, Evaluation System of Sustainable Development for Taiwan, 2001.

httr,://~~~.law.ntu.edu.tw/sustain/.


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