Abstract
Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is a major policy evaluation tool, for institutional processes, when they need to cope with fundamental risks, give voice to non-human agents, manage commons, and address environmental justice. The interplay of SEA with planning, unravels key issues and criticalities in both urban governance and environmental democracy. How can evaluation be developed to support the process? Structured evaluation methods applied in environmental assessment are maybe not sufficient to solve complex social conflicts. We point out some key reflections with the aim of opening up the discussion, by taking the case study of the environmental assessment of pollutant activities in the main industrial port cities of Southern Italy. They represent, at the moment, the most significant social criticality in our country, related to the interplay between environmental assessment and risk for labor. The paper focuses on the case study by mentioning the evolution of some thoughts about the red stripe that links sustainability, environmental democracy, and social evaluation, and illustrates the issues of these aspects in the case study, with the aim of underlining the difficulty of environmental assessment tools as a major support for planning processes, when social conflicts arise.
Highlights
The aim of the paper is to provide experience-based critical support, to environmental evaluation, by profiling the way in which evaluation can face uncertainty in the context of social conflict
As can be perceived below, the introduction of forms of environmental evaluation of plans and planning processes does not guarantee a priori to reach a sustainable form of planning and governance
We treat some definitions that give an idea of the complexity of the issues of sustainability
Summary
The aim of the paper is to provide experience-based critical support, to environmental evaluation (and in special mode to the strategic environmental assessment: SEA), by profiling the way in which evaluation can face uncertainty in the context of social conflict. We choose as the case study, the attempt of a sustainable re-development of the southern industrial port cities in Italy that currently represent the key factor of the main environmental conflict in our country. Beyond the magnitude of the phenomenon, port cities, stand up as a major concern for environmental governance and democracy [1], and are an ideal target for theoretical investigations and practical innovations alike. During 2008, for the first time in history, the share of the world population living in urban areas reached 50%, and the figure is expected to rise to 60% by the year 2030 [2]. Most of world urban population lives in coastal cities, and most of the main pollutant activities are still located in their port areas. Five steps characterize the development of port cities [3]
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