Holistic Impact Assessment Research Articles

Holistic impact assessment and cost savings of rainwater harvesting at the watershed scale.

We evaluated the impacts of domestic and agricultural rainwater harvesting (RWH) systems in three watersheds within the Albemarle-Pamlico river basin (southeastern U.S.) using life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost assessment. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) categories included energy demand, fossil fuel, metals, ozone depletion, global warming, acidification, smog, blue and green water use, ecotoxicity, eutrophication, and human health effects. Building upon previous LCAs of near-optimal domestic and agricultural RWH systems in the region, we scaled functional unit LCIA scores for adoption rates of 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% and compared these to conventional municipal water and well water systems. In addition to investigating watershed-scale impacts of RWH adoption, which few studies have addressed, potential life cycle cost savings due to reduced cumulative energy demand were scaled in each watershed for a more comprehensive analysis. The importance of managing the holistic water balance, including blue water (surface/ground water), green water (rainwater) use, and annual precipitation and their relationship to RWH are also addressed. RWH contributes to water resource sustainability by offsetting surface and ground water consumption and by reducing environmental and human health impacts compared to conventional sources. A watershed-wide RWH adoption rate of 25% has a number of ecological and human health benefits including blue water use reduction ranging from 2–39 Mm3, cumulative energy savings of 12–210 TJ, and reduced global warming potential of 600–10,100 Mg CO2 eq. Potential maximum lifetime energy cost savings were estimated at $5M and $24M corresponding to domestic RWH in Greens Mill and agricultural RWH in Back Creek watersheds.

Towards a holistic environmental impact assessment of carbon nanotube growth through chemical vapour deposition

Despite the large production of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), which has been widely applied in the industrial sector and reached hundreds of tonnes, an integrated study that focuses not only on CNT synthesis and characterisation but also on the environmental footprint of the process life cycle is hitherto scarce. This work goes beyond state-of-the-art, combining and comparing two different CNT synthesis routes by taking into account all the appropriate data to fully evaluate them not only in terms of material characteristics and process productivity but also incorporating a comprehensive life cycle overview indicating the areas of concern that should be thoroughly considered and appreciated prior to their industrial scale production. The resulting environmental impacts and uncertainty analysis offer insights into areas where significant environmental gains could be achieved, thus providing a stepping stone towards “greener” CNT-based nanoproducts and paving the way for their sustainable industrialisation.

From hope to dystopia

Purpose This paper aims to examine the dark flip side of the heightened dreams and wild expectations of development as a bright picture that accompanied the discovery of petroleum in politically unstable and donor-dependent Chad. Design/methodology/approach Data were elicited through local-level ethnography–participant observation, individual surveys and focus group discussion sessions with stakeholders on the impact of the Chad–Cameroon pipeline and petroleum development project. Findings While the “discourse of development” is about a better and new future, this new future, however, has a dark side: un/under-development, “backwardness”, corruption and patronage, leading to deeply entrenched poverty. Petroleum has become a discursive site where the competing discourses about development personified as the provision of material resources are played out. Originality/value The failure of petro-dollar-inspired development in Chad speaks to the mutually reinforcing nature of development decisions. Although firms need workers with specialized skills, workers will not acquire those skills in anticipation of employment opportunities. This disjuncture highlights the need for strategic complementarity in investment decision and coordination among economic agents. More than a decade later, the utopic dream of petro-dollar-inspired development as an aspiration is now characterized by a disconnect–environmental degradation, food insecurity, gendered and deeply entrenched poverty. This disjuncture demonstrates the need for a holistic impact assessment that involves different adaptive approaches and focus on a wide range of livelihood issues. Holistic evaluation on all programmes, plans, projects, policies and interventions will lead to the achievement of sustainable people-centred development that conserves the stewardship of nature.

Environmental sustainability of an energy self-sufficient sewage treatment plant: Improvements through DEMON and co-digestion

It is still not proven that treatment of sewage in a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) is (in every case) environmentally friendly. To address this matter, we have applied a state-of-the-art life cycle assessment (LCA) to an energy self-sufficient WWTP in Strass (Austria), its supply chain and the valorization of its ‘products’: produced electricity out of biogas from sludge digestion and the associated stabilized digestate, applied as agricultural fertilizer. Prominent aspects of our study are: a holistic environmental impact assessment, measurement of greenhouse gas emissions (including N2O), and accounting for infrastructure, replacement of conventional fertilizers and toxicity of metals present in the stabilized digestate. Additionally, the environmental sustainability improvement by implementing one-stage partial nitritation/anammox (e.g. DEMON®) and co-digestion was also assessed. DEMON on the digesters reject water leads to a considerable saving of natural resources compared to nitritiation/denitritation (about 33% of the life cycle resource input), this through the lowering of sludge consumption for N-removal, and thus increasing electricity production via a higher sludge excess. However, its N2O emission could be restrained through further optimization as it represents a large share (30–66%) of the plants' damaging effect on human health, this through climate change. The co-substrate addition to the digester resulted in no significant improvement of the digestion process but induced net electricity generation. If respective amounts of conventional fertilizers are replaced, the land application of the stabilized digestate is environmentally friendly through prevention of natural resource consumption and diversity loss, but possibly not regarding human health impact due the presence of toxic heavy metals, mainly Zn, in the digestate. The outcomes show that the complete life cycle results in a prevention of resource extraction from nature and a potential mitigation of diversity loss (though for some impact categories no quantification of associated diversity loss is possible) but it also leads to a damaging effect on human health, mainly via climate change and heavy metal toxicity. Since it is for now impossible to aggregate the impact to these different aspects in a sound manner, it is not yet possible to consider in this case the studied system as environmentally friendly. Generally, the field of LCA needs further development to present a better and single outcome.

Towards More Holistic Environmental Impact Assessment: Hybridisation of Life Cycle Assessment and Quantitative Risk Assessment

Global and local environmental impacts of products or services can sometimes be in conflict with one another. Therefore, the importance of considering both impacts in environmental management must be recognised. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is useful in evaluating global impacts while quantitative risk assessment (QRA) is effective in local impact assessments. The benefits of combining LCA and QRA in this regard have been recognised. Advantages and disadvantages of different hybridisation approaches were critically examined in this paper. There seems to be no single best approach and a method needs to be carefully selected depending on the type of application.

The holistic impact assessment of shopping centres: the case of Bab Ezzouar, Algeria

This paper proposes a new tool for assessing the impacts of shopping centres on the urban ecosystem. This decision-making tool is innovative because it is holistic: a holistic impact assessment (HIA). It can take into account all the impacts of shopping centres, viz. economic, social, environmental (natural and built environment) ones and their impact on urban governance. The assessment approaches adopted so far tend to focus on the socio-economic impact or on the transport infrastructure one, and to a lesser extent, the environmental impact. Yet, the whole urban ecosystem is affected at several spatial scales. The paper reports the use of the HIA tool applied to a case study, Bab Ezzouar regional shopping centre in Algiers, showing its operational ability when integrated in the urban and commercial sustainable planning process.

Towards a New Instrument for Promoting Sustainability Beyond the EIA and the SEA: The Holistic Impact Assessment (HIA)

The systemic crisis that the world is currently facing should be addressed with a shift in the dominant economic paradigm, which should be made compatible with the pursuit of (ecological) sustainability. This implies inter alia a reallocation of priorities calling not only for relevant environmental, social, economic and cultural changes, but also for legislative and policy innovations. In such a context, a new approach should be adopted in the way legal instruments for the protection of the environment are conceived and applied. For instance, a major effort of re-orientation should be made in the field of the preventive assessment of negative impacts that may be caused by projects as well as by plans and programs on the environment. In particular, the focus should be placed on two legal instruments, namely the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and the Strategic Impact Assessment (SEA), which despite being very useful tools to prevent possible negative impacts on the environment are characterised by several failures, which undermine their effectiveness. On this premise, the present contribution provides a detailed analysis of the main features and the most relevant shortcomings of these two instruments, in particular within the European Union legal system.Then, the focus of the analysis shifts on the possibility to merge EIA and SEA into a new single instrument. The new instrument, which may be named Holistic Impact Assessment (HIA), should be based upon a holistic sustainability approach, and should represent the common framework for the assessment of all the activities likely to have significant adverse effects on a certain territory. Within such a context, the two types of evaluations will continue to exist and be conducted separately, still dealing respectively with the upstream and downstream assessment, but will be placed under a single framework, inspired by a common approach, governed by the same rules and managed in a coordinated way. For all these reasons, the establishment of the HIA might be a suitable solution to promote a better approach to land planning and a more effective and coordinated prevention of all the possible negative impacts caused by either plans/programs or projects on the environment of a given territory.

A Holistic Impact-Assessment Framework for Green ICT

A new impact-assessment framework evaluates the economic and environmental effects of information and communications technology (ICT), attempting to link such effects to policies, standards, and industrial strategies. The framework is tested on a project for cooperative and self-growing energy-aware networks.

Participatory Impact Assessment of Soil and Water Conservation Scenarios in Oum Zessar Watershed, Tunisia

Environmental threats and progressive degradation of natural resources are considered critical impediments to sustainable development. This paper reports on a participatory impact assessment of alternative soil and water conservation (SWC) scenarios in the Oum Zessar watershed, Tunisia. The first objective was to assess the impact of three SWC scenarios on key social, economic and environmental land use functions. The second objective was to test and evaluate the applicability of the 'Framework for Participatory Impact Assessment (FoPIA)' for assessing scenario impacts in the context of a developing country, in this case Tunisia. The assessed scenarios included: the originally planned SWC policy implementation at 85 % coverage of arable land of the watershed, the current implementation (70 %), and a hypothetical expansion of SWC measures to the entire watershed (100 %). Our results suggest that implementation of the SWC policy at 100 % coverage of arable land achieves the maximum socioeconomic benefit. However, if stakeholders' preferences regarding land use functions are taken into account, and considering the fact that the implementation of SWC measures also implies some negative changes to traditional landscapes and the natural system, SWC implementation at 85 % coverage of arable land might be preferable. The FoPIA approved to be a useful tool for conducting a holistic sustainability impact assessment of SWC scenarios and for studying the most intriguing sustainability problems while providing possible recommendations towards sustainable development. We conclude that participatory impact assessment contributes to an enhanced regional understanding of key linkages between policy effects and sustainable development, which provides the foundation for improved policy decision making.

Integrating temperature vegetation dryness index (TVDI) and regional water stress index (RWSI) for drought assessment with the aid of LANDSAT TM/ETM+ images

This paper presents a new drought assessment method by spatially and temporally integrating temperature vegetation dryness index (TVDI) with regional water stress index (RWSI) based on a synergistic approach. With the aid of LANDSAT TM/ETM data, we were able to retrieve the land-use and land-cover (LULC), vegetation indices (VIs), and land surface temperature (LST), leading to the derivation of three types of modified TVDI, including TVDI_SAVI, TVDI_ANDVI and TVDI_MSAVI, for drought assessment in a fast growing coastal area, Northern China. The categorical classification of four drought impact levels associated with the RWSI values enables us to refine the spatiotemporal relationship between the LST and the VIs. Holistic drought impact assessment between 1987 and 2000 was carried out by linking RWSI with TVDIs group wise. Research findings indicate that: (1) LST and VIs were negatively correlated in most cases of low, medium, and high vegetation cover except the case of high density vegetation cover in 2000 due to the effect of urban heat island (UHI) effect; (2) the shortage of water in 1987 was more salient than that that in 2000 based on all indices of TVDI and RWSI; and (3) TVDIs are more suitable for monitoring mild drought, normal and wet conditions when RWSI is smaller than 0.752; but they are not suitable for monitoring moderate and severe drought conditions.

Balancing the economic, social and environmental dimensions of agro-ecosystems: An integrated modeling approach

There is an increasing need to view agro-ecosystems and to identify remedial management practices in a holistic way. An integrated model based on the driving force–pressure–state–impact–response approach was developed as a tool to assess the effects of policies for improving decision making for the sustainability of agro-ecosystems. An economic model was linked to a process-based biophysical model by a meta-model. Then, a holistic indicator-based impact assessment system was linked to the integrated model to assess policy instruments. The integrated model was applied in the intensive irrigated wheat–maize cropping system of the North China Plain in which water and nitrogen fertilizer management are known to be critical issues for sustainable resource management. The results show there is a trade-off relationship between economic return and environmental outcome. It was shown that water pricing is a more effective policy instrument for improving the sustainability of agro-ecosystem than increasing the price of nitrogen fertilizer. When the water price is raised to 1.0 Yuan/m 3 under a two-tariff system, the sustainability indicators for the irrigation water use efficiency was found to increase from 0.37 to 0.77, groundwater use sustainability increased from 0.05 to 0.60, nitrate leaching increased from 0.48 to 0.55 while the indicators for the farm gross margin, food self-sufficiency, and soil nitrogen balance remain unchanged. The results suggest the modeling approach developed here is very useful for evaluating policy options for complex natural resource management issues.

Sabah shoreline management plan (Borneo, Malaysia): Ecosystems and pollution

The management of the coastline around Sabah (Borneo, Malaysia) faces numerous conflicting interests from the public, private and industry groups. The public demands socio-economic growth, sustainable development and preservation of natural resources while the private sector and industry demand local coastal protection and often reckless development. Subsequently, there are numerous multi-disciplinary conflicts across user groups, over the use of coastal resources. To resolve these issues the creation of a management plan for Sabah's coastline has been initiated. A baseline was established from historical investigations, data collection and using a combination of visual inspections and photos. Understanding of the physical, chemical and biological processes involved as well as the dynamics of the integrated processes and a holistic impact assessment is also required. To do so numerical models were used to integrate available information and knowledge and to hind-cast and now-cast conditions and predict the consequences of different development scenarios. In some cases the models results needed further detailed analysis in combination with specific knowledge on local habitats to determine the impacts. The focus of the paper is on the integration of information, but some details are also given on the important conflicts and habitat threats.

An ecological economics framework for assessing environmental flows: the case of inter-basin water transfers in Lesotho

This paper used the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) that transfers water from the Orange River Basin in Lesotho to the Vaal River Basin in South Africa as a case study to show how environmental sustainability aspects can be integrated into economic development planning. Using the Ecological Social Accounting Matrix (ESAM) for Lesotho that integrates ecological implications of the LHWP with economic benefits of the project, the paper analysed the impact of lost ecological services downstream the LHWP dams in Lesotho on the well-being of households directly affected by the project (riparians) and the general economy of the country. The results revealed that despite significant economic benefits, the project has unintended impacts on ecological resources and services with resultant deleterious well-being implications for riparians. The results from the ESAM analysis indicated that not only the income of riparians is likely to suffer, but also that of other households and social groups, as well as the general economy of Lesotho. While results of the ESAM analysis did not indicate large income impacts on the economy at large, they were significant for riparians. The importance of integrating ecological consequences into impact assessment of IBWT before such transfers can be implemented to ensure sustainable development and considering economy-wide impacts associated with IBWT was proven necessary for a holistic impact assessment of IBWT.