INVESTIGATION OF DIFFERENT STAKEHOLDER VIEWS OF LOCAL RESIDENT INVOLVEMENT DURING ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENTS IN THE UK

2003 ◽  
Vol 05 (01) ◽  
pp. 45-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL ROBINSON ◽  
ALAN BOND

Based on the possibility that different stakeholders have different views and aspirations about public involvement in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), a study was carried out to test whether this was the case, and whether the urban/suburban public might have different views on involvement of local residents (who are considered to be stakeholders) in EIA to the rural public and whether the views of those with experience of such involvement differ from the views of those without such experience. A questionnaire survey was carried out of UK EIA consultants and residents of one rural village and one urban area in the UK. The questions were structured in relation to seven issues relating to local residents involvement in EIA: importance; when (at which EIA stage); when (with respect to development sector); when (with respect to impact areas, e.g. air, fauna); to what extent; who; and for what purpose. Chi-squared tests were carried out to identify significant differences between pairs of results. Significant differences were found between the views of the consultants (who would organise the local residents involvement) and the local residents themselves, for many of the issues investigated. There were also some differences in views between the views of the rural and urban/suburban public for a limited range of issues and some, but not many, differences between the views of those with experience of local residents involvement and those without. Bearing in mind the limited nature of the survey, the results indicate that there is potential, even where consultants design what they consider to be very good public involvement programmes, for poor acceptance from the local residents and a lack of confidence in the programme. Consultants need to be aware of the range of views of stakeholders in order to develop successful public involvement programmes.

1993 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-18
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Schlotter

Since July 1986, my place of employment has been a small, for-profit consulting firm of civil engineers and urban planners called H. W. Lochner, Incorporated. Lochner was founded in the mid-1940s as a civil engineering design firm. When the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) became law in 1969, Lochner, like many other engineering firms, broadened its services to include NEPA-required environmental impact assessments of federally funded infrastructure projects. For the kind of highway projects conducted at Lochner, these impact assessments involve detailed comparisons of alternative roadway designs and locations. Such comparative evaluations are undertaken by a combination of engineers, environmental scientists, and social scientists (usually urban planners). My niche within the Lochner organization is centered around two general NEPA-related activities: impact assessment (both social and environmental) and public involvement.


2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (02) ◽  
pp. 1550022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Vicente ◽  
Teresa Fidélis ◽  
Gonzalo Méndez

Since 2000, the Transboundary Environmental Impact Assessment (TEIA) process in the Iberian context has undergone significant development due to new circumstances that came into play at the bilateral and European levels: (i) the adoption of a collaborative TEIA Protocol between Spain and Portugal in 2008; and (ii) the increasing number of cross-border projects supported by European Union funds. Despite these developments, the impact of this bilateral regulation on public participation, the cornerstone of any Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), has not yet been fully examined. Drawing from specific literature focusing on the involvement of the public as the basis of effective improvement of the TEIA, this paper critically analyses if the lates transboundary provision has encouraged public participation in this context. Although the analysis of the TEIA enforcement revealed a considerable increase in the number of consultations between the neighbouring states compared to the previous situation, public involvement has not increased. Based on these findings, this paper presents a set of recommendations to more effectively involve the public in transboundary consultations.


1999 ◽  
Vol 01 (01) ◽  
pp. 105-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMON DRESNER ◽  
NIGEL GILBERT

Interviews with participants in the decision-making processes for major installations in six western European countries reveal criticism of the procedures from all sides. In particular, environmental impact assessments were criticised for their lack of independence from the proposer, failure to assess alternatives to the proposal adequately, incomprehensibility to lay-people and failure to consider social factors. There was also criticism of general lack of public involvement in the decision-making process. Consideration of these criticisms lends support to calls for revision of the European directives on environmental impact assessment and their implementation in national laws.


2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-92
Author(s):  
Rob Edwards

Herbicide resistance in problem weeds is now a major threat to global food production, being particularly widespread in wild grasses affecting cereal crops. In the UK, black-grass (Alopecurus myosuroides) holds the title of number one agronomic problem in winter wheat, with the loss of production associated with herbicide resistance now estimated to cost the farming sector at least £0.5 billion p.a. Black-grass presents us with many of the characteristic traits of a problem weed; being highly competitive, genetically diverse and obligately out-crossing, with a growth habit that matches winter wheat. With the UK’s limited arable crop rotations and the reliance on the repeated use of a very limited range of selective herbicides we have been continuously performing a classic Darwinian selection for resistance traits in weeds that possess great genetic diversity and plasticity in their growth habits. The result has been inevitable; the steady rise of herbicide resistance across the UK, which now affects over 2.1 million hectares of some of our best arable land. Once the resistance genie is out of the bottle, it has proven difficult to prevent its establishment and spread. With the selective herbicide option being no longer effective, the options are to revert to cultural control; changing rotations and cover crops, manual rogueing of weeds, deep ploughing and chemical mulching with total herbicides such as glyphosate. While new precision weeding technologies are being developed, their cost and scalability in arable farming remains unproven. As an agricultural scientist who has spent a working lifetime researching selective weed control, we seem to be giving up on a technology that has been a foundation stone of the green revolution. For me it begs the question, are we really unable to use modern chemical and biological technology to counter resistance? I would argue the answer to that question is most patently no; solutions are around the corner if we choose to develop them.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7853
Author(s):  
Xiubai Li ◽  
Jinok Susanna Kim ◽  
Timothy J. Lee

The importance of community attitude and participation for the success and sustainability of cultural festivals has been steadily increasing in recent years. The Chuncheon Puppet Festival (CPF) is an international festival that has been held every year since 1989 in Chuncheon, Korea. The festival has several distinctive characteristics as a sustainable event because: (a) it maintains its single genre of puppet performances based on modern cultural art; (b) it is well-established as the festival for the local residents of Chuncheon City and is planned by local community residents and local small companies, not by government agencies or global large entrepreneurs; (c) it helps children to have an interesting cultural experience in the local environment; and (d) it is regularly hosted in August, an off-season for festivals in Korea that was chosen by residents as it is a school holiday season. However, there is still room for improvement to secure its place as a successful sustainable festival. The following might be considered: (i) increased exchange of human resources among the festival executive members, community groups, and the public staff in Chuncheon City; (ii) local residents should maintain full control of the festival; and (iii) a local cultural trust should be established by cultural art professionals, local resident organizations, puppet show professionals, and public agency staff. The CPF is a typical example of a successful sustainable festival with proactive and supportive community participation and a large number of volunteers that help to increase local competitiveness and sustainable local development. This case report delivers insightful lessons and messages to guide what needs to be preconditioned for local cultural festivals to be sustainable and successful for a long time in many destinations, where they can contribute as efficient catalysts for regional tourism development.


Author(s):  
U. Nopp-Mayr ◽  
F. Kunz ◽  
F. Suppan ◽  
E. Schöll ◽  
J. Coppes

AbstractIncreasing numbers of wind power plants (WPP) are constructed across the globe to reduce the anthropogenic contribution to global warming. There are, however, concerns on the effects of WPP on human health as well as related effects on wildlife. To address potential effects of WPP in environmental impact assessments, existing models accounting for shadow flickering and noise are widely applied. However, a standardized, yet simple and widely applicable proxy for the visibility of rotating wind turbines in woodland areas was largely lacking up to date. We combined land cover information of forest canopy extracted from orthophotos and airborne laser scanning (LiDAR) data to represent the visibility of rotating wind turbines in five woodland study sites with a high spatial resolution. Performing an in-situ validation in five study areas across Europe which resulted in a unique sample of 1738 independent field observations, we show that our approach adequately predicts from where rotating wind turbine blades are visible within woodlands or not. We thus provide strong evidence, that our approach yields a valuable proxy of the visibility of moving rotor blades with high resolution which in turn can be applied in environmental impact assessments of WPP within woodlands worldwide.


Rheumatology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 60 (Supplement_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie J W Shoop-Worrall ◽  
Suzanne M M Verstappen ◽  
Wendy Costello ◽  
Saskya P Angevare ◽  
Yosef Uziel ◽  
...  

Abstract Background/Aims  Younger and older people with rheumatic diseases may experience increased anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the uncertainty regarding their likelihood of contracting the virus, its complications alongside their existing condition and whether their immunosuppressive treatments pose additional risks. This study explored trajectories of anxiety in parents of children and young people (CYP) with rheumatic diseases and adults with rheumatic diseases in the six months following March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods  CYP and adults recruited to the international COVID-19 European Patient Registry, a parent-led, online, self-referred prospective cohort recruiting participants globally, were selected if enrolled within 20th March to 17th April 2020. Anxiety scores (0-10, 10=Highest anxiety) were collected weekly for up to 28 weeks and denoted parent anxiety in the CYP cohort and self-reported anxiety in the adult cohort. Group-based trajectory models explored anxiety clusters using censored-normal models in the CYP and adult populations, separately. Linear, quadratic and cubic polynomials were tested within 1 to 10 clusters and optimal models selected based on a combination of model fit (BIC), parsimony and clinical plausibility. Demographic (country, age, gender) and clinical (diagnosis, disease control, respiratory comorbidity, immunosuppressive therapy) information and COVID-19 mitigation behaviours (isolation, distancing, none) were collected at initial enrolment and compared between clusters using Chi-squared, Fisher’s exact and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Results  Among 498 CYP and 2640 adults, most were female (65%, 89%) and from the UK (50%, 84%), respectively. The most common diagnoses were polyarticular JIA (37%) and oligoarticular JIA (29%) among CYP and RA among the adults (63%). Respiratory comorbidities were uncommon in the CYP (10%) and adult (17%) cohorts, and most were taking any immunosuppressive therapies (85%, 87%), respectively. As of March 2020, 88% and 79% were self-isolating, respectively. In both the parents of CYP and adult cohorts, four trajectory clusters were identified with similar patterns: Persistent extremely high anxiety (32%, 17%), persistent high anxiety (43%, 41%), high anxiety that marginally improved (25%, 32%) and moderate anxiety that improved (11%, 10%). Among CYP, few characteristics distinguished the clusters. However, in the adult cohort, clusters with greater and more persistent anxiety were associated with higher levels of respiratory comorbidities, higher use of immunosuppressive therapies, higher initial levels of self-isolation and slightly older age than those with lower or improving anxiety over time. Conclusion  This study reports four trajectories of anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic that are consistent across parents of CYP with rheumatic diseases and among adults with these conditions. Despite relatively lower risks for CYP, parental anxiety regarding COVID-19 was high and not associated with characteristics of their child or of their child's disease. Among adults with rheumatic diseases, greater anxiety was associated with risk factors potentially associated with COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. Disclosure  S.J.W. Shoop-Worrall: None. S.M.M. Verstappen: None. W. Costello: None. S.P. Angevare: None. Y. Uziel: None. C. Wouters: None. N. Wulffraat: Honoraria; Sobi. Grants/research support; Abbvie. R. Beesley: None.


Energy Policy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 156 ◽  
pp. 112379
Author(s):  
Jacob D. Hileman ◽  
Mario Angst ◽  
Tyler A. Scott ◽  
Emma Sundström

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Georgina M. Robinson

In an age where concern for the environment is paramount, individuals are continuously looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint—does this now extend to in one’s own death? How can one reduce the environmental impact of their own death? This paper considers various methods of disposing the human body after death, with a particular focus on the environmental impact that the different disposal techniques have. The practices of ‘traditional’ burial, cremation, ‘natural’ burial, and ‘resomation’ will be discussed, with focus on the prospective introduction of the funerary innovation of the alkaline hydrolysis of human corpses, trademarked as ‘Resomation’, in the United Kingdom. The paper situates this process within the history of innovative corpse disposal in the UK in order to consider how this innovation may function within the UK funeral industry in the future, with reference made to possible religious perspectives on the process.


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