شناسایی و توسعه جایگزین های مدیریت مواد زائد برای ارزیابی زیست محیطی استراتژیک (SEA)

The European Union Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive (2001/42/EC) requires the assessment of likely significant effects on the environment of implementing plans or programmes and reasonable alternatives. While SEA regulations and guidelines emphasize rigour and objectivity in the assessment of alternatives they have little to say on their actual identification. Therefore, criteria should be developed which would aid decision makers in the identification of alternatives appropriate to the tier of decision-making and which meet the objectives of SEA. A methodology is set out in this paper for identifying SEA alternatives for a proposed waste management plan/programme. Specifically, the methodology describes a set of alternatives identification criteria, which will meet the requirements and objectives of SEA and waste management legislation. The outputs from the methodology will help focus on the identification of more sustainable alternatives for waste management planning in Ireland.

Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is an important tool for integrating the environment into decision-making (Sadler and Verheem, 1996 and Sheate et al., 2003) and as such offers a promising approach towards achieving the goal of sustainable development (Therivel and Partidario, 1996). Specifically, SEA seeks to inform the decision-maker of the degree of uncertainty over impacts, the level of consistency in objectives (plan and environmental), the sensitivity of the baseline and the range of plan or programme alternatives available. Alternatives are options, choices, or courses of action; they are means to accomplish particular goals (Steinemann, 2001). Specifically, they are the means of achieving the central aims of SEA, which is to provide for a high level of environmental protection and to integrate environmental considerations into the decision making process. In order to determine if the central aims of SEA are being incorporated into the development of alternatives, some criteria must be used where SEA/environmental objectives and environmental issues/problems are included. While there is no currently available methodology for the identification of alternatives in waste management this research paper proposes a set of criteria to help practitioners develop a set of alternatives for a plan or programme. Specifically, this will involve a discussion of alternatives and their role within SEA, following from this an overview of waste management in Ireland will be given, which will consider how alternatives are currently developed. A generic set of SEA alternatives development criteria will be applied to waste management planning with a view to identifying the points of convergence and divergence between waste management planning and SEA processes.

The purpose behind proposing a set of alternatives identification criteria in this research paper was to establish a means of developing alternatives that would be of a sufficiently high, yet of practical standard to meet the objectives of the SEA Directive and Irish waste management legislation. The development of alternatives in waste management planning in Ireland has traditionally been driven by waste quantities and qualities, ability to meet waste policy objectives and targets, environmental protection, existing facilities, infrastructure and governance structures. However, it is proposed here that these criteria alone are insufficient to meet the goals of SEA, which is to integrate the environment into the decision making process with a view to achieving sustainable development. Developed within an Irish environmental planning context, a set of alternatives development criteria was proposed, which it was argued would be sufficiently robust to meet the main SEA objectives. The criteria were then applied to waste management planning with a view to testing their validity. The suggested criteria include: tier of decision-making; path dependency; hierarchy of options; environmental policy context review; setting environmental objectives; identification of existing and potential environmental issues; evidence from the baseline; sustainability; consultation and timing. In recognising that different types of alternatives may be available in specific situations it was further argued that different combinations of the criterion may be appropriate to different tiers of decision making. For example, at higher levels of decision making where the objective could be to achieve a policy direction or vision appropriate criteria would include hierarchy of options, SEA/environmental objectives, social acceptability, sustainability and consultation The potential list should not be seen as exhaustive and may need to be updated over time as familiarity and confidence in the SEA process grows. The alternatives decision criteria provide a simple and logical method for identifying reasonable alternatives for use in SEA. Since the identification, description and evaluation of reasonable alternatives is a central but highly challenging SEA exercise, it is useful to establish a methodology for their development, which can be drawn upon by practitioners. In providing a short, comprehensive and recognisable set of criteria, practitioners should not experience any major difficulties in their utilisation. Indeed it can be argued that in many circumstances the criteria already form part of the practitioners environmental decision making tool kit, even if undocumented and tacit. In conclusion, it is recommended that such a methodology could be used when alternatives are being developed in practice in any number of environmental sectors (e.g. land use planning, waste management, transport, energy). Not only will the criteria assist in the practicalities of developing alternatives, but they will also go some way towards illuminating the reasoning behind how decisions are made and why particular conclusions are arrived at and by whom. At a practical level the criteria can be used as a simple audit trail to illustrate the decision making process, while at a deeper level they can be used as a starting point for practitioners to think through the socio-environmental context within which they develop policy and plan alternatives and ultimately make environmental decisions. In this way the methodology opens up the environmental decision making process to scrutiny. In addition, in the utilisation of a generic set of SEA decision making criteria which collectively account for key environmental, social and economic considerations (environmental policy integration and public participation and consultation in particular) the goal of sustainability can be progressed.