Guidelines for Integrated Environmental Assessments of Urban Areas
*Figure 4: The impact chain
• What impact do we aim to achieve? • What decisions and actions can make it happen? • Who is in a position to decide and act? • What channels of communication reach those people best, and how to engage those chanels? • What information, contents and format, is needed to feed these channels?
Source: The Impact of information on environmental decision making processes and the enviornment, GRID-Arendal 2001.
3.4 Stage 4: Planning A big part of the preparatory work is now achieved. The issues are known, indicators defined, data sources identified. With the impact strategy, the team has a clear idea what to reach with the results of the assessment. It is now time to plan how to document this; how, when and where to collect and analyse data and based on this identify actions and responses to be given.
Monitoring The planning stage is also the time where the team should think about how to monitor progress, and keep track of changes in the state of the environment and its impacts. Monitoring should provide you with tangible information on a regular basis over an extended period of time. In addition to environmental information, monitoring systems also collect social and economic information that is relevant for understanding environmental issues. (see GEO module 4 for more in-depth discussion of monitoring systems and data collection).
BOX 4: Environmental monitoring versus process monitoring Environmental monitoring systems play a great role in environmental observation and protection in the EECCA region. Governments have put considerable efforts into the collection of data, less into their dissemination and sharing with a wide audience. In addition to environmental observation connotation, monitoring is also understood as the observation of changes in the process and actions involved in implementing a project (project monitoring). In the case of the GEO Cities process, both types of monitoring are needed: Existing environmental monitoring systems can be used as a source for data collection, to show evidence about trends and impacts identified. Monitoring of progress is also necessary to ensure a successful implementation of the GEO Cities project. In the latter case, one wants to put together a set of performance indicators that allow measuring whether the project advances as expected, and whether the goals and outputs defined at the beginning will be reached et the end.
Chapter 3
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