ENVIRONMENT IN FOCUS
Photos by AECOM
Impacts in the spotlight
By AECOM
Integrated infrastructure development company AECOM had a major presence at the 38th annual conference of the International Association for Impact Assessment( IAIA18), held from 16 to 19 May 2018 at the Durban International Convention Centre.
Billed as the international environment conference of the year, AECOM had four speakers delivering presentations, said Nicola Liversage, unit director: Environment – Africa. The theme for 2018 was“ Environmental Justice in Societies in Transition”.
The conference overview highlighted that globally, societies are in transition due to environmental challenges such as climate change; shifts in political power, as seen in Europe and the US; and social changes such as mass migration.
All these changes and challenges pose a threat to the sustainability of the physical and human environment, while growing inequality threatens both the social and natural environment. Although the aim of development is to create a more sustainable environment, the reality is often that only a few benefits, while others bear the brunt of the impacts.
South Africa is a good example of a society in transition, where reducing inequality is one of the greatest challenges it faces. In many instances, environmental impact assessments( EIAs) are the only means to assess the potential environmental and social impacts of large-scale infrastructure projects in Africa, Liversage pointed out.
Although these EIAs are based on similar standards, their implementation often falls short of these standards. In countries where enforcement is weak, EIAs may not
Bharat Gordhan, senior environmental scientist at AECOM.
be undertaken at all, resulting in frequent and serious environmentally and / or socially induced consequences.
Liversage urged environmental consultants“ to build relationships with the design engineers and contractors. Our value lies in ensuring integration of our mitigation measures in the design process and in providing support, advice, and guidance to the contractor to enable the best practicable solutions in construction for a truly sustainable development.”
She concluded:“ Our industry is suffering from a regulatory‘ tick box’ mindset, paper-churning exercise that provides little value enhancement, and adds on layers of delays and unnecessary uncertainty for development. Environmental practitioners, design engineers, contractors, developers, and regulators all have roles to play.“ I encourage us to reflect on what we are doing, or not doing, to challenge this perception. The‘ EIA Uprising in Africa’ is here, and we are all an important cog in the wheel of change in the environment industry in Africa. We need this revolution for our children. The time is now, and it starts with us.”
Bharat Gordhan, senior environmental scientist at AECOM, concurred that the EIA can be a comprehensive tool, if used appropriately. However, most of the developers— from government, state-owned companies, and private companies to industry— instead perceived it as a hindrance.
“ The conventional perception is that the developer obtains approval from the
Nicola Liversage is unit director: Environment – Africa at AECOM.
Robin Swanepoel is Africa technical specialist: Environment and Compliance at AECOM. authorities, and thereafter implements the project, with a cursory consideration around the time of the independent environmental control officer( ECO) audits. Adaptation around a dynamic environment, sometimes influenced by climate change, implies that the original approval should also be able to adapt to different risks that may not have been considered previously as a snapshot within the EIA,” Gordhan stressed.“ A key driver of a dynamic environmental risk assessment and management could be the use of the environmental jargon among all the affected stakeholders( developer, engineer, contractor, and ECO). This would allow the environmental specialist to share the same table as their fellow respected professionals like geotechnical engineers, mechanical engineers, architects, and health and safety practitioners,” Gordhan added.
Robin Swanepoel, Africa technical specialist: Environmental Management and Compliance at AECOM, in conjunction with Unisa Professor Ian Albert Wessels, addressed the urgent need to improve environmental and social performance on construction projects.
The authors highlighted that construction sites, whether complex megaprojects or small-scale, low-complexity projects, can be conceptualised as a system in which different actors are involved in the implementation of environmental management plans( EMPs).
These different actors have distinct roles, depending on where they are located within the system. Using organisational and systems theory, the‘ system’ of the project construction site is deconstructed into the subsystems of operating, control, and management systems. Different actors are located within these subsystems, with their own specific role, responsibility, accountability, and authority. This translates into a network of environmental actors on construction sites, with their
36 _ QUARRY SA | JULY / AUGUST 2018