Stakeholder perceptions of Environmental Management Plans as an environmental protection tool for major developments in the UK

Abstract

Insufficient implementation and the lack of legislative requirements for follow-up measures following the 15 approval of projects are consistently highlighted as major shortcomings of Environmental Impact Assessment 16 (EIA). Although adopted over 15 years ago by the World Bank, Environmental Management Plans (EMPs) 17 were only semi-formalised in the UK in 2008 and arguably provide a continuous link or 'bridge' between the 18 EIA process pre-consent and an Environmental Management System (EMS) post-consent. Drawing on twenty-19 one semi-structured interviews with stakeholders and thematic analysis of their responses, and a broad-scale 20 practitioner survey, this study aimed to assess the effectiveness of EMPs as an environmental protection tool 21 across the project lifecycle for major developments. The findings revealed a mixed picture of EMP effectiveness 22 in practice, with EMPs only partially fulfilling a bridging role between EIA and EMS. There is no 'gold standard' 23 terminology for EMPs, all having slightly different uses, thus presenting different focuses to different stakeholders 24 and further enhancing variation in practice. For many stakeholders, the effectiveness was simply not known, due 25 to the lack of communication and follow-up that still exists. EMP-EMS linkages were shown to be effective from 26 the developer's perspective when a single organisation has involvement across all project phases, though weak-27 nesses occur when multiple parties are involved. Among other stakeholders, knowledge varied significantly; 28 whilst some were in agreement that the linkages worked, many were unaware of the connections and thought 29 of them as two quite separate tools. Stakeholders advocated for the need to make EMPs a legal requirement; 30 for improved communication between stakeholders during EMP implementation and increased documentation 31 of project outcomes; and for EMPs to be consistently written by environmental professionals. Furthermore, weak 32 links in the current process may be improved by providing detailed guidance for organisations on the potential 33 for EMP-EMS linkages, with the additional aim of encouraging stakeholders to broaden their current specialist 34 knowledge on environmental protection tools. Contents lists available at ScienceDirectEnvironmental Impact Assessment Review j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / e i a r in the long term (Marshall, 2004;Slinn et al., 2007;Palframan, 2010 working in the industry was performed to ensure that the study was 296 clearly explained and the questions easily understood (Fink, 2003 for a new scheme -I will be amazed if anybody actually chased me for it. 331I know that's not right but in practice I think that is the reality" (D1). Table 1 t1:2 Subject Area 1 -The effectiveness of EMPs providing environmental protection for the construction and operational phases. Effectiveness not knownDue to a flaw in the planning system LA 100% "It's incredibly difficult to know because the big gap in ...

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