Development of Impact Assessment practices to help enable Circular Economy progress

• Autor(a) principal: Rato, Mariana Vieira
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/163517
• topic: Circular Economy (CE); Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA); Sustainability; Conceptual Framework; Domínio/Área Científica::Engenharia e Tecnologia::Engenharia do Ambiente

As a result of human activities, the environmental burden has increased exponentially in the past decades. The challenge of today stands with the urgency to fulfil society’s needs within the limits of the planet. To achieve such accomplishment, a demand to shift human develop- ment towards sustainability arises, where the environmental, social and economic dimensions are balanced in a harmonious way. The Circular Economy (CE) concept has been appointed as an approach that will help drive society into a more sustainable path, as it drifts from the traditional model of “take-make-use- dispose” to a course that allows the decrease of environmental pressures without limiting the economy, ensuring at the same time, social equity and fairness, for the present and future generations. The path to sustainability does not rely only on changes in the production, distribution, and disposal systems. It also relies on changes in environmental processes that evaluate and allow the implementation of major developments, namely the EIA process. The Environmental Im- pact Assessment (EIA) is an important mechanism that ensures that all major projects are im- plemented with the most sustainable settings as viably possible. In this line, an interlink of values and goals between CE and EIA starts to appear. However, this is still an underexplored field, where important scientific knowledge gaps exist, such as the potential contribution that the EIA might have towards CE, and in the understanding of the connection between these two fields. This research aims to develop a set of impact assessment practices that would enable the tran- sition towards circularity and contribute to improving the EIA procedures. The exploration of the connection between these two fields culminated in a conceptual framework that dis- plays this linkage and is accompanied by a variety of proposals that integrate CE and EIA. To accomplish this goal, a systematic review of the literature has been performed, followed by the development of a conceptual model and a diversity of practices harmonizing these subjects, incorporating a variety of principles and circular practices into the EIA procedures. As this study comprehends an exploratory nature, a questionnaire has been conducted, in- tending to probe and gather experts' opinions and information on this topic. It was found that the incorporation of these subjects may create a synergic relationship, where they can benefit from one another´s strengths, in addition to contributing to the advancement of both these fields. Although the response level on the questionnaire performed was lower than expected, the expert's reaction and judgment to the proposals were widely positive, drawing attention to the potential of harmonizing and incorporating these topics. The results of the questionnaire demonstrate that the majority of respondents agree that both the princi- ples and strategies applied, and the proposed practices are appropriate to incorporate into the EIA process, and have the potential to contribute to its improvement and to foster the transi- tion to CE. Acknowledging that the theme is underexplored, both in the academic and practical fields, a wide range of possible aspects that can be enriched and improved is recognized, highlighting the assessment and evaluation of the link between these areas in future developments, in par- ticular in existing barriers in the EIA process that CE can help to overcome, and in the devel- opment and improvement of appropriate and beneficial circular practices to incorporate into the EIA procedures.