Cumulative impact assessments and bird/wind farm interactions: Developing a conceptual framework

(This compelling publication recently appeared in the journal “Environmental Impact Assessment Review”. It reviews critical issues related to EIA's on bird and wind farm interactions and is a “must read” for all interested in this vital topic. We load the article's abstract and the concluding comments. The full article could be found on the journal's homepage at:  

www. elsevier.com/locate/eiar    - Ed.)

ABSTRACT

The wind power industry has grown rapidly in the UK to meet EU targets of sourcing 20% of energy from renewable sources by 2020. Although wind power is a renewable energy source, there are environmental concerns over increasing numbers of wind farm proposals and associated cumulative impacts. Individually, a wind farm, or indeed any action, may have minor effects on the environment, but collectively these may be significant, potentially greater than the sum of the individual parts acting alone. EU and UK legislation requires a cumulative impact assessment (CIA) as part of Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA). However, in the absence of detailed guidance and definitions, such assessments within EIA are rarely adequate, restricting the acquisition of basic knowledge about the cumulative impacts of wind farms on bird populations. Here we propose a conceptual framework to promote transparency in CIA through the explicit definition of impacts, actions and scales within an assessment. Our framework requires improved legislative guidance on the actions to include in assessments, and advice on the appropriate baselines against which to assess impacts. Cumulative impacts are currently considered on restricted scales (spatial and temporal) relating to individual development EIAs. We propose that benefits would be gained from elevating CIA to a strategic level, as a component of spatially explicit planning.

5. Conclusion

“The natural world is in crisis; wild living resources are being depleted at increasing rates, the ecosystems upon which they depend are generally perturbed, and the consumption of resources by a growing human population generally increases” (Mangel et al., 1996). As human actions increasingly influence the environment, it is important to monitor and assess these anthropogenic-induced changes. Increasing numbers of wind farms seem to be inevitable given the international legal responsibility to reduce CO2 emissions but there remains much concern over the impacts on bird populations. With increasing numbers of wind farms comes concern not only over isolated environmental effects but also the cumulative environmental impacts and despite awareness of the issue, there seems to be a lack of understanding and research in the area of cumulative impact assessment.  The cumulative impact assessment process is inadequate and unsatisfactory with few EIAs even considering cumulative impacts. Bad practice is not restricted to the UK, but widespread across Europe and North America (Burris and Canter,1997; Duinker and Greig, 2006; Wärnbäck and Hilding-Rydevik, 2008). The absence of effective assessments of cumulative impacts is a function of the current lack of guidance (Cooper and Sheate, 2002), and particularly the absence of a comprehensive definition. Without a clear definition it is not possible to ensure an assessment that demonstrates adequate consideration of all aspects of the ecosystem including spatial and temporal scale. Therefore there is an urgent need for legislation and statutory authorities to offer clarity on the requirements of cumulative assessment. Similarly, without explicit statements of which components have been considered in a cumulative assessment, it is difficult to draw conclusions from the data. The framework we suggest provides a means by which to explicitly highlight and include actions, impacts and scales in any cumulative impact assessment. By explicitly stating the actions and receptors included (or more importantly, those not included) in an assessment, and the scales at which these have been considered, it is possible to reduce uncertainty surrounding the assessment. If data collection has to be compromised i.e. the spatial scale reduced from global to local, due to limited financial resources, it can be identified using the framework we describe. However, practitioners are still lacking a means by which to make consistent decisions on the reduced sets of actions and receptors to include, and the scales at which to consider them, in a cumulative impact assessment. Until a standard method is devised it is unlikely that cumulative impact assessments will provide any more value than at present.

A comprehensive cumulative impact assessment relies on the availability of data for actions. In a competitive business such as energy supply, acquiring information from other developers about potential actions, sufficient to conduct a thorough cumulative assessment is difficult, if not impossible. Ludwig et al. (2001) suggested, “Wicked problems, such as the planning of wind farms, require innovative policy but also innovative methods of arriving at the policy”. We propose that the innovation required is the elevation of cumulative impact assessment from the individual project to the strategic level. Under the EIA Directive, cumulative impact assessments are conducted at a project level by developers; elevating the process to a more strategic level may relieve some of the problems of data availability and confidentiality, with an assessment being the responsibility of a regulatory body rather than the individual project developer. With a more strategic approach, greater data acquisition would also be possible, as resources would be pooled for one assessment rather than for many. Strategic assessments already occur within the EU in the form of the strategic environmental assessment (SEA) and for offshore wind farm developments, the SEA is intended to inform cumulative impact assessments. Therefore, the infrastructure is more readily available and would only need modification. It has been suggested that when capability and resources for assessing cumulative impacts are limited, a greater proportion of effort should be assigned to minimise the impacts ofsingle actions (MacDonald, 2000). The recommended shift in policy would see cumulative impact assessment integrated into strategic planning levels as part of the process of spatially explicit planning, making available the resources of developers to minimise the impacts of single actions through environmental impact assessments.

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