Uploaded byyoedtsipola
5 views

Sustainability Assessment Criteria And Processes Robert B Gibson

Sustainability Assessment Criteria And Processes Robert B Gibson Sustainability Assessment Criteria And Processes Robert B Gibson Sustainability Assessment Criteria And Processes Robert B Gibson

Download to read offline
Sustainability Assessment Criteria And Processes Robert B Gibson download https://ebookbell.com/product/sustainability-assessment-criteria- and-processes-robert-b-gibson-2453812 Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com
Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be interested in. You can click the link to download. Wastetoenergy Multicriteria Decision Analysis For Sustainability Assessment And Ranking 1st Edition Jingzheng Ren https://ebookbell.com/product/wastetoenergy-multicriteria-decision- analysis-for-sustainability-assessment-and-ranking-1st-edition- jingzheng-ren-11148010 Biofuels For A More Sustainable Future Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment Multicriteria Decision Making 1st Edition Alessandro Manzardo https://ebookbell.com/product/biofuels-for-a-more-sustainable-future- life-cycle-sustainability-assessment-multicriteria-decision- making-1st-edition-alessandro-manzardo-11186680 Sustainability Assessment Context Of Resource And Environmental Policy Mohammad Ali Auth https://ebookbell.com/product/sustainability-assessment-context-of- resource-and-environmental-policy-mohammad-ali-auth-4409902 Sustainability Assessment Tools In Higher Education Institutions Mapping Trends And Good Practices Around The World 1st Edition Antje Disterheft https://ebookbell.com/product/sustainability-assessment-tools-in- higher-education-institutions-mapping-trends-and-good-practices- around-the-world-1st-edition-antje-disterheft-4601730
Sustainability Assessment Of Renewablesbased Products Methods And Case Studies 1st Edition Jo Dewulf https://ebookbell.com/product/sustainability-assessment-of- renewablesbased-products-methods-and-case-studies-1st-edition-jo- dewulf-5548412 Sustainability Assessment A Rating System Framework For Best Practices 1st Edition Csar A Poveda https://ebookbell.com/product/sustainability-assessment-a-rating- system-framework-for-best-practices-1st-edition-csar-a-poveda-10898354 Nanobioenergy Application And Sustainability Assessment Manish Srivastava https://ebookbell.com/product/nanobioenergy-application-and- sustainability-assessment-manish-srivastava-49151810 Handbook On Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment 1st Edition Guido Sonnemann https://ebookbell.com/product/handbook-on-life-cycle-sustainability- assessment-1st-edition-guido-sonnemann-57281528 Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment Lcsa Subramanian Senthilkannan Muthu Ed https://ebookbell.com/product/life-cycle-sustainability-assessment- lcsa-subramanian-senthilkannan-muthu-ed-37318930
Sustainability Assessment
Sustainability Assessment Criteria and Processes Robert B. Gibson with Selma Hassan, Susan Holtz, James Tansey and Graham Whitelaw London • Sterling,VA
This page is intentionally blank
First published by Earthscan in the UK and USA in 2005 Copyright © Robert B. Gibson All rights reserved ISBN-13: 978-1-84407-050-3 paperback ISBN-10: 1-84407-050-6 paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-84407-051-0 hardback ISBN-10: 1-84407-051-4 hardback Typesetting by JS Typesetting Ltd, Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan Printed and bound in the UK by Bath Press, Bath Cover design by Ruth Bateson For a full list of publications please contact: Earthscan 8–12 Camden High Street London, NW1 0JH, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7387 8558 Fax: +44 (0)20 7387 8998 Email: earthinfo@earthscan.co.uk Web: www.earthscan.co.uk 22883 Quicksilver Drive, Sterling,VA 20166-2012, USA Earthscan is an imprint of James and James (Science Publishers) Ltd and publishes in association with the International Institute for Environment and Development A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gibson, Robert B., 1950– Sustainability assessment : making the world better, one undertaking at a time / Robert B. Gibson ; with Selma Hassan ... [et al.]. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-84407-050-6 – ISBN 1-84407-051-4 1. Sustainable development. I. Hassan, Selma. II.Title. HC79.E5G513 2005 338.9'27–dc22 2005018172 Printed on elemental chlorine-free paper
Contents List of Figures,Tables and Boxes vii Preface viii Acknowledgements xiii List of Acronyms and Abbreviations xiv 1 Beginnings: Stumbling Towards Sustainability Assessment 1 Beginning in Labrador 1 Specifying the higher test 11 2 Assessment:Thirty-some Years of Environmental Assessment 14 Growing up in a difficult world 14 Basic and more advanced approaches 15 Development stages and growth trends 21 Maturing assessment and emerging sustainability 36 3 Sustainability:The Essentials of the Concept 38 A necessary and difficult idea 38 Old sustainability 39 Groundwork for a new sustainability 41 The second coming of sustainability 47 Debating the concept 51 The essentials 59 Initial implications for assessment regimes 62 4 Practice: Sustainability in Illustrative Initiatives 66 Theory and practice 66 Stories 67 Lessons from the stories 82 5 Criteria: Sustainability Requirements as the Basis for Decision Making 88 The need for decision criteria 88 Requirements for progress towards sustainability 95 Characteristics, strengths and limitations of the requirements as decision criteria 115
vi Sustainability Assessment 6 Trade-offs: Facing Conflict and Compromise 122 Pursuing sustainability in a messy world 122 Unavoidable trade-offs 123 Trade-offs of substance and process 125 Trade-off rules 130 Beyond the rules 138 7 Processes: Designing Sustainability Assessment Regimes 142 How versus what 142 Basic process principles 144 Components of a sustainability assessment law 145 Transitions 162 8 Decisions: Applying Sustainability-based Criteria in Significance Determinations and Other Common Assessment Judgements 165 Decisions and significance 165 Applying sustainability-based criteria in significance judgements 168 9 Continuations:The Way Ahead 180 Proliferation 180 The fundamentals and the variations 181 Getting there 185 References 189 Appendices 206 Index 248
List of Figures,Tables and Boxes Figures 3.1 Circles of sustainability 57 3.2 Intersecting pillars of sustainability 58 Tables 3.1 Pearce and Turner’s sustainability spectrum 53 3.2 Pezzoli’s ten categories of literature on sustainable development 54 3.3 The three pillar version 55 Boxes 2.1 The structure and key components of potentially effective assessment processes 17 2.2 Four stages in the development from environmental regulations to advanced environmental assessment 22 2.3 Twelve major trends in the growth of environmental assessment 23 3.1 Sustainable development multiple choice 52 3.2 The essentials of the concept of sustainability 62 5.1 Sustainability requirements as decision criteria 116 6.1 General trade-off rules 139 7.1 Best practice design principles for sustainability assessment processes 146 8.1 Conventional criteria for evaluating the significance of effects 172 8.2 Generic sustainability-based criteria for evaluating the significance of effects 173 8.3 Generic questions for evaluating the significance of trade-offs 177
Preface Matchmaking For the past decade or so a couple of good ideas have been circling each other in what may be a semi-conscious mating ritual. On the surface at least, they seem well matched. But so far there have been only a few amicable meetings and the occasional tentative embrace. Our task here is to propose a union, perhaps even sketch out the pre-nuptial contract. The marriageable pair are environmental assessment and the pursuit of sustainability – two of the major concepts introduced over the past few decades to improve the odds of continued human survival on this planet. While both are of age and have had some experience in the world, neither can claim to be fully developed. For that, arguably, each needs the other. Something old, something new The sustainability idea is both very ancient and quite recent. Before the modern era, most cultures, excepting those with elites devoted to conquest, aimed for stability and continuity. Their gods encouraged humility and their elders stressed respect for tradition. Change still happened, of course. But it was not sought. People saw that innovation was more likely to bring peril than progress, and even mere curiosity could open a Pandora’s box of trouble. Vestiges of this inclination to stick with the tried and true are still evident in aspects of most people’s lives today. But as a dominant concern it was gradu- ally abandoned over the last few hundred years in favour of progress through technological and economic advance. The expectation, or at least the hope, for progress has now spread almost everywhere. For many people, in many places, the benefits have been huge. But there have also always been costs, some of them also huge, and in the latter part of the 20th century this led to the resurgence, in a new form, of the old sustainability idea. The story of how this happened is complicated and there is far from universal agreement on how it should be interpreted. The basics, however, were quite clearly centred on a simple tension. On one side were the major
political and economic powers, promoting progress through faster and greater economic growth.These included subscribers to the cheerful belief that a self- adjusting positive market mechanism would ensure progress in perpetuity if barriers to economic and technological advance were properly eliminated. On the other side was a widening circle of other organizations inclined to question the agenda of progress through growth, at least as it was ordinarily practised. The critics pointed to the persistence of desperate poverty, the deepening of dangerous inequities, the proliferation of risky technologies and the degrada- tion of essential ecological systems. The overwhelming evidence, they said, was that economic growth had failed to deliver benefits where they were most needed, that it was destroying its own foundations and that things could not possibly go on this way. The resolution, most influentially proposed in 1987 by the World Com- mission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission), was ‘sustainable development’ – a concept that promised to bridge the gulf between the advocates and critics of progress through growth. As terminology, ‘sustainable development’ was wildly successful. Within a few years, govern- ance bodies in a host of jurisdictions had officially embraced the idea.Within a decade, governments had written it into a wide range of pronouncements, policies and even laws. Just what it meant was less certain. Scholars, activists and competing powerful interests debated whether sustainable development was an oxymoron or a redundancy, whether the noun prevailed over the adjec- tive and whether interpretative flexibility was its chief merit or its fatal flaw. Some key essentials, however, were soon evident. If nothing else, ‘sustainable development’ stood as a critique of the status quo. No one would have bothered with the idea; certainly no governments would have rushed to embrace it, if the old faith in growth as an automatic path to well-being had still been plausible.The Brundtland Commission, which had been assigned to address the problems of poverty and environmental degrada- tion, saw that many present conditions and practices were not sustainable, that the trend was towards disaster, and that serious reforms were needed to reverse this. Conventional growth was not just an unreliable route to real progress; it was a path in the wrong direction. Governments that claimed commitment to sustainability mostly failed to accompany their words with any substantial shifts in behaviour. But at least as a matter of public image, they found it wise to wrap themselves in the shroud of sustainability and this put them, at least officially, with the critics. No doubt some authorities adopted sustainability as form rather than sub- stance and were happy to hide behind the uncertainties of interpretation. Some fundamentals were, however, clear from the outset. Perhaps the most important insight was that long-term gains depend on intricate combinations of social, economic and ecological factors that intertwine in different ways depending on local and regional conditions. The Brundtland report documented this in the interplay of poverty reduction and environmental rehabilitation. But complex interrelationships and context dependencies were evident everywhere and these have remained the biggest challenge for sustainability implementation. Over Preface ix
x Sustainability Assessment the past decade and a half, continuing analysis and implementation efforts have gradually clarified the basic requirements of sustainability. But there has been no easy solution to the complexity and contextuality problems. A suitable partner Environmental assessment is thirty-some but still just approaching maturity. Its official birthplace was the US National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which included a few brief clauses requiring proponents of environmentally significant undertakings to consider the environmental implications before US government approval could be granted.The rationale was simple: because environmental damages were too costly to tolerate and too costly to repair, pre- vention had to be encouraged. And because existing incentives were evidently insufficient, new obligations had to be imposed.The US law was one version. Over the following three decades, environmental assessment requirements were adopted in one form or another by most capable governments and by other governance bodies ranging from multilateral aid institutions to small municipalities. Always there were debates about how mandatory, comprehensive, open, broadly applied, forceful and subversive of convention environmental assess- ment requirements should be. In most jurisdictions these matters are still contested today. Implementation also remains highly imperfect almost every- where. But gradually and unevenly assessment has evolved towards greater scope and ambition.Attention to cumulative effects and application to strategic level policies, plans and programmes as well as specific projects have been the best recognized recent developments. In addition, there has been more critical examination of the purposes of proposed undertakings and alternatives that might serve these purposes better, plus more inclusive and better integrated attention to social, economic and cultural as well as ecological effects, greater willingness to respect local knowledge, and deeper appreciation of the limits of science, the roles of values and the inevitability of surprise. The culmination of these changes is now just emerging in the form of a more demanding set of decision criteria. Environmental assessment processes – and similar planning, evaluation and decision making processes under other names – are being pushed to apply a higher test in deliberations about what kinds of undertakings should be assessed, what concerns should be given most attention, what proposals merit approval and what considerations should be imposed. In the past the main objective was to predict and avoid, or at least mitigate, the potentially significant negative effects of major undertakings. The new and higher objective is to plan and implement the best responses to publicly examined problems and opportunities, and to ensure overall long- term gains. This is where the pursuit of sustainability enters as a marriageable partner. With the higher test, the key challenge for proponents is, as a recent Canadian assessment panel put it, to show ‘the extent to which the Undertaking may
make a positive overall contribution towards the attainment of ecological and community sustainability, both at the local and regional levels’. On the surface there is nothing very novel here. Overall long-term gain is what proponents and approval authorities have conventionally promised, though often just implicitly as an assumed result of more heavily emphasized short-term economic benefits.The difference when environmental assessment processes impose the ‘contribution to sustainability’ test is that claims about long-term gains must be made and defended directly.There is no assumption that immediate economic growth will bring lasting benefits. Moreover, in prop- erly open and independent assessment processes, the claims and evaluations are subject to more effective public scrutiny than is typical in conventional approval processes. Finally, with the sustainability test environmental assess- ments must attempt integrated consideration of the relevant social, economic and ecological factors. This is, as we have seen, a basic requirement of the pursuit of sustainability. Environmental assessment thus seems to be a particularly suitable mate for sustainability efforts. In many jurisdictions, it is the main open process for the planning and evaluation of new projects and, increasingly, new policies, plans and programmes. It is both established and adaptable. It is designed to force neglected considerations into conventional decision making. Well conceived assessment processes include critical examination of purposes and alternatives, and cover the full suite of social, economic and ecological factors in a single process. And environmental assessment is meant for case specific, context sensitive application. Many environmental assessment processes, especially newer ones, are of- ficially committed to furthering sustainability. Unfortunately, there is rarely much evidence that anyone has given much serious thought to the implica- tions.While the potential fit between environmental assessment and the pursuit of sustainability is good, few existing assessment processes manage to serve environmental objectives as well as they should. Even fewer are designed to serve sustainability purposes and, so far, most efforts to pursue sustainability through environmental assessments have been weak, though there have been a few exemplary exceptions.The partnership, mostly, has great potential. Drafting the terms of union If there is to be a successful union of environmental assessment and the pursuit of sustainability, we will need to be clearer about how to translate a general commitment to sustainability into a workable set of practical assessment cri- teria, process design characteristics and implementation methods. We will have to clarify what sustainability requires, and identify well integrated means of ensuring that these requirements are addressed. The predominant current approaches encourage separate attention to social, econ- omic and biophysical matters – the three ‘pillars’ on which most descriptions of sustainability are constructed.For effectively integrated sustainability assessment, Preface xi
xii Sustainability Assessment the pillar boundaries will have to be overcome and some other way found to manage the multitudes of considerations without obscuring their intercon- nections. We will also have to provide guidance on how to deal with trade-offs. In a world as imperfect as this one, most proposed undertakings will bring sustain- ability losses as well as sustainability gains. It will, therefore, be necessary to determine when certain sustainability objectives may have priority over others, which compromises and sacrifices may be acceptable, and how overall con- tributions to sustainability may be identified. We will have to set out the practical means – the essential characteristics of deliberative and decision making processes, the necessary and useful tools, and the openings for adjustment – by which the considerable challenges of sustainability assessment can be met by ordinary officials, proponents and citizens with limited resources and plenty of other obligations. And all of this we will have to accomplish with due respect for the particulars of context. Only so much can be set out in general rules, generic guidance and standard procedures. The book you have now opened will not satisfy any of these needs finally or completely.While some of the basics are easy enough, sustainability assess- ment faces a world that is difficult and complicated. It must deal not only with uncertainties but whole vast areas of mystery. Such is the nature of the social, economic and ecological realities in which we live and in which all assessable undertakings intervene. No doubt we will learn a great deal from further experience and more careful analysis. Perhaps the initial steps taken here in the very early days of sustainability assessment will soon seem hope- lessly primitive. We can live with that. This is only the stage of matchmaking and honeymoon advice. Marriage counselling will come soon enough.
Acknowledgements Much of the initial research and thinking behind this book began with a monograph (Gibson, 2002) and background papers prepared under a research contribution agreement with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. Thiswasfollowedbymoreparticularstudiesonsustainabilityassessmentoptions for the Canadian International Development Agency. Neither agency bears responsibility for the contents of this book, and neither should be presumed to agree with the positions taken or the recommendations made. Nevertheless, both provided important support and have been admirably quick to recognize that sustainability-based assessment is worthy of careful examination. In addition to the contributors recognized on the title page, a long list of excellent scholars and practitioners assisted our research on sustainability assessment and the preparation of this book.We would like especially to thank Jennifer Agnolin, Petr Cizek, Peter Croal, Theo Hacking, David Hirsh, Tony Hodge, René Kemp, Lorri Krebs, David Lawrence, Tamara Levine, Angus Morrison-Saunders, Saeed Parto, Doris Pokorny, Jenny Pope, John Robinson, Erin Rogozinski, Hendrik Rosenthal, Jack Santa-Barbara, Lindsay Staples, Jenna Watson, Bob Weir and Susan Wismer. Thanks also to the wonderfully patient and helpful folks at Earthscan, especially Rob West, Ruth Mayo, Victoria Brown and Camille Adamson.
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations Cdn$ Canadian dollars CFC chlorofluorocarbon DDT dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane EIS environmental impact statement GDP gross domestic product GIS geographic information systems GNP gross national product IUCN World Conservation Union (formerly International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) LA21 Local Agenda 21 MMSD Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development project NEPA National Environmental Policy Act NGO non-governmental organization OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development t/d tonnes per day UK United Kingdom UN United Nations UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and Development UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization US United States
1 Beginnings Stumbling Towards Sustainability Assessment Beginning in Labrador They say that on the seventh day, God hurled stones at Labrador. Perhaps it is true – even by Canadian standards, Labrador is a hard land. The north coast is all rocky islands and headlands swept by Arctic waters flowing out into the North Atlantic. The interior is more rock, rivers, barrens and boreal forest. And yet for millennia Inuit and Innu people have lived there successfully – the Inuit on the coast, harvesting seal and fish, the Innu in the interior, relying on the caribou. European contact and the arrival of new residents led to changes in economy and culture, and more recent decades have brought more outside influences. But for most people in northern Labrador the hard land is home; it has been so since time beyond memory and will continue to be in any desirable future. Whether the future of northern Labrador will be desirable for people who consider it a permanent home is a question of sustainability. It is a matter of how to ensure viable and fulfilling livelihoods over the long haul from one generation to the next. Essentially, the same concerns apply to communities everywhere, since the basic challenges of sustainability face all of them. But so far only a few places have chosen, or been permitted, to confront these matters explicitly. Northern Labrador has been the site of one such attempt. Between 1997 and 2002, a proposed major mining project beside Voisey’s Bay, a deep inlet on Labrador’s north coast, was the subject of an environmental assessment and a set of associated and consequential deliberations that wrestled directly, often openly, and by some interim measures successfully, with the project’s potential contribution to local and regional sustainability. Serious application of sustainability-based evaluation criteria is not yet common in environmental assessments or other decision making on important undertakings. ‘Contribution to sustainability’ is frequently presented as an official objective of environmental assessment. In a host of related practical circumstances – urban neighbourhood planning, corporate responsibility re- porting, regional growth management initiatives, new versions of progress
2 Sustainability Assessment indicators and so on – reasonably comprehensive lists of sustainability con- siderations have been adopted. But true sustainability assessments, carefully designed and intentionally influential, are still rare. The Voisey’s Bay case in Labrador is just one example of an emerging practice and, inevitably, it has some unique characteristics. Nonetheless, it captures well the basic needs and challenges involved in sustainability assessment. OnVoisey’s Bay The Voisey’s Bay mining project began in a moment of extraordinary good fortune. In 1993, prospectors Albert Chislett and Chris Verbiski, returning home from work further north, flew over the Voisey’s Bay area just as sunlight from a particular angle reflected off a mineralized outcrop. They landed to investigate and discovered rich deposits of nickel with associated copper and cobalt. The most spectacular part of their discovery, a body of exceptionally high grade ore called ‘the ovoid’, was later found to contain about 31 million tonnes of reserves – 2.9 per cent nickel, 1.69 per cent copper and 0.14 per cent cobalt (Inco, 2002a). Moreover, it was right at the surface, mineable by open pit methods and conveniently near tidewater. Subsequent drilling delineated over 100 million tonnes of additional ore underground in less rich but still commercially extractable deposits. In 1996, Inco Ltd paid Cdn$4.3 billion for the claims and associated drilling information. Though the company later announced a Cdn$2 billion write-down of that investment, the Voisey’s Bay deposits continued to be seen as the foundation for an economically important development for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as for the northern Labrador region. Deliberations on the nature of the development and conditions for approval had to overcome a variety of difficulties, including court challenges and high- stake negotiating positions, but in June 2002 the five key parties – Inco, the federal and provincial governments, the Innu Nation and the Labrador Inuit Association – announced an agreement. It covered the mine, mill and concen- trator operation atVoisey’s Bay, plus a closely linked metal processing/refining operation to be established at Argentia in Newfoundland.1 The announced overall capital cost of mine and smelter components was Cdn$2.9 billion. During the negotiations, Inco was understandably most interested in re- couping its investment and maximizing its financial returns. For the provincial and local interests, however, durable longer-term gains were more important. Expecting long-term gains from a mining undertaking may seem futile. Non-renewable resource extraction projects are generally poor candidates as contributors to sustainability. Mine project life is limited by orebody geology and made uncertain by market fluctuations. Often the boom is closely fol- lowed by a bust, and the lasting local effects – economic, social and ecological – are largely negative.2 This has frequently been accepted as the nature of the industry, though the busts usually inspire some last ditch efforts by local residents and relevant governments to encourage further exploration in hopes of life-extending discoveries, or to attract some other employer to the area.
Beginnings 3 Options beyond that have been limited, though some jurisdictions have taken anticipatory steps to build ‘heritage funds’ while the resource income is flowing, to diversify mining centre economies or to foster downstream processing – ad- ditional ore milling, refining and smelting, perhaps even manufacturing using the product – that might continue after the initial orebody is exhausted. Provincial authorities in the Voisey’s Bay case took the latter route. Long dependent on the fishery and often frustrated by failed development ventures in other sectors, the province of Newfoundland and Labrador insisted that the Voisey’s Bay ore be smelted in Newfoundland. This, in the provincial view, would make theVoisey’s Bay mine a stepping stone to a technologically advanced and globally competitive smelting industry in the province and an accordingly longer stream of economic benefits. After an extended campaign fought partly in the business media and partly in private negotiations, the province did get Inco to agree to process the ore in Newfoundland (Newfoundland and Labrador, 2002a). This may not be enough to win the province a lasting role in the industry. However, the province has certainly shown commitment to more durable gains. While the difficult contest over the processing question attracted the bulk of press reporting on the Voisey’s Bay project, more innovative steps, from a sustainability perspective, were taken in the deliberations about the mine itself. In the processing negotiations, the province’s longer-term concerns centred on conventional economic development considerations – creating more jobs, capturing value added benefits from provincial resources, enhancing provincial revenues, fostering economic diversification. Environmental issues received some attention and sustainability may have been an implicit objective, but it was not pursued in a comprehensive or well integrated manner. The mining part of the package was treated differently. At Voisey’s Bay, sustainability effects were the central issue. This was in part because the mining was to be in aboriginal homelands and in part because the proposed undertaking was reviewed through an extraordinary environmental assess- ment process. Homelands The lands in question were traditionally shared by the Innu and the Inuit (perhaps not often simultaneously or always amicably) and remain part of their traditional territories. Emish is the old Innu name for the area where the nickel deposits were found.Tasiujatsoak is the Inuit name for the nearby deep inlet, which they used long before Amos Voisey, a fur trader and merchant, settled there in the 1800s. Although the usual name now is Voisey’s Bay, the area remains Innu and Inuit land, at least in as much as aboriginal title is recognized, since neither people ever signed away title to these lands. As a consequence, the Innu Nation and the Labrador Inuit Association, as bodies representing the Inuit and Innu, became participating government authori- ties in the evaluations, negotiations and decisions on the Voisey’s Bay mining proposal.
4 Sustainability Assessment The Labrador Inuit Association represents most residents of five commu- nities on the Labrador north coast including Nain (population 1200), which is located 35km north-east of the mine site.While the Inuit have been subject to European colonial, evangelical and commercial influence since the 18th century, they signed no treaties.Their land claim was accepted for negotiation by the federal government in 1977 and has since moved gradually towards resolution.3 Among the people included are descendants of Amos Voisey and other settlers whose families are now assumed to have partial Inuit ancestry.4 The Innu Nation represents the roughly 600 Mushaua Innu who now live in Natuashish, about 80km south-east of Voisey’s Bay.The Mushaua Innu were nomadic hunter-gatherers in the Labrador interior until 1967 when they were moved to Davis Inlet (which the Innu call Utshimassits: the place of the boss). The coastal island site was inconvenient for access to mainland hunting and other culturally familiar activities and, not surprisingly, the social, cultural and economic effects were largely tragic.5 Whether things will be better in Natuashish, the new mainland community established in 2002, remains uncertain, but that move symbolizes Innu determination to make a better future.The Innu have also been negatively affected by low level military test flights over their lands and this led to lengthy and bitter conflicts with the federal government. The government has, however, recognized the Innu land claim, which was submitted in 1977. Negotiations began in 1991 and a Canada/Newfoundland/Innu framework agreement was signed in 1996 (INAC, 1996b). In their different ways, the Innu and Inuit communities of northern Lab- rador are hybrids of the traditional and the modern.The people have been, to varying degrees, separated from many of their old ways. But they are not far in time or place from the traditional understandings and practices that over countless generations made it possible to sustain themselves. They are still close enough to the land to feel the interdependence of the social, ecological, economic and cultural aspects of their lives. Perhaps their traditional lives were rarely easy. Probably the customary practices of the Innu and Inuit were in other respects as flawed as those of other cultures. Nonetheless, their ways of getting along with each other and being part of the land worked well enough – were sufficiently respectful, flexible and sensitive – to demonstrate the pos- sibility, nature and importance of durable livelihoods. For both Innu and Inuit the prospect of a nearby mining project raised hopes and fears. It brought the promise of new economic opportunities and associated improvements in regional infrastructure and services. But it also meant less control over traditional lands, more disturbance of wildlife and damage to local ecosystems, and further disruption of already fragile social conditions. Moreover, the gains could be brief and the negative effects per- manent. In the northern Labrador communities, the mine became the focus for discussions about future relations between traditional renewable resource harvesting activities and the modern, globalized market economy. While the traditional activities had long been the foundation for survival and identity,
Beginnings 5 they no longer seemed to offer a sufficient basis for community livelihoods. Unfortunately the mine, like many other modern economy options for places like northern Labrador, offered only a transitory economic alternative. That might be good enough for people willing to move from one such opportunity to the next. But for people with deep roots and a long-term commitment to their home place, the mine would not be acceptable unless it built the short- term opportunity into something both desirable and lasting. That testofacceptability–groundsforconfidencethattherewillbe desirable and lasting gains – might seem obviously reasonable. But it is not commonly applied in major project decision making. As a rule, proposed undertakings gain approval if they have devoted and apparently capable proponents,however narrowly motivated, and if there is no persuasive evidence of likely undue harm to any interests deemed worthy of attention.While that is a simplified version of the general rule, it is the essence of processes centred on limited restriction of enterprise. In the Voisey’s Bay case this general rule was replaced. How this was accomplished and what it entailed is worthy of attention. A landmark assessment From the outset of theVoisey’s Bay project deliberations, the Inuit and the Innu made it clear that they had long-term rights and interests to be respected.6 On the strength of their claims to aboriginal title, both groups were recognized as relevant authorities for key project evaluations and decisions especially in two processes that were to play particularly important roles in forcing attention to sustainability considerations. These were the Voisey’s Bay mine and mill environmental assessment review and the subsequent negotiation of impact and benefit agreements. The Voisey’s Bay environmental assessment was a landmark in Canadian and global assessment practice because it introduced ‘contribution to sustain- ability’ as the basic test of acceptability. As a major project with inevitable environmental significance, the proposed Voisey’s Bay mine-mill was subject to assessment requirements as well as Inuit and Innu approval. To consolidate the review, the four government bodies signed a memorandum of understanding and drafted terms of reference for a single review by a five member environmental assessment panel.The panel, with appointees recommended by the four parties, then prepared guidelines for the proponent to follow in preparing an environmental impact statement that would be reviewed through a set of public hearings in the relevant com- munities, including Nain and Utshimassits. Aside from the willing agreement among four parties with a consider- able history of tension and conflict, none of this was particularly remarkable. Consolidation of hearings where two or more jurisdictions are involved is a common means of avoiding duplication and inefficiency.The panel’s terms of reference were broad and progressive – covering the full range of ‘social, eco- nomic, recreational, cultural, spiritual and aesthetic conditions that influence the life of humans and communities’, as well as the biophysical aspects of the
6 Sustainability Assessment ‘environment’ – and including attention to traditional ecological knowledge, cumulative effects and the precautionary principle.7 But all of these elements had been included before in environmental assessment practice. The panel took a further interpretive step. It concluded that its obligations, taken together, imposed a requirement to consider the sustainability effects of the proposed undertaking. ‘Promotion of sustainable development’, the panel observed, ‘is a fundamental purpose of environmental impact assessment’. Accordingly, the panel, established ‘contribution to sustainability’ as the key evaluative test. In its Environmental Impact Statement Guidelines for the Review of theVoisey’s Bay Mine and Mill Undertaking, the panel stated: It is the Panel’s interpretation that progress towards sustainable development will require the following: • the preservation of ecosystem integrity, including the capability of natural systems to maintain their structure and functions and to support biological diversity; • respect for the right of future generations to the sustainable use of renewable resources; and • the attainment of durable and equitable social and economic benefits. Therefore, in reviewing the EIS [environmental impact statement] and other submissions, the Panel will consider: • the extent to which the Undertaking may make a positive overall contribution towards the attainment of ecological and community sustainability, both at the local and regional levels; • how the planning and design of the Undertaking have addressed the three objectives of sustainable development stated above; • how monitoring, management and reporting systems will attempt to ensure continuous progress towards sustainability; and • appropriate indicators to determine whether this progress is being maintained (Voisey’s Bay Panel, 1997, s3.3).8 The guidelines set a national precedent by setting out sustainability-based decision criteria. These obliged the proponent to meet a considerably higher test than is usual in environmental assessments. In most assessment practice the focus is on avoidance or mitigation of significant negative environmental effects. Sometimes ‘environmental effects’ are defined broadly to include aspects of the human as well as biophysical environment. Sometimes the need for and purposes of the undertaking are to be addressed. And sometimes, comparative evaluation of alternatives is required. But typically, the working objective is just to recognize and reduce any potentially severe adverse effects, to ensure the project damages are acceptably minimal. Demanding ‘a positive overall contribution’ is very different. Especially for a mining project, making a case for the project as ‘a positive overall contribution towards the attainment of ecological and community
Beginnings 7 sustainability, both at the local and regional levels’ is quite clearly more difficult than merely showing that any significant adverse effects will be mitigated to an acceptable level. The panel made it clear that it expected Inco to show that it would create or enhance beneficial effects as well as mitigate the negative ones. The panel also clearly saw the sustainability test as reason for attention to the project’s legacy – how closure would be managed and what would be left behind. In other words, an overall positive contribution to ecological and community sustainability would have to be demonstrated for an undertaking with a limited anticipated economic life and no prospect for ecological improvement given that the area was essentially pristine at the outset. Inco was not visibly distressed by the challenge. Less than six months after the guidelines were finalized, the company submitted its proposal and impact assessment statement. Not everyone was persuaded that the submission passed the assigned test. A consultant for the Innu Nation prepared a detailed report arguing that the proponent had failed on many grounds to meet the panel’s requirements and to establish that the project would make a positive overall contribution to sustainability (Green, 1998). Additional concerns were raised in the public hearings. While these covered a variety of specifics, a common theme centred on how to avoid the boom and bust effects of a short mine life. In March 1999, the panel issued its report. The panel concluded that the project could be acceptable if specified conditions were met and offered 107 recommendations on a wide range of project related matters. Of these, the most significant focused on steps to address concerns about the durability of project benefits and to ensure avoidance of negative effects. The panel urged the decision making authorities to ensure: • that the lifespan of the project was sufficient to permit establishment of lasting benefits; • that land claim negotiations were completed before the project was allowed to proceed; • that specific agreements were reached with the Inuit and Innu on project impacts and benefits, and on co-management of environmental reviews during project implementation (Voisey’s Bay Panel, 1999). Building a bridge The life span issue raised the most substantial implications for project design and implementation. As initially proposed, the mining operations would feed a 20,000 tonnes per day (t/d) concentrator. If sufficiently rich underground resources were confirmed as expected, the project life with the 20,000 t/d mill would be 20–25 years. But if only the very rich ‘ovoid’ deposit were mined and the less attractive underground deposits judged economically questionable, the project life could be as short as seven years. The panel referred to this as the ‘scoop and run scenario’ (Voisey’s Bay Panel, 1999) and recommended means of ensuring a longer project life to avoid negative boom and bust effects,
8 Sustainability Assessment ensure more lasting gains, and permit better preparation for local economic viability after the mine closed. Chief among the possible means of extending project life was reducing the annual production rate by allowing only a smaller mill. Inco argued in its assessment submission that a significantly smaller capacity mill (anything below 15,000 t/d) would not be economically viable. The Innu and Inuit, however, insisted that if the sustainability test were to mean anything at all in this case, then durable contributions to community livelihoods would have to be provided, and for this a reasonable project life span had to be ensured. Mill capacity therefore remained a central issue during the post-assessment negotiations. In the end, Inco agreed to use a 6000 t/d mill, at least initially, and with further delineation of the Voisey’s Bay deposits it confidently predicted a project life span greater than 30 years (Inco, 2002a). Ensuring a 30-year mine life is not the achievement of sustainability. For the mine it is just a longer period of boom before the bust. For the communities it is just an extended but still limited period of income and opportunity.The key issue for sustainability is whether the longer run of revenues and opportunities strengthens the foundations for viable and durable livelihoods after the mine closes. Like other necessarily temporary undertakings, the Voisey’s Bay nickel mine can make a contribution to sustainability only if the limited period of economic viability serves as a bridge to a more sustainable future. While the panel did not use the bridging concept explicitly, it recognized the link between a longer project life span and the potential for constructing a more lasting economic base. A longer period of mine operation, the panel observed, would: ...enable workers to earn pensions and accumulate savings beyond one generation, and to develop industrial and business skills that could support new economic activities.At the same time, communities could use the increased flow of income over a long period to diversify their local economies.A long duration would also reduce the risk of negative effects associated with the community boom-and-bust effect (Voisey’s Bay Panel, 1999, p8). By itself, however, an extended mine life would not ensure successful bridging to a more sustainable long-term future for the communities near the mine. Two additional requirements would have to be met: first, sufficient resources and opportunities would have to flow from the mine to the communities and second, these would have to be used effectively to build a more durable base for the decades following mine closure. Some of this extended beyond the ambit of the panel’s review. But the panel did emphasize measures to ensure that the local communities gained the economic and political wherewithal to pursue a more sustainable future. This was addressed in the second set of key panel recommendations, which concerned relations between the project and the aboriginal title holders, in particular relations that would be established through land claim agreements and impact and benefit agreements.
Beginnings 9 In Canada,negotiation of land claim agreements is the conventional,though usually very slow, means of addressing the claims of aboriginal groups that retain title to traditional territories and rights to continue traditional activities. Land claim agreements vary but typically involve recognition of ownership over some portion of the traditional lands, certain rights to use larger areas (e.g. for hunting and trapping), defined roles in land management decision making (e.g. on wildlife management and in environmental assessments), other self-government provisions, financial compensation and shares in resource royalties (INAC, 1996a). In northern Labrador, both the Inuit and Innu had submitted claims in 1977, and neither had been resolved despite some years of negotiation with federal and provincial government authorities. The panel urged that claim agreements be reached prior to project approval to solidify and specify the communities’ foundation of authority, to establish basic arrangements for sharing mine royalties and other benefits, and to provide a firm foundation for participation in co-management bodies that would monitor and guide mine development. Failing that, the panel recommended negotiation of similar packages of provisions specific to the mine. Either way the idea was to give the local people the capacity to capture significant overall gains from the mine and to use these in ways that would enhance their communities’ long-term prospects. The panel saw negotiation of impact and benefit agreements between the Innu and Inuit and the mining company in the same light. Impact and benefit agreements are case specific documents that set out, for example, commitments for training and employment of local people, for provision of opportunities for local businesses, and for environmental monitoring and protection.While their scope and influence are generally smaller than those of land claim agreement provisions, they too can be important means of maximizing local gains and minimizing damages. In August 1999, five months after the panel’s report was submitted, the federal and provincial governments announced their general acceptance of most of the panel’s recommendations. The governments refused to commit to reaching agreement on land claims prior to project approval (DFO, 1999; Newfoundland and Labrador, 1999) – a decision the Innu and Inuit challenged in court (Robinson, 1999) – but did proceed, more or less as the panel had recommended, to ensure equivalent case-specific arrangements. Making a difference The June 2002 project approval in principle for the Voisey’s Bay mine and mill covers a variety of substantive conditions and continuing processes to minimize negative effects and enhance local benefits and participation over the whole project life. These include, in addition to the applicable regulatory obligations: • an environmental co-management agreement that establishes a joint body (with two representatives from each of the four governance parties) to
10 Sustainability Assessment monitor project effects, review new and to-be specified project-related actions including tailings and waste rock disposal options, and recommend necessary adjustments; • impact and benefit agreements – one between the company and the Innu Nation and a separate one between the company and the Labrador Inuit Association – that allow the project to proceed on traditional lands in return for certain special arrangements for revenue sharing, local employment and contracting, training programmes and community roles in ongoing review of project implementation (Newfoundland and Labrador, 2002b); • commitments to address additional details in special Voisey’s Bay chapters in land claim final agreements with the Inuit and Innu (Newfoundland and Labrador, 2002b). Together, the key elements of the Voisey’s Bay project agreement represent a significant effort to meet the sustainability test.The major concession by Inco to use a 6000 t/d instead of 20,000 t/d mill to extend project life, and the set of arrangements dealing with community participation in benefits and impacts, address a broad range of sustainability-related concerns – social, economic and ecological – in a reasonably well integrated package. The agreement also provides for reviews and adjustments intended to increase prospects for a continuing flow of benefits. Adoption of sustainability-based decision criteria in the Voisey’s Bay case clearly made a difference. It changed how the main issues in the case were addressed, how the project was designed and what was approved. The higher test of ‘contribution to sustainability’ shifted the focus from the mitigation of negative environmental effects during the life of the mine to net gains over the long term. The net gains requirement meant attention to trade-offs and compensations. Because there would be at least some lasting ecological damage, a plausible ‘contribution to sustainability’ could be provided only if strong environmental stewardship were combined with steps to lengthen and strengthen socio-economic benefits.To establish grounds for claiming the project would have a positive legacy, the proponent and government decision makers had to find ways of enhancing the communities’ long-term prospects. The two most obvious practical effects were the influence on project design, especially concerning the size of the mill, and the negotiation of impact and benefit agreements centred on engaging local people in environmental protection and enhancing the flow of resources and opportunities. Both should help the communities prepare for life after mining. Whether the end results will actually be net gains for sustainability is far from certain. At the mine site, there will inevitably be at least some residual ecological damage after remediation and closure. The mine’s products and revenues may also contribute to increases in consumption and waste generation in ways that lead away from sustainability. There may well be compensating positives. Tax and other revenues from the mine may be used to improve community infrastructure in ways that enhance long-term economic prospects and reduce negative ecological effects. Longer-term social and economic gains
Beginnings 11 are also possible, especially with the extended project life and other efforts to strengthen local training and capacity-building. But these steps mostly enhance the potential for positive bridging to an economically and ecologically viable future. Successful delivery is not assured and much still depends on implementation. This is no criticism of the efforts by theVoisey’s Bay panel and others who played key roles in the assessment and the associated deliberations on approval conditions and the impact and benefit agreements. Even the best planning can only go so far. Moreover, the Voisey’s Bay participants were pioneers in sustainability-centred assessment.They had no established path to follow and no assembled collection of previous case experiences to go by. None of the agencies involved had anticipated such an assessment and none had prepared relevant sustainability-centred guidance documents. No special criteria or process rules for sustainability assessment had been established. Specifying the higher test At the time of the Voisey’s Bay assessment, there had been plenty of other serious efforts to apply sustainability criteria in practical decision making. Sustainability objectives had underpinned a variety of initiatives in regional and community planning, in building and neighbourhood design, and in the implementation of poverty reduction projects.There had even been a few other environmental assessments using the rough equivalent of a sustainability- centred approach. But, like the Voisey’s Bay effort, these had been more or less ad hoc, exploratory and primitive. The situation is not much different today. The last few years have seen a continued proliferation of official commitments to sustainability, some of them directly embedded in environmental assessment law. There have also been increasing numbers of new sustainability-centred initiatives, led by actors ranging from neighbourhood organizations and municipalities to corporate sectors and multilateral agencies in jurisdictions around the world. Many of these initiatives have been exemplary and most have offered important lessons of some sort. But there has been little consistency of concept or approach.The ‘contribution to sustainability’ test is just as vaguely and variously defined today as it was when the Voisey’s Bay panel went to work.The practical implications for deliberations and decisions – in policy and project planning, the evaluation of competing options, the design of review and approval processes, post- approval monitoring and adjustment – have not been carefully delineated.We are still stumbling towards sustainability assessment. Some stumbling is unavoidable. Different circumstances demand different approaches and uncertainty demands flexibility. One of the key lessons to be drawn from the unsustainable results of conventionally guided develop- ment decision making is that context matters. Any useful guidance for future sustainability assessments must incorporate adaptive flexibility and respect the specifics of context. But some elements of context are universal.While the
12 Sustainability Assessment pursuit of durable and desirable futures may take a host of different forms, it always faces intertwined ecological, social and economic factors. There are always complexities and uncertainties to respect and good reasons to antici- pate surprise.We may debate how far to go with generic criteria and standard processes, but we certainly have the wherewithal for some basic shared un- derstanding of what is required for sustainability gains, and we have enough experience to consolidate into a useful basic package of overall guidance. That,at least,is the presumption of this book.The agenda here is to consider what we have learned from environmental assessment experience and from sustainability thought and practice so far, to identify the key requirements for sustainability and sustainability-oriented assessments, and to outline the essential steps for implementation. Notes 1 Under the Statement of Principles signed in June 2002, Inco agreed to con- struct a pilot hydrometallurgical processing plant and either to expand it to a commercial scale operation or to build instead a conventional refinery for the Voisey’s ore. Initially, the Voisey’s ore would be shipped to Inco processing facilities elsewhere, but the company agreed to treat this as a loan, with an equivalent amount of ore from elsewhere later brought to Argentia in compensation (Newfoundland and Labrador, 2002a). 2 Even while they are operating, mining projects can have negative effects on local communities and economies. Uneven distribution of new incomes can lead to tensions and conflicts. Sudden addition of new revenues for community programmes can lead to dependency on a transitory activity while reducing incentives to pursue other opportunities. And inflationary effects can undermine traditional non-mining economic activities, leaving the community with fewer viable alternatives after the mine closes. These problems, considered more broadly, may help explain why the economies of resource rich developing countries tend to grow more slowly than the median for developing countries (Östensson and Uwizeye-Mapendano, 2000; MMSD, 2002). 3 A Canada/Newfoundland/Inuit framework agreement was ratified in 1990, and an agreement-in-principle signed in June 2001 (INAC, 2001). 4 At the formation of the Labrador Inuit Association, the rule of thumb was that members of all families that had been on the coast before the establishment of the airbase at Goose Bay in 1942 probably had at least some Inuit ancestry, and could be considered legitimate participants in the Association and its claim. 5 Reports of this transition to sedentary life with a money economy disagree on whether it was encouraged or forced. But the island site seems clearly to have been chosen for servicing convenience. 6 In February 1995, for example, the Innu occupied the site and issued an eviction order to Diamond Fields Resources, the exploration company
Beginnings 13 then holding the Voisey’s Bay claims, for failure to obtain Innu permission and failure to prepare an environmental and cultural protection plan before starting exploration on aboriginal lands (Innu Nation, 1996). 7 The Memorandum of Understanding and the Panel Terms of Reference are included as appendices to the panel’s final report (Voisey’s Bay Panel, 1999). 8 For a discussion of the broader significance of these guidelines, see Gibson (2000).
2 Assessment Thirty-someYears of Environmental Assessment Growing up in a difficult world The Voisey’s Bay assessment was atypical when it was initiated in 1997 and remains so today.1 As we will see in later chapters, there have been plenty of other efforts to define and use sustainability principles and criteria in practical decision making – in a host of applications from urban growth management to corporate responsibility reporting.There have also been many official state- ments of devotion to sustainability in environmental assessment work. Many recent assessment laws list contribution to sustainability among their statutory purposes. Nevertheless, serious efforts to use sustainability gains as a guiding objective and central criterion in actual assessments are still rare. Even for the most progressive jurisdictions, the idea remains in the experimental fringe of innovation in assessment law and practice. This may not change soon, but there are reasons to expect, as well as to hope for, an eventual effective union between environmental assessment and the pursuit of sustainability. We can expect necessity to be the mother of assessment innovation. Researchers, policy makers and affected interests disagree on how worried we should be about the worsening of ecological degradation,economic inequity and other threats to long-term well-being.They also disagree on the causes and solutions. But only the most wildly optimistic and the profoundly ill-informed claim that the present practices can continue indefinitely without wrecking the biophysical foundations for survival. If the extraordinary popularity of sustainability language reveals only one thing, it is widespread recognition that what prevails today is not sustainable and that changes of some sort are needed. As important conditions get worse, and the costs of unsustainable behaviour become more evident, mother necessity will spur more determined responses. Almost certainly these will include efforts to impose a ‘contribution to sustainability’ test in the planning and approval of new or renewed undertakings.
Assessment 15 Environmental assessment is not the only, or necessarily the best, vehicle for applying a ‘contribution to sustainability’ test. Land use planning for towns and cities, urbanizing regions and rural and resource areas, is also a good can- didate. So are, for other applications, government priority setting processes, neighbourhood and building design charettes, ethical investment analyses, and programme development procedures for international aid projects. Indeed, almost any existing decision making process could and should be used, if it deals with matters that may have long-term effects on factors influencing the prospects for sustainability.The chief advantages of environmental assessment are that it has for over 30 years been maturing in the direction of sustainability assessment, and that it can be adjusted for application, under any convenient label, to decision making on almost any sustainability related undertaking – not just to the familiar sorts of new physical projects but also to ongoing activities and renovations, plans and programmes, government and corporate poli- cies, fiscal or regulatory initiatives, trade regimes, communication strategies, product designs, even lobbying campaigns by environmental organizations. The maturing of environmental assessment, since its birth in the 1969 United States (US) National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), has been a global phenomenon, influenced by experiences in the hundreds of jurisdic- tions – nations, provinces and states, municipalities, corporations, national and multilateral agencies, and aboriginal governance bodies – that have adopted, applied and revised environmental assessment processes in various ways over the years. It has, accordingly, reflected many of the same insights and influences responsible for the inception and elaboration of sustainability. The two grew up in the same large neighbourhood, facing similar challenges and learning similar lessons. It is hardly surprising that they should fit well together. Basic and more advanced approaches Environmental assessment is one of several names for processes designed to encourage, if not force, better attention to environmental considerations in the planning and implementation of particular undertakings. Sometimes it is called environmental impact assessment or environmental appraisal or social and ecological assessment, and sometimes the use of different names reflects differences in approach. Certainly there are and have been great variations – in the range of undertakings subject to assessment, the procedural steps, the scope of considerations, the nature and roles of participants, the flex- ibility of application, and even, as we have seen in the Voisey’s Bay case, the criteria to be satisfied. But the essential purpose has remained: environmental assessment is meant to change the nature of decision making. Under ordinary circumstances, decision makers can be relied upon to consider economic and technical matters. Governments also have reliable incentives to pay attention to political concerns. Environmental assessment was introduced as an incen- tive as well as a means to take environmental factors just as seriously.
16 Sustainability Assessment The aim of ensuring due attention to environmental considerations in deci- sion making determines the necessary basic structure of assessment processes. Box 2.1 lists the basic components of potentially effective processes, and iden- tifies a core set of additional components that are included in more advanced and ambitious processes.2 The main difference is that the basic list processes are designed only to avoid or mitigate serious negative effects and ensure that approved undertakings are ‘acceptable’.The additional components give more attention to difficult environmental realities – especially scientific uncertainty and cumulative effects – and encourage planners and decision makers to identify the best responses to carefully considered needs and purposes. The importance of this distinction, for environmental decision making and for a union with sustainability objectives, we will discuss a little later. Note that even in basic processes, environmental assessment involves a series of deliberations and decisions through the full life of an undertaking from initial conception to final decommissioning. A formal assessment review may happen at a particular point in the process, usually timed to provide or contribute to an approval decision. But assessment activities (and due attention to environmental factors) are meant to continue. Given the purpose of ensuring serious attention to environmental consider- ations, even in environmental assessment processes with modest ‘acceptability’ aims, the specifics of process design are important. It matters a great deal whether environmental assessment is introduced through voluntary encourage- ment or legal mandate and whether ‘environment’ is defined narrowly to cover only biophysical and ecological matters or broadly to cover socio-economic and cultural concerns. It matters whether proponents of new projects begin their deliberations knowing they will have to satisfy environmental assessment requirements or have these requirements imposed only after they have decided what they wish to do. It matters whether the process is efficient or cumber- some, whether the joint roles of science and preference are understood, and whether those with the most to lose can get a fair hearing. On all these topics and more the theoreticians and practitioners of environmental assessment have now struggled for more than 30 years. Considerable diversity remains, in thinking as well as in practice. But it is now possible to look back on the birth and growth of environmental assessment, to identify the key stages and most significant areas of maturation and to appreciate how these have led us to sustainability assessment. Origins The general origins of environmental assessment lie in the wave of public environmental concerns and demands that rose in the wealthy nations of the world in the mid- to late 1960s. Among the underlying factors were comfort, confidence, distrust and dread – the odd legacies ofWorldWar II and the post- war boom in industry and consumption. The boom had brought ever rising material ambitions, from kitchen appliances and synthetic fabrics to private vehicles and detached homes with weed-free lawns. But these came with rising
Assessment 17 Box 2.1 The structure and key components of potentially effective assessment processes Basic components Additional components of more advanced processes 1 Application rules that specify what sorts of undertakings are subject to assessment requirements (so planners and proponents know from the outset that they will have to address environmental considerations). 1 Application rules that ensure assessment of all undertakings, including policies and programmes and plans as well as capital projects, that might have significant environmental effects. 2 Guidance and procedures for determining more specifically the level of assessment and review required in particular cases. 2 Requirements to establish the need and/or justify the purpose to be served. 3 Definition of the range of ‘environmental’ considerations to be addressed, preferably including socio-economic and cultural as well as biophysical factors. 3 Requirements to identify the reasonable alternatives, including different general approaches as well as different designs, for serving the purpose. 4 Requirements to identify and evaluate the potentially significant effects of proposed undertakings, in light of existing environmental conditions, pressures and trends. 4 Requirements for integrated consideration of related undertakings and of cumulative effects of existing, proposed and reasonably anticipated undertakings. 5 Provisions for scoping (setting reasonable boundaries and focusing assessment work on the most important issues). 5 Requirements to identify means of enhancing positive effects. 6 Requirements to identify and evaluate means of mitigating predicted negative effects. 6 Requirements for comparative evaluation of the reasonable alternatives with justification for selection of the preferred alternative as the proposed undertaking. 7 Overall evaluation of the effects of the proposed undertaking, with chosen mitigation measures. 7 Requirements to identify and evaluate the significance of uncertainties (about effect predictions, mitigation and enhancement effectiveness) and associated risks. 8 Provisions for public as well as technical review of the proposed undertaking and the assessment work (to evaluate both the proposed undertaking and the adequacy of efforts to incorporate attention to environmental considerations in developing the proposal), including review through public hearings in especially significant cases. 8 Provisions, including funding support, to ensure effective public as well as technical notification and consultation at significant points throughout the proposal development and assessment process. 9 Means of ensuring that the assessment and review findings are incorporated effectively in approvals and permitting. 9 Requirements and provisions for monitoring of actual effects and comparison of these with predicted effects (to allow adaptive management and enhance learning from experience) through the full life-cycle of the undertaking. 10 Requirements and provisions for monitoring and enforcing compliance with approval conditions. 10 Provisions for linking assessment work, including monitoring, into a broader regime for setting, pursuing and re-evaluating public objectives.
18 Sustainability Assessment expectations for health and security, and a gradually strengthening willingness to challenge authority. The spectacular advances in technology – living better with chemistry and electricity while watching the Americans and Soviets race into space – were accompanied by gnawing fears about where it was all leading, especially as the Cold War powers persisted in adding to stocks of atomic weapons that were already sufficient to annihilate life on Earth. Rachel Carson’s exposé of global scale chemical contamination came in 1962, the same year as the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was quickly followed by a succession of books presenting frightening statistics about population,pollution and depletion trends (later compiled in the Club of Rome’s 1972 Limits to Growth computer projections), further undermining confidence in economic and technological ‘progress’ as a universally Good Thing. Such ambivalence about industrial progress was nothing new and the driving concerns were as much conservative as radical. But in the 1960s it was accompanied by a rising disaffection with authority and a proliferation of public interest groups that, often with surprising media support, raised public awareness and pushed governments to address matters such as environmental stewardship in which they had previously shown little interest. The first steps were in basic environmental protection and resource man- agement – stronger efforts to control air pollutants, improvements to waste management and sewage treatment facilities, additional efforts to protect natural and heritage areas. Environmental assessment came a little later.While it is now broadly recognized as an approach to planning and decision making, environmental assessment emerged in most jurisdictions from environmental regulation. It was an outgrowth of pollution abatement law. Or, more pre- cisely, it was a response to the failures of environmental laws that focused on responding to particular, identified abuses. By the late 1960s most industrial countries had put in place a suite of laws, and some enforcement staff, to deal with noxious and costly pollution problems. Most of these laws addressed air, water and land as separate areas of concern. Most were reactive, more concerned with correction than preven- tion. And most assumed simple cause–effect, source–receptor relationships. Accordingly, enforcement was typically seen as a technical matter, not just in the confirmation of offences but also in the determination of appropriate resolutions. Sometimes there were prosecutions and legal penalties, but more often the regulators and the regulatees sat down together to determine what abatement action would be suitable and sufficient (Schrecker, 1984). This approach had some successes. Where the problems faced were quite simple, the abatement responses could be suitable and sufficient. But three inadequacies became increasingly apparent. First, the problems to be addressed became more complicated. The kinds of pollution commonly recognized in the 1960s were a cartoonist’s delight – billowing black smoke, dead fish floating upside down, cesspools stinking enough to create odour waves. Soon, however, a host of more insidious prob- lems emerged. There were invisible and odourless trace contaminants that moved through air, water and soil and acted in combination, often with delayed
Assessment 19 and nasty effects. In ecosystems this could mean acidification, species loss or nutrient-driven system collapse. In humans the rising threats were cancer, birth defects or immune system disruption. The sources were multiple, the effects no longer just local and the prospects for scientific certainty dim. Second, the approach was highly inefficient. Damages proved often to be impossible or too costly to repair. Poisoned aquifers could not be decontami- nated; paved wetlands could not be resurrected; asthmatic children could not be cured. Even where significant correction was feasible, reactive mitigation was much more expensive than proper initial design. Interests that preferred to avoid environmental expenditures of any kind might be happy with acting only after problems had emerged and were undeniably serious. For the wider public, especially those living downstream and downwind, the reactive ap- proach meant responses that were too little and too late. As industrial activi- ties expanded, the public costs grew larger and less tolerable. Eventually the political costs were also unbearable. Third, the credibility of the authorities crumbled. Treating environmental protection as a matter of reactive technical analysis and response could only work if technical monitoring revealed all the serious problems, if good infor- mation were available on causes and solutions, and if this information were used impartially in decision making. In practice, these conditions were rarely met. Most actual problems were complex and ill-understood. Authorities everywhere tended to mistake limited evidence of harm for limited prospects for damage.They offered assurances that problems were small or well in hand. Sometimes they withheld evidence to forestall public panic. But inevitably the information would leak out, or further research would confirm suspicions – revealing contaminant health effects at ever lower concentrations, ecological losses over ever wider areas, and multiple risks from an ever lengthening list of products and activities. As this record continued, the assurances brought more suspicion than comfort. When corrective actions were taken, often belatedly and minimally, further suspicions grew around the processes for deciding what to do. Despite the technical emphasis, most actual responses involved value laden choices among more or less imperfect options and the choices were made behind closed doors in negotiations between the regulators and the polluters.When the results were disappointing, affected citizens and public interest advocates saw unsavoury collusion and demanded more rigour and openness. In truth, the frequently observed phenomenon of regulator capture by regulatee was not often due to any overt corruption. Usually it was just that the regulatory officials and the managers of regulated facilities spent a lot of time together. Perhaps they had also gone to engineering school together.In any event they quite naturally found it easy to develop shared sympathies. To forestall this, citizens increasingly called for greater public scrutiny with more rigorous requirements and more players at the table when decisions were made. In response, governments began to introduce more integrated, anticipatory and open processes.They placed more emphasis on the permitting and licensing of new facilities and activities, hoping to prevent or minimize later problems,
20 Sustainability Assessment and they began to coordinate attention to water, air and land effects. Initially these approvals processes still centred on technical and economic considera- tions with little public involvement, were still limited to the usual air, water and land issues, and were applied mostly to a limited range of known pollu- tion sources. Typically they were also centred on determinations of ‘accept- ability’ – whether undertakings would meet established environmental criteria or standards – rather than on promotion of the most desirable or even least negative options. But gradually the anticipatory controls were expanded and strengthened, and in this the introduction of environmental assessment pro- cesses played a large role. Resistance, adoption and proliferation Many early environmental assessment processes were quite narrowly focused on biophysical concerns, technically oriented and discretionary. But an ambi- tious initial standard was set by the first process – the environmental impact assessment obligations introduced in the US National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 – and assessment processes ever since have been gradually expanding their scope and coverage and becoming more demanding. NEPA section 102 (2) required US federal agencies to prepare ‘statements’ to ac- company proposals for all new legislation or other activities that might have significant environmental effects. The statements had to consider alternatives to the proposed action, address long-term as well as immediate concerns, and be taken seriously in overall decision making. This was an ‘action forcing’ requirement. The required actions were meant to change the nature of the proposal development process so that environmental factors were habitually integrated with the usual economic and technical considerations. And the law made such action mandatory. Not surprisingly, the new obligations were resisted. Passage of the NEPA requirements was followed by a flood of court cases and, later, by an outpouring of regulatory specifications that clarified what ‘significant’ meant, what kinds of undertakings were covered, what the statements had to include, and what constituted adequate attention to the findings. Other jurisdictions hesitated before this path. Many claimed to fear the prospect of interminable litigation, though the US reliance on court decisions was due mostly to the early absence of regulations, administrative oversight and other good means of clarifying the law’s requirements (Wood, 2003). In most places, the main reason for resistance was that the new assessment obligations fell on government agencies that were not eager to think differently, to accept the new burdens or to face additional scrutiny. Experienced practitioners of environmental assessment today can point to a long list of cases demonstrating that serious assessment efforts bring important direct benefits for project proponents. Arguably, environmental assessments often provide net benefits for proponents. Nevertheless, like other measures initiated to serve the public good in the face of the prevailing government and corporate motivations, effective environmental assessment processes have had
Assessment 21 to be imposed on proponents. Most proponents have at least initially resisted subjection to effective assessment requirements, and have tended to appreciate the benefits of assessment only through imposed experience. Certainly it was not proponent enthusiasm that drove the adoption and strengthening of environmental assessment. It was mostly public pressure plus fear of political damage from more environmental disasters. And as more and more jurisdictions adopted assessment requirements, slower moving govern- ments also risked being labelled as environmental dinosaurs. By 1998, environmental assessment processes were reportedly in place in over 100 countries (Donnelly et al, 1998) and more have been adopted since. In many countries, national level initiatives are accompanied by separate proc- esses applied by provinces or states, regional and municipal authorities and aboriginal governments, often with provisions for process combination or co- operation. Some specialized sectoral agencies – for example, those responsible for managing energy, mining or fisheries activities – have their own processes, as do most major international aid bodies, including multilateral ones such as the World Bank. And a host of private sector corporations have integrated environmental assessment processes, formal and informal, into their planning and decision making structures. Development stages and growth trends The substantive and procedural variations among these processes are great. Even at the national level, among countries with roughly similar capabilities and governance traditions, process specifics differ in important ways. Moreover, most processes have been in a more or less constant state of adjustment and elaboration in light of experience and in response to new pressures.There are, nevertheless, some common essentials – fundamental design considerations that each process must address in one way or another. While commentators have listed these in different ways as basic assessment process components or as criteria for evaluating process design and implementation (see, for example, Sadler, 1996; Senécal et al, 1999; Wood, 2003), there is broad agreement on the main elements. And in these matters it is possible to trace a general path of environmental assessment maturation, in theory and practice, over the past three decades. Box 2.2 presents a four stage account of how environmental assessment has grown since the 1960s from its regulatory roots. The stages are a consid- erable simplification of what has been a messy, uneven and still incomplete global process, but they illustrate the basic character and direction of change involved. A more specific list of the major trends is provided in Box 2.3.They represent, broadly, a shift towards adoption of the more advanced and ambi- tious components listed some pages ago in Box 2.1. In the list of trends, too, a good deal of simplification is involved. The identified trends are not universally shared nor are they all at the same level of achievement. Many assessment processes are largely untouched and remain
22 Sustainability Assessment little more than regulatory procedures under a misleading title. Some initially strong processes have been weakened. Many processes that have incorporated some advanced components listed in Box 2.1 still lack some of the items from the basic list. In several areas implementation still lags far behind thought and policy. Overall, however, these trends are clearly evident not just in the advocacy of environmental assessment practitioners but also in the nascent practices of leading jurisdictions. Arguably each of these trends is important on its own grounds. Our in- terest here, however, is in their significance in building a base for sustainability assessment. For this, the key differences between primitive and advanced en- vironmental assessment are perhaps best considered under the categories of ends and means. Box 2.2 Four stages in the development from environmental regulations to advanced environmental assessment Stage 1: reactive pollution control through measures responding to identified, local problems (usually air, water or soil pollution), with solutions considered technical matters to be addressed through closed negotiation of abatement requirements between government officials and the polluters. Stage 2: proactive impact identification and mitigation through impact assess- ment and project approval/licensing, still focused on biophysical concerns (though now integrating consideration of various receptors) and still treated as a largely technical issue with no serious public role (but perhaps expert review). Stage 3: integration of broader environmental considerations in project selec- tion and planning through environmental assessment processes with: • consideration of socio-economic as well as biophysical effects; • obligatory examination of alternatives, aiming to identify the best options environmentally as well as economically; • public reviews (that reveal expert conflicts and uncertainties, and consequently the significance of public choice). Stage 4: integrated planning and decision making for sustainability, addressing policies and programmes as well as projects, cumulative and global effects, with review and decision processes: • devoted to empowering the public; • recognizing uncertainties and favouring precaution, diversity, reversibility, adaptability; • expecting positive steps towards sustainability.
Assessment 23 Ends The goals of environment assessment processes can be modest or ambitious. In many jurisdictions, environmental assessment as an outgrowth of environ- mental regulation has aimed only to prevent or mitigate serious problems. Projects and other undertakings under review are generally assumed to be desirable and assessment decisions merely identify needed adjustments and suitable conditions of approval. As with regulatory decision making, the pre- ferred emphasis is on ensuring compliance with established standards, testable Box 2.3 Twelve major trends in the growth of environmental assessment Over the past three decades, environmental assessment in concept and practice has moved or is moving towards being: 1 more mandatory and codified (increased adoption of law-based processes, further specification of requirements, reduction of discretionary provisions); 2 more widely applied (covering small as well as large capital projects, con- tinuing as well as new initiatives, sectoral and area developments as well as single proposals, strategic as well as project level undertakings); 3 more often initiated early in planning (beginning with purposes and broad alternatives, sometimes beginning with the driving policies, programmes and plans); 4 more open and participatory (not just proponents, government officials and technical experts); 5 more comprehensive of environmental concerns (socio-economic, cultural and community effects as well as biophysical and ecological effects, regional and global as well as local effects); 6 more integrative (considering cumulative and systemic effects rather than just individual impacts); 7 more accepting of different kinds of knowledge and analysis (informal and traditional knowledge as well as conventional science, preferences as well as ‘facts’); 8 more closely monitored (by the courts, informed civil society bodies and government auditors watching responses to assessment obligations, and by stakeholders watching actual effects of approved undertakings); 9 more humble (recognizing and addressing uncertainties, applying precaution); 10 more sensitive to efficiency concerns (questions about process emphases, costs and relations with other evaluation and decision making processes); 11 more often adopted beyond formal environmental assessment processes (through sectoral law at various levels, but also in land use planning, through voluntary corporate initiatives, etc.); 12 more ambitious (aiming for overall biophysical and socio-economic gains rather than just individually ‘acceptable’ undertakings).
24 Sustainability Assessment ‘objectively’. Proponents typically want to know what the tests of acceptability are, so they can design accordingly. In practice, even basic assessment proc- esses recognize that there are important categories of potentially negative effects for which no general standards have been set. Moreover, one strength of environmental assessment as a process applied to individual undertakings is that it takes into account the particular environmental context (with its more or less unique set of ecological and social conditions, stresses, sensitivities, etc.) and the particular characteristics of the proposed initiative. Neverthe- less, assessment processes that have remained close to their regulatory origins continue to centre on testing the acceptability of undertakings and considering needs for additional mitigation measures. Proponents doing the required assessment work are expected to adjust their project planning and design to minimize environmental problems. As well, the findings from assessment reviews at the project decision stage may be incorporated more or less directly into project permitting and have some influence in overall approvals. But in most cases this remains at the periphery of decision making and in almost all cases the assessment conclusions are delivered as advice to the core decision makers. At the higher level of most comprehensive and advanced environmental assessment processes, the goals are to identify and favour best responses to carefully considered needs and opportunities. Such assessments require critical consideration of the purposes involved, comparative evaluation of the reasonable alternatives in light of their openly assessed socio-economic and biophysical effects and risks, and attention to the broader context including cumulative effects of other activities, existing and anticipated. The resulting proposals are expected to be the best options (or the least bad ones) over the long term. Assessments of this kind are typically more sensitive to uncertain- ties and place more emphasis on making explicitly value-laden choices. Assessment processes with these more ambitious objectives have a much greater potential for changing thinking and practice. Certainly they have had major effects on the subject and results of planning and decision making in particular cases. For example, ordinary acceptability-oriented assessments of new solid waste landfill proposals consider alternative design components (clay or engineered fabric liners, competing options for leachate collection and treatment, etc.) and might also evaluate alternative sites. If done well, the assessment and associated planning and decision making ensure a well designed and suitably sited dump. In contrast, the more ambitious form of assessment questions the simple waste disposal purpose, requires attention to a broader range of waste management options, and engages more stakeholders in the deliberations. The alternative approaches assessed normally include waste reduction options (waste minimization incentives, initiatives to encourage re- use, recycling and composting programmes) in combination with options for disposal of the residuals.The results therefore include not only well-designed recycling, composting and landfill facilities but also important shifts in waste management policies and programmes, in commercial and industrial practices, even in citizen behaviour – all with a greater potential for positive ripple effects than the ‘better dump’ approach.
Assessment 25 The more ambitious approach is not new.The original 1969 NEPA law in the US had high aims – it defined ‘environment’ broadly, required evaluation of alternatives and addressed long-term effects. Many other early processes also started with stated commitments to substantial change in the nature of planning and decision making. Often, however, the specific provisions and their implementation fell short. Just having admirable ends was never enough – assessment processes also needed the means of delivery and these have been the main areas of attention, frustration and improvement in environmental assessment over the years. Means While some changes in environmental assessment processes have centred on matters of high principle, most have resulted from much more directly practical adjustments. Of the 12 trends listed in Box 2.3, only the final one is entirely about ends. Many of the others facilitate more ambitious assess- ments, but in most cases these changes have been driven by needs to address apparent political and ecological realities, including pressures from citizens and other stakeholders who found that existing processes were not working well enough. Mandatory and codified Assessment expectations were gradually specified and codified because ex- perience taught that discretionary openings would be abused, and because proponents demanded clearer delineation of what they had to do to obtain ap- provals. Some countries, including Canada and New Zealand had introduced environmental assessment through non-legislated policy pronouncements. But these processes suffered from discretionary avoidance and substantive in- consistency. Requirements for Canada’s first major project assessment review, which considered the Point Lepreau nuclear power station in New Bruns- wick, were watered down to avoid conflict with a financing and construction schedule.The second review, which considered the Wreck Cove hydroelectric power project in Nova Scotia, was not initiated until after the project had been approved and the findings that should have affected project design were not available until after much of project work had been completed (Emond, 1978). Performance improved over time. Nevertheless, many government agencies gave little more than lip-service to assessment expectations until the requirements became legally binding. The Canadian experience was far from unusual and the gradual shift to legally mandated, obligatory and reasonably well specified requirements stands globally as a common feature of environ- mental assessment maturation. In jurisdictions that began with or later adopted assessment law, there was a parallel administrative transition from procedural and substantive guide- lines to more firmly applicable regulations (e.g. on categories of undertakings subject to assessment requirements, notice provisions, report contents, and procedures for more and less detailed assessments). Here too the objective was to limit discretion and clarify obligations, without constraining the needed flexibility of a case and situation based process.
26 Sustainability Assessment Widely applied The initial focus of most environmental assessment regimes was on major new capital projects that could have significant negative effects. Such projects were familiar subjects of regulatory permitting and the required impact assessments would provide bases for various licensing approvals. The US NEPA process also applied from the outset to environmentally significant policies, plans, pro- grammes and legislative initiatives, as well as to small projects though through a less demanding and more streamlined version of the process for major undertakings. There was, however, considerable early uncertainty about just what was and was not subject to the full and streamlined NEPA requirements. Clarification came only after some years of court rulings. Most other jurisdictions relied on regulatory or administrative specification of the application rules. Some chose to make decisions on assessment require- ments only after projects had been proposed and seemed worrisome, but this reactive approach conflicted with the objective of encouraging proponents to assess potential effects and incorporate the findings during proposal develop- ment. Better regimes tried to pre-identify and list all categories of undertakings that would be subject to assessment at some level. In most cases the lists were gradually expanded, despite opposition from proponent interests. The main expansions reflected three lessons from experience. The first came from the evident inconsistency of requiring quite rigorous assessments of new undertakings, while neglecting existing activities that were serious sources of environmental abuse. Sometimes the response was simply to tighten regula- tory controls on existing operations. But some jurisdictions also moved to extend assessments requirements to ongoing activities such as timber cutting operations, major changes to existing facilities such as airports, and decom- missioning of potentially dangerous sites such as hazardous waste treatment facilities. The second lesson was that while assessments focused on case by case examination of individual projects, actual environmental effects usually came from combinations of activities,existing and new.Some jurisdictions responded with requirements to consider cumulative effects in individual assessments. But it was soon apparent that broader assessment of the set of relevant activities – through assessments of undertakings, alternatives and cumulative effects in a particular sector or area – would be more efficient and would allow fairer assignment of the costs. The third lesson was that many individual project assessments raised larger policy issues that needed attention but could not be addressed effectively in project-centred decisions. The acceptability of a major new highway cutting through an ancient forest or an amiable neighbourhood might depend heavily on whether the proposed road would fit sensibly into a broader transportation plan that was itself defensible.And the same issue might well arise in assessments of other individual transportation projects in that jurisdiction. Here too, individual assessments proved to be an inadequate and inefficient mechanism used only because no better option was available. It made more sense to assign assessment resources directly to the strategic level and introduce assessments of policies, plans and programmes.
Assessment 27 The latter have become the most lively area of environmental assessment innovation in the past decade. Most jurisdictions with serious environmental assessment processes for the project level now also apply assessment require- ments of some sort at the strategic level (Wood, 2003). Some, California for instance, have extensive experience and well developed means of application, including specified implications for project level work. Malawi and some other countries with very limited administrative capacity have chosen to focus on strategic level assessments to gain more widespread benefits from resources that would be stretched too thinly at the project level. Earlier in planning As more jurisdictions introduced and applied requirements to consider pur- poses and alternatives, effective consideration of environmental factors was pushed into earlier stages of proposal development. Eventually this trend led environmental assessment further upstream – into the realm of policies, plans and other strategic level activities that set the context for proposal develop- ment. When assessment adopts the regulatory tradition and focuses only on already preferred and perhaps largely designed undertakings, all that is practi- cally feasible is marginal adjustment for mitigation.The only other possibility is a denial of approval that would force the proponent to give up or at least to go back to an earlier stage and begin again. When comparative evaluation of alternatives is required, assessment begins before there is a preferred option. And when purposes must be justified, the starting point is the conceptual beginning where many proponents may be pushed to consider issues and options they had previously left unexamined. Requirements to assess alternative options have often posed difficulties, especially for private sector proponents and public sector agencies with nar- rowly focused interests, capacities and mandates. A company that makes its money building natural gas pipelines and supplying residential and industrial customers, for example, is likely to be disinclined to consider energy demand reduction options and may be ill-equipped to act on such options if they emerge as the preferred alternative. This problem can be exaggerated. Narrowly in- terested proponents can still be required to establish that their proposed un- dertaking is the best option available, whether or not they consider themselves able to pursue the alternatives. But the immediate concern points to a deeper one about the context for consideration and the pursuit of alternatives. Attractive but unconventional options can often be most effectively facili- tated and favoured through initiatives at the strategic level. For example, many jurisdictions have chosen to encourage energy demand reduction through changes in pricing regimes, certificate trading, product standards and label- ling, or new tax provisions (van der Laar and Vreuls, 2004; Nilsson, 2005). Sometimes these can spur rapid shifts in proponent attitudes and abilities to pursue alternatives. But the more important implication is that careful atten- tion to alternatives may be at least as beneficial at this strategic level as at the project level. And strategic level assessments may be more efficient, especially if they address issues that would otherwise be left to repeated coverage in
28 Sustainability Assessment a succession of project assessments (Stinchcombe and Gibson, 2001). Not surprisingly, greatly expanded application at the strategic level has been one of the most dramatic developments in environmental assessment in the past decade. Open and participatory Increased public involvement has been a common feature of many govern- ments’ environmental initiatives over the past three decades. Along with environmental assessment processes, resource management regimes, permit- ting procedures, standard-setting exercises, even international convention negotiations have come to include a public role and to accept much greater public scrutiny. Commitment and performance vary greatly among and within jurisdictions. But relative openness is now common and still increasing almost everywhere. Certainly there has been resistance. Approval delays and other embarrassments have led some proponents and government authorities to seek restrictions on the public role (usually under the cover of demands for process efficiency). Some jurisdictions have responded by limiting the number and scope of public participation opportunities. Nevertheless, the general trend has been to greater openness, despite proponent preference. Pressures for more open and participatory processes originated in general distrust of regulatory authorities and dissatisfaction with the results of conven- tionally closed regulatory decision making. But these pressures grew as public participants gained experience in assessment deliberations and learned more about the limits of technical expertise.Well publicized, more or less adversarial public hearings on major assessment cases have invariably featured disagree- ments among technical experts who are supposed to be presenting the best scientific information and the most rigorous analyses. In each case, highly credentialled experts appearing on behalf of the proponents present technical evidence favouring the proposal, and similarly expert witnesses speaking in support of the critics present technical evidence opposing the proposal. Some- times the contesting experts have taken opposing positions while relying on exactly the same body of information (see, for example, Brunk et al, 1991). These displays, repeated in environmental law proceedings, judicial in- quiries, planning controversies, resource management debates and other deliberations on apparently technical matters, have thoroughly undermined claims that technical experts can be relied upon to make the necessary deci- sions based on objective science.Values and preferences, clearly, play a major role. Assessment decisions are therefore increasingly seen as matters of public choice. In these circumstances, denial or restriction of public scrutiny and involvement in the decision making raises questions about hidden motives and significant political costs can be involved. The more positive side of the story is that in environmental assessment practice, affected citizens and public intervenors have repeatedly proved to be the most powerfully motivated and the most capable critical reviewers of submitted assessment documents and associated proposals. Better planning and better projects have resulted.
Assessment 29 Participative experience has also had a self-feeding effect. Involving the public in assessment deliberations fosters an expectation that the decision making will be transparent and will reflect the participants’ expressed judge- ments and preferences. It also encourages those involved to expect similar engagement and transparency in other similarly weighty matters. Advocates of greater public involvement argue that it brings long-term educational benefits as well as immediate improvements in project planning (Sinclair and Diduck, 1995). Citizen participants focus on learning about the contested proposal and its effects, but in the course of this they typically also learn a great deal about their community and environment, about how to evaluate evidence and defend a deeply held position, and about the complexi- ties of decision making in the public interest. Assessment deliberations can also exhaust participants, disrupt family lives and split communities. Overall, however, the experience tends to build the capacities of participants to be effective contributors to civic life (Jackson, 1993). Comprehensive The NEPA process in the US began with a broad definition of ‘environmental’ considerations that included socio-economic and biophysical aspects. Many other jurisdictions followed this lead, some sooner than others.The European Union and most of its member countries have chosen to focus on biophysical concerns only, perhaps to compensate for the greater conventional attention paid to social and economic concerns. The more comprehensive approach is common, though not universal, in Canadian processes, in Australia and New Zealand, in developing countries and in international aid agencies such as the World Bank, perhaps because of the more obvious and pressing links between socio-economic and ecological concerns. The broader scope is also widely adopted for assessments at the strategic level. There is a possible trade-off here. The greater emphasis on biophysical concerns seems likely to be compromised by inclusion of socio-economic con- cerns. In Canadian experience, no substantial loss of ecological concern is evident in broader assessments. Indeed, in major cases – from the Mackenzie Valley natural gas pipeline inquiry in the mid-1970s to the Voisey’s Bay case a quarter of a century later – the combination of biophysical and socio- economic concerns has been mutually supporting. This has been especially true where protection of aboriginal cultures has been a major consideration. But in urban and suburban cases too, ecological and community protection have often been closely associated. Indeed, the common public reaction, in city neighbourhoods as much as in remote villages, is that separating the social and the ecological is arbitrary and inappropriate, especially if the core concerns are about such things as health, security, community culture, ambience and lasting quality of life. In practice, many public concerns do not fit tidily in the ecological, social or economic categories. This is true at the regional and global as well as local levels. The big advantage of broader assessments is that the full range of significant possible effects can be considered together and the trade-offs
30 Sustainability Assessment examined openly and explicitly. Because environmental assessments often provide the only public forum for case specific deliberations, they are often the one opportunity to address the full set of concerns, linkages and compromises through public governance.Where assessments do not address socio-economic matters, narrowly biophysical assessment recommendations that have been developed with some public involvement are fed into a closed process where the relevant authorities decide among themselves what priorities will prevail and what trade-offs will be made. While the conclusions are announced, the actual reasoning typically remains hidden. Integrative Early environmental assessment work suffered from motivational and meth- odological weaknesses. Proponents tended to treat assessment requirements as a paper obligation best addressed by submitting voluminous reports.These typically covered all possible concerns, but without much attention to priori- ties, interrelationships or synthesis. The work also tended to mirror the frag- mentation of scientific and technical expertise. In reports on the biophysical environment, individual factors were documented in detail. Great long lists of identified species were provided. But little light was shed on the nature of the biophysical and ecological systems, their response to current human interventions, and the possible systemic implications of proposed new activi- ties.3 Social impact assessments suffered from similar weaknesses and capable integration of the biophysical and social work was rare.4 Environmental assessment practitioners soon recognized the need for more systemic and better integrated understanding of existing environments, and more effective emphasis on how these systems, not just individual components of them, might be affected by new undertakings (Beanlands and Duinker, 1983). Similar conclusions were also being drawn in other fields. Experience, including failures, in the management of forests, fisheries, protected areas, watersheds and, most recently, atmospheric chemistry and global climate, has led to new appreciation and understanding of complex systems (Gunderson et al, 1995). The results, in research design, study methodologies and ap- proaches to management are just beginning to be adopted in environmental assessment practice. But they fit well with the growing emphasis on assessment of regional and cumulative effects, and the broader implications of policies, programmes and plans. Accepting of different kinds of knowledge and analysis The general undermining of faith in technical expertise has been accompanied by a growing acceptance of other kinds of knowledge – not as a replacement for conventionallyspecializedexpertise,orwithanyexpectationofgreaterreliability, but as a complementary source and a route to greater overall understanding. The acceptance of traditional ecological knowledge, as in the Voisey’s Bay assessment, is one example. In that case, like many others involving Aboriginal people with long traditions of living close to the land, there was good reason to
Assessment 31 anticipate that they had knowledge that was practically unavailable to scientists able to spend only a few field seasons in part of the area. And it was not just a matter of facts and data.The Inuit and Innu knowledge and ways of knowing combined ecological information with cultural practice and commitment to a future in that area, all of which were relevant to the assessment, difficult as it may have been to fit into the usual categories of assessment review. Much the same has been recognized about the deeply rooted, experiential knowledge of other long-term residents and land users. Consequently, when the Canadian government amended its environmental assessment legislation in 2003, it chose to recognize that both ‘community knowledge and aboriginal traditional knowledge’ were worthy of consideration in environmental as- sessments (Canada, 2003b, s8(16.1)). Environmental assessment practices have also increasingly embraced new methodologies that combine explicit social choice with technical analysis of scenarios, options, effects and risks. The underlying factor here is our still just dawning appreciation of ecological and socio-ecological system complexity, the consequently unavoidable role of values and preferences, and the enormous challenge of assembling a reason- able basis for competent decision making. Monitored Critics of environmental assessment practice have long harboured two sus- picions – that assessment obligations would be avoided and that the actual effects of assessed projects would be worse than predicted. Both have had important influences on the maturation of environmental assessment. Fears about tendencies to avoid assessment obligations were quickly confirmed. Many project proponents openly resisted assessment requirements or, where enforcement was weak, simply failed to comply.The flood of litigation following the introduction of NEPA assessment requirements in the US was driven at least as much by avoidance as by desire for clarification. In Canada, extensive non-compliance by government agencies was repeatedly confirmed by internal audits until the country’s policy-based process was replaced by a law (Gibson and Hanna, 2005). Pressure for the legislation and codification discussed above was one response, but these, by themselves, were generally insufficient. Certainly there are jurisdictions whose legislated requirements are not effectively applied. Clear obligations, committed senior authorities and capable administrators all help. But in many jurisdictions the key to effective implementation has been the critical vigilance of independent auditors (including those within govern- ments) and informed civil society organizations (including public interest environmental law groups) with public credibility and the capacity to initiate court actions were necessary. Such bodies play important roles on many issues of public concern, operate differently in different political cultures, and do not everywhere include groups particularly focused on environmental assess- ment. Generally, however, they have been an increasingly significant force for strengthening the substance as well as the implementation of environmental assessment.
32 Sustainability Assessment Some of the major implementation concerns have centred not on whether assessments are done as required, but on what happens after assessed pro- jects are allowed to proceed (Wood, 2003). Here there are two monitoring questions. First, are the assessment commitments and approval conditions met in implementation? And second, how do the actual effects compare with what was predicted? Both of these matters have attracted more attention with the maturing of environmental assessment, though there is still plenty of room for improvement. Compliance monitoring has often been undermined by vagueness in approval statements, failure to assign enforcement responsibilities and resources, and unimpressive penalties for non-compliance. Assessment authorities have only gradually begun to correct these problems, and costs remain the biggest barrier.The most promising responses may come from the few jurisdictions that are now empowering and supporting citizen monitors and local stakeholder monitoring committees as complements to conventional enforcement officials. Citizen and stakeholder mobilization has also been part of the answer to the traditional neglect of effects monitoring. Advancement in the science and art of impact prediction has been hampered by the widespread failure to check impact predictions against actual effects. Budgetary constraints are usually blamed, though passing up such learning opportunities is likely to be a false economy. Some jurisdictions have begun to introduce mandatory follow-up requirements, which are probably necessary if effects monitoring is to be done commonly and well. Further involvement of motivated local stakeholders may make this more affordable and more broadly educational but it is also recog- nized that good monitoring will require technical expertise, consistent research protocols for reporting, and widely shared access to the results (Hunsberger et al, 2004). While few of these are yet in place, the necessary technical and organizational capacity for the work is probably now possible. Humble In environmental assessment, as in other fields of biophysical and socio-cultural study, advances in methodology and comprehension have been accompanied by a deepening awareness of how little we know. The phenomenon of con- flicting credentialled experts, noted above, is only part of the story. Experts increasingly agree that the key reality faced in environmental work, and in most other policy fields, is the functioning of intersecting, interdependent, dynamic and perhaps inconceivably complex systems. These systems may be quite resilient but also appear to be normally in processes of change.They can, if overly stressed, change dramatically into systems with very different charac- teristics (Kay et al, 1999; Gunderson and Holling, 2002). This is the big risk in global climate change from the greenhouse effect – not that temperatures will simply continue to edge upwards, but that the climate system will begin to fluctuate wildly and then flip into a new form that is much different (hotter, colder, drier, wetter, windier, etc.) from what we have and depend on now. Unfortunately, we do not and probably cannot know where the threshold is.
Assessment 33 Not all systems are as complex as the global climate system (though few have been as energetically studied). And not many will bring equivalent cata- strophe if they are not maintained more or less in their current form. But all are dynamic and connected with others with complexities beyond full under- standing. The upshot is that we have a limited basis for confidence in system de- scriptions, much less impact predictions beyond the individual component level.That does not mean that predictions of system response are impossible. In many circumstances, quite reliable predictions can be made on the basis of experiential data, assisted by sophisticated modelling. But even where we have good information and capable assessments, surprises are possible, if not likely. For environmental policy generally, this means precautionary approaches should be adopted. For environmental assessment particularly, it means putting greater emphasis on identifying impact uncertainties and associated risks, avoiding potential problems and favouring low risk alterna- tives. It also means attention to adaptive design and preparation for adaptive management. Adaptive design includes preference for diversity, reversibility and substitutability, safe-fail rather than fail-safe technologies,5 preparation of fall-back options and plans for careful monitoring. Adaptive management uses these design features to make adjustments as implementation proceeds and surprises emerge (Holling, 1978, 1986; Gunderson et al, 1995; Dearden and Mitchell, 1998). Precautionary language is now appearing more often in environmental assessment laws and guidelines (Lawrence, 2003a), as it is in other environ- mental policies and processes. Delineation of the implications is not yet well advanced, but progress in this area seems likely (granting the limits of confi- dent prediction). Sensitive to efficiency concerns In most jurisdictions the imposition of environmental assessment obligations has been resisted, often energetically. Not surprisingly, much of the opposi- tion has come from development interests – in both the public and private sectors – whose undertakings would have to be assessed. But resistance has also come from government approval authorities with mandates to promote economic growth. It is likely, though difficult to prove, that a good deal of their discomfort centres on being pushed into unfamiliar territory, where the old methods of decision making and the usually preferred project options no longer prevail. Most often, however, the open criticisms have focused on the costs of implementation, approval delays and process inefficiencies. The continued expansion of environmental assessment applications des- pite these concerns suggests widespread confidence that the benefits generally exceed the costs – that better and more acceptable decisions result and that prevention of damage is cheaper than repair. Nevertheless, there have certainly been legitimate concerns about assessment inefficiencies. Critics in many jurisdictions have pointed to questionable resource allocation (assessment of minimally significant projects and effects while the implications of major
34 Sustainability Assessment undertakings are unexamined), the proliferation of overlapping and divergent assessment regimes, tolerance of poor quality work (assessment reports that are huge in volume but weak in analytical quality), unnecessarily lengthy reviews and hearings, and weak efforts to learn from experience (general failure to undertake monitoring of actual effects and compliance with commitments). A few governments, usually ones that are closely aligned with economic development interests, have chosen to weaken core assessment provisions or exempt more undertakings from them. Most have responded more directly to specific inefficiency problems. As we have seen, many jurisdictions are codifying expectations (to reduce process confusion), putting more emphasis on strategic level assessments (to resolve or simplify project level issues), streamlining application to less worrisome projects, and strengthening post- approval monitoring. Other common efficiency initiatives include negotiating arrangements for process harmonization where obligations overlap, facilitating issue scoping (focusing assessment attention on the major concerns), and introducing review timelines. Despite these efforts, efficiency challenges will no doubt continue to in- crease. Part of this will simply reflect the expansion of assessment obligations to cover more issues and undertakings. An additional emerging factor centres on process integration.As assessment spreads into the strategic level and begins more commonly to address cumulative effects across the full socio-economic, cultural and biophysical range, its role in overall decision making inevitably shifts. Initially, assessment work produced findings that were to be integrated into conventional decision making. Gradually, especially with critical attention to purposes and alternatives, it assumed more importance as an influence on basic planning assumptions and options. Now assessment is itself becoming a vehicle for more integrated deliberations and is closer to the core of decision making. This raises new questions about how assessment processes should cooperate, link or merge with other more traditional planning, evaluation and approval processes. Adopted beyond assessment regimes Experience has taught that serious attention to environmental considerations does not happen reliably without some powerful incentive. But that incentive does not have to be environmental assessment legislation. Assessment require- ments can and have been incorporated in a wide variety of other statutes to cover undertakings not otherwise subject to assessment obligations, or to add environmental components to existing processes. Examples in Canada include sector-based laws governing federal decisions on export subsidies, provincial licensing of mines and sand and gravel pits, and municipal approval of sub- division developments adjacent to environmentally sensitive areas. Some additional applications have been driven largely by non-legislative factors. Urban planning and mining project development provide illustrative cases. In North America, especially in urban and urbanizing regions subject to substantial growth pressures, planning authorities face increasingly costly urban sprawl and persistent political pressures for more healthy, green and
Assessment 35 liveable communities.The planners have responded in part by adopting versions of biophysical and socio-economic assessment to assist decision making at many levels – from evaluations of broad development scenarios to preparation of renewal plans for particular properties and neighbourhoods. The mining industry globally too has concluded that it needs to give much more careful and better integrated attention to biophysical and socio-economic concerns. Its motivation is essentially economic. A series of major environmental cata- strophes, mostly resulting from tailings dam failures, and widely reported cases of local communities rejecting proposed mining operations, or sabotaging existing ones, has increased mining costs, added to the difficulties of raising project financing, and damaged the industry’s reputation enough to make it harder for mining companies to recruit new talent.6 The rising importance of such motivations may not reduce needs for legislated assessment processes. But it does indicate wider recognition of the practical value of greater environmental awareness, and the usefulness of en- vironmental assessment approaches as means to this end. Ambitious In the Voisey’s Bay case, environmental assessment decision making centred on demonstration of ‘a positive overall contribution’ to long-term community and ecological gains. Such an objective is a long step from the mitigation of significant negative effects – the prevailing aim of most early assessment processes and of many still today. Arguably, the more ambitious target was at least discernable in the initial NEPA language. It is also implied in assess- ment processes that require critical comparative evaluation of purposes and alternatives. These should, in theory, lead to the selection of options that are not merely acceptable but, relative to the alternatives, most in accord with broad public interests. In practice, the expansion of assessment ambitions from acceptability to sustainability has been slow and fitful. It also remains far from complete. Consideration of alternatives has not always been required and when it has, authorities have often retained the acceptability test, seeking to identify and approve a clearly acceptable option but not necessarily the best one. This is understandable when assessments look only at the environmental factors. But as the interdependence of factors becomes more fully appreciated, and as citizens demand more scope in the process most open to them, environmental assessment has gradually become a vehicle for more comprehensive and better integrated analyses. In many places it has been extended to cover the strategic and project levels, cumulative as well as individual effects, socio-economic and cultural as well as the biophysical considerations, traditional knowledge and community preferences as well as technical calculations, and post-approval adaptations as well as pre-approval planning. Together these give assessment a bigger role and move it closer to the centre of decision making. High ambitions come with this territory. But they also come with the larger world of challenge and change in which concerns about sustainability have emerged.The trends observed in the maturation of environmental assessment
Other documents randomly have different content
to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God" (chap. vii. 4). But not only are death and resurrection the only possible means by which a sinner can escape the condemnation of the law and the tyrannical sway of sin, they are also the only means by which he can acceptably serve God. The flesh, or carnal mind, cannot serve God, for it is not subject to His law, neither indeed can be; therefore we infer that the sources of that life by which we can serve God are not to be found in the flesh, but only in union with the Lord Jesus in resurrection. "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered" (John xv. 6). Consequently, when God would bring Levi into a place of nearness and service to Himself, He shows him to us as passing through those circumstances which, in the clearest manner, illustrate death and resurrection; for they are taken instead of those that were as dead, but who escaped through the death of the lamb: and then, having thus passed through the circumstances of death, they are told in chap. viii. to "put off the old man and put on the new"—for that is the meaning of the "washing of water," and "shaving of the flesh," etc. This is in full keeping with what the apostle states to his son Titus: "For we ourselves also were sometime foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour" (Titus iii. 3-6). But in order that we may have a clearer and more comprehensive view of the ground upon which the Levites stood before God, I would refer, in as brief and concise a manner as I can, to the offerings connected with their consecration: these were the burnt offering, the meat offering, and the sin offering; all, as we shall see, showing out the Lord Jesus Christ in His varied aspects.[7] And first, the burnt offering: the principles unfolded in this offering are
brought out in the first chapter of Leviticus, where we read, "If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord" (ver. 3). Here, then, is something real for the soul to feed on and rejoice in. We have in the burnt offering the Lord Jesus Christ, in all His fulness and perfections, as offering Himself "without spot to God," and also as accepted before God for us. In this He was found to be "a male without blemish;" so much so, that the One in whose sight the very heavens are not clean, could say, "In whom I am well pleased;" and again, "Mine elect, in whom My soul delighteth." But further, this unblemished offering presents Himself voluntarily at the door of the tabernacle. "No man," says the Lord Jesus, speaking of His life, "taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again: this commandment have I received of My Father." And truly, in tracing the way of the blessed Jesus through this defiled world, we can recognize this feature of the burnt offering in a very striking manner. From first to last His course was marked with all the steadiness and divine uninterrupted calmness of true devotedness to God. The billows of dark and fierce temptation might roll and toss themselves with a rage and fury which would have crushed one less than God. The devil might stir up all his deadly malice against Him; man might display all his enmity—enmity which could only be outdone by the eternal friendship of this devoted One. His disciples, moreover, may refuse to "watch with Him one hour." Death may arm himself with all his ghastly terrors, and pour out a cup mixed with hell's bitterest ingredients; and further, display his deadly sting in all its infernal keenness and power to wound. The grave may conjure up all its unutterable horrors to make one grand struggle for "victory," but all in vain. The answer of this unblemished voluntary offering to all these was, "My meat and my drink is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work." He had His eye upon one object, and that was "the joy that was set before Him." He looked forward to the
moment when He would be able to draw forth from the inexhaustible treasuries of eternal love the rich and princely fruits of His hard-bought victory, and pour them forth in divine profusion upon the "travail of His soul;" even the Church, which He loved, and purchased with His own precious blood. He eagerly anticipated "the morning without clouds," when, surrounded by the myriads of His ransomed brethren, He will sound forth in everlasting strains the mighty answer to all the foul aspersions of the enemy as to the love of God toward the sinner. All these attractions, I say, He had before Him, and therefore He marched onward in the greatness of His strength; "He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem." Lord Jesus Christ, invigorate our poor cold hearts to sound forth the eternal honors of Thine adorable name; and may our lives be more and more the decided evidence of our hearts—love to Thee, for "Thou alone art worthy!" All this is surely most blessed for us; but, blessed as it is, it is not all; there are other strokes from the pencil of the Divine Artist, calculated, in the highest degree, to captivate our spiritual tastes, yea, more, to feed our souls. "He shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him, to make atonement for him" (ver. 4). Here, then, is grace! Levi, the self-willed, cruel, fierce, and blood-shedding Levi, is accepted in all the perfectness and acceptableness of this "unblemished male" before God: whatever of excellency, whatever of value, whatever of purity, God beheld in this offering, that did He likewise behold in Levi as "accepted in the offering." Thus, look at Levi apart from the offering, and you will find him such that God could not come into his assembly: but look at him as in the offering, and you find him, through grace, as pure and as perfect as the offering itself. Nothing could surpass this most excellent grace. The grace that could take up a sinner from such a pit of corruption as that in which Levi lay groveling, and lead him into such high elevation, deserves the highest note of praise; and, blessed be God, it shall, ere long, have it from all who, like Levi, have felt its sacred power.
However, we must not enter too minutely into the detail of this burnt offering, and there are just two points further to which I will refer. The first is presented to us in ver. 6: "And he shall flay the burnt offering, and cut it into his pieces." Here we see at once to what a process of strict, jealous and uncompromising scrutiny the Lord Jesus exposed Himself in offering Himself before God. It was not enough that the animal should be APPARENTLY "without blemish," for the skin, or outward surface, might look very well, and at the same time the offering be not at all fit for God's altar; therefore the outward surface must be removed, in order that this offering may be examined in all its sinews, joints and veins, and thus be found, as to the springs of action, the structure of his frame, and the source and channels of the life that animated him, a perfectly unblemished offering. But further, "he shall cut it into his pieces," i.e., take the offering asunder, and examine its various parts, in order that it may not only form a perfect whole, but that each distinct joint may be found perfect. Thus, in whatever aspect we look at the Lord Jesus, we get divine perfection. He could say to God, "Thou hast tried Me, and shalt find nothing;" and God could answer, "I am well pleased." He could say of the devil, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me;" and the devil could reply, "I know Thee, who thou art, the Holy One of God." He could say to men, "Which of you convinceth Me of sin?" and man could answer, "Truly this was a righteous man." Thus, I say, our divine burnt-offering, who voluntarily presented Himself at God's altar, and there poured forth His most precious blood, was found, in every feature and in every aspect, pure and perfect in the very highest sense of the word, and confessed so by heaven, earth, and hell.[8] All, therefore, having been found pure, and fit for God's altar, it becomes the happy place of Aaron's sons to send up before God the sweet savor of this most acceptable offering, as we read: "And the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire upon the altar, and lay the wood in order upon the fire. And the priests, Aaron's sons, shall lay the parts, the head and the fat, in order upon the wood that is on the fire which is upon the altar. But his inwards and his legs shall he
wash in water: and the priest shall burn all on the altar, to be a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savor unto the Lord" (vers. 7-9). The fat of the offering was God's peculiar part; no one could with impunity touch that; yea, the punishment for so doing was the same as for eating blood; i.e., it was as wrong and as daringly presumptuous for a man to intrude upon God's portion of the offering as it was for him to assume life in his own right, which latter was an open denial of the state of death and ruin in which he was by reason of sin. God, then, I say, claimed the fat. He alone could feed upon the inward excellency and peerless perfections of Jesus, just as in the case of the unmeasured ointment in Exodus xxx., where we see, as well as in the above cited passage, that the infinite mind of God could alone appreciate the infinite value of Christ. But we find the head burnt in connection with the fat, showing us, I suppose, that both the hidden energies of the Lord Jesus and the seat of His understanding were equally suited to be a sweet savor unto God. Lastly, the inwards and legs were washed and burned upon the altar, showing us that the secret thoughts, purposes and counsels of the Lord Jesus, as well as the outward development of these in His walk, were perfectly pure and fit for the altar: and, in connection with this last point, one cannot help dwelling with comfort upon the marvelous contrast between the Lord Jesus and His poor people. How often may our outward walk, typified by "the legs," appear quite right in the eye of man, when, at the same time, perhaps, in the eye of God, our "inwards" may be full of gross impurity. But it is well for us that such was not the case with our great Head: in Him all was alike, for all was pure. May our hearts, dear Christian reader, enter more and more fully, under the teaching of the Spirit, into the intrinsic excellency of the Lord Jesus; and may we be enabled daily, standing at the altar before God, to send up in His presence the savor of all this! As to the meat offering, we need not enter minutely into it. It was composed, as we know, of that which sprang from the earth, and such as aptly shadowed out "the Man Christ Jesus," the frankincense thereon marking the entire devotedness of all the actings of Christ's
human nature to God His Father. Nothing was done by Him to meet man's eye, or man's approbation; nothing was done to produce mere effect; no, all was directly before God. Whether we trace the footsteps of the Lord Jesus, while, for thirty years, He was subject to His parents at home; or while, for three years, He was engaged in public ministry amongst the Jews—all was alike: all showed forth the pure frankincense that marked Him, in all things, as God's peculiar and devoted servant. We may observe further that this meat offering was baked with oil, and anointed with oil; thus showing forth, I suppose, the incarnate Son of God, who was first "conceived of the Holy Ghost" (Matt. i. 20), and then "anointed with the Holy Ghost" (Matt. iii. 16; Acts x. 38). We now come to speak of the sin offering, and may the Lord graciously refresh our spirits while dwelling for a little on the blessed principles unfolded therein. The sin offering is brought before us in Leviticus iv., from whence we may select one case for our present purpose. "If the priest that is anointed do sin according to the sin of the people, then let him bring for his sin which he hath sinned a young bullock without blemish unto the Lord for a sin offering. And he shall bring the bullock unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord, and shall lay his hand upon the bullock's head and kill the bullock before the Lord" (vers. 3, 4). The reader will, no doubt, observe a marked difference between the above passage and that in which the burnt offering was referred to; and the difference so far mainly consists in this, that in the last cited passage the words "voluntary will" are not found, and this was quite to be looked for. In the burnt offering we were enabled to recognize the Lord Jesus Christ offering Himself voluntarily before God, in which aspect of His blessed work He could say, "No man taketh it (My life) from Me, I lay it down of Myself." In other words, He offered Himself "of His own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord." But in the sin offering it is quite different: "He shall be brought" and "He shall be killed;" i.e., instead of coming, He shall be brought; and instead of
laying down His life of Himself, His life shall be taken from Him. These, I say, are important distinctions, and such as arise from the very nature of the two offerings. In the burnt offering the Lord Jesus is seen offering Himself in all the unblemished perfectness which belonged to Him; and in this His soul had great delight, because He was presenting that before God which was so acceptable to Him. But in the sin offering the Lord Jesus is seen standing in connection with that which His pure and spotless soul must have deeply abhorred and keenly resented—abhorred and resented, indeed, in a way of which we cannot form the faintest idea. He is seen, in a word, as standing in connection with sin: yea, more, as "made sin" (2 Cor. v. 21). Thus it was that the prophet, through the Spirit, viewed Him when he said, "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all" (Isa. liii. 5, 6). Now I believe that by looking at the two offerings in connection we get a very deep and wondrous view of sin's dark and dreadful enormity in the sight of God: for sin in this point of view appears sinful just according to the measure of Christ's perfectness in God's account. If in the burnt offering we were enabled to see that such was the beauty and excellency of Christ that His whole man could go up before God as a sweet savor, and that God could "find nothing in Him" but perfection, as a necessary consequence then we must see in the sin offering the blackness and heinousness of sin, which could oblige God to hide His face from "His elect, in whom His soul delighted." This brings us to the next point connected with the sin offering, viz., "He shall lay his hand upon the bullock's head" (ver. 4). Here we have at once the secret of the deep and profound mystery of the three hours' darkness. It was before observed that God had to hide His face from the Lord Jesus on the cross, but how are we to account for such a mysterious
circumstance? Simply by the words, "he (the sinner) shall lay his hand upon the bullock's head." If, in contemplating the burnt offering, we were struck by the fact that all the perfectness of the offering was communicated to the "fierce and cruel" Levi, so here we are called upon to adore the grace that devised the wondrous plan whereby that could be effected, which was by imputing to the offering all the sin and defilement of Levi, and dealing with the sin of Levi in the person of the sin offering, in order that Levi himself might be dealt with in the person of the burnt offering. And all this, be it observed, is conveyed to us in the action of "the laying on of hands." This action was performed in both cases; i.e., Levi laid his hands on the head of the burnt-offering, and Levi laid his hands on the head of the sin offering. As to the act, it was the same in each case; but oh, how different the results! they were, in a word, as different as life and death, heaven and hell, sin and holiness. In fact, we cannot conceive a wider contrast than that which is observable in the results of this action, to all appearance the same in each case. We may, perhaps, be able to form some idea of it by considering that the act of imposition of hands was at once the imputation of sin to one "who knew no sin," but was "holy, harmless, undefiled," and whose very nature abhorred all sin. And, on the other hand, it was the imputation of perfect righteousness to one who was by nature "a cruel, fierce, and self-willed murderer."[9] Furthermore, the act of imposition of hands obliged the One who from before all worlds dwelt in the bosom of the Father to travel far away into the cold and barren regions of death and darkness, where the genial and life-giving rays of His Father's countenance, which He alone could truly appreciate, had never penetrated; and standing upon the confines of which, He cried out, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me!" and again, when these gloomy regions, with their ten thousand unutterable horrors, burst upon His spotless soul, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" And, on the other hand, it enabled the one who dwelt in "the habitations of cruelty," into whose "assembly" God could not come, to stand in the very blaze of the light of God's throne. These considerations, I say, may
perhaps assist our conceptions in some measure upon this astounding truth. Now, the apostle states the same truth in the didactic language of the New Testament when he says, "He (God) hath made Him to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor. v. 21). That is, He hath made the One whose perfectness is seen in the burnt offering to be judged as sin, and treated as such in the sin offering, in order that we, who deserved the treatment of the sin offering, might be treated as accepted in the burnt offering. I would also observe here that there is much force and value in the word "made:" it shows out most fully that righteousness was just as foreign to the nature of man as sin was to the nature of Christ. Man had no righteousness of his own, or, in other words, he knew no righteousness, and therefore he had to be "made" righteousness. Christ "knew no sin," and therefore had to be "made sin" in order that we might be made righteousness, even "the righteousness of God in Him." But further, we learn from the passage to which we are referring that the Lord Jesus having been "made sin for us," is not more real, not more true, not more palpable, than that the believer is "made righteousness in Him." If there be any truth or reality in the record concerning the cross and passion of the Lord Jesus, then, it is plain that the moment a soul acts faith upon Christ in His death and resurrection, that moment he is accepted in all the acceptableness of Christ. His consciousness of this is, of course, quite another question: a truth and the realization of a truth are quite distinct. The measure of our realization will be in proportion to the measure of our communion with God. If we are satisfied to move at a cold and heartless distance from God, our consciousness of the power and value of any truth will, as a consequence, be meagre and shallow: while, therefore, it is not to be forgotten that the root and source of all life and communion is the truth stated in the passage to which we are alluding, it is manifest that the more we walk in communion with Him who gives us the life, the more shall we enjoy
both Himself and the life which He gives. Dear Christian reader, let us pray that the cross and passion of the Lord Jesus may sink so deeply into our hearts that we may have on the one hand such a view of the loathsomeness of sin as shall lead us to abhor it with a holy abhorrence "all the days of our life," and on the other hand such a view of the amazing love of God as shall constrain us "to live not unto ourselves but unto Him who died for us and rose again." Thus, then, we see that the laying on of hands shows forth nothing less than a change of places on the part of the sinner and the Saviour. The sinner was out of the favor of God: "O my soul, come not thou into their habitation." The Saviour was in the favor of God, "daily His delight," dwelling in His bosom from before all worlds. But the amazing plan of redemption shows us the Saviour out of the favor of God, and God forsaking Him, while at the same time a condemned malefactor is brought at once into the very presence of a loving and pardoning God. Amazing, deep, inconceivable, eternal love! unfathomable wisdom! love which soars far aloft above the most gigantic conception! wisdom which has written everlasting contempt upon all the power and base designs of the great enemy of God and man! For, ere Levi could be introduced into the enjoyment of the "covenant of life and peace" (Mal. ii. 5), a spotless Victim must stand the shock of the king of terrors and all his thunders. But who is this Victim? We ask not, "Who is this King of glory?" but Who is this Victim? The answer to this question it is which gives to the plan of redemption its grandest and most divine characteristic. The Victim was none less than the Son of God Himself! Yes! here was love, here was wisdom. The Son of God had to stoop because man had exalted himself. And surely we may say, If God had not entered upon the work, all, all were lost, and that forever. No mere mortal could have entered into that dark scene where sin was being atoned for; no one but the Son of God could have sustained the weight which, in the garden and on the cross, rested on the shoulders of the "One that was mighty." And here we might refer to the Lord's language to His disciples when He was about to enter into conflict with the adversary: "Hereafter I will not
talk much with you; for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me" (John xiv. 30). Why could He not "talk much with them?" Because He was just going to enter upon the work of atonement, in which they could do nothing, because the prince of this world, had he come, would have had plenty in them; but then, the moment He, as it were, in spirit passes through that sorrowful hour, He says, "Arise, let us go hence;" i.e., although we could not move a single step in the achievement of the victory, yet we could enjoy the fruits of it; and not only so, but display the fruits of it in a life of service and fruit-bearing to God, which forms the subject of teaching in the next chapter. Here, then, is what gives peace to the awakened conscience of the sinner. God Himself has done the work. God has triumphed over all man's wickedness and rebellion, and now every soul who feels his need of pardon and peace can draw near in faith and holy confidence and reap the fruits of this wondrous triumph of grace and mercy. And now, dear reader, if you have not as yet made these wondrous fruits your own; if you have not as yet cast the whole burden of your sins on God's eternal love as seen in the cross, I ask you, Why do you stand aloof? Why do you doubt? Perhaps you feel the hardness of your heart, perhaps you are ready to say that you feel yourself even now unmoved by the contemplation of all the deep sorrow endured by the Son of God. Well, what of that? If it be a question of your guilt, you may go much farther than even this, for in that hour of which we have been speaking you stood unmoved, looked on with cold and heartless indifference, while all creation owned the wondrous fact. Yea, more, you yourself crucified the incarnate God, you spat in His face, and plunged your spear into His side. Do you shrink back and say, "Oh, not so bad!" I say it was the act of the human heart; and if you have a human heart, it was your act. But the Scriptures at once decide this point, for it is written, "For of a truth against Thy holy child Jesus, whom Thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel,
were gathered together" (Acts iv. 27). This passage, I say, proves that all the world were representatively around the cross. But why insist on this? Simply to show forth the riches of the grace of God, which can only be seen in all its effulgent lustre in the cross; and therein it is seen mounting far above all man's sin and malignant rebellion; for when man, in the fiendish pride of his heart, could plunge his spear into the side of incarnate Deity, God's cry was— Blood! and through that blood "remission of sins, beginning at Jerusalem." Thus, "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound," and "grace REIGNS through righteousness by Jesus Christ our Lord." Enough, I trust, has been said to show the grounds upon which the Levites stood before God. These grounds were free and eternal grace—grace exercised toward them through the blood, which is the only channel through which grace can flow. Man has been found to be utterly ruined before God, and therefore it must be a question either of salvation through free grace, or eternal damnation; for "by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh living be justified." But then, while man is by nature utterly unfit to render anything like an acceptable righteousness or service to God, yet, when God gives us new life through grace, He, of course, looks for the development of that life. In other words, grace brings the soul into circumstances of responsibility and service, and it is as we meet those circumstances that God is glorified in us and our souls grow in the knowledge of God. Thus it was in the case of the leper: up to a certain point in his history he had nothing to do, the priest was the sole actor. But when the priest had done his part; when, by virtue of the blood which had been shed, he had pronounced him "clean," the leper had then to begin to "wash himself" (Lev. xiv. 8). Now we shall find that the history of Levi develops all these principles most fully. We have hitherto been engaged with Levi's condition and character by nature and also the wondrous remedy devised by grace to meet him in his lost estate, and not only to save him from that estate but also to raise him up to an elevation which could never have entered
into the heart of man, even into the very tabernacle of God. We shall now, with God's blessing and grace, proceed to examine that high elevation to which we have referred, and also the service which it involved, as put before us in Numbers iii. "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Bring the tribe of Levi near, and present them before Aaron the priest, that they may minister unto him. And they shall keep his charge, and the charge of the whole congregation before the tabernacle of the congregation, to do the service of the tabernacle. And they shall keep all the instruments of the tabernacle of the congregation, and the charge of the children of Israel, to do the service of the tabernacle. And thou shalt give the Levites unto Aaron, and to his sons: they are wholly given unto him out of the children of Israel" (vers. 5-9). Here, then, God's marvelous purposes of grace toward Levi fully open before us, and truly marvelous they are indeed. We see that the sacrifices were but a means to an end; but both the means and the end were in every way worthy of each other. The means were, in one word, "death and resurrection," and all included therein. The end was, nearness to God, and all included therein. Looking at Levi by nature, there could not be any point farther removed from God than that at which he stood; but grace in exercise, through the blood, could lift him up out of that ruin in which he stood, and "bring him nigh," yea, bring him into association with the great head of the priestly family, there to serve in the tabernacle. Thus, we read, "You hath He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.... But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved), and hath raised us up together, and
made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph. ii. 1- 6). And again, "But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometime were afar off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ" (ver. 13). When nature is left free to work, it will ever go as far away from God as it can. This is true since the day when man said, "I heard Thy voice, and I was afraid and I hid myself" (Gen. iii. 10). But when grace is left free and sovereign to work, it will ever bring the soul "nigh." Thus it was with Levi. He was by nature "black as the tents of Kedar;" by grace, "comely as the curtains of Solomon:" by nature he was "joined" in a covenant of murder; by grace "joined" in a covenant of "life and peace." The former, because he was "fierce and cruel;" the latter, because he feared and was afraid of the Lord's name. (Comp. Gen. xlix. 6, 7; Mal. ii. 5.) Furthermore, Levi was by nature conversant with the "instruments of cruelty;" by grace, with "the instruments of God's tabernacle:" by nature God could not come into Levi's assembly; by grace, Levi is brought into God's assembly: by nature, "his feet were swift to shed blood;" by grace, swift to follow the movements of the cloud through the desert, in real, patient service to God. In a word, Levi had become a "new creature," and "old things had passed away," and therefore he was no longer to "live unto himself," but unto Him who had done such marvelous things for him in grace. I would further observe, on the last cited passage, that the Levites are, in the first place, declared to be God's property, and then they are "wholly given unto Aaron." Thus we read: "Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me, and they have kept Thy word" (John xvii. 6). And again, "All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me" (John vi. 37). I would now look a little into the detail of their service, in which, I doubt not, we shall find much to edify and refresh us. We find that although the whole tribe of Levi were, as to standing, "joined with Aaron," yet, as to service, they were divided into classes. "All had not the same office;" and this is what we might
have expected, for, although in the matter of life and standing they were all on a level, yet, in the development of that life, and in the manifestation of the power of that standing, they would, no doubt, display different measures; and not only so, but there would also be seen an assignment to each of distinct position and line of service, which would serve to distinguish him from his brethren in a very marked and decided manner. And here I would observe that I know of nothing connected with the walk and service of the Christian which demands more attention than this point to which I am now alluding, viz., unity in the matter of life and standing, and at the same time the greatest variety in the manifestation of character and in the line of service. A due attention to this important point would save us from much of that "unwise" comparing of ourselves and our service with the persons and services of others, which is most unholy, and, as a consequence, most unhealthy.[10] And not only would it lead thus to beneficial results in a negative point of view, it would also have a most happy effect in producing and cultivating originality and uniqueness of Christian character. But while there was this diversity in the line of service amongst the Levites, it is also to be remembered that there was manifested unity. The Levites were one people, and seen as such; they were "joined" with Aaron in the work of the tabernacle; moreover, THEY HAD ONE STANDARD, round which they all rallied, and that was "the tabernacle of the congregation," the well known type of Christ in His character and offices. And, indeed, this was one of the ends which God had in view in calling out the Levites by His grace from amongst the people of Israel; it was that they should stand in marked association with Aaron and his sons, and in that association bear the tabernacle and all pertaining thereto on their shoulders, through the barren wilderness around. [11] God did not call out the Levites merely that they might escape the sad effects of God's absence from their assembly; or, in other words, God had more than THEIR blessing and security in view in His dealings with them. He designed that they should serve in the
tabernacle, and thus be to His praise and glory. We shall, however, I trust, see this principle upon which I am dwelling in a clearer and stronger point of view as we proceed in our subject. We find that Levi had three sons, viz., "Gershon, and Kohath, and Merari" (Num. iii. 17). These formed the heads of the three classes alluded to, and we shall find that the nature of the service of each was such as of necessity to impart that tone of character signified by their very name. Thus: "Of Gershon was the family of the Libnites and the family of the Shimites: these are the families of the Gershonites. And the chief of the house of the father of the Gershonites shall be Eliasaph, the son of Lael. And the charge of the sons of Gershon in the tabernacle of the congregation shall be the tabernacle and the tent, the covering thereof, and the hanging for the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and the hangings of the court, and the curtain for the door of the court, which is by the tabernacle, and by the altar round about, and the cords of it for all the service thereof" (vers. 21-26). Here was Gershon's work, to carry through the waste and howling wilderness the tabernacle and its coverings. This was indeed true Levite service, but it was most blessed service, and its antitype in the Church now is what we should much seek after, because it is that which alone puts the Christian into his right place in the world, i.e., the place of a STRANGER. There could be but little attractiveness in the rams' skins and badgers' skins; but, little as there was, it was, nevertheless, the high privilege of the Gershonite to take them all up and bear them cheerfully on his shoulders across the trackless sands. What, then, are we to understand by the covering of the tabernacle? I believe, in a word, it shadowed out the character of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was that which would meet the eye. There might be, and were, other services among the Levites of a very blessed nature, but surely it was most elevated service to carry through the desert that which so strikingly prefigured the character of Christ.
This is what makes the saint "a stranger" (as the name Gershon imports) in the world. If we are walking in the manifestation of the character of the Lord Jesus, and in so doing realize our place as in the wilderness, we may rest assured it will impart a very decided tone of strangership to our character in the world. And oh, would that we knew much more of this. The Church has laid down the rams' skins and badgers' skins, and with them the Gershonite character: in other words, the Church has ceased to walk in the footsteps of her rejected Lord and Master, and the consequence has been that instead of being the wearied and worn stranger, as she should be, treading the parched and sterile desert, with the burden on the shoulders, she has settled herself down in the green places of the world and made herself at home. But there was another feature of the stranger character shadowed out in the curtain, viz., anticipation. This was most blessed—God dwelling in curtains showed plainly that neither God nor the ark of His strength had found a resting-place, but were journeying on towards "a rest that remained." And how could there be a rest in the desert? There were no rivers and brooks there—no old corn there—no milk and honey there. True, the smitten rock sent forth its refreshing streams to meet their need, and heaven sent down their daily bread; but all this was not Canaan. They were still in the desert, eating wilderness food and drinking wilderness water, and it was Gershon's holy privilege to carry upon his shoulders that which in the fullest manner expressed all this, viz., THE CURTAIN. "Thus saith the Lord, Shalt thou build Me an house for Me to dwell in? Whereas I have not dwelt in any house since the time that I brought up the children of Israel out of Egypt, even to this day, but have walked in a tent and in a tabernacle" (2 Sam. vii. 5, 6). Here, too, we have sadly failed. The Church grew weary of the curtain, and wished to build a house before the time; she grew weary of "walking in a tent," and earnestly desired to "dwell in a house."
And truly we have all to watch and pray against this disposition to grow weary of our Gershonite character. There is nothing so trying to nature as continual labor in a state of expectancy; our hearts love rest and fruition, and therefore nothing but the continual remembrance that "our sufficiency is of God" can at all sustain us in our Gershon or stranger condition. Let us therefore remember that we bear on our shoulders the curtains, and have beneath our feet the sand of the desert, above our heads the pillar of cloud, and before us "the land of rest" clothed in never-withering green, and, both as a stimulus and a warning, let us remember that "He that endureth to the end THE SAME shall be saved."[12] We shall next consider the Merarite feature of character; for, although the family of Merari does not stand next in order in the chapter, yet there is a kindredness of spirit, as it were, arising out of the very nature of their service, that would link them together in the mind. But, not only is there this intimate connection between the services of these two classes of Levites, which would lead us to link them together thus, the Lord Himself presents them to us in marked unity of service, for we read, "And the Kohathites set forward bearing the sanctuary; and the other (i.e., the Gershonites and the Merarites) did set up the tabernacle against they came" (Num. x. 21). Here, then, we see that it was the great business of these two families to pass onward through the desert in holy companionship, bearing with them, wherever they went, "the tabernacle," and, moreover, the tabernacle as looked at in its character of outward manifestation or testimony; which would, as a matter of course, put those who carried it thus into a place of very laborious discipleship. "And under the custody and charge of the sons of Merari shall be the boards of the tabernacle, and the bars thereof, and the pillars
thereof, and the sockets thereof, and all the vessels thereof, and all that serveth thereto, and the pillars of the court round about, and their sockets, and their pins, and their cords" (chap. iii. 36, 37). Here, then, was what Merari had to do: he had to take his place here or there, according to the movement of the cloud, and set up the boards of the tabernacle in their sockets of silver—and all this, be it remembered, upon the sand of the desert.[13] Could anything be more opposed to another than the nature of all that Merari had to set up was to the waste and howling wilderness around? What could be more unlike than silver and barren sand? But Merari might not shrink from all this; no, his language was, when he had arrived at a spot in the desert at which the cloud halted, "I am come to set up the patterns of things in heaven in the very midst of all the desolation and misery of the wilderness around." All this was most laborious, and would, no doubt, impart to the character of Merari a tone of sadness or sorrow which was at once expressed in his name, which means "sorrow." And surely the antitype of all this in the Church now will fully confirm what has been stated about the character of Merari. Let any one take his stand firmly and decidedly in the world for Christ—let him penetrate into those places where "the world" is really seen in its vigor—let him oppose himself, firm as a rock, to the deep and rapid tide of worldliness, and there let him begin to set up "the sockets of silver," and, rest assured of it, he will find such a course attended with very much sorrow and bitterness of soul; in a word, he will realize it to be a path in which the cross is to be taken up "daily," and not only taken up, but borne. Now, if any further proof were needed of the above interpretation, we have a most striking one in the fact that there are but very few of the laborious Merarite character to be found; and why is this? Simply because the exhibition of such a character will ever be attended with very much labor and sorrow to nature, and nature loves ease, and therefore human nature never could be a Merarite; nothing will make us true
Merarites but deep communion with Him who was "the Man of sorrows." There is something in the service of Gershon from which one does not shrink so much as from that of Merari. For what had Gershon to do? He had to place the curtains and badgers' skins over the boards which had been already set up by his laborious and sorrowful brother. And just so now: if a laborious servant of God has gone to a place where hitherto the world and Satan have reigned supreme, and there raised a testimony for Christ, it will be comparatively easy for another to go and walk on in the simple manifestation of Christian character, which would of itself put him into the place of "a stranger." But, although nature may assume the character of a misanthropist, yet nothing but grace can make us Merarites, and the true Merarite is the true philanthropist, because he introduces that which alone can bless; and the very fact that a Merarite should have to take a place of sorrow is a most convincing proof that the world is an evil place. There was no need of a Merarite in Canaan, nor a Gershonite either: for the Merarite was happy there, and the Gershonite at home. But the world is not the Levite's home, and therefore if any will carry the curtains, he must be a stranger; and if any will carry the sockets and boards, he must be a man of sorrow; for when He who was a true Gershonite and a true Merarite came into the world He was emphatically the Man of sorrows, who had not where to lay His head. However, if the Gershonite and the Merarite had to occupy a place in which they endured not a little of "the burden and heat of the day," yet the Lord graciously met them in that with a very rich reward, for "He is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love," and therefore, if they had to labor and toil amongst their brethren, they were blessedly ministered to by their brethren. Thus we read concerning the offerings of the princes: "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Take it of them, that they may be to do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation; and thou shalt give them unto
the Levites, to every man according to his service. And Moses took the wagons and the oxen and gave them unto the Levites. Two wagons and four oxen he gave unto the sons of Gershon, according to their service. And four wagons and eight oxen he gave unto the sons of Merari according unto their service, under the hand of Ithamar the son of Aaron the priest. But unto the sons of Kohath he gave none, because the service of the sanctuary belonging unto them was that they should bear upon their shoulders" (Num. vii. 4- 9). Here we see that the service of Gershon and Merari was that which met the rich and blessed ministrations of their brethren. Grace had filled the hearts and affections of the princes, and not only filled but overflowed them, and in its overflow it was designed to refresh the spirits of the homeless Gershonite and sorrowful Merarite: on the other hand, the Kohathites had no part in these ministrations; and why? Because their service, as we shall see presently, was in itself a rich reward indeed. We see the very same doctrine taught in the case of the Levites generally, as contrasted with the priests, in chap. xviii., where we read: "And the Lord spake unto Aaron, Thou shalt have no inheritance in their land, neither shalt thou have any part among them: I am thy part and thine inheritance among the children of Israel" (ver. 20). On the other hand, He says of the Levites, "Behold, I have given the children of Levi all the tenth in Israel for an inheritance, for their service which they serve, even the service of the tabernacle of the congregation." And again, "Ye shall eat it in every place, ye and your households, for it is your reward for your service in the tabernacle of the congregation" (vers. 21, 31). Aaron occupied a position so truly elevated that any inheritance in the way of earthly things would have been to him most degrading; whereas the Levites (looked at in one aspect) had not this high standing, but had much hard labor; and consequently, while Aaron's
very place and service was "his reward," the Levites had to get a tenth for "their reward." We come now to consider the third and last division of the Levites, viz., the Kohathites, of whom we read, "The families of the sons of Kohath shall pitch on the side of the tabernacle southward. And the chief of the house of the father of the families of the Kohathites shall be Elizaphan the son of Uzziel. And their charge shall be the ark, and the table, and the candlestick, and the altars, and the vessels of the sanctuary wherewith they minister, and the hanging, and all the service thereof" (chap. iii. 29-31). We can now have no difficulty in understanding why it was that Kohath had no share in the ministrations of the princes. Gershon and Merari might need wagons and oxen to carry the boards, etc., but not so Kohath; his charge was too precious to be committed to any or aught but himself, and therefore it was his high and honored place to carry all upon his shoulders. What a privilege, for example, to be allowed to carry the ark, the table, or the golden candlestick! And would it not have argued an entire absence of ability to appreciate his elevated calling if he had sought for the assistance of oxen in his holy service? What, then, we ask, would have been the effect produced upon the character of Kohath by this his service? Would it not have imparted a very elevated tone thereto? Surely it would. What can be more elevated, at least as far as development of character in the world is concerned, than the display of that congregational spirit which is expressed in the name of Kohath? Should not Christians be found rebuking, by a real union in everything, man's oft-repeated attempt at forming associations for various purposes? And how can they effect that if it be not by gathering more closely around their common centre, Christ, in all the blessed fulness and variety of that Name? a fulness and variety typified by the varied furniture of the
tabernacle, some of the most precious parts of which were designed to be borne on the shoulders of this favored division of the tribe of Levi. And surely we may safely assert that what would lead the saints now into more of the congregational spirit is just communion with Him whom the ark and table shadowed forth. If we were more conversant with Christ as the ark, covering in this scene of death, and, moreover, with the table of showbread, whereon stood the food of the priests—if, I say, we knew more of Christ in these blessed aspects of His character—we should not be as we are, a proverb and a byword by reason of our gross disunion. But, alas, as the Church grew weary of the curtains and the boards, and laid aside her Gershonite and Merarite character, so has she laid aside her Kohathite character, because she has ceased to carry the ark and the table upon her shoulder, and cast those precious pearls which were, through the grace of God, her peculiar property, to the swine, and thus has she lost her elevated character and position in the world. Thus, let us review those three grand features of character shown forth in the tribe of Levi. 1st. Strangership. "Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not." "Here we have no abiding city." "Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul."
2d. Sorrow in the world. "In the world ye shall have tribulation." "If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you." "I RECKON that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." "After that ye have suffered awhile, make you perfect"—"ye have need of patience"—"ye yourselves know that ye are appointed thereunto." "If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him." "These are they that came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." 3d. Union. "That they all may be one." "He should gather together in one the children of God that are scattered abroad." "That He might reconcile both unto God in ONE body by the cross." And here, again, I would request of my reader to bear in mind that, while there was this beautiful diversity in the character and line of service of the Levites, yet they were one people, and that manifestly—they were one in life, one in standing, one in calling, one in inheritance; and so should it be with Christians now. We are not to expect uniformity of opinion on every point, nor yet are we to look for a perfect correspondence in the line of service and development of life; but then the saints should be seen as one people—one in worship,[14] one in labor, one in object, one in sympathy; in a word, one in everything that belongs to them in common as the people of God. How sadly out of order it would have been for a Levite to call upon one of the uncircumcised of the nations around to assist him in carrying any part of the tabernacle! and yet we hear Christians now
justifying and insisting upon the propriety of conduct not less disorderly, viz., calling upon the openly unconverted and profane to put their hands to the Lord's work. Thus we see that the Levites have become scattered, and have forsaken their posts. The Gershonite has refused to carry the curtains because he has become weary of the stranger condition; the Merarite has laid down the boards and sockets because he grew weary of bearing the cross, and the Kohathite has degraded his high and holy office by making it the common property of those who have not authority from God to put their hands thereunto. Thus the name of God is blasphemed among the heathen by us, and we do not "sigh and cry for the abominations" thus practiced, but lift up our heads in proud indifference as if it all were right, and as if the camp of God were moving onward in all heavenly order, under the guidance of the cloud, communicated by the silver trumpets. "My brethren, these things ought not so to be." May we walk more humbly before our God, and, while we mourn over the sad fact that "Overturn, overturn, overturn" has been written by the finger of God upon all human arrangements, let us remember that it is only "until He come whose right it is," and then all shall be set right forever, for God, in all things, shall be fully glorified through Jesus Christ. Thus, dear reader, have we followed Levi in his course; and oh, what a marvelous course has it been! a course, every step of which displays the visible marks of sovereign grace abounding over man's sin—grace, which led God to stoop from His throne in the heavens to visit "the habitations of cruelty," in order to lift a poor perishing sinner from thence, and bring him, through the purging power of the blood, into a place of marvelous blessing indeed, even into the very tabernacle of God, there to be employed about the instruments of God's house. We have found Levi to have been indeed the one who
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world, offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth. That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to self-development guides and children's books. More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading. Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and personal growth every day! ebookbell.com

More Related Content

PPT
ASU SD Presentation 2008
bygtwaddell
 
PDF
Towards Sustainability Emerging Systems for Informing Sustainable Development...
byquilmasibeli
 
PDF
Sustainability: a Primer
byPriscila Mendoza
 
PPT
SAEM SD Presentation 2008
bygtwaddell
 
PDF
Towards Sustainability Emerging Systems for Informing Sustainable Development...
bynxayguvofv688
 
PDF
Towards Sustainability Emerging Systems for Informing Sustainable Development...
bylxzjifpw1325
 
PPTX
measure-training-module-sustainability-definitions (1).pptx
bySushmaKarki10
 
PPTX
measure-training-module-sustainability-definitions.pptx
byHamzaKastih
 
ASU SD Presentation 2008
bygtwaddell
 
Towards Sustainability Emerging Systems for Informing Sustainable Development...
byquilmasibeli
 
Sustainability: a Primer
byPriscila Mendoza
 
SAEM SD Presentation 2008
bygtwaddell
 
Towards Sustainability Emerging Systems for Informing Sustainable Development...
bynxayguvofv688
 
Towards Sustainability Emerging Systems for Informing Sustainable Development...
bylxzjifpw1325
 
measure-training-module-sustainability-definitions (1).pptx
bySushmaKarki10
 
measure-training-module-sustainability-definitions.pptx
byHamzaKastih
 

Similar to Sustainability Assessment Criteria And Processes Robert B Gibson

PDF
Towards Sustainability Emerging Systems for Informing Sustainable Development...
bytandiananyak
 
PDF
Towards Sustainability Emerging Systems For Informing Sustainable Development...
byerinhoyanpu
 
PDF
Towards Sustainability Emerging Systems for Informing Sustainable Development...
byadinewtabaku
 
PDF
Towards Sustainability Emerging Systems for Informing Sustainable Development...
byiqnqnrawrn951
 
PDF
Sustainable Values Sustainable Change A Guide To Environmental Decision Makin...
bysayilivizney
 
PPTX
evs ppt.pptx
byVidhiBhutia
 
PDF
Sustainability Indicators A Scientific Assessment 1st Edition Tomas Hak
bysaronhcartie52
 
PPT
Sd Conference Aiaer Jan. 2008
byLukas Ritzel
 
PDF
The contested notion of sustainability
byYousef Taibeh
 
PPTX
289327041-Introduction-to-Sustainable-Engineering-Module-1.pptx
byGajendranAMECHKIOT
 
PDF
Is Sustainability a Myth?
byKevin Struck
 
PPT
Sustainability concepts
byBadrAlsulami1
 
PDF
Sustainable Growth And Sustainable Development
byTammy Majors
 
PPTX
Melissa leach
bySTEPS Centre
 
PDF
Sostenibilitat oportunitats de_negoci
byLa innovation Kitchen
 
PDF
Toward Sustainable Organisations A Holistic Perspective On Implementation Eff...
byboyumedeen2t
 
PDF
Sustainability Assessment Context Of Resource And Environmental Policy Mohamm...
byabbakamnat
 
PDF
Environmental Sustainability Essay
byCheap Paper Writing Service
 
PDF
Evaluating Sustainable Development In The Built Environment 1st Edition Peter...
byzolawwzf0286
 
PDF
Sustainability Indicators A Scientific Assessment 1st Edition Tomas Hak
byzlpfric3395
 
Towards Sustainability Emerging Systems for Informing Sustainable Development...
bytandiananyak
 
Towards Sustainability Emerging Systems For Informing Sustainable Development...
byerinhoyanpu
 
Towards Sustainability Emerging Systems for Informing Sustainable Development...
byadinewtabaku
 
Towards Sustainability Emerging Systems for Informing Sustainable Development...
byiqnqnrawrn951
 
Sustainable Values Sustainable Change A Guide To Environmental Decision Makin...
bysayilivizney
 
evs ppt.pptx
byVidhiBhutia
 
Sustainability Indicators A Scientific Assessment 1st Edition Tomas Hak
bysaronhcartie52
 
Sd Conference Aiaer Jan. 2008
byLukas Ritzel
 
The contested notion of sustainability
byYousef Taibeh
 
289327041-Introduction-to-Sustainable-Engineering-Module-1.pptx
byGajendranAMECHKIOT
 
Is Sustainability a Myth?
byKevin Struck
 
Sustainability concepts
byBadrAlsulami1
 
Sustainable Growth And Sustainable Development
byTammy Majors
 
Melissa leach
bySTEPS Centre
 
Sostenibilitat oportunitats de_negoci
byLa innovation Kitchen
 
Toward Sustainable Organisations A Holistic Perspective On Implementation Eff...
byboyumedeen2t
 
Sustainability Assessment Context Of Resource And Environmental Policy Mohamm...
byabbakamnat
 
Environmental Sustainability Essay
byCheap Paper Writing Service
 
Evaluating Sustainable Development In The Built Environment 1st Edition Peter...
byzolawwzf0286
 
Sustainability Indicators A Scientific Assessment 1st Edition Tomas Hak
byzlpfric3395
 

Recently uploaded

PDF
Hit The Homerun FINAl- A U25 sorts quiz of Jigisha 4.0 organized by Pragya, ...
byPragya - UEM Kolkata Quiz Club
 
PPTX
Discharge procedure.................pptx
byAneetaSharma15
 
PPTX
Quiz-O-Force Diwali Quiz Preliminary.pptx
bySourav Kr Podder
 
PPTX
Neurodevelopmental Learning Needs .pptx
byglungelo06
 
PDF
CXC-AD Associate Degree Handbook (Revised)
byCaribbean Examinations Council
 
PPTX
Environmental Degradation and Pollution
bySheila Mae Ellima
 
PPTX
Types of contract under Indian Contract Law.pptx
byKeerthana Chinnathambi
 
PPTX
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Gothic novel characteristics.
byRaquel FC
 
PPTX
How to Configure Custom Addons Path in Odoo 18
byCeline George
 
PPTX
Presentation one The History of Eugenics
bymbuyisaandiswa81
 
PPTX
Modern History Quiz 6th OCTOBER0011.pptx
byPrometheans Quiz Club
 
PDF
President John Dramani Mahama has declared three days of national mourning fo...
bynservice241
 
PDF
The Future of Disasters - What We Need to Know and What We Need to Do.pdf
byProf. David E. Alexander (UCL)
 
DOCX
PHYSIOLOGY NOTES - Dr. SUDHADEVI SADANANDAN
byDr. Sudhadevi Sadanandan
 
PPTX
Essential Elements of a Valid Contract.pptx
byKeerthana Chinnathambi
 
PDF
How to become an optometrist/boptom .pdf
byAnmol Singh
 
PPTX
How to write python test cases in Odoo 18
byCeline George
 
PDF
Introduction to Agriculture: Meaning, Scope, and Importance: Introduction to ...
byKrashi Coaching
 
PDF
Data Restart 2025: Pavol Lukáč - AgentSpace: Dělá více, abyste vy mohli méně....
byTaste
 
PPTX
Admission Procedure.................pptx
byAneetaSharma15
 
Hit The Homerun FINAl- A U25 sorts quiz of Jigisha 4.0 organized by Pragya, ...
byPragya - UEM Kolkata Quiz Club
 
Discharge procedure.................pptx
byAneetaSharma15
 
Quiz-O-Force Diwali Quiz Preliminary.pptx
bySourav Kr Podder
 
Neurodevelopmental Learning Needs .pptx
byglungelo06
 
CXC-AD Associate Degree Handbook (Revised)
byCaribbean Examinations Council
 
Environmental Degradation and Pollution
bySheila Mae Ellima
 
Types of contract under Indian Contract Law.pptx
byKeerthana Chinnathambi
 
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Gothic novel characteristics.
byRaquel FC
 
How to Configure Custom Addons Path in Odoo 18
byCeline George
 
Presentation one The History of Eugenics
bymbuyisaandiswa81
 
Modern History Quiz 6th OCTOBER0011.pptx
byPrometheans Quiz Club
 
President John Dramani Mahama has declared three days of national mourning fo...
bynservice241
 
The Future of Disasters - What We Need to Know and What We Need to Do.pdf
byProf. David E. Alexander (UCL)
 
PHYSIOLOGY NOTES - Dr. SUDHADEVI SADANANDAN
byDr. Sudhadevi Sadanandan
 
Essential Elements of a Valid Contract.pptx
byKeerthana Chinnathambi
 
How to become an optometrist/boptom .pdf
byAnmol Singh
 
How to write python test cases in Odoo 18
byCeline George
 
Introduction to Agriculture: Meaning, Scope, and Importance: Introduction to ...
byKrashi Coaching
 
Data Restart 2025: Pavol Lukáč - AgentSpace: Dělá více, abyste vy mohli méně....
byTaste
 
Admission Procedure.................pptx
byAneetaSharma15
 

Sustainability Assessment Criteria And Processes Robert B Gibson

  • 1.
    Sustainability Assessment CriteriaAnd Processes Robert B Gibson download https://ebookbell.com/product/sustainability-assessment-criteria- and-processes-robert-b-gibson-2453812 Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com
  • 2.
    Here are somerecommended products that we believe you will be interested in. You can click the link to download. Wastetoenergy Multicriteria Decision Analysis For Sustainability Assessment And Ranking 1st Edition Jingzheng Ren https://ebookbell.com/product/wastetoenergy-multicriteria-decision- analysis-for-sustainability-assessment-and-ranking-1st-edition- jingzheng-ren-11148010 Biofuels For A More Sustainable Future Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment Multicriteria Decision Making 1st Edition Alessandro Manzardo https://ebookbell.com/product/biofuels-for-a-more-sustainable-future- life-cycle-sustainability-assessment-multicriteria-decision- making-1st-edition-alessandro-manzardo-11186680 Sustainability Assessment Context Of Resource And Environmental Policy Mohammad Ali Auth https://ebookbell.com/product/sustainability-assessment-context-of- resource-and-environmental-policy-mohammad-ali-auth-4409902 Sustainability Assessment Tools In Higher Education Institutions Mapping Trends And Good Practices Around The World 1st Edition Antje Disterheft https://ebookbell.com/product/sustainability-assessment-tools-in- higher-education-institutions-mapping-trends-and-good-practices- around-the-world-1st-edition-antje-disterheft-4601730
  • 3.
    Sustainability Assessment OfRenewablesbased Products Methods And Case Studies 1st Edition Jo Dewulf https://ebookbell.com/product/sustainability-assessment-of- renewablesbased-products-methods-and-case-studies-1st-edition-jo- dewulf-5548412 Sustainability Assessment A Rating System Framework For Best Practices 1st Edition Csar A Poveda https://ebookbell.com/product/sustainability-assessment-a-rating- system-framework-for-best-practices-1st-edition-csar-a-poveda-10898354 Nanobioenergy Application And Sustainability Assessment Manish Srivastava https://ebookbell.com/product/nanobioenergy-application-and- sustainability-assessment-manish-srivastava-49151810 Handbook On Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment 1st Edition Guido Sonnemann https://ebookbell.com/product/handbook-on-life-cycle-sustainability- assessment-1st-edition-guido-sonnemann-57281528 Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment Lcsa Subramanian Senthilkannan Muthu Ed https://ebookbell.com/product/life-cycle-sustainability-assessment- lcsa-subramanian-senthilkannan-muthu-ed-37318930
  • 6.
  • 7.
    Sustainability Assessment Criteria andProcesses Robert B. Gibson with Selma Hassan, Susan Holtz, James Tansey and Graham Whitelaw London • Sterling,VA
  • 8.
    This page isintentionally blank
  • 9.
    First published byEarthscan in the UK and USA in 2005 Copyright © Robert B. Gibson All rights reserved ISBN-13: 978-1-84407-050-3 paperback ISBN-10: 1-84407-050-6 paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-84407-051-0 hardback ISBN-10: 1-84407-051-4 hardback Typesetting by JS Typesetting Ltd, Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan Printed and bound in the UK by Bath Press, Bath Cover design by Ruth Bateson For a full list of publications please contact: Earthscan 8–12 Camden High Street London, NW1 0JH, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7387 8558 Fax: +44 (0)20 7387 8998 Email: [email protected] Web: www.earthscan.co.uk 22883 Quicksilver Drive, Sterling,VA 20166-2012, USA Earthscan is an imprint of James and James (Science Publishers) Ltd and publishes in association with the International Institute for Environment and Development A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gibson, Robert B., 1950– Sustainability assessment : making the world better, one undertaking at a time / Robert B. Gibson ; with Selma Hassan ... [et al.]. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-84407-050-6 – ISBN 1-84407-051-4 1. Sustainable development. I. Hassan, Selma. II.Title. HC79.E5G513 2005 338.9'27–dc22 2005018172 Printed on elemental chlorine-free paper
  • 10.
    Contents List of Figures,Tablesand Boxes vii Preface viii Acknowledgements xiii List of Acronyms and Abbreviations xiv 1 Beginnings: Stumbling Towards Sustainability Assessment 1 Beginning in Labrador 1 Specifying the higher test 11 2 Assessment:Thirty-some Years of Environmental Assessment 14 Growing up in a difficult world 14 Basic and more advanced approaches 15 Development stages and growth trends 21 Maturing assessment and emerging sustainability 36 3 Sustainability:The Essentials of the Concept 38 A necessary and difficult idea 38 Old sustainability 39 Groundwork for a new sustainability 41 The second coming of sustainability 47 Debating the concept 51 The essentials 59 Initial implications for assessment regimes 62 4 Practice: Sustainability in Illustrative Initiatives 66 Theory and practice 66 Stories 67 Lessons from the stories 82 5 Criteria: Sustainability Requirements as the Basis for Decision Making 88 The need for decision criteria 88 Requirements for progress towards sustainability 95 Characteristics, strengths and limitations of the requirements as decision criteria 115
  • 11.
    vi Sustainability Assessment 6Trade-offs: Facing Conflict and Compromise 122 Pursuing sustainability in a messy world 122 Unavoidable trade-offs 123 Trade-offs of substance and process 125 Trade-off rules 130 Beyond the rules 138 7 Processes: Designing Sustainability Assessment Regimes 142 How versus what 142 Basic process principles 144 Components of a sustainability assessment law 145 Transitions 162 8 Decisions: Applying Sustainability-based Criteria in Significance Determinations and Other Common Assessment Judgements 165 Decisions and significance 165 Applying sustainability-based criteria in significance judgements 168 9 Continuations:The Way Ahead 180 Proliferation 180 The fundamentals and the variations 181 Getting there 185 References 189 Appendices 206 Index 248
  • 12.
    List of Figures,Tablesand Boxes Figures 3.1 Circles of sustainability 57 3.2 Intersecting pillars of sustainability 58 Tables 3.1 Pearce and Turner’s sustainability spectrum 53 3.2 Pezzoli’s ten categories of literature on sustainable development 54 3.3 The three pillar version 55 Boxes 2.1 The structure and key components of potentially effective assessment processes 17 2.2 Four stages in the development from environmental regulations to advanced environmental assessment 22 2.3 Twelve major trends in the growth of environmental assessment 23 3.1 Sustainable development multiple choice 52 3.2 The essentials of the concept of sustainability 62 5.1 Sustainability requirements as decision criteria 116 6.1 General trade-off rules 139 7.1 Best practice design principles for sustainability assessment processes 146 8.1 Conventional criteria for evaluating the significance of effects 172 8.2 Generic sustainability-based criteria for evaluating the significance of effects 173 8.3 Generic questions for evaluating the significance of trade-offs 177
  • 13.
    Preface Matchmaking For the pastdecade or so a couple of good ideas have been circling each other in what may be a semi-conscious mating ritual. On the surface at least, they seem well matched. But so far there have been only a few amicable meetings and the occasional tentative embrace. Our task here is to propose a union, perhaps even sketch out the pre-nuptial contract. The marriageable pair are environmental assessment and the pursuit of sustainability – two of the major concepts introduced over the past few decades to improve the odds of continued human survival on this planet. While both are of age and have had some experience in the world, neither can claim to be fully developed. For that, arguably, each needs the other. Something old, something new The sustainability idea is both very ancient and quite recent. Before the modern era, most cultures, excepting those with elites devoted to conquest, aimed for stability and continuity. Their gods encouraged humility and their elders stressed respect for tradition. Change still happened, of course. But it was not sought. People saw that innovation was more likely to bring peril than progress, and even mere curiosity could open a Pandora’s box of trouble. Vestiges of this inclination to stick with the tried and true are still evident in aspects of most people’s lives today. But as a dominant concern it was gradu- ally abandoned over the last few hundred years in favour of progress through technological and economic advance. The expectation, or at least the hope, for progress has now spread almost everywhere. For many people, in many places, the benefits have been huge. But there have also always been costs, some of them also huge, and in the latter part of the 20th century this led to the resurgence, in a new form, of the old sustainability idea. The story of how this happened is complicated and there is far from universal agreement on how it should be interpreted. The basics, however, were quite clearly centred on a simple tension. On one side were the major
  • 14.
    political and economicpowers, promoting progress through faster and greater economic growth.These included subscribers to the cheerful belief that a self- adjusting positive market mechanism would ensure progress in perpetuity if barriers to economic and technological advance were properly eliminated. On the other side was a widening circle of other organizations inclined to question the agenda of progress through growth, at least as it was ordinarily practised. The critics pointed to the persistence of desperate poverty, the deepening of dangerous inequities, the proliferation of risky technologies and the degrada- tion of essential ecological systems. The overwhelming evidence, they said, was that economic growth had failed to deliver benefits where they were most needed, that it was destroying its own foundations and that things could not possibly go on this way. The resolution, most influentially proposed in 1987 by the World Com- mission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission), was ‘sustainable development’ – a concept that promised to bridge the gulf between the advocates and critics of progress through growth. As terminology, ‘sustainable development’ was wildly successful. Within a few years, govern- ance bodies in a host of jurisdictions had officially embraced the idea.Within a decade, governments had written it into a wide range of pronouncements, policies and even laws. Just what it meant was less certain. Scholars, activists and competing powerful interests debated whether sustainable development was an oxymoron or a redundancy, whether the noun prevailed over the adjec- tive and whether interpretative flexibility was its chief merit or its fatal flaw. Some key essentials, however, were soon evident. If nothing else, ‘sustainable development’ stood as a critique of the status quo. No one would have bothered with the idea; certainly no governments would have rushed to embrace it, if the old faith in growth as an automatic path to well-being had still been plausible.The Brundtland Commission, which had been assigned to address the problems of poverty and environmental degrada- tion, saw that many present conditions and practices were not sustainable, that the trend was towards disaster, and that serious reforms were needed to reverse this. Conventional growth was not just an unreliable route to real progress; it was a path in the wrong direction. Governments that claimed commitment to sustainability mostly failed to accompany their words with any substantial shifts in behaviour. But at least as a matter of public image, they found it wise to wrap themselves in the shroud of sustainability and this put them, at least officially, with the critics. No doubt some authorities adopted sustainability as form rather than sub- stance and were happy to hide behind the uncertainties of interpretation. Some fundamentals were, however, clear from the outset. Perhaps the most important insight was that long-term gains depend on intricate combinations of social, economic and ecological factors that intertwine in different ways depending on local and regional conditions. The Brundtland report documented this in the interplay of poverty reduction and environmental rehabilitation. But complex interrelationships and context dependencies were evident everywhere and these have remained the biggest challenge for sustainability implementation. Over Preface ix
  • 15.
    x Sustainability Assessment thepast decade and a half, continuing analysis and implementation efforts have gradually clarified the basic requirements of sustainability. But there has been no easy solution to the complexity and contextuality problems. A suitable partner Environmental assessment is thirty-some but still just approaching maturity. Its official birthplace was the US National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which included a few brief clauses requiring proponents of environmentally significant undertakings to consider the environmental implications before US government approval could be granted.The rationale was simple: because environmental damages were too costly to tolerate and too costly to repair, pre- vention had to be encouraged. And because existing incentives were evidently insufficient, new obligations had to be imposed.The US law was one version. Over the following three decades, environmental assessment requirements were adopted in one form or another by most capable governments and by other governance bodies ranging from multilateral aid institutions to small municipalities. Always there were debates about how mandatory, comprehensive, open, broadly applied, forceful and subversive of convention environmental assess- ment requirements should be. In most jurisdictions these matters are still contested today. Implementation also remains highly imperfect almost every- where. But gradually and unevenly assessment has evolved towards greater scope and ambition.Attention to cumulative effects and application to strategic level policies, plans and programmes as well as specific projects have been the best recognized recent developments. In addition, there has been more critical examination of the purposes of proposed undertakings and alternatives that might serve these purposes better, plus more inclusive and better integrated attention to social, economic and cultural as well as ecological effects, greater willingness to respect local knowledge, and deeper appreciation of the limits of science, the roles of values and the inevitability of surprise. The culmination of these changes is now just emerging in the form of a more demanding set of decision criteria. Environmental assessment processes – and similar planning, evaluation and decision making processes under other names – are being pushed to apply a higher test in deliberations about what kinds of undertakings should be assessed, what concerns should be given most attention, what proposals merit approval and what considerations should be imposed. In the past the main objective was to predict and avoid, or at least mitigate, the potentially significant negative effects of major undertakings. The new and higher objective is to plan and implement the best responses to publicly examined problems and opportunities, and to ensure overall long- term gains. This is where the pursuit of sustainability enters as a marriageable partner. With the higher test, the key challenge for proponents is, as a recent Canadian assessment panel put it, to show ‘the extent to which the Undertaking may
  • 16.
    make a positiveoverall contribution towards the attainment of ecological and community sustainability, both at the local and regional levels’. On the surface there is nothing very novel here. Overall long-term gain is what proponents and approval authorities have conventionally promised, though often just implicitly as an assumed result of more heavily emphasized short-term economic benefits.The difference when environmental assessment processes impose the ‘contribution to sustainability’ test is that claims about long-term gains must be made and defended directly.There is no assumption that immediate economic growth will bring lasting benefits. Moreover, in prop- erly open and independent assessment processes, the claims and evaluations are subject to more effective public scrutiny than is typical in conventional approval processes. Finally, with the sustainability test environmental assess- ments must attempt integrated consideration of the relevant social, economic and ecological factors. This is, as we have seen, a basic requirement of the pursuit of sustainability. Environmental assessment thus seems to be a particularly suitable mate for sustainability efforts. In many jurisdictions, it is the main open process for the planning and evaluation of new projects and, increasingly, new policies, plans and programmes. It is both established and adaptable. It is designed to force neglected considerations into conventional decision making. Well conceived assessment processes include critical examination of purposes and alternatives, and cover the full suite of social, economic and ecological factors in a single process. And environmental assessment is meant for case specific, context sensitive application. Many environmental assessment processes, especially newer ones, are of- ficially committed to furthering sustainability. Unfortunately, there is rarely much evidence that anyone has given much serious thought to the implica- tions.While the potential fit between environmental assessment and the pursuit of sustainability is good, few existing assessment processes manage to serve environmental objectives as well as they should. Even fewer are designed to serve sustainability purposes and, so far, most efforts to pursue sustainability through environmental assessments have been weak, though there have been a few exemplary exceptions.The partnership, mostly, has great potential. Drafting the terms of union If there is to be a successful union of environmental assessment and the pursuit of sustainability, we will need to be clearer about how to translate a general commitment to sustainability into a workable set of practical assessment cri- teria, process design characteristics and implementation methods. We will have to clarify what sustainability requires, and identify well integrated means of ensuring that these requirements are addressed. The predominant current approaches encourage separate attention to social, econ- omic and biophysical matters – the three ‘pillars’ on which most descriptions of sustainability are constructed.For effectively integrated sustainability assessment, Preface xi
  • 17.
    xii Sustainability Assessment thepillar boundaries will have to be overcome and some other way found to manage the multitudes of considerations without obscuring their intercon- nections. We will also have to provide guidance on how to deal with trade-offs. In a world as imperfect as this one, most proposed undertakings will bring sustain- ability losses as well as sustainability gains. It will, therefore, be necessary to determine when certain sustainability objectives may have priority over others, which compromises and sacrifices may be acceptable, and how overall con- tributions to sustainability may be identified. We will have to set out the practical means – the essential characteristics of deliberative and decision making processes, the necessary and useful tools, and the openings for adjustment – by which the considerable challenges of sustainability assessment can be met by ordinary officials, proponents and citizens with limited resources and plenty of other obligations. And all of this we will have to accomplish with due respect for the particulars of context. Only so much can be set out in general rules, generic guidance and standard procedures. The book you have now opened will not satisfy any of these needs finally or completely.While some of the basics are easy enough, sustainability assess- ment faces a world that is difficult and complicated. It must deal not only with uncertainties but whole vast areas of mystery. Such is the nature of the social, economic and ecological realities in which we live and in which all assessable undertakings intervene. No doubt we will learn a great deal from further experience and more careful analysis. Perhaps the initial steps taken here in the very early days of sustainability assessment will soon seem hope- lessly primitive. We can live with that. This is only the stage of matchmaking and honeymoon advice. Marriage counselling will come soon enough.
  • 18.
    Acknowledgements Much of theinitial research and thinking behind this book began with a monograph (Gibson, 2002) and background papers prepared under a research contribution agreement with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. Thiswasfollowedbymoreparticularstudiesonsustainabilityassessmentoptions for the Canadian International Development Agency. Neither agency bears responsibility for the contents of this book, and neither should be presumed to agree with the positions taken or the recommendations made. Nevertheless, both provided important support and have been admirably quick to recognize that sustainability-based assessment is worthy of careful examination. In addition to the contributors recognized on the title page, a long list of excellent scholars and practitioners assisted our research on sustainability assessment and the preparation of this book.We would like especially to thank Jennifer Agnolin, Petr Cizek, Peter Croal, Theo Hacking, David Hirsh, Tony Hodge, René Kemp, Lorri Krebs, David Lawrence, Tamara Levine, Angus Morrison-Saunders, Saeed Parto, Doris Pokorny, Jenny Pope, John Robinson, Erin Rogozinski, Hendrik Rosenthal, Jack Santa-Barbara, Lindsay Staples, Jenna Watson, Bob Weir and Susan Wismer. Thanks also to the wonderfully patient and helpful folks at Earthscan, especially Rob West, Ruth Mayo, Victoria Brown and Camille Adamson.
  • 19.
    List of Acronymsand Abbreviations Cdn$ Canadian dollars CFC chlorofluorocarbon DDT dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane EIS environmental impact statement GDP gross domestic product GIS geographic information systems GNP gross national product IUCN World Conservation Union (formerly International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) LA21 Local Agenda 21 MMSD Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development project NEPA National Environmental Policy Act NGO non-governmental organization OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development t/d tonnes per day UK United Kingdom UN United Nations UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and Development UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization US United States
  • 20.
    1 Beginnings Stumbling Towards SustainabilityAssessment Beginning in Labrador They say that on the seventh day, God hurled stones at Labrador. Perhaps it is true – even by Canadian standards, Labrador is a hard land. The north coast is all rocky islands and headlands swept by Arctic waters flowing out into the North Atlantic. The interior is more rock, rivers, barrens and boreal forest. And yet for millennia Inuit and Innu people have lived there successfully – the Inuit on the coast, harvesting seal and fish, the Innu in the interior, relying on the caribou. European contact and the arrival of new residents led to changes in economy and culture, and more recent decades have brought more outside influences. But for most people in northern Labrador the hard land is home; it has been so since time beyond memory and will continue to be in any desirable future. Whether the future of northern Labrador will be desirable for people who consider it a permanent home is a question of sustainability. It is a matter of how to ensure viable and fulfilling livelihoods over the long haul from one generation to the next. Essentially, the same concerns apply to communities everywhere, since the basic challenges of sustainability face all of them. But so far only a few places have chosen, or been permitted, to confront these matters explicitly. Northern Labrador has been the site of one such attempt. Between 1997 and 2002, a proposed major mining project beside Voisey’s Bay, a deep inlet on Labrador’s north coast, was the subject of an environmental assessment and a set of associated and consequential deliberations that wrestled directly, often openly, and by some interim measures successfully, with the project’s potential contribution to local and regional sustainability. Serious application of sustainability-based evaluation criteria is not yet common in environmental assessments or other decision making on important undertakings. ‘Contribution to sustainability’ is frequently presented as an official objective of environmental assessment. In a host of related practical circumstances – urban neighbourhood planning, corporate responsibility re- porting, regional growth management initiatives, new versions of progress
  • 21.
    2 Sustainability Assessment indicatorsand so on – reasonably comprehensive lists of sustainability con- siderations have been adopted. But true sustainability assessments, carefully designed and intentionally influential, are still rare. The Voisey’s Bay case in Labrador is just one example of an emerging practice and, inevitably, it has some unique characteristics. Nonetheless, it captures well the basic needs and challenges involved in sustainability assessment. OnVoisey’s Bay The Voisey’s Bay mining project began in a moment of extraordinary good fortune. In 1993, prospectors Albert Chislett and Chris Verbiski, returning home from work further north, flew over the Voisey’s Bay area just as sunlight from a particular angle reflected off a mineralized outcrop. They landed to investigate and discovered rich deposits of nickel with associated copper and cobalt. The most spectacular part of their discovery, a body of exceptionally high grade ore called ‘the ovoid’, was later found to contain about 31 million tonnes of reserves – 2.9 per cent nickel, 1.69 per cent copper and 0.14 per cent cobalt (Inco, 2002a). Moreover, it was right at the surface, mineable by open pit methods and conveniently near tidewater. Subsequent drilling delineated over 100 million tonnes of additional ore underground in less rich but still commercially extractable deposits. In 1996, Inco Ltd paid Cdn$4.3 billion for the claims and associated drilling information. Though the company later announced a Cdn$2 billion write-down of that investment, the Voisey’s Bay deposits continued to be seen as the foundation for an economically important development for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as for the northern Labrador region. Deliberations on the nature of the development and conditions for approval had to overcome a variety of difficulties, including court challenges and high- stake negotiating positions, but in June 2002 the five key parties – Inco, the federal and provincial governments, the Innu Nation and the Labrador Inuit Association – announced an agreement. It covered the mine, mill and concen- trator operation atVoisey’s Bay, plus a closely linked metal processing/refining operation to be established at Argentia in Newfoundland.1 The announced overall capital cost of mine and smelter components was Cdn$2.9 billion. During the negotiations, Inco was understandably most interested in re- couping its investment and maximizing its financial returns. For the provincial and local interests, however, durable longer-term gains were more important. Expecting long-term gains from a mining undertaking may seem futile. Non-renewable resource extraction projects are generally poor candidates as contributors to sustainability. Mine project life is limited by orebody geology and made uncertain by market fluctuations. Often the boom is closely fol- lowed by a bust, and the lasting local effects – economic, social and ecological – are largely negative.2 This has frequently been accepted as the nature of the industry, though the busts usually inspire some last ditch efforts by local residents and relevant governments to encourage further exploration in hopes of life-extending discoveries, or to attract some other employer to the area.
  • 22.
    Beginnings 3 Options beyondthat have been limited, though some jurisdictions have taken anticipatory steps to build ‘heritage funds’ while the resource income is flowing, to diversify mining centre economies or to foster downstream processing – ad- ditional ore milling, refining and smelting, perhaps even manufacturing using the product – that might continue after the initial orebody is exhausted. Provincial authorities in the Voisey’s Bay case took the latter route. Long dependent on the fishery and often frustrated by failed development ventures in other sectors, the province of Newfoundland and Labrador insisted that the Voisey’s Bay ore be smelted in Newfoundland. This, in the provincial view, would make theVoisey’s Bay mine a stepping stone to a technologically advanced and globally competitive smelting industry in the province and an accordingly longer stream of economic benefits. After an extended campaign fought partly in the business media and partly in private negotiations, the province did get Inco to agree to process the ore in Newfoundland (Newfoundland and Labrador, 2002a). This may not be enough to win the province a lasting role in the industry. However, the province has certainly shown commitment to more durable gains. While the difficult contest over the processing question attracted the bulk of press reporting on the Voisey’s Bay project, more innovative steps, from a sustainability perspective, were taken in the deliberations about the mine itself. In the processing negotiations, the province’s longer-term concerns centred on conventional economic development considerations – creating more jobs, capturing value added benefits from provincial resources, enhancing provincial revenues, fostering economic diversification. Environmental issues received some attention and sustainability may have been an implicit objective, but it was not pursued in a comprehensive or well integrated manner. The mining part of the package was treated differently. At Voisey’s Bay, sustainability effects were the central issue. This was in part because the mining was to be in aboriginal homelands and in part because the proposed undertaking was reviewed through an extraordinary environmental assess- ment process. Homelands The lands in question were traditionally shared by the Innu and the Inuit (perhaps not often simultaneously or always amicably) and remain part of their traditional territories. Emish is the old Innu name for the area where the nickel deposits were found.Tasiujatsoak is the Inuit name for the nearby deep inlet, which they used long before Amos Voisey, a fur trader and merchant, settled there in the 1800s. Although the usual name now is Voisey’s Bay, the area remains Innu and Inuit land, at least in as much as aboriginal title is recognized, since neither people ever signed away title to these lands. As a consequence, the Innu Nation and the Labrador Inuit Association, as bodies representing the Inuit and Innu, became participating government authori- ties in the evaluations, negotiations and decisions on the Voisey’s Bay mining proposal.
  • 23.
    4 Sustainability Assessment TheLabrador Inuit Association represents most residents of five commu- nities on the Labrador north coast including Nain (population 1200), which is located 35km north-east of the mine site.While the Inuit have been subject to European colonial, evangelical and commercial influence since the 18th century, they signed no treaties.Their land claim was accepted for negotiation by the federal government in 1977 and has since moved gradually towards resolution.3 Among the people included are descendants of Amos Voisey and other settlers whose families are now assumed to have partial Inuit ancestry.4 The Innu Nation represents the roughly 600 Mushaua Innu who now live in Natuashish, about 80km south-east of Voisey’s Bay.The Mushaua Innu were nomadic hunter-gatherers in the Labrador interior until 1967 when they were moved to Davis Inlet (which the Innu call Utshimassits: the place of the boss). The coastal island site was inconvenient for access to mainland hunting and other culturally familiar activities and, not surprisingly, the social, cultural and economic effects were largely tragic.5 Whether things will be better in Natuashish, the new mainland community established in 2002, remains uncertain, but that move symbolizes Innu determination to make a better future.The Innu have also been negatively affected by low level military test flights over their lands and this led to lengthy and bitter conflicts with the federal government. The government has, however, recognized the Innu land claim, which was submitted in 1977. Negotiations began in 1991 and a Canada/Newfoundland/Innu framework agreement was signed in 1996 (INAC, 1996b). In their different ways, the Innu and Inuit communities of northern Lab- rador are hybrids of the traditional and the modern.The people have been, to varying degrees, separated from many of their old ways. But they are not far in time or place from the traditional understandings and practices that over countless generations made it possible to sustain themselves. They are still close enough to the land to feel the interdependence of the social, ecological, economic and cultural aspects of their lives. Perhaps their traditional lives were rarely easy. Probably the customary practices of the Innu and Inuit were in other respects as flawed as those of other cultures. Nonetheless, their ways of getting along with each other and being part of the land worked well enough – were sufficiently respectful, flexible and sensitive – to demonstrate the pos- sibility, nature and importance of durable livelihoods. For both Innu and Inuit the prospect of a nearby mining project raised hopes and fears. It brought the promise of new economic opportunities and associated improvements in regional infrastructure and services. But it also meant less control over traditional lands, more disturbance of wildlife and damage to local ecosystems, and further disruption of already fragile social conditions. Moreover, the gains could be brief and the negative effects per- manent. In the northern Labrador communities, the mine became the focus for discussions about future relations between traditional renewable resource harvesting activities and the modern, globalized market economy. While the traditional activities had long been the foundation for survival and identity,
  • 24.
    Beginnings 5 they nolonger seemed to offer a sufficient basis for community livelihoods. Unfortunately the mine, like many other modern economy options for places like northern Labrador, offered only a transitory economic alternative. That might be good enough for people willing to move from one such opportunity to the next. But for people with deep roots and a long-term commitment to their home place, the mine would not be acceptable unless it built the short- term opportunity into something both desirable and lasting. That testofacceptability–groundsforconfidencethattherewillbe desirable and lasting gains – might seem obviously reasonable. But it is not commonly applied in major project decision making. As a rule, proposed undertakings gain approval if they have devoted and apparently capable proponents,however narrowly motivated, and if there is no persuasive evidence of likely undue harm to any interests deemed worthy of attention.While that is a simplified version of the general rule, it is the essence of processes centred on limited restriction of enterprise. In the Voisey’s Bay case this general rule was replaced. How this was accomplished and what it entailed is worthy of attention. A landmark assessment From the outset of theVoisey’s Bay project deliberations, the Inuit and the Innu made it clear that they had long-term rights and interests to be respected.6 On the strength of their claims to aboriginal title, both groups were recognized as relevant authorities for key project evaluations and decisions especially in two processes that were to play particularly important roles in forcing attention to sustainability considerations. These were the Voisey’s Bay mine and mill environmental assessment review and the subsequent negotiation of impact and benefit agreements. The Voisey’s Bay environmental assessment was a landmark in Canadian and global assessment practice because it introduced ‘contribution to sustain- ability’ as the basic test of acceptability. As a major project with inevitable environmental significance, the proposed Voisey’s Bay mine-mill was subject to assessment requirements as well as Inuit and Innu approval. To consolidate the review, the four government bodies signed a memorandum of understanding and drafted terms of reference for a single review by a five member environmental assessment panel.The panel, with appointees recommended by the four parties, then prepared guidelines for the proponent to follow in preparing an environmental impact statement that would be reviewed through a set of public hearings in the relevant com- munities, including Nain and Utshimassits. Aside from the willing agreement among four parties with a consider- able history of tension and conflict, none of this was particularly remarkable. Consolidation of hearings where two or more jurisdictions are involved is a common means of avoiding duplication and inefficiency.The panel’s terms of reference were broad and progressive – covering the full range of ‘social, eco- nomic, recreational, cultural, spiritual and aesthetic conditions that influence the life of humans and communities’, as well as the biophysical aspects of the
  • 25.
    6 Sustainability Assessment ‘environment’– and including attention to traditional ecological knowledge, cumulative effects and the precautionary principle.7 But all of these elements had been included before in environmental assessment practice. The panel took a further interpretive step. It concluded that its obligations, taken together, imposed a requirement to consider the sustainability effects of the proposed undertaking. ‘Promotion of sustainable development’, the panel observed, ‘is a fundamental purpose of environmental impact assessment’. Accordingly, the panel, established ‘contribution to sustainability’ as the key evaluative test. In its Environmental Impact Statement Guidelines for the Review of theVoisey’s Bay Mine and Mill Undertaking, the panel stated: It is the Panel’s interpretation that progress towards sustainable development will require the following: • the preservation of ecosystem integrity, including the capability of natural systems to maintain their structure and functions and to support biological diversity; • respect for the right of future generations to the sustainable use of renewable resources; and • the attainment of durable and equitable social and economic benefits. Therefore, in reviewing the EIS [environmental impact statement] and other submissions, the Panel will consider: • the extent to which the Undertaking may make a positive overall contribution towards the attainment of ecological and community sustainability, both at the local and regional levels; • how the planning and design of the Undertaking have addressed the three objectives of sustainable development stated above; • how monitoring, management and reporting systems will attempt to ensure continuous progress towards sustainability; and • appropriate indicators to determine whether this progress is being maintained (Voisey’s Bay Panel, 1997, s3.3).8 The guidelines set a national precedent by setting out sustainability-based decision criteria. These obliged the proponent to meet a considerably higher test than is usual in environmental assessments. In most assessment practice the focus is on avoidance or mitigation of significant negative environmental effects. Sometimes ‘environmental effects’ are defined broadly to include aspects of the human as well as biophysical environment. Sometimes the need for and purposes of the undertaking are to be addressed. And sometimes, comparative evaluation of alternatives is required. But typically, the working objective is just to recognize and reduce any potentially severe adverse effects, to ensure the project damages are acceptably minimal. Demanding ‘a positive overall contribution’ is very different. Especially for a mining project, making a case for the project as ‘a positive overall contribution towards the attainment of ecological and community
  • 26.
    Beginnings 7 sustainability, bothat the local and regional levels’ is quite clearly more difficult than merely showing that any significant adverse effects will be mitigated to an acceptable level. The panel made it clear that it expected Inco to show that it would create or enhance beneficial effects as well as mitigate the negative ones. The panel also clearly saw the sustainability test as reason for attention to the project’s legacy – how closure would be managed and what would be left behind. In other words, an overall positive contribution to ecological and community sustainability would have to be demonstrated for an undertaking with a limited anticipated economic life and no prospect for ecological improvement given that the area was essentially pristine at the outset. Inco was not visibly distressed by the challenge. Less than six months after the guidelines were finalized, the company submitted its proposal and impact assessment statement. Not everyone was persuaded that the submission passed the assigned test. A consultant for the Innu Nation prepared a detailed report arguing that the proponent had failed on many grounds to meet the panel’s requirements and to establish that the project would make a positive overall contribution to sustainability (Green, 1998). Additional concerns were raised in the public hearings. While these covered a variety of specifics, a common theme centred on how to avoid the boom and bust effects of a short mine life. In March 1999, the panel issued its report. The panel concluded that the project could be acceptable if specified conditions were met and offered 107 recommendations on a wide range of project related matters. Of these, the most significant focused on steps to address concerns about the durability of project benefits and to ensure avoidance of negative effects. The panel urged the decision making authorities to ensure: • that the lifespan of the project was sufficient to permit establishment of lasting benefits; • that land claim negotiations were completed before the project was allowed to proceed; • that specific agreements were reached with the Inuit and Innu on project impacts and benefits, and on co-management of environmental reviews during project implementation (Voisey’s Bay Panel, 1999). Building a bridge The life span issue raised the most substantial implications for project design and implementation. As initially proposed, the mining operations would feed a 20,000 tonnes per day (t/d) concentrator. If sufficiently rich underground resources were confirmed as expected, the project life with the 20,000 t/d mill would be 20–25 years. But if only the very rich ‘ovoid’ deposit were mined and the less attractive underground deposits judged economically questionable, the project life could be as short as seven years. The panel referred to this as the ‘scoop and run scenario’ (Voisey’s Bay Panel, 1999) and recommended means of ensuring a longer project life to avoid negative boom and bust effects,
  • 27.
    8 Sustainability Assessment ensuremore lasting gains, and permit better preparation for local economic viability after the mine closed. Chief among the possible means of extending project life was reducing the annual production rate by allowing only a smaller mill. Inco argued in its assessment submission that a significantly smaller capacity mill (anything below 15,000 t/d) would not be economically viable. The Innu and Inuit, however, insisted that if the sustainability test were to mean anything at all in this case, then durable contributions to community livelihoods would have to be provided, and for this a reasonable project life span had to be ensured. Mill capacity therefore remained a central issue during the post-assessment negotiations. In the end, Inco agreed to use a 6000 t/d mill, at least initially, and with further delineation of the Voisey’s Bay deposits it confidently predicted a project life span greater than 30 years (Inco, 2002a). Ensuring a 30-year mine life is not the achievement of sustainability. For the mine it is just a longer period of boom before the bust. For the communities it is just an extended but still limited period of income and opportunity.The key issue for sustainability is whether the longer run of revenues and opportunities strengthens the foundations for viable and durable livelihoods after the mine closes. Like other necessarily temporary undertakings, the Voisey’s Bay nickel mine can make a contribution to sustainability only if the limited period of economic viability serves as a bridge to a more sustainable future. While the panel did not use the bridging concept explicitly, it recognized the link between a longer project life span and the potential for constructing a more lasting economic base. A longer period of mine operation, the panel observed, would: ...enable workers to earn pensions and accumulate savings beyond one generation, and to develop industrial and business skills that could support new economic activities.At the same time, communities could use the increased flow of income over a long period to diversify their local economies.A long duration would also reduce the risk of negative effects associated with the community boom-and-bust effect (Voisey’s Bay Panel, 1999, p8). By itself, however, an extended mine life would not ensure successful bridging to a more sustainable long-term future for the communities near the mine. Two additional requirements would have to be met: first, sufficient resources and opportunities would have to flow from the mine to the communities and second, these would have to be used effectively to build a more durable base for the decades following mine closure. Some of this extended beyond the ambit of the panel’s review. But the panel did emphasize measures to ensure that the local communities gained the economic and political wherewithal to pursue a more sustainable future. This was addressed in the second set of key panel recommendations, which concerned relations between the project and the aboriginal title holders, in particular relations that would be established through land claim agreements and impact and benefit agreements.
  • 28.
    Beginnings 9 In Canada,negotiationof land claim agreements is the conventional,though usually very slow, means of addressing the claims of aboriginal groups that retain title to traditional territories and rights to continue traditional activities. Land claim agreements vary but typically involve recognition of ownership over some portion of the traditional lands, certain rights to use larger areas (e.g. for hunting and trapping), defined roles in land management decision making (e.g. on wildlife management and in environmental assessments), other self-government provisions, financial compensation and shares in resource royalties (INAC, 1996a). In northern Labrador, both the Inuit and Innu had submitted claims in 1977, and neither had been resolved despite some years of negotiation with federal and provincial government authorities. The panel urged that claim agreements be reached prior to project approval to solidify and specify the communities’ foundation of authority, to establish basic arrangements for sharing mine royalties and other benefits, and to provide a firm foundation for participation in co-management bodies that would monitor and guide mine development. Failing that, the panel recommended negotiation of similar packages of provisions specific to the mine. Either way the idea was to give the local people the capacity to capture significant overall gains from the mine and to use these in ways that would enhance their communities’ long-term prospects. The panel saw negotiation of impact and benefit agreements between the Innu and Inuit and the mining company in the same light. Impact and benefit agreements are case specific documents that set out, for example, commitments for training and employment of local people, for provision of opportunities for local businesses, and for environmental monitoring and protection.While their scope and influence are generally smaller than those of land claim agreement provisions, they too can be important means of maximizing local gains and minimizing damages. In August 1999, five months after the panel’s report was submitted, the federal and provincial governments announced their general acceptance of most of the panel’s recommendations. The governments refused to commit to reaching agreement on land claims prior to project approval (DFO, 1999; Newfoundland and Labrador, 1999) – a decision the Innu and Inuit challenged in court (Robinson, 1999) – but did proceed, more or less as the panel had recommended, to ensure equivalent case-specific arrangements. Making a difference The June 2002 project approval in principle for the Voisey’s Bay mine and mill covers a variety of substantive conditions and continuing processes to minimize negative effects and enhance local benefits and participation over the whole project life. These include, in addition to the applicable regulatory obligations: • an environmental co-management agreement that establishes a joint body (with two representatives from each of the four governance parties) to
  • 29.
    10 Sustainability Assessment monitorproject effects, review new and to-be specified project-related actions including tailings and waste rock disposal options, and recommend necessary adjustments; • impact and benefit agreements – one between the company and the Innu Nation and a separate one between the company and the Labrador Inuit Association – that allow the project to proceed on traditional lands in return for certain special arrangements for revenue sharing, local employment and contracting, training programmes and community roles in ongoing review of project implementation (Newfoundland and Labrador, 2002b); • commitments to address additional details in special Voisey’s Bay chapters in land claim final agreements with the Inuit and Innu (Newfoundland and Labrador, 2002b). Together, the key elements of the Voisey’s Bay project agreement represent a significant effort to meet the sustainability test.The major concession by Inco to use a 6000 t/d instead of 20,000 t/d mill to extend project life, and the set of arrangements dealing with community participation in benefits and impacts, address a broad range of sustainability-related concerns – social, economic and ecological – in a reasonably well integrated package. The agreement also provides for reviews and adjustments intended to increase prospects for a continuing flow of benefits. Adoption of sustainability-based decision criteria in the Voisey’s Bay case clearly made a difference. It changed how the main issues in the case were addressed, how the project was designed and what was approved. The higher test of ‘contribution to sustainability’ shifted the focus from the mitigation of negative environmental effects during the life of the mine to net gains over the long term. The net gains requirement meant attention to trade-offs and compensations. Because there would be at least some lasting ecological damage, a plausible ‘contribution to sustainability’ could be provided only if strong environmental stewardship were combined with steps to lengthen and strengthen socio-economic benefits.To establish grounds for claiming the project would have a positive legacy, the proponent and government decision makers had to find ways of enhancing the communities’ long-term prospects. The two most obvious practical effects were the influence on project design, especially concerning the size of the mill, and the negotiation of impact and benefit agreements centred on engaging local people in environmental protection and enhancing the flow of resources and opportunities. Both should help the communities prepare for life after mining. Whether the end results will actually be net gains for sustainability is far from certain. At the mine site, there will inevitably be at least some residual ecological damage after remediation and closure. The mine’s products and revenues may also contribute to increases in consumption and waste generation in ways that lead away from sustainability. There may well be compensating positives. Tax and other revenues from the mine may be used to improve community infrastructure in ways that enhance long-term economic prospects and reduce negative ecological effects. Longer-term social and economic gains
  • 30.
    Beginnings 11 are alsopossible, especially with the extended project life and other efforts to strengthen local training and capacity-building. But these steps mostly enhance the potential for positive bridging to an economically and ecologically viable future. Successful delivery is not assured and much still depends on implementation. This is no criticism of the efforts by theVoisey’s Bay panel and others who played key roles in the assessment and the associated deliberations on approval conditions and the impact and benefit agreements. Even the best planning can only go so far. Moreover, the Voisey’s Bay participants were pioneers in sustainability-centred assessment.They had no established path to follow and no assembled collection of previous case experiences to go by. None of the agencies involved had anticipated such an assessment and none had prepared relevant sustainability-centred guidance documents. No special criteria or process rules for sustainability assessment had been established. Specifying the higher test At the time of the Voisey’s Bay assessment, there had been plenty of other serious efforts to apply sustainability criteria in practical decision making. Sustainability objectives had underpinned a variety of initiatives in regional and community planning, in building and neighbourhood design, and in the implementation of poverty reduction projects.There had even been a few other environmental assessments using the rough equivalent of a sustainability- centred approach. But, like the Voisey’s Bay effort, these had been more or less ad hoc, exploratory and primitive. The situation is not much different today. The last few years have seen a continued proliferation of official commitments to sustainability, some of them directly embedded in environmental assessment law. There have also been increasing numbers of new sustainability-centred initiatives, led by actors ranging from neighbourhood organizations and municipalities to corporate sectors and multilateral agencies in jurisdictions around the world. Many of these initiatives have been exemplary and most have offered important lessons of some sort. But there has been little consistency of concept or approach.The ‘contribution to sustainability’ test is just as vaguely and variously defined today as it was when the Voisey’s Bay panel went to work.The practical implications for deliberations and decisions – in policy and project planning, the evaluation of competing options, the design of review and approval processes, post- approval monitoring and adjustment – have not been carefully delineated.We are still stumbling towards sustainability assessment. Some stumbling is unavoidable. Different circumstances demand different approaches and uncertainty demands flexibility. One of the key lessons to be drawn from the unsustainable results of conventionally guided develop- ment decision making is that context matters. Any useful guidance for future sustainability assessments must incorporate adaptive flexibility and respect the specifics of context. But some elements of context are universal.While the
  • 31.
    12 Sustainability Assessment pursuitof durable and desirable futures may take a host of different forms, it always faces intertwined ecological, social and economic factors. There are always complexities and uncertainties to respect and good reasons to antici- pate surprise.We may debate how far to go with generic criteria and standard processes, but we certainly have the wherewithal for some basic shared un- derstanding of what is required for sustainability gains, and we have enough experience to consolidate into a useful basic package of overall guidance. That,at least,is the presumption of this book.The agenda here is to consider what we have learned from environmental assessment experience and from sustainability thought and practice so far, to identify the key requirements for sustainability and sustainability-oriented assessments, and to outline the essential steps for implementation. Notes 1 Under the Statement of Principles signed in June 2002, Inco agreed to con- struct a pilot hydrometallurgical processing plant and either to expand it to a commercial scale operation or to build instead a conventional refinery for the Voisey’s ore. Initially, the Voisey’s ore would be shipped to Inco processing facilities elsewhere, but the company agreed to treat this as a loan, with an equivalent amount of ore from elsewhere later brought to Argentia in compensation (Newfoundland and Labrador, 2002a). 2 Even while they are operating, mining projects can have negative effects on local communities and economies. Uneven distribution of new incomes can lead to tensions and conflicts. Sudden addition of new revenues for community programmes can lead to dependency on a transitory activity while reducing incentives to pursue other opportunities. And inflationary effects can undermine traditional non-mining economic activities, leaving the community with fewer viable alternatives after the mine closes. These problems, considered more broadly, may help explain why the economies of resource rich developing countries tend to grow more slowly than the median for developing countries (Östensson and Uwizeye-Mapendano, 2000; MMSD, 2002). 3 A Canada/Newfoundland/Inuit framework agreement was ratified in 1990, and an agreement-in-principle signed in June 2001 (INAC, 2001). 4 At the formation of the Labrador Inuit Association, the rule of thumb was that members of all families that had been on the coast before the establishment of the airbase at Goose Bay in 1942 probably had at least some Inuit ancestry, and could be considered legitimate participants in the Association and its claim. 5 Reports of this transition to sedentary life with a money economy disagree on whether it was encouraged or forced. But the island site seems clearly to have been chosen for servicing convenience. 6 In February 1995, for example, the Innu occupied the site and issued an eviction order to Diamond Fields Resources, the exploration company
  • 32.
    Beginnings 13 then holdingthe Voisey’s Bay claims, for failure to obtain Innu permission and failure to prepare an environmental and cultural protection plan before starting exploration on aboriginal lands (Innu Nation, 1996). 7 The Memorandum of Understanding and the Panel Terms of Reference are included as appendices to the panel’s final report (Voisey’s Bay Panel, 1999). 8 For a discussion of the broader significance of these guidelines, see Gibson (2000).
  • 33.
    2 Assessment Thirty-someYears of Environmental Assessment Growingup in a difficult world The Voisey’s Bay assessment was atypical when it was initiated in 1997 and remains so today.1 As we will see in later chapters, there have been plenty of other efforts to define and use sustainability principles and criteria in practical decision making – in a host of applications from urban growth management to corporate responsibility reporting.There have also been many official state- ments of devotion to sustainability in environmental assessment work. Many recent assessment laws list contribution to sustainability among their statutory purposes. Nevertheless, serious efforts to use sustainability gains as a guiding objective and central criterion in actual assessments are still rare. Even for the most progressive jurisdictions, the idea remains in the experimental fringe of innovation in assessment law and practice. This may not change soon, but there are reasons to expect, as well as to hope for, an eventual effective union between environmental assessment and the pursuit of sustainability. We can expect necessity to be the mother of assessment innovation. Researchers, policy makers and affected interests disagree on how worried we should be about the worsening of ecological degradation,economic inequity and other threats to long-term well-being.They also disagree on the causes and solutions. But only the most wildly optimistic and the profoundly ill-informed claim that the present practices can continue indefinitely without wrecking the biophysical foundations for survival. If the extraordinary popularity of sustainability language reveals only one thing, it is widespread recognition that what prevails today is not sustainable and that changes of some sort are needed. As important conditions get worse, and the costs of unsustainable behaviour become more evident, mother necessity will spur more determined responses. Almost certainly these will include efforts to impose a ‘contribution to sustainability’ test in the planning and approval of new or renewed undertakings.
  • 34.
    Assessment 15 Environmental assessmentis not the only, or necessarily the best, vehicle for applying a ‘contribution to sustainability’ test. Land use planning for towns and cities, urbanizing regions and rural and resource areas, is also a good can- didate. So are, for other applications, government priority setting processes, neighbourhood and building design charettes, ethical investment analyses, and programme development procedures for international aid projects. Indeed, almost any existing decision making process could and should be used, if it deals with matters that may have long-term effects on factors influencing the prospects for sustainability.The chief advantages of environmental assessment are that it has for over 30 years been maturing in the direction of sustainability assessment, and that it can be adjusted for application, under any convenient label, to decision making on almost any sustainability related undertaking – not just to the familiar sorts of new physical projects but also to ongoing activities and renovations, plans and programmes, government and corporate poli- cies, fiscal or regulatory initiatives, trade regimes, communication strategies, product designs, even lobbying campaigns by environmental organizations. The maturing of environmental assessment, since its birth in the 1969 United States (US) National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), has been a global phenomenon, influenced by experiences in the hundreds of jurisdic- tions – nations, provinces and states, municipalities, corporations, national and multilateral agencies, and aboriginal governance bodies – that have adopted, applied and revised environmental assessment processes in various ways over the years. It has, accordingly, reflected many of the same insights and influences responsible for the inception and elaboration of sustainability. The two grew up in the same large neighbourhood, facing similar challenges and learning similar lessons. It is hardly surprising that they should fit well together. Basic and more advanced approaches Environmental assessment is one of several names for processes designed to encourage, if not force, better attention to environmental considerations in the planning and implementation of particular undertakings. Sometimes it is called environmental impact assessment or environmental appraisal or social and ecological assessment, and sometimes the use of different names reflects differences in approach. Certainly there are and have been great variations – in the range of undertakings subject to assessment, the procedural steps, the scope of considerations, the nature and roles of participants, the flex- ibility of application, and even, as we have seen in the Voisey’s Bay case, the criteria to be satisfied. But the essential purpose has remained: environmental assessment is meant to change the nature of decision making. Under ordinary circumstances, decision makers can be relied upon to consider economic and technical matters. Governments also have reliable incentives to pay attention to political concerns. Environmental assessment was introduced as an incen- tive as well as a means to take environmental factors just as seriously.
  • 35.
    16 Sustainability Assessment Theaim of ensuring due attention to environmental considerations in deci- sion making determines the necessary basic structure of assessment processes. Box 2.1 lists the basic components of potentially effective processes, and iden- tifies a core set of additional components that are included in more advanced and ambitious processes.2 The main difference is that the basic list processes are designed only to avoid or mitigate serious negative effects and ensure that approved undertakings are ‘acceptable’.The additional components give more attention to difficult environmental realities – especially scientific uncertainty and cumulative effects – and encourage planners and decision makers to identify the best responses to carefully considered needs and purposes. The importance of this distinction, for environmental decision making and for a union with sustainability objectives, we will discuss a little later. Note that even in basic processes, environmental assessment involves a series of deliberations and decisions through the full life of an undertaking from initial conception to final decommissioning. A formal assessment review may happen at a particular point in the process, usually timed to provide or contribute to an approval decision. But assessment activities (and due attention to environmental factors) are meant to continue. Given the purpose of ensuring serious attention to environmental consider- ations, even in environmental assessment processes with modest ‘acceptability’ aims, the specifics of process design are important. It matters a great deal whether environmental assessment is introduced through voluntary encourage- ment or legal mandate and whether ‘environment’ is defined narrowly to cover only biophysical and ecological matters or broadly to cover socio-economic and cultural concerns. It matters whether proponents of new projects begin their deliberations knowing they will have to satisfy environmental assessment requirements or have these requirements imposed only after they have decided what they wish to do. It matters whether the process is efficient or cumber- some, whether the joint roles of science and preference are understood, and whether those with the most to lose can get a fair hearing. On all these topics and more the theoreticians and practitioners of environmental assessment have now struggled for more than 30 years. Considerable diversity remains, in thinking as well as in practice. But it is now possible to look back on the birth and growth of environmental assessment, to identify the key stages and most significant areas of maturation and to appreciate how these have led us to sustainability assessment. Origins The general origins of environmental assessment lie in the wave of public environmental concerns and demands that rose in the wealthy nations of the world in the mid- to late 1960s. Among the underlying factors were comfort, confidence, distrust and dread – the odd legacies ofWorldWar II and the post- war boom in industry and consumption. The boom had brought ever rising material ambitions, from kitchen appliances and synthetic fabrics to private vehicles and detached homes with weed-free lawns. But these came with rising
  • 36.
    Assessment 17 Box 2.1The structure and key components of potentially effective assessment processes Basic components Additional components of more advanced processes 1 Application rules that specify what sorts of undertakings are subject to assessment requirements (so planners and proponents know from the outset that they will have to address environmental considerations). 1 Application rules that ensure assessment of all undertakings, including policies and programmes and plans as well as capital projects, that might have significant environmental effects. 2 Guidance and procedures for determining more specifically the level of assessment and review required in particular cases. 2 Requirements to establish the need and/or justify the purpose to be served. 3 Definition of the range of ‘environmental’ considerations to be addressed, preferably including socio-economic and cultural as well as biophysical factors. 3 Requirements to identify the reasonable alternatives, including different general approaches as well as different designs, for serving the purpose. 4 Requirements to identify and evaluate the potentially significant effects of proposed undertakings, in light of existing environmental conditions, pressures and trends. 4 Requirements for integrated consideration of related undertakings and of cumulative effects of existing, proposed and reasonably anticipated undertakings. 5 Provisions for scoping (setting reasonable boundaries and focusing assessment work on the most important issues). 5 Requirements to identify means of enhancing positive effects. 6 Requirements to identify and evaluate means of mitigating predicted negative effects. 6 Requirements for comparative evaluation of the reasonable alternatives with justification for selection of the preferred alternative as the proposed undertaking. 7 Overall evaluation of the effects of the proposed undertaking, with chosen mitigation measures. 7 Requirements to identify and evaluate the significance of uncertainties (about effect predictions, mitigation and enhancement effectiveness) and associated risks. 8 Provisions for public as well as technical review of the proposed undertaking and the assessment work (to evaluate both the proposed undertaking and the adequacy of efforts to incorporate attention to environmental considerations in developing the proposal), including review through public hearings in especially significant cases. 8 Provisions, including funding support, to ensure effective public as well as technical notification and consultation at significant points throughout the proposal development and assessment process. 9 Means of ensuring that the assessment and review findings are incorporated effectively in approvals and permitting. 9 Requirements and provisions for monitoring of actual effects and comparison of these with predicted effects (to allow adaptive management and enhance learning from experience) through the full life-cycle of the undertaking. 10 Requirements and provisions for monitoring and enforcing compliance with approval conditions. 10 Provisions for linking assessment work, including monitoring, into a broader regime for setting, pursuing and re-evaluating public objectives.
  • 37.
    18 Sustainability Assessment expectationsfor health and security, and a gradually strengthening willingness to challenge authority. The spectacular advances in technology – living better with chemistry and electricity while watching the Americans and Soviets race into space – were accompanied by gnawing fears about where it was all leading, especially as the Cold War powers persisted in adding to stocks of atomic weapons that were already sufficient to annihilate life on Earth. Rachel Carson’s exposé of global scale chemical contamination came in 1962, the same year as the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was quickly followed by a succession of books presenting frightening statistics about population,pollution and depletion trends (later compiled in the Club of Rome’s 1972 Limits to Growth computer projections), further undermining confidence in economic and technological ‘progress’ as a universally Good Thing. Such ambivalence about industrial progress was nothing new and the driving concerns were as much conservative as radical. But in the 1960s it was accompanied by a rising disaffection with authority and a proliferation of public interest groups that, often with surprising media support, raised public awareness and pushed governments to address matters such as environmental stewardship in which they had previously shown little interest. The first steps were in basic environmental protection and resource man- agement – stronger efforts to control air pollutants, improvements to waste management and sewage treatment facilities, additional efforts to protect natural and heritage areas. Environmental assessment came a little later.While it is now broadly recognized as an approach to planning and decision making, environmental assessment emerged in most jurisdictions from environmental regulation. It was an outgrowth of pollution abatement law. Or, more pre- cisely, it was a response to the failures of environmental laws that focused on responding to particular, identified abuses. By the late 1960s most industrial countries had put in place a suite of laws, and some enforcement staff, to deal with noxious and costly pollution problems. Most of these laws addressed air, water and land as separate areas of concern. Most were reactive, more concerned with correction than preven- tion. And most assumed simple cause–effect, source–receptor relationships. Accordingly, enforcement was typically seen as a technical matter, not just in the confirmation of offences but also in the determination of appropriate resolutions. Sometimes there were prosecutions and legal penalties, but more often the regulators and the regulatees sat down together to determine what abatement action would be suitable and sufficient (Schrecker, 1984). This approach had some successes. Where the problems faced were quite simple, the abatement responses could be suitable and sufficient. But three inadequacies became increasingly apparent. First, the problems to be addressed became more complicated. The kinds of pollution commonly recognized in the 1960s were a cartoonist’s delight – billowing black smoke, dead fish floating upside down, cesspools stinking enough to create odour waves. Soon, however, a host of more insidious prob- lems emerged. There were invisible and odourless trace contaminants that moved through air, water and soil and acted in combination, often with delayed
  • 38.
    Assessment 19 and nastyeffects. In ecosystems this could mean acidification, species loss or nutrient-driven system collapse. In humans the rising threats were cancer, birth defects or immune system disruption. The sources were multiple, the effects no longer just local and the prospects for scientific certainty dim. Second, the approach was highly inefficient. Damages proved often to be impossible or too costly to repair. Poisoned aquifers could not be decontami- nated; paved wetlands could not be resurrected; asthmatic children could not be cured. Even where significant correction was feasible, reactive mitigation was much more expensive than proper initial design. Interests that preferred to avoid environmental expenditures of any kind might be happy with acting only after problems had emerged and were undeniably serious. For the wider public, especially those living downstream and downwind, the reactive ap- proach meant responses that were too little and too late. As industrial activi- ties expanded, the public costs grew larger and less tolerable. Eventually the political costs were also unbearable. Third, the credibility of the authorities crumbled. Treating environmental protection as a matter of reactive technical analysis and response could only work if technical monitoring revealed all the serious problems, if good infor- mation were available on causes and solutions, and if this information were used impartially in decision making. In practice, these conditions were rarely met. Most actual problems were complex and ill-understood. Authorities everywhere tended to mistake limited evidence of harm for limited prospects for damage.They offered assurances that problems were small or well in hand. Sometimes they withheld evidence to forestall public panic. But inevitably the information would leak out, or further research would confirm suspicions – revealing contaminant health effects at ever lower concentrations, ecological losses over ever wider areas, and multiple risks from an ever lengthening list of products and activities. As this record continued, the assurances brought more suspicion than comfort. When corrective actions were taken, often belatedly and minimally, further suspicions grew around the processes for deciding what to do. Despite the technical emphasis, most actual responses involved value laden choices among more or less imperfect options and the choices were made behind closed doors in negotiations between the regulators and the polluters.When the results were disappointing, affected citizens and public interest advocates saw unsavoury collusion and demanded more rigour and openness. In truth, the frequently observed phenomenon of regulator capture by regulatee was not often due to any overt corruption. Usually it was just that the regulatory officials and the managers of regulated facilities spent a lot of time together. Perhaps they had also gone to engineering school together.In any event they quite naturally found it easy to develop shared sympathies. To forestall this, citizens increasingly called for greater public scrutiny with more rigorous requirements and more players at the table when decisions were made. In response, governments began to introduce more integrated, anticipatory and open processes.They placed more emphasis on the permitting and licensing of new facilities and activities, hoping to prevent or minimize later problems,
  • 39.
    20 Sustainability Assessment andthey began to coordinate attention to water, air and land effects. Initially these approvals processes still centred on technical and economic considera- tions with little public involvement, were still limited to the usual air, water and land issues, and were applied mostly to a limited range of known pollu- tion sources. Typically they were also centred on determinations of ‘accept- ability’ – whether undertakings would meet established environmental criteria or standards – rather than on promotion of the most desirable or even least negative options. But gradually the anticipatory controls were expanded and strengthened, and in this the introduction of environmental assessment pro- cesses played a large role. Resistance, adoption and proliferation Many early environmental assessment processes were quite narrowly focused on biophysical concerns, technically oriented and discretionary. But an ambi- tious initial standard was set by the first process – the environmental impact assessment obligations introduced in the US National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 – and assessment processes ever since have been gradually expanding their scope and coverage and becoming more demanding. NEPA section 102 (2) required US federal agencies to prepare ‘statements’ to ac- company proposals for all new legislation or other activities that might have significant environmental effects. The statements had to consider alternatives to the proposed action, address long-term as well as immediate concerns, and be taken seriously in overall decision making. This was an ‘action forcing’ requirement. The required actions were meant to change the nature of the proposal development process so that environmental factors were habitually integrated with the usual economic and technical considerations. And the law made such action mandatory. Not surprisingly, the new obligations were resisted. Passage of the NEPA requirements was followed by a flood of court cases and, later, by an outpouring of regulatory specifications that clarified what ‘significant’ meant, what kinds of undertakings were covered, what the statements had to include, and what constituted adequate attention to the findings. Other jurisdictions hesitated before this path. Many claimed to fear the prospect of interminable litigation, though the US reliance on court decisions was due mostly to the early absence of regulations, administrative oversight and other good means of clarifying the law’s requirements (Wood, 2003). In most places, the main reason for resistance was that the new assessment obligations fell on government agencies that were not eager to think differently, to accept the new burdens or to face additional scrutiny. Experienced practitioners of environmental assessment today can point to a long list of cases demonstrating that serious assessment efforts bring important direct benefits for project proponents. Arguably, environmental assessments often provide net benefits for proponents. Nevertheless, like other measures initiated to serve the public good in the face of the prevailing government and corporate motivations, effective environmental assessment processes have had
  • 40.
    Assessment 21 to beimposed on proponents. Most proponents have at least initially resisted subjection to effective assessment requirements, and have tended to appreciate the benefits of assessment only through imposed experience. Certainly it was not proponent enthusiasm that drove the adoption and strengthening of environmental assessment. It was mostly public pressure plus fear of political damage from more environmental disasters. And as more and more jurisdictions adopted assessment requirements, slower moving govern- ments also risked being labelled as environmental dinosaurs. By 1998, environmental assessment processes were reportedly in place in over 100 countries (Donnelly et al, 1998) and more have been adopted since. In many countries, national level initiatives are accompanied by separate proc- esses applied by provinces or states, regional and municipal authorities and aboriginal governments, often with provisions for process combination or co- operation. Some specialized sectoral agencies – for example, those responsible for managing energy, mining or fisheries activities – have their own processes, as do most major international aid bodies, including multilateral ones such as the World Bank. And a host of private sector corporations have integrated environmental assessment processes, formal and informal, into their planning and decision making structures. Development stages and growth trends The substantive and procedural variations among these processes are great. Even at the national level, among countries with roughly similar capabilities and governance traditions, process specifics differ in important ways. Moreover, most processes have been in a more or less constant state of adjustment and elaboration in light of experience and in response to new pressures.There are, nevertheless, some common essentials – fundamental design considerations that each process must address in one way or another. While commentators have listed these in different ways as basic assessment process components or as criteria for evaluating process design and implementation (see, for example, Sadler, 1996; Senécal et al, 1999; Wood, 2003), there is broad agreement on the main elements. And in these matters it is possible to trace a general path of environmental assessment maturation, in theory and practice, over the past three decades. Box 2.2 presents a four stage account of how environmental assessment has grown since the 1960s from its regulatory roots. The stages are a consid- erable simplification of what has been a messy, uneven and still incomplete global process, but they illustrate the basic character and direction of change involved. A more specific list of the major trends is provided in Box 2.3.They represent, broadly, a shift towards adoption of the more advanced and ambi- tious components listed some pages ago in Box 2.1. In the list of trends, too, a good deal of simplification is involved. The identified trends are not universally shared nor are they all at the same level of achievement. Many assessment processes are largely untouched and remain
  • 41.
    22 Sustainability Assessment littlemore than regulatory procedures under a misleading title. Some initially strong processes have been weakened. Many processes that have incorporated some advanced components listed in Box 2.1 still lack some of the items from the basic list. In several areas implementation still lags far behind thought and policy. Overall, however, these trends are clearly evident not just in the advocacy of environmental assessment practitioners but also in the nascent practices of leading jurisdictions. Arguably each of these trends is important on its own grounds. Our in- terest here, however, is in their significance in building a base for sustainability assessment. For this, the key differences between primitive and advanced en- vironmental assessment are perhaps best considered under the categories of ends and means. Box 2.2 Four stages in the development from environmental regulations to advanced environmental assessment Stage 1: reactive pollution control through measures responding to identified, local problems (usually air, water or soil pollution), with solutions considered technical matters to be addressed through closed negotiation of abatement requirements between government officials and the polluters. Stage 2: proactive impact identification and mitigation through impact assess- ment and project approval/licensing, still focused on biophysical concerns (though now integrating consideration of various receptors) and still treated as a largely technical issue with no serious public role (but perhaps expert review). Stage 3: integration of broader environmental considerations in project selec- tion and planning through environmental assessment processes with: • consideration of socio-economic as well as biophysical effects; • obligatory examination of alternatives, aiming to identify the best options environmentally as well as economically; • public reviews (that reveal expert conflicts and uncertainties, and consequently the significance of public choice). Stage 4: integrated planning and decision making for sustainability, addressing policies and programmes as well as projects, cumulative and global effects, with review and decision processes: • devoted to empowering the public; • recognizing uncertainties and favouring precaution, diversity, reversibility, adaptability; • expecting positive steps towards sustainability.
  • 42.
    Assessment 23 Ends The goalsof environment assessment processes can be modest or ambitious. In many jurisdictions, environmental assessment as an outgrowth of environ- mental regulation has aimed only to prevent or mitigate serious problems. Projects and other undertakings under review are generally assumed to be desirable and assessment decisions merely identify needed adjustments and suitable conditions of approval. As with regulatory decision making, the pre- ferred emphasis is on ensuring compliance with established standards, testable Box 2.3 Twelve major trends in the growth of environmental assessment Over the past three decades, environmental assessment in concept and practice has moved or is moving towards being: 1 more mandatory and codified (increased adoption of law-based processes, further specification of requirements, reduction of discretionary provisions); 2 more widely applied (covering small as well as large capital projects, con- tinuing as well as new initiatives, sectoral and area developments as well as single proposals, strategic as well as project level undertakings); 3 more often initiated early in planning (beginning with purposes and broad alternatives, sometimes beginning with the driving policies, programmes and plans); 4 more open and participatory (not just proponents, government officials and technical experts); 5 more comprehensive of environmental concerns (socio-economic, cultural and community effects as well as biophysical and ecological effects, regional and global as well as local effects); 6 more integrative (considering cumulative and systemic effects rather than just individual impacts); 7 more accepting of different kinds of knowledge and analysis (informal and traditional knowledge as well as conventional science, preferences as well as ‘facts’); 8 more closely monitored (by the courts, informed civil society bodies and government auditors watching responses to assessment obligations, and by stakeholders watching actual effects of approved undertakings); 9 more humble (recognizing and addressing uncertainties, applying precaution); 10 more sensitive to efficiency concerns (questions about process emphases, costs and relations with other evaluation and decision making processes); 11 more often adopted beyond formal environmental assessment processes (through sectoral law at various levels, but also in land use planning, through voluntary corporate initiatives, etc.); 12 more ambitious (aiming for overall biophysical and socio-economic gains rather than just individually ‘acceptable’ undertakings).
  • 43.
    24 Sustainability Assessment ‘objectively’.Proponents typically want to know what the tests of acceptability are, so they can design accordingly. In practice, even basic assessment proc- esses recognize that there are important categories of potentially negative effects for which no general standards have been set. Moreover, one strength of environmental assessment as a process applied to individual undertakings is that it takes into account the particular environmental context (with its more or less unique set of ecological and social conditions, stresses, sensitivities, etc.) and the particular characteristics of the proposed initiative. Neverthe- less, assessment processes that have remained close to their regulatory origins continue to centre on testing the acceptability of undertakings and considering needs for additional mitigation measures. Proponents doing the required assessment work are expected to adjust their project planning and design to minimize environmental problems. As well, the findings from assessment reviews at the project decision stage may be incorporated more or less directly into project permitting and have some influence in overall approvals. But in most cases this remains at the periphery of decision making and in almost all cases the assessment conclusions are delivered as advice to the core decision makers. At the higher level of most comprehensive and advanced environmental assessment processes, the goals are to identify and favour best responses to carefully considered needs and opportunities. Such assessments require critical consideration of the purposes involved, comparative evaluation of the reasonable alternatives in light of their openly assessed socio-economic and biophysical effects and risks, and attention to the broader context including cumulative effects of other activities, existing and anticipated. The resulting proposals are expected to be the best options (or the least bad ones) over the long term. Assessments of this kind are typically more sensitive to uncertain- ties and place more emphasis on making explicitly value-laden choices. Assessment processes with these more ambitious objectives have a much greater potential for changing thinking and practice. Certainly they have had major effects on the subject and results of planning and decision making in particular cases. For example, ordinary acceptability-oriented assessments of new solid waste landfill proposals consider alternative design components (clay or engineered fabric liners, competing options for leachate collection and treatment, etc.) and might also evaluate alternative sites. If done well, the assessment and associated planning and decision making ensure a well designed and suitably sited dump. In contrast, the more ambitious form of assessment questions the simple waste disposal purpose, requires attention to a broader range of waste management options, and engages more stakeholders in the deliberations. The alternative approaches assessed normally include waste reduction options (waste minimization incentives, initiatives to encourage re- use, recycling and composting programmes) in combination with options for disposal of the residuals.The results therefore include not only well-designed recycling, composting and landfill facilities but also important shifts in waste management policies and programmes, in commercial and industrial practices, even in citizen behaviour – all with a greater potential for positive ripple effects than the ‘better dump’ approach.
  • 44.
    Assessment 25 The moreambitious approach is not new.The original 1969 NEPA law in the US had high aims – it defined ‘environment’ broadly, required evaluation of alternatives and addressed long-term effects. Many other early processes also started with stated commitments to substantial change in the nature of planning and decision making. Often, however, the specific provisions and their implementation fell short. Just having admirable ends was never enough – assessment processes also needed the means of delivery and these have been the main areas of attention, frustration and improvement in environmental assessment over the years. Means While some changes in environmental assessment processes have centred on matters of high principle, most have resulted from much more directly practical adjustments. Of the 12 trends listed in Box 2.3, only the final one is entirely about ends. Many of the others facilitate more ambitious assess- ments, but in most cases these changes have been driven by needs to address apparent political and ecological realities, including pressures from citizens and other stakeholders who found that existing processes were not working well enough. Mandatory and codified Assessment expectations were gradually specified and codified because ex- perience taught that discretionary openings would be abused, and because proponents demanded clearer delineation of what they had to do to obtain ap- provals. Some countries, including Canada and New Zealand had introduced environmental assessment through non-legislated policy pronouncements. But these processes suffered from discretionary avoidance and substantive in- consistency. Requirements for Canada’s first major project assessment review, which considered the Point Lepreau nuclear power station in New Bruns- wick, were watered down to avoid conflict with a financing and construction schedule.The second review, which considered the Wreck Cove hydroelectric power project in Nova Scotia, was not initiated until after the project had been approved and the findings that should have affected project design were not available until after much of project work had been completed (Emond, 1978). Performance improved over time. Nevertheless, many government agencies gave little more than lip-service to assessment expectations until the requirements became legally binding. The Canadian experience was far from unusual and the gradual shift to legally mandated, obligatory and reasonably well specified requirements stands globally as a common feature of environ- mental assessment maturation. In jurisdictions that began with or later adopted assessment law, there was a parallel administrative transition from procedural and substantive guide- lines to more firmly applicable regulations (e.g. on categories of undertakings subject to assessment requirements, notice provisions, report contents, and procedures for more and less detailed assessments). Here too the objective was to limit discretion and clarify obligations, without constraining the needed flexibility of a case and situation based process.
  • 45.
    26 Sustainability Assessment Widelyapplied The initial focus of most environmental assessment regimes was on major new capital projects that could have significant negative effects. Such projects were familiar subjects of regulatory permitting and the required impact assessments would provide bases for various licensing approvals. The US NEPA process also applied from the outset to environmentally significant policies, plans, pro- grammes and legislative initiatives, as well as to small projects though through a less demanding and more streamlined version of the process for major undertakings. There was, however, considerable early uncertainty about just what was and was not subject to the full and streamlined NEPA requirements. Clarification came only after some years of court rulings. Most other jurisdictions relied on regulatory or administrative specification of the application rules. Some chose to make decisions on assessment require- ments only after projects had been proposed and seemed worrisome, but this reactive approach conflicted with the objective of encouraging proponents to assess potential effects and incorporate the findings during proposal develop- ment. Better regimes tried to pre-identify and list all categories of undertakings that would be subject to assessment at some level. In most cases the lists were gradually expanded, despite opposition from proponent interests. The main expansions reflected three lessons from experience. The first came from the evident inconsistency of requiring quite rigorous assessments of new undertakings, while neglecting existing activities that were serious sources of environmental abuse. Sometimes the response was simply to tighten regula- tory controls on existing operations. But some jurisdictions also moved to extend assessments requirements to ongoing activities such as timber cutting operations, major changes to existing facilities such as airports, and decom- missioning of potentially dangerous sites such as hazardous waste treatment facilities. The second lesson was that while assessments focused on case by case examination of individual projects, actual environmental effects usually came from combinations of activities,existing and new.Some jurisdictions responded with requirements to consider cumulative effects in individual assessments. But it was soon apparent that broader assessment of the set of relevant activities – through assessments of undertakings, alternatives and cumulative effects in a particular sector or area – would be more efficient and would allow fairer assignment of the costs. The third lesson was that many individual project assessments raised larger policy issues that needed attention but could not be addressed effectively in project-centred decisions. The acceptability of a major new highway cutting through an ancient forest or an amiable neighbourhood might depend heavily on whether the proposed road would fit sensibly into a broader transportation plan that was itself defensible.And the same issue might well arise in assessments of other individual transportation projects in that jurisdiction. Here too, individual assessments proved to be an inadequate and inefficient mechanism used only because no better option was available. It made more sense to assign assessment resources directly to the strategic level and introduce assessments of policies, plans and programmes.
  • 46.
    Assessment 27 The latterhave become the most lively area of environmental assessment innovation in the past decade. Most jurisdictions with serious environmental assessment processes for the project level now also apply assessment require- ments of some sort at the strategic level (Wood, 2003). Some, California for instance, have extensive experience and well developed means of application, including specified implications for project level work. Malawi and some other countries with very limited administrative capacity have chosen to focus on strategic level assessments to gain more widespread benefits from resources that would be stretched too thinly at the project level. Earlier in planning As more jurisdictions introduced and applied requirements to consider pur- poses and alternatives, effective consideration of environmental factors was pushed into earlier stages of proposal development. Eventually this trend led environmental assessment further upstream – into the realm of policies, plans and other strategic level activities that set the context for proposal develop- ment. When assessment adopts the regulatory tradition and focuses only on already preferred and perhaps largely designed undertakings, all that is practi- cally feasible is marginal adjustment for mitigation.The only other possibility is a denial of approval that would force the proponent to give up or at least to go back to an earlier stage and begin again. When comparative evaluation of alternatives is required, assessment begins before there is a preferred option. And when purposes must be justified, the starting point is the conceptual beginning where many proponents may be pushed to consider issues and options they had previously left unexamined. Requirements to assess alternative options have often posed difficulties, especially for private sector proponents and public sector agencies with nar- rowly focused interests, capacities and mandates. A company that makes its money building natural gas pipelines and supplying residential and industrial customers, for example, is likely to be disinclined to consider energy demand reduction options and may be ill-equipped to act on such options if they emerge as the preferred alternative. This problem can be exaggerated. Narrowly in- terested proponents can still be required to establish that their proposed un- dertaking is the best option available, whether or not they consider themselves able to pursue the alternatives. But the immediate concern points to a deeper one about the context for consideration and the pursuit of alternatives. Attractive but unconventional options can often be most effectively facili- tated and favoured through initiatives at the strategic level. For example, many jurisdictions have chosen to encourage energy demand reduction through changes in pricing regimes, certificate trading, product standards and label- ling, or new tax provisions (van der Laar and Vreuls, 2004; Nilsson, 2005). Sometimes these can spur rapid shifts in proponent attitudes and abilities to pursue alternatives. But the more important implication is that careful atten- tion to alternatives may be at least as beneficial at this strategic level as at the project level. And strategic level assessments may be more efficient, especially if they address issues that would otherwise be left to repeated coverage in
  • 47.
    28 Sustainability Assessment asuccession of project assessments (Stinchcombe and Gibson, 2001). Not surprisingly, greatly expanded application at the strategic level has been one of the most dramatic developments in environmental assessment in the past decade. Open and participatory Increased public involvement has been a common feature of many govern- ments’ environmental initiatives over the past three decades. Along with environmental assessment processes, resource management regimes, permit- ting procedures, standard-setting exercises, even international convention negotiations have come to include a public role and to accept much greater public scrutiny. Commitment and performance vary greatly among and within jurisdictions. But relative openness is now common and still increasing almost everywhere. Certainly there has been resistance. Approval delays and other embarrassments have led some proponents and government authorities to seek restrictions on the public role (usually under the cover of demands for process efficiency). Some jurisdictions have responded by limiting the number and scope of public participation opportunities. Nevertheless, the general trend has been to greater openness, despite proponent preference. Pressures for more open and participatory processes originated in general distrust of regulatory authorities and dissatisfaction with the results of conven- tionally closed regulatory decision making. But these pressures grew as public participants gained experience in assessment deliberations and learned more about the limits of technical expertise.Well publicized, more or less adversarial public hearings on major assessment cases have invariably featured disagree- ments among technical experts who are supposed to be presenting the best scientific information and the most rigorous analyses. In each case, highly credentialled experts appearing on behalf of the proponents present technical evidence favouring the proposal, and similarly expert witnesses speaking in support of the critics present technical evidence opposing the proposal. Some- times the contesting experts have taken opposing positions while relying on exactly the same body of information (see, for example, Brunk et al, 1991). These displays, repeated in environmental law proceedings, judicial in- quiries, planning controversies, resource management debates and other deliberations on apparently technical matters, have thoroughly undermined claims that technical experts can be relied upon to make the necessary deci- sions based on objective science.Values and preferences, clearly, play a major role. Assessment decisions are therefore increasingly seen as matters of public choice. In these circumstances, denial or restriction of public scrutiny and involvement in the decision making raises questions about hidden motives and significant political costs can be involved. The more positive side of the story is that in environmental assessment practice, affected citizens and public intervenors have repeatedly proved to be the most powerfully motivated and the most capable critical reviewers of submitted assessment documents and associated proposals. Better planning and better projects have resulted.
  • 48.
    Assessment 29 Participative experiencehas also had a self-feeding effect. Involving the public in assessment deliberations fosters an expectation that the decision making will be transparent and will reflect the participants’ expressed judge- ments and preferences. It also encourages those involved to expect similar engagement and transparency in other similarly weighty matters. Advocates of greater public involvement argue that it brings long-term educational benefits as well as immediate improvements in project planning (Sinclair and Diduck, 1995). Citizen participants focus on learning about the contested proposal and its effects, but in the course of this they typically also learn a great deal about their community and environment, about how to evaluate evidence and defend a deeply held position, and about the complexi- ties of decision making in the public interest. Assessment deliberations can also exhaust participants, disrupt family lives and split communities. Overall, however, the experience tends to build the capacities of participants to be effective contributors to civic life (Jackson, 1993). Comprehensive The NEPA process in the US began with a broad definition of ‘environmental’ considerations that included socio-economic and biophysical aspects. Many other jurisdictions followed this lead, some sooner than others.The European Union and most of its member countries have chosen to focus on biophysical concerns only, perhaps to compensate for the greater conventional attention paid to social and economic concerns. The more comprehensive approach is common, though not universal, in Canadian processes, in Australia and New Zealand, in developing countries and in international aid agencies such as the World Bank, perhaps because of the more obvious and pressing links between socio-economic and ecological concerns. The broader scope is also widely adopted for assessments at the strategic level. There is a possible trade-off here. The greater emphasis on biophysical concerns seems likely to be compromised by inclusion of socio-economic con- cerns. In Canadian experience, no substantial loss of ecological concern is evident in broader assessments. Indeed, in major cases – from the Mackenzie Valley natural gas pipeline inquiry in the mid-1970s to the Voisey’s Bay case a quarter of a century later – the combination of biophysical and socio- economic concerns has been mutually supporting. This has been especially true where protection of aboriginal cultures has been a major consideration. But in urban and suburban cases too, ecological and community protection have often been closely associated. Indeed, the common public reaction, in city neighbourhoods as much as in remote villages, is that separating the social and the ecological is arbitrary and inappropriate, especially if the core concerns are about such things as health, security, community culture, ambience and lasting quality of life. In practice, many public concerns do not fit tidily in the ecological, social or economic categories. This is true at the regional and global as well as local levels. The big advantage of broader assessments is that the full range of significant possible effects can be considered together and the trade-offs
  • 49.
    30 Sustainability Assessment examinedopenly and explicitly. Because environmental assessments often provide the only public forum for case specific deliberations, they are often the one opportunity to address the full set of concerns, linkages and compromises through public governance.Where assessments do not address socio-economic matters, narrowly biophysical assessment recommendations that have been developed with some public involvement are fed into a closed process where the relevant authorities decide among themselves what priorities will prevail and what trade-offs will be made. While the conclusions are announced, the actual reasoning typically remains hidden. Integrative Early environmental assessment work suffered from motivational and meth- odological weaknesses. Proponents tended to treat assessment requirements as a paper obligation best addressed by submitting voluminous reports.These typically covered all possible concerns, but without much attention to priori- ties, interrelationships or synthesis. The work also tended to mirror the frag- mentation of scientific and technical expertise. In reports on the biophysical environment, individual factors were documented in detail. Great long lists of identified species were provided. But little light was shed on the nature of the biophysical and ecological systems, their response to current human interventions, and the possible systemic implications of proposed new activi- ties.3 Social impact assessments suffered from similar weaknesses and capable integration of the biophysical and social work was rare.4 Environmental assessment practitioners soon recognized the need for more systemic and better integrated understanding of existing environments, and more effective emphasis on how these systems, not just individual components of them, might be affected by new undertakings (Beanlands and Duinker, 1983). Similar conclusions were also being drawn in other fields. Experience, including failures, in the management of forests, fisheries, protected areas, watersheds and, most recently, atmospheric chemistry and global climate, has led to new appreciation and understanding of complex systems (Gunderson et al, 1995). The results, in research design, study methodologies and ap- proaches to management are just beginning to be adopted in environmental assessment practice. But they fit well with the growing emphasis on assessment of regional and cumulative effects, and the broader implications of policies, programmes and plans. Accepting of different kinds of knowledge and analysis The general undermining of faith in technical expertise has been accompanied by a growing acceptance of other kinds of knowledge – not as a replacement for conventionallyspecializedexpertise,orwithanyexpectationofgreaterreliability, but as a complementary source and a route to greater overall understanding. The acceptance of traditional ecological knowledge, as in the Voisey’s Bay assessment, is one example. In that case, like many others involving Aboriginal people with long traditions of living close to the land, there was good reason to
  • 50.
    Assessment 31 anticipate thatthey had knowledge that was practically unavailable to scientists able to spend only a few field seasons in part of the area. And it was not just a matter of facts and data.The Inuit and Innu knowledge and ways of knowing combined ecological information with cultural practice and commitment to a future in that area, all of which were relevant to the assessment, difficult as it may have been to fit into the usual categories of assessment review. Much the same has been recognized about the deeply rooted, experiential knowledge of other long-term residents and land users. Consequently, when the Canadian government amended its environmental assessment legislation in 2003, it chose to recognize that both ‘community knowledge and aboriginal traditional knowledge’ were worthy of consideration in environmental as- sessments (Canada, 2003b, s8(16.1)). Environmental assessment practices have also increasingly embraced new methodologies that combine explicit social choice with technical analysis of scenarios, options, effects and risks. The underlying factor here is our still just dawning appreciation of ecological and socio-ecological system complexity, the consequently unavoidable role of values and preferences, and the enormous challenge of assembling a reason- able basis for competent decision making. Monitored Critics of environmental assessment practice have long harboured two sus- picions – that assessment obligations would be avoided and that the actual effects of assessed projects would be worse than predicted. Both have had important influences on the maturation of environmental assessment. Fears about tendencies to avoid assessment obligations were quickly confirmed. Many project proponents openly resisted assessment requirements or, where enforcement was weak, simply failed to comply.The flood of litigation following the introduction of NEPA assessment requirements in the US was driven at least as much by avoidance as by desire for clarification. In Canada, extensive non-compliance by government agencies was repeatedly confirmed by internal audits until the country’s policy-based process was replaced by a law (Gibson and Hanna, 2005). Pressure for the legislation and codification discussed above was one response, but these, by themselves, were generally insufficient. Certainly there are jurisdictions whose legislated requirements are not effectively applied. Clear obligations, committed senior authorities and capable administrators all help. But in many jurisdictions the key to effective implementation has been the critical vigilance of independent auditors (including those within govern- ments) and informed civil society organizations (including public interest environmental law groups) with public credibility and the capacity to initiate court actions were necessary. Such bodies play important roles on many issues of public concern, operate differently in different political cultures, and do not everywhere include groups particularly focused on environmental assess- ment. Generally, however, they have been an increasingly significant force for strengthening the substance as well as the implementation of environmental assessment.
  • 51.
    32 Sustainability Assessment Someof the major implementation concerns have centred not on whether assessments are done as required, but on what happens after assessed pro- jects are allowed to proceed (Wood, 2003). Here there are two monitoring questions. First, are the assessment commitments and approval conditions met in implementation? And second, how do the actual effects compare with what was predicted? Both of these matters have attracted more attention with the maturing of environmental assessment, though there is still plenty of room for improvement. Compliance monitoring has often been undermined by vagueness in approval statements, failure to assign enforcement responsibilities and resources, and unimpressive penalties for non-compliance. Assessment authorities have only gradually begun to correct these problems, and costs remain the biggest barrier.The most promising responses may come from the few jurisdictions that are now empowering and supporting citizen monitors and local stakeholder monitoring committees as complements to conventional enforcement officials. Citizen and stakeholder mobilization has also been part of the answer to the traditional neglect of effects monitoring. Advancement in the science and art of impact prediction has been hampered by the widespread failure to check impact predictions against actual effects. Budgetary constraints are usually blamed, though passing up such learning opportunities is likely to be a false economy. Some jurisdictions have begun to introduce mandatory follow-up requirements, which are probably necessary if effects monitoring is to be done commonly and well. Further involvement of motivated local stakeholders may make this more affordable and more broadly educational but it is also recog- nized that good monitoring will require technical expertise, consistent research protocols for reporting, and widely shared access to the results (Hunsberger et al, 2004). While few of these are yet in place, the necessary technical and organizational capacity for the work is probably now possible. Humble In environmental assessment, as in other fields of biophysical and socio-cultural study, advances in methodology and comprehension have been accompanied by a deepening awareness of how little we know. The phenomenon of con- flicting credentialled experts, noted above, is only part of the story. Experts increasingly agree that the key reality faced in environmental work, and in most other policy fields, is the functioning of intersecting, interdependent, dynamic and perhaps inconceivably complex systems. These systems may be quite resilient but also appear to be normally in processes of change.They can, if overly stressed, change dramatically into systems with very different charac- teristics (Kay et al, 1999; Gunderson and Holling, 2002). This is the big risk in global climate change from the greenhouse effect – not that temperatures will simply continue to edge upwards, but that the climate system will begin to fluctuate wildly and then flip into a new form that is much different (hotter, colder, drier, wetter, windier, etc.) from what we have and depend on now. Unfortunately, we do not and probably cannot know where the threshold is.
  • 52.
    Assessment 33 Not allsystems are as complex as the global climate system (though few have been as energetically studied). And not many will bring equivalent cata- strophe if they are not maintained more or less in their current form. But all are dynamic and connected with others with complexities beyond full under- standing. The upshot is that we have a limited basis for confidence in system de- scriptions, much less impact predictions beyond the individual component level.That does not mean that predictions of system response are impossible. In many circumstances, quite reliable predictions can be made on the basis of experiential data, assisted by sophisticated modelling. But even where we have good information and capable assessments, surprises are possible, if not likely. For environmental policy generally, this means precautionary approaches should be adopted. For environmental assessment particularly, it means putting greater emphasis on identifying impact uncertainties and associated risks, avoiding potential problems and favouring low risk alterna- tives. It also means attention to adaptive design and preparation for adaptive management. Adaptive design includes preference for diversity, reversibility and substitutability, safe-fail rather than fail-safe technologies,5 preparation of fall-back options and plans for careful monitoring. Adaptive management uses these design features to make adjustments as implementation proceeds and surprises emerge (Holling, 1978, 1986; Gunderson et al, 1995; Dearden and Mitchell, 1998). Precautionary language is now appearing more often in environmental assessment laws and guidelines (Lawrence, 2003a), as it is in other environ- mental policies and processes. Delineation of the implications is not yet well advanced, but progress in this area seems likely (granting the limits of confi- dent prediction). Sensitive to efficiency concerns In most jurisdictions the imposition of environmental assessment obligations has been resisted, often energetically. Not surprisingly, much of the opposi- tion has come from development interests – in both the public and private sectors – whose undertakings would have to be assessed. But resistance has also come from government approval authorities with mandates to promote economic growth. It is likely, though difficult to prove, that a good deal of their discomfort centres on being pushed into unfamiliar territory, where the old methods of decision making and the usually preferred project options no longer prevail. Most often, however, the open criticisms have focused on the costs of implementation, approval delays and process inefficiencies. The continued expansion of environmental assessment applications des- pite these concerns suggests widespread confidence that the benefits generally exceed the costs – that better and more acceptable decisions result and that prevention of damage is cheaper than repair. Nevertheless, there have certainly been legitimate concerns about assessment inefficiencies. Critics in many jurisdictions have pointed to questionable resource allocation (assessment of minimally significant projects and effects while the implications of major
  • 53.
    34 Sustainability Assessment undertakingsare unexamined), the proliferation of overlapping and divergent assessment regimes, tolerance of poor quality work (assessment reports that are huge in volume but weak in analytical quality), unnecessarily lengthy reviews and hearings, and weak efforts to learn from experience (general failure to undertake monitoring of actual effects and compliance with commitments). A few governments, usually ones that are closely aligned with economic development interests, have chosen to weaken core assessment provisions or exempt more undertakings from them. Most have responded more directly to specific inefficiency problems. As we have seen, many jurisdictions are codifying expectations (to reduce process confusion), putting more emphasis on strategic level assessments (to resolve or simplify project level issues), streamlining application to less worrisome projects, and strengthening post- approval monitoring. Other common efficiency initiatives include negotiating arrangements for process harmonization where obligations overlap, facilitating issue scoping (focusing assessment attention on the major concerns), and introducing review timelines. Despite these efforts, efficiency challenges will no doubt continue to in- crease. Part of this will simply reflect the expansion of assessment obligations to cover more issues and undertakings. An additional emerging factor centres on process integration.As assessment spreads into the strategic level and begins more commonly to address cumulative effects across the full socio-economic, cultural and biophysical range, its role in overall decision making inevitably shifts. Initially, assessment work produced findings that were to be integrated into conventional decision making. Gradually, especially with critical attention to purposes and alternatives, it assumed more importance as an influence on basic planning assumptions and options. Now assessment is itself becoming a vehicle for more integrated deliberations and is closer to the core of decision making. This raises new questions about how assessment processes should cooperate, link or merge with other more traditional planning, evaluation and approval processes. Adopted beyond assessment regimes Experience has taught that serious attention to environmental considerations does not happen reliably without some powerful incentive. But that incentive does not have to be environmental assessment legislation. Assessment require- ments can and have been incorporated in a wide variety of other statutes to cover undertakings not otherwise subject to assessment obligations, or to add environmental components to existing processes. Examples in Canada include sector-based laws governing federal decisions on export subsidies, provincial licensing of mines and sand and gravel pits, and municipal approval of sub- division developments adjacent to environmentally sensitive areas. Some additional applications have been driven largely by non-legislative factors. Urban planning and mining project development provide illustrative cases. In North America, especially in urban and urbanizing regions subject to substantial growth pressures, planning authorities face increasingly costly urban sprawl and persistent political pressures for more healthy, green and
  • 54.
    Assessment 35 liveable communities.Theplanners have responded in part by adopting versions of biophysical and socio-economic assessment to assist decision making at many levels – from evaluations of broad development scenarios to preparation of renewal plans for particular properties and neighbourhoods. The mining industry globally too has concluded that it needs to give much more careful and better integrated attention to biophysical and socio-economic concerns. Its motivation is essentially economic. A series of major environmental cata- strophes, mostly resulting from tailings dam failures, and widely reported cases of local communities rejecting proposed mining operations, or sabotaging existing ones, has increased mining costs, added to the difficulties of raising project financing, and damaged the industry’s reputation enough to make it harder for mining companies to recruit new talent.6 The rising importance of such motivations may not reduce needs for legislated assessment processes. But it does indicate wider recognition of the practical value of greater environmental awareness, and the usefulness of en- vironmental assessment approaches as means to this end. Ambitious In the Voisey’s Bay case, environmental assessment decision making centred on demonstration of ‘a positive overall contribution’ to long-term community and ecological gains. Such an objective is a long step from the mitigation of significant negative effects – the prevailing aim of most early assessment processes and of many still today. Arguably, the more ambitious target was at least discernable in the initial NEPA language. It is also implied in assess- ment processes that require critical comparative evaluation of purposes and alternatives. These should, in theory, lead to the selection of options that are not merely acceptable but, relative to the alternatives, most in accord with broad public interests. In practice, the expansion of assessment ambitions from acceptability to sustainability has been slow and fitful. It also remains far from complete. Consideration of alternatives has not always been required and when it has, authorities have often retained the acceptability test, seeking to identify and approve a clearly acceptable option but not necessarily the best one. This is understandable when assessments look only at the environmental factors. But as the interdependence of factors becomes more fully appreciated, and as citizens demand more scope in the process most open to them, environmental assessment has gradually become a vehicle for more comprehensive and better integrated analyses. In many places it has been extended to cover the strategic and project levels, cumulative as well as individual effects, socio-economic and cultural as well as the biophysical considerations, traditional knowledge and community preferences as well as technical calculations, and post-approval adaptations as well as pre-approval planning. Together these give assessment a bigger role and move it closer to the centre of decision making. High ambitions come with this territory. But they also come with the larger world of challenge and change in which concerns about sustainability have emerged.The trends observed in the maturation of environmental assessment
  • 55.
    Other documents randomlyhave different content
  • 56.
    to the lawby the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God" (chap. vii. 4). But not only are death and resurrection the only possible means by which a sinner can escape the condemnation of the law and the tyrannical sway of sin, they are also the only means by which he can acceptably serve God. The flesh, or carnal mind, cannot serve God, for it is not subject to His law, neither indeed can be; therefore we infer that the sources of that life by which we can serve God are not to be found in the flesh, but only in union with the Lord Jesus in resurrection. "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered" (John xv. 6). Consequently, when God would bring Levi into a place of nearness and service to Himself, He shows him to us as passing through those circumstances which, in the clearest manner, illustrate death and resurrection; for they are taken instead of those that were as dead, but who escaped through the death of the lamb: and then, having thus passed through the circumstances of death, they are told in chap. viii. to "put off the old man and put on the new"—for that is the meaning of the "washing of water," and "shaving of the flesh," etc. This is in full keeping with what the apostle states to his son Titus: "For we ourselves also were sometime foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour" (Titus iii. 3-6). But in order that we may have a clearer and more comprehensive view of the ground upon which the Levites stood before God, I would refer, in as brief and concise a manner as I can, to the offerings connected with their consecration: these were the burnt offering, the meat offering, and the sin offering; all, as we shall see, showing out the Lord Jesus Christ in His varied aspects.[7] And first, the burnt offering: the principles unfolded in this offering are
  • 57.
    brought out inthe first chapter of Leviticus, where we read, "If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord" (ver. 3). Here, then, is something real for the soul to feed on and rejoice in. We have in the burnt offering the Lord Jesus Christ, in all His fulness and perfections, as offering Himself "without spot to God," and also as accepted before God for us. In this He was found to be "a male without blemish;" so much so, that the One in whose sight the very heavens are not clean, could say, "In whom I am well pleased;" and again, "Mine elect, in whom My soul delighteth." But further, this unblemished offering presents Himself voluntarily at the door of the tabernacle. "No man," says the Lord Jesus, speaking of His life, "taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again: this commandment have I received of My Father." And truly, in tracing the way of the blessed Jesus through this defiled world, we can recognize this feature of the burnt offering in a very striking manner. From first to last His course was marked with all the steadiness and divine uninterrupted calmness of true devotedness to God. The billows of dark and fierce temptation might roll and toss themselves with a rage and fury which would have crushed one less than God. The devil might stir up all his deadly malice against Him; man might display all his enmity—enmity which could only be outdone by the eternal friendship of this devoted One. His disciples, moreover, may refuse to "watch with Him one hour." Death may arm himself with all his ghastly terrors, and pour out a cup mixed with hell's bitterest ingredients; and further, display his deadly sting in all its infernal keenness and power to wound. The grave may conjure up all its unutterable horrors to make one grand struggle for "victory," but all in vain. The answer of this unblemished voluntary offering to all these was, "My meat and my drink is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work." He had His eye upon one object, and that was "the joy that was set before Him." He looked forward to the
  • 58.
    moment when Hewould be able to draw forth from the inexhaustible treasuries of eternal love the rich and princely fruits of His hard-bought victory, and pour them forth in divine profusion upon the "travail of His soul;" even the Church, which He loved, and purchased with His own precious blood. He eagerly anticipated "the morning without clouds," when, surrounded by the myriads of His ransomed brethren, He will sound forth in everlasting strains the mighty answer to all the foul aspersions of the enemy as to the love of God toward the sinner. All these attractions, I say, He had before Him, and therefore He marched onward in the greatness of His strength; "He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem." Lord Jesus Christ, invigorate our poor cold hearts to sound forth the eternal honors of Thine adorable name; and may our lives be more and more the decided evidence of our hearts—love to Thee, for "Thou alone art worthy!" All this is surely most blessed for us; but, blessed as it is, it is not all; there are other strokes from the pencil of the Divine Artist, calculated, in the highest degree, to captivate our spiritual tastes, yea, more, to feed our souls. "He shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him, to make atonement for him" (ver. 4). Here, then, is grace! Levi, the self-willed, cruel, fierce, and blood-shedding Levi, is accepted in all the perfectness and acceptableness of this "unblemished male" before God: whatever of excellency, whatever of value, whatever of purity, God beheld in this offering, that did He likewise behold in Levi as "accepted in the offering." Thus, look at Levi apart from the offering, and you will find him such that God could not come into his assembly: but look at him as in the offering, and you find him, through grace, as pure and as perfect as the offering itself. Nothing could surpass this most excellent grace. The grace that could take up a sinner from such a pit of corruption as that in which Levi lay groveling, and lead him into such high elevation, deserves the highest note of praise; and, blessed be God, it shall, ere long, have it from all who, like Levi, have felt its sacred power.
  • 59.
    However, we mustnot enter too minutely into the detail of this burnt offering, and there are just two points further to which I will refer. The first is presented to us in ver. 6: "And he shall flay the burnt offering, and cut it into his pieces." Here we see at once to what a process of strict, jealous and uncompromising scrutiny the Lord Jesus exposed Himself in offering Himself before God. It was not enough that the animal should be APPARENTLY "without blemish," for the skin, or outward surface, might look very well, and at the same time the offering be not at all fit for God's altar; therefore the outward surface must be removed, in order that this offering may be examined in all its sinews, joints and veins, and thus be found, as to the springs of action, the structure of his frame, and the source and channels of the life that animated him, a perfectly unblemished offering. But further, "he shall cut it into his pieces," i.e., take the offering asunder, and examine its various parts, in order that it may not only form a perfect whole, but that each distinct joint may be found perfect. Thus, in whatever aspect we look at the Lord Jesus, we get divine perfection. He could say to God, "Thou hast tried Me, and shalt find nothing;" and God could answer, "I am well pleased." He could say of the devil, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me;" and the devil could reply, "I know Thee, who thou art, the Holy One of God." He could say to men, "Which of you convinceth Me of sin?" and man could answer, "Truly this was a righteous man." Thus, I say, our divine burnt-offering, who voluntarily presented Himself at God's altar, and there poured forth His most precious blood, was found, in every feature and in every aspect, pure and perfect in the very highest sense of the word, and confessed so by heaven, earth, and hell.[8] All, therefore, having been found pure, and fit for God's altar, it becomes the happy place of Aaron's sons to send up before God the sweet savor of this most acceptable offering, as we read: "And the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire upon the altar, and lay the wood in order upon the fire. And the priests, Aaron's sons, shall lay the parts, the head and the fat, in order upon the wood that is on the fire which is upon the altar. But his inwards and his legs shall he
  • 60.
    wash in water:and the priest shall burn all on the altar, to be a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savor unto the Lord" (vers. 7-9). The fat of the offering was God's peculiar part; no one could with impunity touch that; yea, the punishment for so doing was the same as for eating blood; i.e., it was as wrong and as daringly presumptuous for a man to intrude upon God's portion of the offering as it was for him to assume life in his own right, which latter was an open denial of the state of death and ruin in which he was by reason of sin. God, then, I say, claimed the fat. He alone could feed upon the inward excellency and peerless perfections of Jesus, just as in the case of the unmeasured ointment in Exodus xxx., where we see, as well as in the above cited passage, that the infinite mind of God could alone appreciate the infinite value of Christ. But we find the head burnt in connection with the fat, showing us, I suppose, that both the hidden energies of the Lord Jesus and the seat of His understanding were equally suited to be a sweet savor unto God. Lastly, the inwards and legs were washed and burned upon the altar, showing us that the secret thoughts, purposes and counsels of the Lord Jesus, as well as the outward development of these in His walk, were perfectly pure and fit for the altar: and, in connection with this last point, one cannot help dwelling with comfort upon the marvelous contrast between the Lord Jesus and His poor people. How often may our outward walk, typified by "the legs," appear quite right in the eye of man, when, at the same time, perhaps, in the eye of God, our "inwards" may be full of gross impurity. But it is well for us that such was not the case with our great Head: in Him all was alike, for all was pure. May our hearts, dear Christian reader, enter more and more fully, under the teaching of the Spirit, into the intrinsic excellency of the Lord Jesus; and may we be enabled daily, standing at the altar before God, to send up in His presence the savor of all this! As to the meat offering, we need not enter minutely into it. It was composed, as we know, of that which sprang from the earth, and such as aptly shadowed out "the Man Christ Jesus," the frankincense thereon marking the entire devotedness of all the actings of Christ's
  • 61.
    human nature toGod His Father. Nothing was done by Him to meet man's eye, or man's approbation; nothing was done to produce mere effect; no, all was directly before God. Whether we trace the footsteps of the Lord Jesus, while, for thirty years, He was subject to His parents at home; or while, for three years, He was engaged in public ministry amongst the Jews—all was alike: all showed forth the pure frankincense that marked Him, in all things, as God's peculiar and devoted servant. We may observe further that this meat offering was baked with oil, and anointed with oil; thus showing forth, I suppose, the incarnate Son of God, who was first "conceived of the Holy Ghost" (Matt. i. 20), and then "anointed with the Holy Ghost" (Matt. iii. 16; Acts x. 38). We now come to speak of the sin offering, and may the Lord graciously refresh our spirits while dwelling for a little on the blessed principles unfolded therein. The sin offering is brought before us in Leviticus iv., from whence we may select one case for our present purpose. "If the priest that is anointed do sin according to the sin of the people, then let him bring for his sin which he hath sinned a young bullock without blemish unto the Lord for a sin offering. And he shall bring the bullock unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord, and shall lay his hand upon the bullock's head and kill the bullock before the Lord" (vers. 3, 4). The reader will, no doubt, observe a marked difference between the above passage and that in which the burnt offering was referred to; and the difference so far mainly consists in this, that in the last cited passage the words "voluntary will" are not found, and this was quite to be looked for. In the burnt offering we were enabled to recognize the Lord Jesus Christ offering Himself voluntarily before God, in which aspect of His blessed work He could say, "No man taketh it (My life) from Me, I lay it down of Myself." In other words, He offered Himself "of His own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord." But in the sin offering it is quite different: "He shall be brought" and "He shall be killed;" i.e., instead of coming, He shall be brought; and instead of
  • 62.
    laying down Hislife of Himself, His life shall be taken from Him. These, I say, are important distinctions, and such as arise from the very nature of the two offerings. In the burnt offering the Lord Jesus is seen offering Himself in all the unblemished perfectness which belonged to Him; and in this His soul had great delight, because He was presenting that before God which was so acceptable to Him. But in the sin offering the Lord Jesus is seen standing in connection with that which His pure and spotless soul must have deeply abhorred and keenly resented—abhorred and resented, indeed, in a way of which we cannot form the faintest idea. He is seen, in a word, as standing in connection with sin: yea, more, as "made sin" (2 Cor. v. 21). Thus it was that the prophet, through the Spirit, viewed Him when he said, "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all" (Isa. liii. 5, 6). Now I believe that by looking at the two offerings in connection we get a very deep and wondrous view of sin's dark and dreadful enormity in the sight of God: for sin in this point of view appears sinful just according to the measure of Christ's perfectness in God's account. If in the burnt offering we were enabled to see that such was the beauty and excellency of Christ that His whole man could go up before God as a sweet savor, and that God could "find nothing in Him" but perfection, as a necessary consequence then we must see in the sin offering the blackness and heinousness of sin, which could oblige God to hide His face from "His elect, in whom His soul delighted." This brings us to the next point connected with the sin offering, viz., "He shall lay his hand upon the bullock's head" (ver. 4). Here we have at once the secret of the deep and profound mystery of the three hours' darkness. It was before observed that God had to hide His face from the Lord Jesus on the cross, but how are we to account for such a mysterious
  • 63.
    circumstance? Simply bythe words, "he (the sinner) shall lay his hand upon the bullock's head." If, in contemplating the burnt offering, we were struck by the fact that all the perfectness of the offering was communicated to the "fierce and cruel" Levi, so here we are called upon to adore the grace that devised the wondrous plan whereby that could be effected, which was by imputing to the offering all the sin and defilement of Levi, and dealing with the sin of Levi in the person of the sin offering, in order that Levi himself might be dealt with in the person of the burnt offering. And all this, be it observed, is conveyed to us in the action of "the laying on of hands." This action was performed in both cases; i.e., Levi laid his hands on the head of the burnt-offering, and Levi laid his hands on the head of the sin offering. As to the act, it was the same in each case; but oh, how different the results! they were, in a word, as different as life and death, heaven and hell, sin and holiness. In fact, we cannot conceive a wider contrast than that which is observable in the results of this action, to all appearance the same in each case. We may, perhaps, be able to form some idea of it by considering that the act of imposition of hands was at once the imputation of sin to one "who knew no sin," but was "holy, harmless, undefiled," and whose very nature abhorred all sin. And, on the other hand, it was the imputation of perfect righteousness to one who was by nature "a cruel, fierce, and self-willed murderer."[9] Furthermore, the act of imposition of hands obliged the One who from before all worlds dwelt in the bosom of the Father to travel far away into the cold and barren regions of death and darkness, where the genial and life-giving rays of His Father's countenance, which He alone could truly appreciate, had never penetrated; and standing upon the confines of which, He cried out, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me!" and again, when these gloomy regions, with their ten thousand unutterable horrors, burst upon His spotless soul, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" And, on the other hand, it enabled the one who dwelt in "the habitations of cruelty," into whose "assembly" God could not come, to stand in the very blaze of the light of God's throne. These considerations, I say, may
  • 64.
    perhaps assist ourconceptions in some measure upon this astounding truth. Now, the apostle states the same truth in the didactic language of the New Testament when he says, "He (God) hath made Him to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor. v. 21). That is, He hath made the One whose perfectness is seen in the burnt offering to be judged as sin, and treated as such in the sin offering, in order that we, who deserved the treatment of the sin offering, might be treated as accepted in the burnt offering. I would also observe here that there is much force and value in the word "made:" it shows out most fully that righteousness was just as foreign to the nature of man as sin was to the nature of Christ. Man had no righteousness of his own, or, in other words, he knew no righteousness, and therefore he had to be "made" righteousness. Christ "knew no sin," and therefore had to be "made sin" in order that we might be made righteousness, even "the righteousness of God in Him." But further, we learn from the passage to which we are referring that the Lord Jesus having been "made sin for us," is not more real, not more true, not more palpable, than that the believer is "made righteousness in Him." If there be any truth or reality in the record concerning the cross and passion of the Lord Jesus, then, it is plain that the moment a soul acts faith upon Christ in His death and resurrection, that moment he is accepted in all the acceptableness of Christ. His consciousness of this is, of course, quite another question: a truth and the realization of a truth are quite distinct. The measure of our realization will be in proportion to the measure of our communion with God. If we are satisfied to move at a cold and heartless distance from God, our consciousness of the power and value of any truth will, as a consequence, be meagre and shallow: while, therefore, it is not to be forgotten that the root and source of all life and communion is the truth stated in the passage to which we are alluding, it is manifest that the more we walk in communion with Him who gives us the life, the more shall we enjoy
  • 65.
    both Himself andthe life which He gives. Dear Christian reader, let us pray that the cross and passion of the Lord Jesus may sink so deeply into our hearts that we may have on the one hand such a view of the loathsomeness of sin as shall lead us to abhor it with a holy abhorrence "all the days of our life," and on the other hand such a view of the amazing love of God as shall constrain us "to live not unto ourselves but unto Him who died for us and rose again." Thus, then, we see that the laying on of hands shows forth nothing less than a change of places on the part of the sinner and the Saviour. The sinner was out of the favor of God: "O my soul, come not thou into their habitation." The Saviour was in the favor of God, "daily His delight," dwelling in His bosom from before all worlds. But the amazing plan of redemption shows us the Saviour out of the favor of God, and God forsaking Him, while at the same time a condemned malefactor is brought at once into the very presence of a loving and pardoning God. Amazing, deep, inconceivable, eternal love! unfathomable wisdom! love which soars far aloft above the most gigantic conception! wisdom which has written everlasting contempt upon all the power and base designs of the great enemy of God and man! For, ere Levi could be introduced into the enjoyment of the "covenant of life and peace" (Mal. ii. 5), a spotless Victim must stand the shock of the king of terrors and all his thunders. But who is this Victim? We ask not, "Who is this King of glory?" but Who is this Victim? The answer to this question it is which gives to the plan of redemption its grandest and most divine characteristic. The Victim was none less than the Son of God Himself! Yes! here was love, here was wisdom. The Son of God had to stoop because man had exalted himself. And surely we may say, If God had not entered upon the work, all, all were lost, and that forever. No mere mortal could have entered into that dark scene where sin was being atoned for; no one but the Son of God could have sustained the weight which, in the garden and on the cross, rested on the shoulders of the "One that was mighty." And here we might refer to the Lord's language to His disciples when He was about to enter into conflict with the adversary: "Hereafter I will not
  • 66.
    talk much withyou; for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me" (John xiv. 30). Why could He not "talk much with them?" Because He was just going to enter upon the work of atonement, in which they could do nothing, because the prince of this world, had he come, would have had plenty in them; but then, the moment He, as it were, in spirit passes through that sorrowful hour, He says, "Arise, let us go hence;" i.e., although we could not move a single step in the achievement of the victory, yet we could enjoy the fruits of it; and not only so, but display the fruits of it in a life of service and fruit-bearing to God, which forms the subject of teaching in the next chapter. Here, then, is what gives peace to the awakened conscience of the sinner. God Himself has done the work. God has triumphed over all man's wickedness and rebellion, and now every soul who feels his need of pardon and peace can draw near in faith and holy confidence and reap the fruits of this wondrous triumph of grace and mercy. And now, dear reader, if you have not as yet made these wondrous fruits your own; if you have not as yet cast the whole burden of your sins on God's eternal love as seen in the cross, I ask you, Why do you stand aloof? Why do you doubt? Perhaps you feel the hardness of your heart, perhaps you are ready to say that you feel yourself even now unmoved by the contemplation of all the deep sorrow endured by the Son of God. Well, what of that? If it be a question of your guilt, you may go much farther than even this, for in that hour of which we have been speaking you stood unmoved, looked on with cold and heartless indifference, while all creation owned the wondrous fact. Yea, more, you yourself crucified the incarnate God, you spat in His face, and plunged your spear into His side. Do you shrink back and say, "Oh, not so bad!" I say it was the act of the human heart; and if you have a human heart, it was your act. But the Scriptures at once decide this point, for it is written, "For of a truth against Thy holy child Jesus, whom Thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel,
  • 67.
    were gathered together"(Acts iv. 27). This passage, I say, proves that all the world were representatively around the cross. But why insist on this? Simply to show forth the riches of the grace of God, which can only be seen in all its effulgent lustre in the cross; and therein it is seen mounting far above all man's sin and malignant rebellion; for when man, in the fiendish pride of his heart, could plunge his spear into the side of incarnate Deity, God's cry was— Blood! and through that blood "remission of sins, beginning at Jerusalem." Thus, "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound," and "grace REIGNS through righteousness by Jesus Christ our Lord." Enough, I trust, has been said to show the grounds upon which the Levites stood before God. These grounds were free and eternal grace—grace exercised toward them through the blood, which is the only channel through which grace can flow. Man has been found to be utterly ruined before God, and therefore it must be a question either of salvation through free grace, or eternal damnation; for "by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh living be justified." But then, while man is by nature utterly unfit to render anything like an acceptable righteousness or service to God, yet, when God gives us new life through grace, He, of course, looks for the development of that life. In other words, grace brings the soul into circumstances of responsibility and service, and it is as we meet those circumstances that God is glorified in us and our souls grow in the knowledge of God. Thus it was in the case of the leper: up to a certain point in his history he had nothing to do, the priest was the sole actor. But when the priest had done his part; when, by virtue of the blood which had been shed, he had pronounced him "clean," the leper had then to begin to "wash himself" (Lev. xiv. 8). Now we shall find that the history of Levi develops all these principles most fully. We have hitherto been engaged with Levi's condition and character by nature and also the wondrous remedy devised by grace to meet him in his lost estate, and not only to save him from that estate but also to raise him up to an elevation which could never have entered
  • 68.
    into the heartof man, even into the very tabernacle of God. We shall now, with God's blessing and grace, proceed to examine that high elevation to which we have referred, and also the service which it involved, as put before us in Numbers iii. "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Bring the tribe of Levi near, and present them before Aaron the priest, that they may minister unto him. And they shall keep his charge, and the charge of the whole congregation before the tabernacle of the congregation, to do the service of the tabernacle. And they shall keep all the instruments of the tabernacle of the congregation, and the charge of the children of Israel, to do the service of the tabernacle. And thou shalt give the Levites unto Aaron, and to his sons: they are wholly given unto him out of the children of Israel" (vers. 5-9). Here, then, God's marvelous purposes of grace toward Levi fully open before us, and truly marvelous they are indeed. We see that the sacrifices were but a means to an end; but both the means and the end were in every way worthy of each other. The means were, in one word, "death and resurrection," and all included therein. The end was, nearness to God, and all included therein. Looking at Levi by nature, there could not be any point farther removed from God than that at which he stood; but grace in exercise, through the blood, could lift him up out of that ruin in which he stood, and "bring him nigh," yea, bring him into association with the great head of the priestly family, there to serve in the tabernacle. Thus, we read, "You hath He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.... But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved), and hath raised us up together, and
  • 69.
    made us sittogether in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph. ii. 1- 6). And again, "But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometime were afar off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ" (ver. 13). When nature is left free to work, it will ever go as far away from God as it can. This is true since the day when man said, "I heard Thy voice, and I was afraid and I hid myself" (Gen. iii. 10). But when grace is left free and sovereign to work, it will ever bring the soul "nigh." Thus it was with Levi. He was by nature "black as the tents of Kedar;" by grace, "comely as the curtains of Solomon:" by nature he was "joined" in a covenant of murder; by grace "joined" in a covenant of "life and peace." The former, because he was "fierce and cruel;" the latter, because he feared and was afraid of the Lord's name. (Comp. Gen. xlix. 6, 7; Mal. ii. 5.) Furthermore, Levi was by nature conversant with the "instruments of cruelty;" by grace, with "the instruments of God's tabernacle:" by nature God could not come into Levi's assembly; by grace, Levi is brought into God's assembly: by nature, "his feet were swift to shed blood;" by grace, swift to follow the movements of the cloud through the desert, in real, patient service to God. In a word, Levi had become a "new creature," and "old things had passed away," and therefore he was no longer to "live unto himself," but unto Him who had done such marvelous things for him in grace. I would further observe, on the last cited passage, that the Levites are, in the first place, declared to be God's property, and then they are "wholly given unto Aaron." Thus we read: "Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me, and they have kept Thy word" (John xvii. 6). And again, "All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me" (John vi. 37). I would now look a little into the detail of their service, in which, I doubt not, we shall find much to edify and refresh us. We find that although the whole tribe of Levi were, as to standing, "joined with Aaron," yet, as to service, they were divided into classes. "All had not the same office;" and this is what we might
  • 70.
    have expected, for,although in the matter of life and standing they were all on a level, yet, in the development of that life, and in the manifestation of the power of that standing, they would, no doubt, display different measures; and not only so, but there would also be seen an assignment to each of distinct position and line of service, which would serve to distinguish him from his brethren in a very marked and decided manner. And here I would observe that I know of nothing connected with the walk and service of the Christian which demands more attention than this point to which I am now alluding, viz., unity in the matter of life and standing, and at the same time the greatest variety in the manifestation of character and in the line of service. A due attention to this important point would save us from much of that "unwise" comparing of ourselves and our service with the persons and services of others, which is most unholy, and, as a consequence, most unhealthy.[10] And not only would it lead thus to beneficial results in a negative point of view, it would also have a most happy effect in producing and cultivating originality and uniqueness of Christian character. But while there was this diversity in the line of service amongst the Levites, it is also to be remembered that there was manifested unity. The Levites were one people, and seen as such; they were "joined" with Aaron in the work of the tabernacle; moreover, THEY HAD ONE STANDARD, round which they all rallied, and that was "the tabernacle of the congregation," the well known type of Christ in His character and offices. And, indeed, this was one of the ends which God had in view in calling out the Levites by His grace from amongst the people of Israel; it was that they should stand in marked association with Aaron and his sons, and in that association bear the tabernacle and all pertaining thereto on their shoulders, through the barren wilderness around. [11] God did not call out the Levites merely that they might escape the sad effects of God's absence from their assembly; or, in other words, God had more than THEIR blessing and security in view in His dealings with them. He designed that they should serve in the
  • 71.
    tabernacle, and thusbe to His praise and glory. We shall, however, I trust, see this principle upon which I am dwelling in a clearer and stronger point of view as we proceed in our subject. We find that Levi had three sons, viz., "Gershon, and Kohath, and Merari" (Num. iii. 17). These formed the heads of the three classes alluded to, and we shall find that the nature of the service of each was such as of necessity to impart that tone of character signified by their very name. Thus: "Of Gershon was the family of the Libnites and the family of the Shimites: these are the families of the Gershonites. And the chief of the house of the father of the Gershonites shall be Eliasaph, the son of Lael. And the charge of the sons of Gershon in the tabernacle of the congregation shall be the tabernacle and the tent, the covering thereof, and the hanging for the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and the hangings of the court, and the curtain for the door of the court, which is by the tabernacle, and by the altar round about, and the cords of it for all the service thereof" (vers. 21-26). Here was Gershon's work, to carry through the waste and howling wilderness the tabernacle and its coverings. This was indeed true Levite service, but it was most blessed service, and its antitype in the Church now is what we should much seek after, because it is that which alone puts the Christian into his right place in the world, i.e., the place of a STRANGER. There could be but little attractiveness in the rams' skins and badgers' skins; but, little as there was, it was, nevertheless, the high privilege of the Gershonite to take them all up and bear them cheerfully on his shoulders across the trackless sands. What, then, are we to understand by the covering of the tabernacle? I believe, in a word, it shadowed out the character of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was that which would meet the eye. There might be, and were, other services among the Levites of a very blessed nature, but surely it was most elevated service to carry through the desert that which so strikingly prefigured the character of Christ.
  • 72.
    This is whatmakes the saint "a stranger" (as the name Gershon imports) in the world. If we are walking in the manifestation of the character of the Lord Jesus, and in so doing realize our place as in the wilderness, we may rest assured it will impart a very decided tone of strangership to our character in the world. And oh, would that we knew much more of this. The Church has laid down the rams' skins and badgers' skins, and with them the Gershonite character: in other words, the Church has ceased to walk in the footsteps of her rejected Lord and Master, and the consequence has been that instead of being the wearied and worn stranger, as she should be, treading the parched and sterile desert, with the burden on the shoulders, she has settled herself down in the green places of the world and made herself at home. But there was another feature of the stranger character shadowed out in the curtain, viz., anticipation. This was most blessed—God dwelling in curtains showed plainly that neither God nor the ark of His strength had found a resting-place, but were journeying on towards "a rest that remained." And how could there be a rest in the desert? There were no rivers and brooks there—no old corn there—no milk and honey there. True, the smitten rock sent forth its refreshing streams to meet their need, and heaven sent down their daily bread; but all this was not Canaan. They were still in the desert, eating wilderness food and drinking wilderness water, and it was Gershon's holy privilege to carry upon his shoulders that which in the fullest manner expressed all this, viz., THE CURTAIN. "Thus saith the Lord, Shalt thou build Me an house for Me to dwell in? Whereas I have not dwelt in any house since the time that I brought up the children of Israel out of Egypt, even to this day, but have walked in a tent and in a tabernacle" (2 Sam. vii. 5, 6). Here, too, we have sadly failed. The Church grew weary of the curtain, and wished to build a house before the time; she grew weary of "walking in a tent," and earnestly desired to "dwell in a house."
  • 73.
    And truly wehave all to watch and pray against this disposition to grow weary of our Gershonite character. There is nothing so trying to nature as continual labor in a state of expectancy; our hearts love rest and fruition, and therefore nothing but the continual remembrance that "our sufficiency is of God" can at all sustain us in our Gershon or stranger condition. Let us therefore remember that we bear on our shoulders the curtains, and have beneath our feet the sand of the desert, above our heads the pillar of cloud, and before us "the land of rest" clothed in never-withering green, and, both as a stimulus and a warning, let us remember that "He that endureth to the end THE SAME shall be saved."[12] We shall next consider the Merarite feature of character; for, although the family of Merari does not stand next in order in the chapter, yet there is a kindredness of spirit, as it were, arising out of the very nature of their service, that would link them together in the mind. But, not only is there this intimate connection between the services of these two classes of Levites, which would lead us to link them together thus, the Lord Himself presents them to us in marked unity of service, for we read, "And the Kohathites set forward bearing the sanctuary; and the other (i.e., the Gershonites and the Merarites) did set up the tabernacle against they came" (Num. x. 21). Here, then, we see that it was the great business of these two families to pass onward through the desert in holy companionship, bearing with them, wherever they went, "the tabernacle," and, moreover, the tabernacle as looked at in its character of outward manifestation or testimony; which would, as a matter of course, put those who carried it thus into a place of very laborious discipleship. "And under the custody and charge of the sons of Merari shall be the boards of the tabernacle, and the bars thereof, and the pillars
  • 74.
    thereof, and thesockets thereof, and all the vessels thereof, and all that serveth thereto, and the pillars of the court round about, and their sockets, and their pins, and their cords" (chap. iii. 36, 37). Here, then, was what Merari had to do: he had to take his place here or there, according to the movement of the cloud, and set up the boards of the tabernacle in their sockets of silver—and all this, be it remembered, upon the sand of the desert.[13] Could anything be more opposed to another than the nature of all that Merari had to set up was to the waste and howling wilderness around? What could be more unlike than silver and barren sand? But Merari might not shrink from all this; no, his language was, when he had arrived at a spot in the desert at which the cloud halted, "I am come to set up the patterns of things in heaven in the very midst of all the desolation and misery of the wilderness around." All this was most laborious, and would, no doubt, impart to the character of Merari a tone of sadness or sorrow which was at once expressed in his name, which means "sorrow." And surely the antitype of all this in the Church now will fully confirm what has been stated about the character of Merari. Let any one take his stand firmly and decidedly in the world for Christ—let him penetrate into those places where "the world" is really seen in its vigor—let him oppose himself, firm as a rock, to the deep and rapid tide of worldliness, and there let him begin to set up "the sockets of silver," and, rest assured of it, he will find such a course attended with very much sorrow and bitterness of soul; in a word, he will realize it to be a path in which the cross is to be taken up "daily," and not only taken up, but borne. Now, if any further proof were needed of the above interpretation, we have a most striking one in the fact that there are but very few of the laborious Merarite character to be found; and why is this? Simply because the exhibition of such a character will ever be attended with very much labor and sorrow to nature, and nature loves ease, and therefore human nature never could be a Merarite; nothing will make us true
  • 75.
    Merarites but deepcommunion with Him who was "the Man of sorrows." There is something in the service of Gershon from which one does not shrink so much as from that of Merari. For what had Gershon to do? He had to place the curtains and badgers' skins over the boards which had been already set up by his laborious and sorrowful brother. And just so now: if a laborious servant of God has gone to a place where hitherto the world and Satan have reigned supreme, and there raised a testimony for Christ, it will be comparatively easy for another to go and walk on in the simple manifestation of Christian character, which would of itself put him into the place of "a stranger." But, although nature may assume the character of a misanthropist, yet nothing but grace can make us Merarites, and the true Merarite is the true philanthropist, because he introduces that which alone can bless; and the very fact that a Merarite should have to take a place of sorrow is a most convincing proof that the world is an evil place. There was no need of a Merarite in Canaan, nor a Gershonite either: for the Merarite was happy there, and the Gershonite at home. But the world is not the Levite's home, and therefore if any will carry the curtains, he must be a stranger; and if any will carry the sockets and boards, he must be a man of sorrow; for when He who was a true Gershonite and a true Merarite came into the world He was emphatically the Man of sorrows, who had not where to lay His head. However, if the Gershonite and the Merarite had to occupy a place in which they endured not a little of "the burden and heat of the day," yet the Lord graciously met them in that with a very rich reward, for "He is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love," and therefore, if they had to labor and toil amongst their brethren, they were blessedly ministered to by their brethren. Thus we read concerning the offerings of the princes: "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Take it of them, that they may be to do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation; and thou shalt give them unto
  • 76.
    the Levites, toevery man according to his service. And Moses took the wagons and the oxen and gave them unto the Levites. Two wagons and four oxen he gave unto the sons of Gershon, according to their service. And four wagons and eight oxen he gave unto the sons of Merari according unto their service, under the hand of Ithamar the son of Aaron the priest. But unto the sons of Kohath he gave none, because the service of the sanctuary belonging unto them was that they should bear upon their shoulders" (Num. vii. 4- 9). Here we see that the service of Gershon and Merari was that which met the rich and blessed ministrations of their brethren. Grace had filled the hearts and affections of the princes, and not only filled but overflowed them, and in its overflow it was designed to refresh the spirits of the homeless Gershonite and sorrowful Merarite: on the other hand, the Kohathites had no part in these ministrations; and why? Because their service, as we shall see presently, was in itself a rich reward indeed. We see the very same doctrine taught in the case of the Levites generally, as contrasted with the priests, in chap. xviii., where we read: "And the Lord spake unto Aaron, Thou shalt have no inheritance in their land, neither shalt thou have any part among them: I am thy part and thine inheritance among the children of Israel" (ver. 20). On the other hand, He says of the Levites, "Behold, I have given the children of Levi all the tenth in Israel for an inheritance, for their service which they serve, even the service of the tabernacle of the congregation." And again, "Ye shall eat it in every place, ye and your households, for it is your reward for your service in the tabernacle of the congregation" (vers. 21, 31). Aaron occupied a position so truly elevated that any inheritance in the way of earthly things would have been to him most degrading; whereas the Levites (looked at in one aspect) had not this high standing, but had much hard labor; and consequently, while Aaron's
  • 77.
    very place andservice was "his reward," the Levites had to get a tenth for "their reward." We come now to consider the third and last division of the Levites, viz., the Kohathites, of whom we read, "The families of the sons of Kohath shall pitch on the side of the tabernacle southward. And the chief of the house of the father of the families of the Kohathites shall be Elizaphan the son of Uzziel. And their charge shall be the ark, and the table, and the candlestick, and the altars, and the vessels of the sanctuary wherewith they minister, and the hanging, and all the service thereof" (chap. iii. 29-31). We can now have no difficulty in understanding why it was that Kohath had no share in the ministrations of the princes. Gershon and Merari might need wagons and oxen to carry the boards, etc., but not so Kohath; his charge was too precious to be committed to any or aught but himself, and therefore it was his high and honored place to carry all upon his shoulders. What a privilege, for example, to be allowed to carry the ark, the table, or the golden candlestick! And would it not have argued an entire absence of ability to appreciate his elevated calling if he had sought for the assistance of oxen in his holy service? What, then, we ask, would have been the effect produced upon the character of Kohath by this his service? Would it not have imparted a very elevated tone thereto? Surely it would. What can be more elevated, at least as far as development of character in the world is concerned, than the display of that congregational spirit which is expressed in the name of Kohath? Should not Christians be found rebuking, by a real union in everything, man's oft-repeated attempt at forming associations for various purposes? And how can they effect that if it be not by gathering more closely around their common centre, Christ, in all the blessed fulness and variety of that Name? a fulness and variety typified by the varied furniture of the
  • 78.
    tabernacle, some ofthe most precious parts of which were designed to be borne on the shoulders of this favored division of the tribe of Levi. And surely we may safely assert that what would lead the saints now into more of the congregational spirit is just communion with Him whom the ark and table shadowed forth. If we were more conversant with Christ as the ark, covering in this scene of death, and, moreover, with the table of showbread, whereon stood the food of the priests—if, I say, we knew more of Christ in these blessed aspects of His character—we should not be as we are, a proverb and a byword by reason of our gross disunion. But, alas, as the Church grew weary of the curtains and the boards, and laid aside her Gershonite and Merarite character, so has she laid aside her Kohathite character, because she has ceased to carry the ark and the table upon her shoulder, and cast those precious pearls which were, through the grace of God, her peculiar property, to the swine, and thus has she lost her elevated character and position in the world. Thus, let us review those three grand features of character shown forth in the tribe of Levi. 1st. Strangership. "Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not." "Here we have no abiding city." "Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul."
  • 79.
    2d. Sorrow inthe world. "In the world ye shall have tribulation." "If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you." "I RECKON that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." "After that ye have suffered awhile, make you perfect"—"ye have need of patience"—"ye yourselves know that ye are appointed thereunto." "If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him." "These are they that came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." 3d. Union. "That they all may be one." "He should gather together in one the children of God that are scattered abroad." "That He might reconcile both unto God in ONE body by the cross." And here, again, I would request of my reader to bear in mind that, while there was this beautiful diversity in the character and line of service of the Levites, yet they were one people, and that manifestly—they were one in life, one in standing, one in calling, one in inheritance; and so should it be with Christians now. We are not to expect uniformity of opinion on every point, nor yet are we to look for a perfect correspondence in the line of service and development of life; but then the saints should be seen as one people—one in worship,[14] one in labor, one in object, one in sympathy; in a word, one in everything that belongs to them in common as the people of God. How sadly out of order it would have been for a Levite to call upon one of the uncircumcised of the nations around to assist him in carrying any part of the tabernacle! and yet we hear Christians now
  • 80.
    justifying and insistingupon the propriety of conduct not less disorderly, viz., calling upon the openly unconverted and profane to put their hands to the Lord's work. Thus we see that the Levites have become scattered, and have forsaken their posts. The Gershonite has refused to carry the curtains because he has become weary of the stranger condition; the Merarite has laid down the boards and sockets because he grew weary of bearing the cross, and the Kohathite has degraded his high and holy office by making it the common property of those who have not authority from God to put their hands thereunto. Thus the name of God is blasphemed among the heathen by us, and we do not "sigh and cry for the abominations" thus practiced, but lift up our heads in proud indifference as if it all were right, and as if the camp of God were moving onward in all heavenly order, under the guidance of the cloud, communicated by the silver trumpets. "My brethren, these things ought not so to be." May we walk more humbly before our God, and, while we mourn over the sad fact that "Overturn, overturn, overturn" has been written by the finger of God upon all human arrangements, let us remember that it is only "until He come whose right it is," and then all shall be set right forever, for God, in all things, shall be fully glorified through Jesus Christ. Thus, dear reader, have we followed Levi in his course; and oh, what a marvelous course has it been! a course, every step of which displays the visible marks of sovereign grace abounding over man's sin—grace, which led God to stoop from His throne in the heavens to visit "the habitations of cruelty," in order to lift a poor perishing sinner from thence, and bring him, through the purging power of the blood, into a place of marvelous blessing indeed, even into the very tabernacle of God, there to be employed about the instruments of God's house. We have found Levi to have been indeed the one who
  • 81.
    Welcome to ourwebsite – the perfect destination for book lovers and knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world, offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth. That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to self-development guides and children's books. More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading. Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and personal growth every day! ebookbell.com