Case Studies on Environmental Issues

Session Chair:

• Nick Hardman-Mountford, Principle Scientist, Oceans and Atmosphere, CSIRO

Session Co-Chair:

• Marc Lehmann, INPEX

Session Description:

Regulatory and social expectations on the environmental safety of development and operations present ongoing challenges for the resources sector.  Innovation in meeting these challenges offer the potential to streamline approval and compliance processes as well as reduce the capital investment and operating costs needed to mitigate safety risks to the environment.  This session presents three case studies on innovations in the resources sector aimed at more efficiently and effectively ensuring environmental safety.

Schedule:

Autonomous Platforms for Marine Environmental Monitoring and Big Data

Iain Parnum, Christine Erbe, Robert McCauley and Alexander Gavrilov, Centre for Marine Science and Technology, Curtin University, Bentley, Western Australia, 

Offshore and coastal development and operations increasingly require long-term and multi-variate environmental monitoring. Carrying out field measurements at multiple sites over long durations can be challenging for economic, technical and safety reasons. The amount of data that is collected as part of these ongoing monitoring efforts bears additional challenges. Autonomous platforms can provide benefits in terms of monitoring efficiency and productivity, long-term monitoring, sampling at multiple sites, cost reduction, and the reduction of the number of field personnel and their time in the field, hence increased health and safety. The Centre for Marine Science & Technology (CMST) uses a variety of autonomous platforms, including underwater acoustic recorders for long-term monitoring of the marine soundscape, marine fauna and ambient noise; and wave gliders for metocean monitoring. Case studies will be presented highlighting some of the state-of-the-art technology and latest research in these fields.

Bringing Environmental and Social Value Into Business Decision-Making

Dr, Paul Hardisty, CSIRO Flagship Director, Land and Water

The idea of bringing environmental and social value into business decision-making has been around a long time.  Since the 1970’s, academics and more enlightened business leaders have been talking about wanting to consider the negative impacts that business activities can have on society and the environment, and taking steps to assess, and if possible, reduce them.  Business can also create positive impacts for society, of course, and these too can be enhanced and celebrated.  This has led to the development and use of a wide range of systems and processes which are designed to help businesses achieve these broader goals of sustainability – balancing the “triple bottom line, environment, society, and economy.  Many such systems are based on multi-criteria type analysis, where various options are compared using qualitative ranking and scoring systems, expert panels and stakeholder opinion canvassing. However, the vast majority of these methods are qualitative and lack objectivity.  As a consequence they are easily manipulated, and are open to being used to justify decisions reached through other means, rather than to objectively select an optimal course of action.  Cost-benefit analysis has also been widely used, but almost exclusively in a traditional way that includes only those elements of the project which are priced within the market economy.  This narrow perspective means that anything for which there is not a market (most environmental and many social goods, for instance) are treated as externalities and effectively ignored.

Objective decision-making is not possible without a clear and practical definition of just what ‘sustainability’ means.  For many it means balancing the competing needs of society, the environment and the economy, objectively and rationally, over the life-cycle of the proposition. Electricity, for instance, brings huge benefits to society, including increases in life expectancy, access to information and education, and powering the industries which provide needed goods and services. But there are hidden costs (and some benefits) to power generation, across the life-cycle, which are not reflected in market prices, including the emission climate altering greenhouse gases (depending on the method of generation).  If we are not including external costs and benefits in energy decisions, true environmental, social and economic optima will elude us. True sustainability requires that all costs, regardless of who (or what) must bear them, are balanced against the benefits produced, not just to the proponent in the form of profits, but to society and the environment as a whole.  Put more quantitatively, to be sustainable, the full environmental, social and economic benefits of a proposition must exceed its environmental, social and economic costs, over its life-cycle. 

By adopting this broad and practical definition of sustainability and using a common unit of measure for all stakeholders’ concerns (money),  options can be compared objectively, and trade-offs between then can be assessed objectively, across a wide variety of factors and interests.   In addition, options can be compared for their sustainability under various conditions, in different applications, and at various scales.  Emissions of climate-altering greenhouse gases by industry and business are a case in point. Businesses have at their disposal a wide range of means to reduce emissions, but not all created equal.  Some are expensive and yield significant reduction, some much less costly but effective at different scales. They key question then becomes: what benefits accrue to the business and to society as a whole from implementing various emission reduction measures?  A broad analysis reveals that optima often exist where emission reduction is not the primary goal, but is simply included as part of a larger suite of overall measures intended to balance profit generation with improved environmental and social performance.  Not all emission reduction measures are sustainable, when rationally examined in this way.  By considering various alternatives for meeting business objectives, over a broad range, and quantitatively monetizing all of the environmental, social and economic costs and benefits accruing as a result of each option, objectively and rationally, we can move away from the hyperbole that too often clouds and over-simplifies the broader sustainability-energy-climate discussion, and focus on what really delivers value, when, where, how, and for whom. 

The Benefits of a Proactive Approach to Environmental and Social Impact Assessment

Tasman Graham, WorleyParsons

Sadly today, there are still project managers who view impact assessment and approvals processes as an unnecessary, costly and time consuming regulatory burden. Political calls for green tape reduction and the very real need to reduce project costs are creating a strained environment, in which we are at risk of failing to learn from the past. This presentation sets out the case for a proactive approach to environmental and social impact assessment as a basis for achieving business objectives, and outlines the key elements to ‘getting it right’ in the planning and delivery of an impact assessment.

For a complex project, moving from objectives to successful outcomes requires effective management. Most managers are adept at understanding how to manage their staff and assets, and know that relationship skills are required to navigate the space of their customers, suppliers, and third parties responsible for shared infrastructure or the resource / reserve they are accessing.  But a project’s (two-way interdependent) relationships also extend to natural and social environments.  There are always multiple business objectives to any project, and many of these warrant careful consideration of environmental and social factors. Examples include maximised access to resources / reserves and production, certainty of project delivery, realising the full value of assets, localisation, future proofed assets and reputation. These business objectives can be translated into objectives for an impact assessment, which should be used as a vehicle to attaining successful outcomes for the business, local communities and society at large.