Use of Environmental Assessment Recommendations

The indicator shows the extent to which relevant staff used the recommendations provided by a completed environmental assessment that identified environmental risks and proposed risk mitigation measures. It indicates the extent to which the intervention considered environmental protection in its design and implementation.

Determine the indicator's value using the following methodology:

1) Make a list of the key recommendations based on the environmental assessment that identified environmental risks and proposed risk mitigation measures.

2) Since some recommendations will likely be more important than others (in terms of their potential impact on the natural environment), consider giving each recommendation a weight – e.g. the most influential recommendation could have a score of 3 while the less impactful could have a score of 1.

3) Together with the project staff, go through the list of key recommendations and discuss the extent to which they were implemented. When required, ask the staff for evidence of implementation. For each fully implemented recommendation, provide the full “weight” (see step 2). If a recommendation was only partially implemented, provide a lower weight.

   There may be recommendations in the environmental assessment that the project team rejected (e.g. due to their irrelevance, impossibility of being implemented with the project’s resources, etc.). If the team provides solid justification of why these were rejected, remove them from the list of recommendations that the team was supposed to implement (as otherwise, they would bias the result).

4) To determine the indicator’s numerical value:

   - count the maximum possible “weights” of all the recommendations; then

   - count the “weight” of the implemented recommendations and then divide it by the maximum possible weight of all the recommendations

   - multiply the result by 100 to convert it into a percentage 

5) The calculations described in step 4 give you a percentage – it is useful but additional qualitative information might be needed to provide a proper understanding of the extent to which the recommendations were implemented. Therefore, complement the percentage with qualitative information regarding the extent to which the recommendations were used.

1) Keep in mind that the process of assessing the extent to which the recommendations were implemented is as important as the result. Therefore, ensure that the staff who was supposed to implement them are fully involved in reviewing their implementation. It can help them recognise the strengths and weaknesses of how they used the recommendations from the conducted environmental assessment.

2) In many cases, the decision on the extent to which a recommendation was implemented is subjective. Therefore, while it is vital to engage the project staff, the decision should be taken by an expert who understands the relative importance of the different recommendations (i.e. their “weight”) and has no stake in the result of this indicator.