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- Co-creating a sustainability performance assessment tool for public sector organisationsPublication . Ramos, Tomás B.; Domingues, Ana Rita; Caeiro, Sandra; Cartaxo, Joana; Painho, Marco; Antunes, Paula; Santos, Rui; Videira, Nuno; Walker, Richard M.; Huisingh, DonaldOrganisations are increasingly being pushed to manage, assess and report their sustainability performance, including public sector organisations (PSO). Several approaches were developed to implement sustainability assessments at the organisation level. However, the majority are still for the private sector and are often not supported by active stakeholder involvement. Several PSO have adapted private-oriented models to assess their sustainability performance, which are often not adequate due to public administration, whose main mission is to provide public services. The present work aims at developing a conceptual framework to support PSO and to assess their sustainability performance. The proposed approach is supported by two sustainability performance assessment systems – Formal and Informal Sustainability Performance Assessment. The Formal Sustainability Performance Assessment system, which is the main focus of this paper, consists of a checklist of objectives and practices and a set of twenty-nine (29) performance indicators. An initial proposal was drawn from the literature review and then assessed through a participatory process involving practitioners and academics in semistructured interviews, questionnaire surveys and a collaborative workshop. The Portuguese central public administration was used as a case study. The developed checklist of objectives and practices and related performance indicators will allow PSO to assess and communicate complex information about organisational sustainability. Reference values support the normalization of indicators’ results, and consequently, the comparison of sustainability-related performance between PSO integrated into the context of the Portuguese central public administration. This research contributes to the debate on organisational sustainability assessment and communication, and the importance of selecting and developing sustainability indicators using co-creation processes with key stakeholders.
- Sustainability policies and practices in public sector organisations: the case of the portuguese central public administrationPublication . Figueira, Inês; Domingues, Ana Rita; Caeiro, Sandra; Painho, Marco; Antunes, Paula; Santos, Rui; Videira, Nuno; Walker, Richard M.; Huisingh, Donald; Ramos, Tomás B.The adoption of sustainability policies and practices in organisations is a rising trend, in particular in companies. Public sector organisations are also following this occurrence but with slower signs. Despite a relevant amount of research work on sustainability practices implemented by private organisations and by some public agencies, central public sectors have been left out of the scope of these studies. The main goal of this research is to identify the sustainability profile (including adopted policies and practices) of the public organisations, using the Portuguese Central Public Administration as a case study. A questionnaire survey was developed and submitted to Portuguese public sector organisations that fulfilled the following criteria: (i) to belong to the Portuguese Central Public Administration and (ii) to have the major area of activity at the national level. The statistical population was also defined on the basis of these criteria. Descriptive statistics and frequency analysis were used to explore the results in the organisations surveyed. The overall results demonstrate a low adoption level of integrated sustainability policies and practices, despite the expected positive trends related with the mandatory social and economic practices. This research contributes to new knowledge by characterising the sustainability profile of the Portuguese central public sector and where actions are needed, leading to a better transition to sustainable societies. The developed questionnaire can be used in other geographical, institutional and cultural contexts to define sustainability profile of worldwide public organisations, working also as a benchmarking tool.
- Ecological risk assessment of sediment management areas : application to Sado Estuary, PortugalPublication . Caeiro, Sandra; Costa, Maria Helena; DelValls, T. Ángel; Repolho, Tiago; Gonçalves, Margarida; Mosca, Alice; Coimbra, Ana Paula; Ramos, Tomás B.; Painho, MarcoThe purpose of this work was to integrate different methodologies to assess the potential ecological risk of estuarine sedimentary management areas, using the Sado Estuary in Portugal as case study. To evaluate the environmental risk of sediment contamination, an integrative and innovative approach was used involving assessment of sediment chemistry, sediment toxicity, benthic community structure, human driving forces and pressures and management areas organic load levels. The basis for decisionmaking for overall assessment was a statistical multivariate analysis appended into a score matrix tables, using a best expert judgment. The integrated approach allowed to identify from the 19 management areas analyzed, three with no risk but other three with high risk to cause adverse effects in the biota, related with the contaminants analyzed. The methodologies used showed to be effective as a support for decision making leading to future estuarine management recommendations.
- Delineation of estuarine management areas using multivariate geostatistics: the case of Sado EstuaryPublication . Caeiro, Sandra; Goovaerts, Pierre; Painho, Marco; Costa, Maria HelenaThe Sado Estuary is a coastal zone located in the south of Portugal where conflicts between conservation and development exist because of its location near industrialized urban zones and its designation as a natural reserve. The aim of this paper is to evaluate a set of multivariate geostatistical approaches to delineate spatially contiguous regions of sediment structure for Sado Estuary. These areas will be the supporting infrastructure of an environmental management system for this estuary. The boundaries of each homogeneous area were derived from three sediment characterization attributes through three different approaches: (1) cluster analysis of dissimilarity matrix function of geographical separation followed by indicator kriging of the cluster data, (2) discriminant analysis of kriged values of the three sediment attributes, and (3) a combination of methods 1 and 2. Final maximum likelihood classification was integrated into a geographical information system. All methods generated fairly spatially contiguous management areas that reproduce well the environment of the estuary. Map comparison techniques based on κ statistics showed that the resultant three maps are similar, supporting the choice of any of the methods as appropriate for management of the Sado Estuary. However, the results of method 1 seem to be in better agreement with estuary behavior, assessment of contamination sources, and previous work conducted at this site.
- An open participatory conceptual framework to support state of the environment and sustainability reportsPublication . Ramos, Tomás B.; Martins, Ivone P.; Martinho, Ana Paula; Douglas, Calbert H.; Painho, Marco; Caeiro, SandraIt is fundamental to monitor, evaluate and report the state of the environment at global and local levels, to better implement sustainable development principles and practices. The State of the Environment and Sustainability Reports should be written in an understandable and accessible way for stakeholders and also be developed from the beginning with its involvement and participation. Despite several initiatives that refer public engagement in State of the Environment and Sustainability Reports, from the national to the corporate levels, usually the participatory approaches are restricted to consultations of key actors. They do not explore the role that could be played by stakeholders as part of the report staff, from designing to production and reviewing. The aim of this research is to develop a conceptual framework to support open participatory, interactive and adaptive State of the Environment and Sustainability Reports, where the stakeholders’ involvement (non-experts and experts) will effectively contribute to the design, data gath- ering and evaluations produced in the reports. The proposed open participatory approach will support the design and implementation of a collaborative report. The stakeholders’ assessment of the State of the Environment and Sustainability Reports can also be used as an indirect way for formal results evaluation, allowing for cross-validation. The paper analyses and explores two practices of regular and formal State of the Environment reports: the “European Environment e State and Outlook (transnational scale) and the “Portuguese State of the Environment Report” (national scale). In both reporting initiatives, the partici- patory approaches in the design and production of the reports are weak or inexistent and many times merely formal. A set of steps and procedures, embedded in a formal framework, is proposed for adoption in the both initiatives. The proposed framework should be implemented through gradually and prioritised steps to mitigate practical difficulties, due to the complexity of institutional reporting processes. The open participatory State of the Environment and Sustainability Report will represent a joint commitment among stakeholders for active reporting development with new information and knowledge. Rethinking tradi- tional reporting and related participatory approaches can move the State of the Environment and Sus- tainability Reports to a new stage of evolution: a continuous updating of information. In this process, data and information will come from formal and informal sources and, stakeholders can scrutinize each other’s participation and increase the overall content and quality of the collaborative disclosures.
- Geointelligence against illegal deforestation and timber laundering in the brazilian AmazonPublication . Perazzoni, Franco; Nicolau, Paula Bacelar; Painho, MarcoDue to the characteristics of the Southern Amazonas Mesoregion (Mesorregião Sul do Amazonas, MSA), conducting on-site surveys in all licensed forestry areas (Plano de Manejo Florestal, PMFS) is an impossible task. Therefore, the present investigation aimed to: (i) analyze the use of geointelligence (GEOINT) techniques to support the evaluation of PMFS; and (ii) verify if the PMFS located in the MSA are being executed in accordance with Brazilian legislation. A set of twenty-two evaluation criteria were established. These were initially applied to a “standard” PMFS and subsequently replicated to a larger area of 83 PMFS, located in the MSA. GEOINT allowed for a better understanding of each PMFS, identifying illegal forestry activities and evidence of timber laundering. Among these results, we highlight the following evidences: (i) inconsistencies related to total transport time and prices declared to the authorities (70% of PMFS); (ii) volumetric information incompatible with official forest inventories and/or not conforming with Benford’s law (54% of PMFS); (iii) signs of exploitation outside the authorized polygon limits (51% of PMFS) and signs of clear-cutting (43% of PMFS); (iv) no signs of infrastructure compatible with licensed forestry (24% of PMFS); and (v) signs of exploitation prior to the licensing (19% of PMFS) and after the expiration of licensing (5%).
- Employee-driven sustainability performance assessment in public organisationsPublication . Coutinho, Vera; Domingues, Ana Rita; Caeiro, Sandra; Painho, Marco; Antunes, Paula; Santos, Rui; Videira, Nuno; Walker, Richard M.; Huisingh, Donald; Ramos, Tomás B.Organisations are increasingly adopting sustainability performance assessment tools. However, these formal organisational sustainability assessments are typically managed and prepared by technical staff. There is a lack of research on approaches that enable a stakeholder-driven performance assessment. This paper develops a framework of informal/complementary stakeholder-driven sustainability performance assessment, from the perspective of employee voluntary collaboration. The framework composes a checklist of questions covering the main sustainability domains: perceptions, individual practices, and voluntary monitoring indicators. In an exploratory case study in a public organisation, the checklist was evaluated by employees in a participatory workshop. The evaluation criteria of understanding and usefulness were rated more positively than reliability. This paper shows a novel way of integrating employee inputs for informal sustainability assessment and supports the importance of empowering public organisations, thereby increasing their understanding of sustainability management frameworks.
- Optimisation of an estuarine monitoring program: selecting the best spatial distributionPublication . Caeiro, Sandra; Painho, Marco; Goodvaerts, P.; Costa, Maria Helena; Ribeiro, Luís; Cunha, M.; Nunes, L.
- Assessing heavy metal contamination in Sado EstuaryPublication . Caeiro, Sandra; Costa, Maria Helena; Ramos, Tomás B.; Fernandes, F.; Silveira, N.; Coimbra, Ana Paula; Medeiros, G.; Painho, MarcoThe Sado Estuary in Portugal is a good example of a site where human pressures and ecological values collide with each other. An overall contamination assessment has never been conducted in a way that is comprehensible to estuary managers. One of the aims of this work was to select different types of index to aggregate and assess heavy metal contamination in the Sado Estuary in an accessible manner. Another aim was to use interpolation surfaces per metal to compare and gauge the results of the indices and to assess the contamination separately per metal. Seventy-eight stations were sampled within the main bay of the estuary and a set of heavy metals and metalloids was established, Cd, Cu, Pb, Cr, Hg, Al, Zn and As. The sediment fine fraction content, organic matter and redox potential were also analysed. Various indices for contamination, background enrichment and ecological risk were used, tested, compared and performance-evaluated. All metals and metalloids were strongly correlated, and the indices appear to reflect heavy metal variability satisfactorily. Difficulties were found in some indices regarding boundary definition (minimum and maximum) and comparability with other estuaries, thus better methods of standardization should be a priority issue. According to the index that has the highest performance score within the group of ecological risk indices – the Sediment Quality Guideline Quotient – only 3% of the stations are highly contaminated and register a high potential for observing adverse biological effects, whereas 47% display moderate contamination. This index can be complemented with the contamination index, which allows more site-specific and accurate information on contaminant levels. If the aim of work on contamination evaluation is to assess the overall contamination of a study area, the indices are highly appropriate. For spatial and source evaluation per metal, interpolation surfaces should also be used.
- Spatial sampling design for sediment quality assessment in estuariesPublication . Caeiro, Sandra; Painho, Marco; Goovaerts, Pierre; Costa, Helena; Sousa, SandraUnusual difficulties are encountered when characterizing the spatial distribution of the properties that collectively define the state of estuaries. Due to the variability of these estuarine conditions, greater sampling efforts are often necessary to describe estuarine environments, as compared to other aquatic systems. That is why in coastal management studies, where the collection of data is sometimes very difficult and time-consuming, a robust sampling strategy is essential. The aim of this study is to design a spatial sampling strategy for estuarine sediments, using prior information on the spatial variation of sediment granulometry. Systematic unaligned sampling with a grid cell size of 750 × 500 m was chosen on the basis of semi-variogram analysis, and was shown to have distinct advantages. This design was sampled for sediment parameters using a GPS-receiver and mapped within the digitized shoreline of the estuary. The estuary shoreline was digitized on the basis of aerial ortho-photography with tidal ebb determination. The sampling is intended to define the boundaries of environmental management areas for the Sado Estuary, situated on the west coast of Portugal. The research represents one of the initial phases in the development of a Sado Estuary environmental management system integrated into a Geographic Information System.