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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.
- 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.
- 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.