Paul E., Hardisty, CRC Press, Baton Rouge, 2010, 315 pp., £80.99 (hbk), ISBN 978-1-4200-5948-9
As Executive Director, Sustainability and EcoNomics™, for the global engineering consultancy firm WorleyParsons, Paul Hardisty has led the development of the Environmental and Economic Sustainability Assessment (EESA) process, which is described as an ‘integrated social, environmental and economic life-cycle decision-making methodology’ and which is the subject of this book. Essentially, the EESA process provides a framework to guide organizations in decision-making from a societal, economic perspective, rather than an internal, financial perspective. At its heart is the expression of the environmental and social implications of decisions in the universal language of money, so that so-called externalities can be more effectively incorporated into traditional investment decision-support tools and processes such as cost–benefit analysis (CBA) along with cost, revenue and profit data.
Hardisty is a well-known and highly sought-after consultant not only in my home town of Perth, Western Australia where he is based, but internationally. For his clients, application of the tools and techniques described in this book have offered a much-needed link between the value-based world of the sustainability or corporate social responsibility practitioner, and the numbers-driven world of the engineers and financial people who typically hold decision-making authority in organizations.
Hardisty points out that the environmental and social implications of proposals, although often very thoroughly explored through robust environmental, social and health impact assessments (ESHIAs), typically do not rate highly where it counts, when project design and technology selection decisions are made, because the units of measurement are different and incompatible. This is not news to most of us, and techniques for allocating monetary values to social and environmental issues have abounded in recent years, from valuation of ecosystem services to prices on carbon. What EESA offers is a structured and holistic decision-making framework around these many valuation techniques, incorporating many traditional tools such as multi-criteria analysis (MCA) and life-cycle analysis (LCA), as well as CBA, to ensure the ‘rational, explicit and objective consideration of the value of social and natural assets’. This book is likely to be of particular interest to sustainability-minded individuals working with and within industry, who have struggled to gain traction for sustainability-related initiatives or to effectively make the business case for sustainability.
Chapter 1 establishes the rationale for the EESA approach, highlighting the deficiencies of the global economic system in delivering long-term sustainability, the short-sightedness of the decision-making processes that support it, and the inherent lack of support for ethical and value positions within these processes. The call is made for business to be part of the solution to the sustainability crisis by considering the implications of its decision-making from a longer-term societal perspective, although the arguments for this approach (that it provides insurance against the risks of future liabilities and future regulation, that a sustainable world is good for business, and that it helps to justify ‘doing the right thing’) are likely to serve to validate the views of sustainability practitioners more than to convince sustainability sceptics. The important point is made that EESA can not only help sustainability initiatives or technologies to pass the necessary financial hurdles but can also highlight where well-intentioned sustainability-directed investments may actually not be justified from a societal perspective.
Chapter 2 summarizes the history of the sustainability discourses and presents the doom and gloom statistics on the current state of the global socio-ecological system to strengthen the case for change. Given the likely audience for this book, this is perhaps unnecessary.
Chapter 3 is the heart of the book, outlining the 12 broad steps of the EESA process. This chapter draws heavily on the language of engineering and financial analysis, and assumes a working understanding of processes such as risk assessment as well as MCA, LCA and CBA and concepts such as net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR). Those without this background may be somewhat baffled and turned off by the graphs and formulae, but engineers seeking to make a difference in their organizations are likely to be excited and inspired by the systematic and analytical nature of the process as presented. An overview of different valuation techniques is provided as well as some very useful indicative valuations. However, it also becomes clear in this chapter that the number crunching involved in the analysis is considerable and daunting, and that in reality one is likely to require the services of WorleyParsons and their proprietary EcoNomics™ DELTΔ© software in order to effectively implement the full EESA process.
Chapters 4 to 7 present case studies from around the globe demonstrating different applications of the concepts and processes described in Chapter 3, focusing in turn on water, climate change, energy and waste. The point is made that there can be no one-size fits-all process, and that each application of the EESA must be context specific.
The final chapter reflects upon the implications of the EESA process. Impact assessment gets a further mention here, as Hardisty offers EESA as ‘a companion to a new generation of EIA, by which project options can be examined from a full life-cycle environmental, social, and economic perspective’.
This is a valuable book. Although there will be some who will baulk at its basic premise of quantifying sustainability in monetary terms, pragmatists are likely to find it useful and inspirational. It is very well written, and the case studies are illuminating and thought-provoking. While it may stop short of being a ‘how to’ manual for the EESA process that can be picked up and implemented directly by the reader, there is much within the book's pages that will be of immediate value to practitioners, whether or not they choose to hire WorleyParsons.
© 2012, Jenny Pope