MAP OF ENVIRONMENTAL LOADS OF CATALONIA Phase I Enric Pol (epol@ub)

1. MAP OF ENVIRONMENTAL LOADS OF CATALONIA Phase I Enric Pol (epol@ub.edu) Maria Rosa Bonet, Andrés Di Masso, Joana Espín, Tomeu Vidal PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP Department of Social Psychology - University of Barcelona

2. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP Origine of Map of Environmental Loads of Catalonia It’s an idea of PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP in the frame of Environmental Intervention Program Department of Social Psychology - University of Barcelona Supported by the Catalan Government to be applied to his environmental and territorial management system

3. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP What’s the Map of Environmental Loads of Catalonia? The Map of Environmental Loads of Catalunya (MELC) is a data-base in GIS (Geographical Information System) format which contains the environmental loads of each part of the territory taking into consideration its physical and social vulnerability.

4. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP Which is the MELC utility? • The MELC is designed to become a useful instrument for the decision making on the location of facilities and environmental services. • The specific characteristics of each project will have to be contrasted with the specificities and capacities of the different places where the facilities or services might be hosted. • The MELC can be useful for the elaboration of studies of environmental impact that must be subjected to an E.I.A., as well as for the valuation of the proposal and the elaboration of the E.I. Statement by the competent governamental organism. • Particularly, the MELC aims to be useful for the territorial and city-planning and the Environmental Evaluation of Plans and Projects according to directive 2001/42/EC, the denominated Strategic Environmental Impact Assessment.

5. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP Why a MELC? The Nimby effect (Not in my back yard) has acquired a special relevance and even virulence, independently of which the implied company, public administration or goverment level might be. The increasing number of environmental conflicts registered in Catalunya can be seen in the growing emergence of platforms and other associations that constitute a systematic opposition to any intervention project in the territory.

6. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP The problem • Increasing Nimby effect (see theoretical support in the European Review of Applied Psychology (Pol et al. 2003/4) • Some particular interests, the interests of some social groups, or the interest of some political perspectives often use the proposals of facilities implying some kind of environmental loads, as an excuse for confrontation, independently of the objectivity of the argumentations adduced by any part. • The increase of the environmental awareness (that is necessary to improve the environmental behavior of people, companies and institutions, and orients it towards a sustainable development), makes more frequent the movements of rejection to facilities and services that, although considered necessary, are not accepted by the population: eventually it is hard to find locations or drawn up.

7. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP Catalonia in Europe

8. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP Standards that guide management • The management and the decisions on facilities and services of environmental character must be done in anintegrated way (Catalan legislation, Law IIAA, 27/2/98; European IPPC Directive). • The European principle of subsidiarity aims to approach the solution of the problem to the place where it takes place. • Subsidiarity usually hits frontally with what’s generally considered as ‘general interest’. All together creates a situation that is hard to manage, revealing that sometimes the environmental problematic cannot be redirected/reoriented.

9. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP Expected benefits of the proposal Reduction of conflicts and Environmental management could be very much benefited if there was a precise description of the loads and environmental responsibilities that the territory supports: • Objectively • According to the citizen’s perceptions Describinghow these loads and responsibilities are distributed on the territory, considering the environmental vulnerability, understood as ecological fragility and social fragility.

10. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP Objectives of the global MELC project • General Objective • Elaboration of a Map of Environmental Loads of Catalonia Specific Objectives • To inventory the local loads derived from housing and urban processes, either legal or illegal. • To inventory the local loads of industrial, energetic, miner and extractive activities with environmental effects that extend the local balance. • To inventory the local loads of agrarian, cattle and fishery activities, with environmental effects that extend the local balance.

11. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP Specific Objectives… • To inventory the local loads of services and infrastructures with environmental effects that extend the local balance. • To inventory the present and foreseeable demographic and city-planning pressure on the territory units that are considered. • To establish an index of anthropization of the territory. • In addition to current catalogues of protected spaces and places of natural interest, to establish a catalogue of spaces of social interest by its patrimonial qualities, of life styles or forms of production to preserve. • To inventory or to catalogue any other aspects not considered in the previous ones and that can be of interest. • To know the citizen’s perception of loads through survey.

12. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP Phases of the MELC project Phase 1Establishment of criteria for the elaboration of indicesand indicators of environmental loads that need to be considered for the elaboration of the MELC Phase 2Creation of a data base from the scopes defined in phase 1 Phase 3 Survey of perception of environmental burden Phase 4 Integration of data on the Map of Loads on GIS Phase 5 Territorial characterization of Catalonia

13. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP Objective of Phase 1 Establishment of previous criteria detecting sensible scopes and factors for the elaboration of indices and indicators of environmental loads Two parallel studies • The citizen’s perspectives • (analysing environmental conflicts) • Documental analysis • Press analysis • Web analysis • Most visible conflicts that create public opinion • Sensible scopes to create indicators • The expert’s perspective • (fixing the operativeconcept of environmental load) • Delphi/experts from different disciplines • Effective concept of “environmental load”: consensus • Definition of sensible scopes to createindicators Data base to be integrated in a GIS

14. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP A) REPORT OF THE SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICTS during the last 15 YEARS (the citizen’s perspectives) Specific objectives: • To detect, to inventory, to categorize and to locate the environmental conflicts • To know how its nature evolves or varies along the time • To identify the leading factors and the causes of the beginning of the conflicts • To describe the processes, agents, actions and resolutions • To know the relations based on the type of the conflict and its location

15. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP work process • Exploration of documental sources • Descriptive card registry Generic descriptive information: Name of the conflict Location Beginning Resolution Type or classification: it defines the object of the conflict Processes of the conflict: Origin and causes Faced agents Actions Types of resolution • Crossing of variables and description of the results • Conclusions

17. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP • Tendency to the increase of the visibility and occurrence of environmental conflicts in the last years. • Sustainability as a new “positive social values” • new Information and Communication Technologies • electoral periods -> more conflicts Environmental argumentations: Obeying to just causes Defense of private interests under the assumption that nobody will dare to discuss an environmental argumentation NIABY (Not In Any Back Yard) NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) Discussion on Environmental Conflicts

18. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP • Waste dilemma: concentration vs equitative distribution • permanent conflict • Territorial intervention • Mobility infrastructures permanent conflicts • Urban developments • Golf courses increasing conflicts 90s • Skiing tracks Discussion on Environmental Conflicts… • Perception of inequity (specially in infrastructures) • At the end of the 90s increasing rejection to production and transportation of energy • (interested?)loss of social prestige of alternatives of energy (f.i. aeolic) • induces the public opinion for a possible ending of the nuclear moratorium? • Symbolic value of the place increases the rejection/conflict

19. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP Anticipation of consequences Social perceptions Cause and responsibility attributions Social construction of reality Social construction of risk univocal attribution responsibilities to Complaints and protestspublic administrations Psychosocial processes in the conflict • Ecological group’s behavior is not homogenous

20. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP • psychologists, geographers • and sociologists (26) • - law (3) • - communication sciences (3) • - policy makers (4) - ecologists/biologists (28) - archit/urban planners (16) - engineers (18) - economists (14) B) THE CONSTRUCTION OF a DEFINITION OF ENVIRONMENTAL LOAD and the DETERMINATION OF SENSIBLE SCOPES (=The expert’s perspectives) • PROCEDURE : • - Delphi technique • 113 participants, first step; 53 second; 27 third step: Discipline and/or profession of participants

21. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP RESULTS What should be considered environmental load? According to the expert’s answers, Environmental loads is the sum of impacts, of a very diverse nature, derivatives from interventions, uses, procedures or services, with different degrees of pressure over the environment and with cumulative and synergic effects that come together on a concrete surrounding (that includes physical, biological, and social dimensions).

22. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP Some sensible scopes to be considered in the creation of environmental loads indices Physical environment sensible scopes: • Injuring of the agricultural system of irrigation • Affectation of the aquatic ecosystems • Accumulation and treatement of waste • Urban developments in natural areas with special qualities • Aggressions and mortgages to the local biodiversity • Atmospheric contamination by the liberation of high toxicity smoke • Forced alteration of geophysical and biogeological processes

23. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP Some sensible scopes to be considered …. Human and social environment sensible scopes • Break down of the social fabric and inhabitability of the territory • Centralization and social desertization • Amassed, unstructured, excessively urbanized population increase • Capacity for the renovationof population and to revert the aging inertia • Risks for the reachedhealth and the quality of life • Symbolic places and expectations • Perception and relevancy of the proposed projects • Loss of the heritagel value of the territory

24. Pol, Bonet, Di Maso, Espin, Vidal -- PSYCHO/SOCIO/ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH GROUP Human and social environment sensible scopes (cont.) • Accumulated inequity and frustrated expectations • Pre-established breach of the political promises and contracts • Disposition/In-disposition to assume services that are of a general interest (supralocal scope) • Injuring of the proximity principle (p.e. in the case of the garbage dumps) • Coherence with the historical evolution of the place