Like many Environmental Protection Agencies (EPAs) globally, EPA Victoria also faces current and future regulatory challenges such as increasing environmental burdens and deteriorating environmental quality due to rising population pressure, increasing prosperity, cheap manufactured goods and climate change. In order for EPA Victoria to support proactive environmental protection measures that ensure net environmental gains beyond compliance and to address the demand for holistic and clear issue prioritisation in the face of increasingly interlinked environmental issues, a sustainability decision-making framework (SDMF) is needed. As a foundation for the development of such a framework, a literature review of existing frameworks was undertaken and this review forms the basis for this paper.
EPA Victoria faces a range of diverse and evolving regulatory challenges which relate to new and increasing environmental burdens and deteriorating environmental quality due to rising population pressure, increased demands for resources and rising emission levels. Paramount to managing these issues in a proactive manner is the use of decision-making frameworks which are fair, transparent, robust and consistent. EPA Victoria and the University of New South Wales have been researching Sustainable Decision Frameworks (SDF) to support the integration of a range of quantitative sustainability assessment tools, including Life Cycle Assessment, Life Cycle Costing and/or Risk Assessment. A SDF for ‘clean up to the extent practicable’ (CUTEP) decisions around groundwater remediation has been developed and tested. The CUTEP SDF builds on the existing CUTEP process through addressing: a) the imprecise definition of objectives; b) the lack of quantitative sustainability metrics; and, c) the absence of an explicit weighting stage in the assessment. A multi-criteria analysis approach underpins the approach. Our findings are presented in this paper.
'/%3e%3c/defs%3e%3cpath fill='%23012169' d='M0 0h10080v5040H0z'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23fff' stroke-width='.6' d='m0 0 6 3m0-3L0 3' clip-path='url(%23b)' transform='scale(840)'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23e4002b' stroke-width='.4' d='m0 0 6 3m0-3L0 3' clip-path='url(%23c)' transform='scale(840)'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23fff' stroke-width='840' d='M2520 0v2520M0 1260h5040'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23e4002b' stroke-width='504' d='M2520 0v2520M0 1260h5040'/%3e%3cg fill='%23fff'%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23d' x='2520' y='3780'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' x='7560' y='4200'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' x='6300' y='2205'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' x='7560' y='840'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' x='8680' y='1869'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23e' x='8064' y='2730'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/svg%3e)
'%3e%3cpath fill='%23012169' d='M0 0v30h60V0z'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23fff' stroke-width='6' d='m0 0 60 30m0-30L0 30'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23C8102E' stroke-width='4' d='m0 0 60 30m0-30L0 30' clip-path='url(%23b)'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23fff' stroke-width='10' d='M30 0v30M0 15h60'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23C8102E' stroke-width='6' d='M30 0v30M0 15h60'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/svg%3e)