# Attachment 2: Environmentally Sound Design[^1]

## What Is Environmentally Sound Design?

For the purposes of these guidelines, environmentally sound design (ESD)
is the design and implementation of activities and projects such that
the environmental impacts associated with meeting a particular
development objective are kept to a practicable minimum.

Environmentally sound design is prevention-based across the project
lifecycle. Prevention begins with the choice of means by which a
development objective is achieved. For example, the development
objective (or goal) of a project or activity may be to improve
agricultural productivity. Potential means to achieve this objective
include: introducing new crop varieties, promoting the use of chemical
inputs, introducing irrigation, changes to tilling and soil conservation
practices, integrated pest management, or some combination of these
measures. Environmentally sound design dictates that each alternative be
considered, and that the environmental impacts associated with each
choice be weighed alongside technical, economic, and social criteria.
Once means are chosen, environmentally sound design also takes a
prevention-based approach to the specifics of project design. Can
changes to location, construction techniques, or operating practices
significantly reduce critical environmental impacts? Finally, where
impacts cannot be prevented entirely or minimized by design choices,
environmentally sound design mandates that they be mitigated during
project operation, or remediated after the project is decommissioned.

## Environmental Assessment: A Process for ESD

Environmental assessment (EA) is a formal process for identifying the
likely effects of particular activities or projects on the environment
and on human health and welfare. As such, EA is a tool to organize,
facilitate and document the practice of environmentally sound design.
Stated another way, environmentally sound design is the goal or
objective of any EA process. EA is useful both to project designers and
planners and to those who must assess project proposals for funding.

## Environmentally Sound Design and Sustainable Development

Sustainable development is the overall objective of any process of
economic and social development. Meaningful movement towards more
sustainable development requires both (1) that development activities
themselves be sustainable, and (2) that a set of enabling conditions be
fulfilled.[^2] Because ESD occurs at the project or activity level, it
addresses this first sustainability requirement: ESD is an essential
component of designing and implementing sustainable activities.

As its name implies, ESD is concerned primarily with environmental
sustainability. Because ESD is concerned with environmental justice, it
also has an important application to social sustainability, however.
Environmental justice is the idea that the poor should not bear a
disproportionate burden of the negative economic and health consequences
of environmental degradation.

## Environmentally Sound Design and Best Development Practices

ESD requires that the environmental impacts associated with projects be
identified, predicted and mitigated. This is not sufficient, however.
Environmentally sound design must adhere to a set of principles which
apply to sound project design, management and implementation *in
general.* These principles have grown out of the experience of
development organizations in the field. In very general terms, they
represent a current consensus on "best practice" in development that
includes: assuring technical feasibility, understanding the social and
policy context, securing stakeholder commitment, engaging in supportive
capacity-building, and practicing adaptive management.

### Assure technical feasibility

All projects must be technically feasible. The construction techniques,
materials, and technologies employed must deliver as intended over the
lifetime of the project.

In the area of environment, technical feasibility means that the design
is appropriate and robust to the environmental conditions of the project
site. Environmental conditions include climate (patterns of rainfall,
temperature ranges), soil types, aquifer characteristics, and the
probability of extreme events such as cyclones and earthquakes. For
example:

-   Are the choices of crops or trees appropriate to climate and soils?

-   For buildings and infrastructure, are construction methods and
    materials appropriate to the anticipated use and lifetime, given
    environmental conditions?

### Understand social and policy context

Projects and activities do not exist in isolation. They are implemented
within an environmental, social, economic and institutional context.
This context can determine whether a project or activity is viable or
even desirable. Social and policy context issues particularly important
to ESD include:

**De facto and de jure national environmental and resource management
policy.** Project design and implementation should conform to national
environmental laws and regulations. They should be compatible with
national environmental strategy (as set out in National Environmental
Action Plans). However, there is often a large difference between
official environmental law or policy in Latin American countries, and
what is actually implemented and enforced in practice. Project planners
cannot assume that the protections such laws may provide in theory will
be achieved in reality. For example, the upstream drainage of a village
water supply may lie within a national park. In theory, the purity of
the water supply is secure, as its source is protected. In reality, this
may be a poor assumption.

**Local or traditional systems of resource management and allocation**.
Systems of land tenure and resource management have clear relevance to
most rural development projects. In rural areas of Latin America
countries, land tenure is often a mix of Spanish colonial and
traditional systems---and projects must frequently obtain approval for
land or resource use through *both* systems. Traditional systems of
resource management are often gender-specific. That is, the
responsibility for monitoring and managing a given resource may fall
along gender lines. Project designers can not assume that the men in a
community can speak for the women, or vice versa.

**National economic policy and ongoing policy reform**. Many Latin
American governments are pursuing sectoral or structural adjustment
programs to stimulate economic growth and international trade. Examples
of macroeconomic tools used in such programs include altering exchange
or interest rates, reducing government budgets, promoting market
liberalization, and enhancing the role of the private sector. These
reforms can influence---both positively and negatively---how resource
users manage their environment. For example, liberalization of export
laws and/or development of transport and export infrastructure can
encourage timber exports, whether or not this is a targeted activity.
Inappropriate or poorly enforced forestry policies can result in an
acceleration of deforestation or significant declines in forest
productivity.

### Secure stakeholder commitment

Stakeholders are those groups most directly affected by the project.
This includes the intended beneficiaries, funders, and those whose use
of and access to local resources is likely to be affected. The focus of
this discussion is on residents of local communities and users of local
resources. Figure 1illustrates the importance of stakeholder commitment
when local communities or cooperatives take over a project or activity
after assistance ends---a situation very typical of small-scale
activities. Often a project only maintains its environmental soundness
if proper operation and maintenance procedures are followed; the figure
cites several examples. Without stakeholder commitment, these proper
procedures are likely to be violated. In the worst case, the project may
actually do more harm than good. (For example, if waste from a health
post sickens the community at large.)

The importance of stakeholder commitment

![](media/image1.wmf)

### Capacity Building

Capacity building is an essential complement to and means of securing
stakeholder commitment. In an environmental context, capacity building
means helping local users or project beneficiaries to acquire:

The knowledge or skills required to operate/maintain a project in an
environmentally sound manner.

An understanding of how project activities affect environmental health,
and why these operation and maintenance practices are important. Such
understanding is essential to secure stakeholder commitment.

### Adaptive Management

Under adaptive management, project implementation is adjusted in
response to feedback from the field. Adaptive management requires both
(1) project monitoring and (2) decision-making which acts on the basis
of monitoring results.

As applied to environment, adaptive management means changing project
operation or design when monitoring shows unexpected, adverse
environmental outcomes. For example, members of a community involved in
a fertilizer project may observe that algae and plant growth in a local
water body has increased markedly. This is a sign of eutrophication,
possibly caused by fertilizer run-off from fields. It probably indicates
a need to change fertilizer application processes.

Adaptive environmental management requires an *environmental monitoring
and mitigation plan,* and explicit allocation for environmental
monitoring and evaluation activity in the project budget. Monitoring and
mitigation plans identify funding sources and responsibility for
monitoring and evaluation from the onset of project design.

### Community Participation 

The need for community participation is a clear consequence of applying
best development practices to the environmental aspects of small-scale
project design and implementation. Community or stakeholder
participation beginning early in the design process is key to at least
three of these practices:

**Assuring technical feasibility**. The detailed knowledge community
members have of local conditions is often critical in anticipating and
identifying a project's potential environmental impacts;

**Securing stakeholder commitment**. By participating in design,
implementation and monitoring participants gain *ownership* and
*responsibility*, as well as a clear understanding of objectives and
anticipated outcomes. Ownership, responsibility and understanding create
incentives to identify and mitigate adverse impacts; and

**Practicing adaptive management.** Local participants are in the best
position to monitor long-term environmental effects of project
activities; monitoring is a key aspect of adaptive management. Further,
local participants or communities need the understanding and capacity to
adapt activities to future change after donor support ceases.

Finally, community participation is an important mechanism for assuring
environmental justice. Development activities often involve tradeoffs
between economic or social development and environmental quality. These
trade-offs should not be imposed unilaterally by external authorities.
Because local residents must *live with* the environmental consequences
of activities, it is only just that they understand and have a voice in
any tradeoffs that are ultimately made.

## ESD Is Not Enough To Assure Sustainable Activities

The focus of this manual is environmentally sound design, which is
necessary---but not sufficient---to design and implement truly
sustainable activities. Environmental considerations must be weighed
together with economic and social criteria. Critical questions include:
is the activity financially sustainable without continuous external
support? Do the benefits of the activity outweigh costs?

## Integrating ESD, USAID Environmental Procedures, and the Project Lifecycle

Environmentally sound design should be an integral part of the project
design and implementation process, not an afterthought. USAID's
environmental procedures (summarized in Annex A) create a framework in
which to organize key ESD-related elements and tasks of the project
lifecycle. The procedures should not be treated as simply an
administrative requirement.

![](media/image2.wmf){width="8.597222222222221in" height="6.0in"}

[^1]: This chapter originally developed in support of USAID's Africa
    Bureau course, "Environmental Assessment and Environmentally Sound
    Design for Small-Scale Activities."

[^2]: Enabling conditions for achieving more environmentally sustainable
    development include: a legal and policy framework enabling
    sustainable private-sector and public initiatives; clearly defined
    national objectives related to environmental design and management;
    good information regarding national/regional environmental resources
    and conditions (assessments or management plans); sufficient host
    county capacity to implement and apply environmental laws and policy
    (includes financial resources, trained professionals, effective
    institutions); and clearly defined responsibility and accountability
    for this implementation. Note that consideration of the enabling
    conditions for economically and socially sustainable development
    would expand this list dramatically.