Developing and applying sustainable decision frameworks: a regulator’s perspective.

Paper in proceeding, 2011

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.