<p>Traditional theories, models, and methods often address a general view of the environment including sociocultural, technological, political, and economic factors. However, there is a lack in infrastructural attention in these concepts which this thesis intends to contribute with by analyzing how regional specific infrastructural variables can be aggregated to one comparative measure and what that measure’s scope of use could be in the market analysis? Hence, the purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the strategic planning process research with a supporting quantitative tool, based on statistical metrics, for determining the market potential.</p><p>This thesis has an inductive approach and is primary based on documentary secondary data and the strategic planning process is the main theory of concern when evaluating the possibilities of infrastructural assessment. As a complement, the infrastructural concerns in the economics are also dealt with.</p><p>The empirics are compiled and calculated in a manner which allows an indexing and the finalized result is presented as an Infrastructural Status Index (InfraStat Index). Some of the utilities of this index are that it can be a complementary part of the PEST- and SWOT-models and a supporting tool in companies’ strategic planning processes. The index has both business and macroeconomic scopes of use and one of the summarizing conclusions is that further research within this concept should incorporate more variables in order to retrieve a more comprehensive result.</p>

Comme d'autres secteurs d'activité nouant des liens avec les territoires, le tourisme a été marqué par une conscientisation accrue de ses enjeux environnementaux au cours des dernières décennies. Durant les années 90, cette question s'est logiquement inscrite dans le débat plus large de la durabilité du tourisme. Depuis lors, de nombreuses initiatives en faveur d'un tourisme plus durable émergent dans le but de sensibiliser les différents acteurs du secteur à l'importance d'améliorer l'équilibre entre développement économique, protection de l'environnement et valeurs sociales. Ces vingt dernières années ont aussi été une période d'intensification des dispositions législatives de protection de l'environnement, notamment à l'échelle de l'Europe. L'adoption en 1985 d'une directive sur l'évaluation des incidences environnementales des projets a ainsi été l'un des fondements de la politique environnementale de l'Union Européenne. Les approches de gestion de l'environnement évoluant, l'Union européenne a adopté en 2001 une directive portant sur l'Evaluation environnementale stratégique des plans et programmes (EES) et couvrant plusieurs secteurs dont le tourisme. L'EES a pour objectif de favoriser la prise en compte des considérations environnementales dans les processus de planification menés par les organismes publics. A l'échelle mondiale, malgré certaines limites reconnues, l'EES a fait ses preuves dans un grand nombre de contextes institutionnels et de secteurs différents et s'avère très complémentaire vis-à-vis de l'évaluation environnementale des projets. Complétant un arsenal législatif environnemental déjà conséquent au niveau européen, l'EES suscite des questions quant à sa capacité à améliorer la prise en compte de l'environnement lors de la mise en œuvre des politiques de développement touristique et à contribuer à un tourisme plus durable. Partant de cette question qui s'inscrit dans la problématique générale de la régulation environnementale du tourisme, la présente thèse poursuit comme objectif d'évaluer les contributions et les limites de la mise en œuvre de l'EES dans le secteur du tourisme et dans le contexte particulier de la Région wallonne. Dans un premier temps, la thèse analyse plusieurs approches de planification et de régulation environnementale opérant dans le cadre du développement touristique en Région wallonne. L’objectif est de mettre en évidence les facteurs sociopolitiques et instrumentaux pouvant influencer les résultats attendus de la mise en œuvre de l'EES dans le secteur du tourisme. Dans un second temps, la thèse examine plusieurs exemples d'application de l'EES à des processus de planification touristique afin d'identifier quels sont les facteurs opérationnels déterminant la capacité de l'EES à améliorer la prise en compte de l'environnement dans les décisions. Ces deux niveaux d'investigation ont permis de mettre en évidence différents éléments intéressants. D’une part, il apparaît que la prise en compte de l'environnement dans les processus de planification touristique tient essentiellement à la mise en œuvre des législations environnementales et peu à l'affirmation d'une culture politique proactive en matière d'intégration de l'environnement. Face à ce constat, la valeur ajoutée de l'EES repose fortement sur son caractère obligatoire. D'autre part, les études de cas montrent que la valeur ajoutée de l'EES par rapport aux processus de planification touristique doit être interprétée en différenciant sa valeur ajoutée "absolue" et sa valeur ajoutée "relative". La valeur ajoutée "absolue" reflète la prégnance de différents facteurs organisationnels, méthodologiques et techniques qui sont sous-jacents à la mise en œuvre de tout processus d'EES. Quant à la valeur ajoutée "relative", elle dépend de la prise en compte effective des résultats des processus d'EES qui est conditionnée par l'équilibre réalisé par les acteurs politiques entre les enjeux économiques, sociaux et environnementaux du développement touristique. A travers le prisme des processus d'EES, la question de la durabilité du tourisme est donc clairement posée.

Early perspectives on environmental issues have in general focussed on local pollution from specific sources. However, in past decades there has been a shift in society’s perspective on environmental management towards a focus on diffuse sources of pollution and long-term and global environmental issues. A systems approach to environmental issues has also been suggested in order to avoid overlooking important environmental issues. In this thesis, the potential of two Swedish legally regulated decision-making processes, the development permission process and the local planning process in the energy and waste sectors, to meet these emerging perspectives on environmental issues is explored. The results in this thesis show that in practice the potential of the development permission process to include the emerging perspectives on environmental issues for this process has been rather low in the past, since the environmental assessments reports submitted with the applications for development permission focus to a large extent on local and technical issues. This means that environmentally relevant issues such as global and long-term impacts and resource management issues tend to have been disregarded. However, studies of more recently made assessment reports reveal that such ssues are beginning to emerge to some extent. Furthermore, the public adds to the potential for this decision-making process, as it tends to discuss the project from a systems perspective as well. The thesis further suggests that the institutional context of the decision-making process impedes the potential to include the emerging perspectives in some respects. For example, present legislative rules and guidelines do not include the new perspectives on environmental issues and do not allow decision-making authorities to take such issues into account. The thesis also shows that the local planning processes do not have the potential - in practice - to include environmental issues from wide perspectives. The local plans tend to focus on environmental issues from a local and technical perspective and do only to some extent include wider perspectives. It is further indicated that the interests and power of the actors within the planning processes are important factors influencing which perspectives are applied when the plan is made. To increase the potential for the local planning process to meet the demands for wider perspectives on environmental issues, the thesis therefore suggests that it is important to raise the status of local energy and waste management plans so they can have an actual impact on the development of the local technical systems. Finally, in order to increase the potential for both of the two formal decision-making processes studied in this thesis, linking the two decision-making processes would enable local planners, project developers and decision-making authorities to address impacts from a wider perspective. Linking the two processes would leave only local and project-oriented environmental issues to be discussed within the project development permission process, and the local planning process could focus on the environmental impacts of a local energy system and proposed energy projects from wider perspectives. The two processes would therefore be able to take all environmental issues relevant from a systems perspective into account.

QC 20100930

Traditional theories, models, and methods often address a general view of the environment including sociocultural, technological, political, and economic factors. However, there is a lack in infrastructural attention in these concepts which this thesis intends to contribute with by analyzing how regional specific infrastructural variables can be aggregated to one comparative measure and what that measure’s scope of use could be in the market analysis? Hence, the purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the strategic planning process research with a supporting quantitative tool, based on statistical metrics, for determining the market potential. This thesis has an inductive approach and is primary based on documentary secondary data and the strategic planning process is the main theory of concern when evaluating the possibilities of infrastructural assessment. As a complement, the infrastructural concerns in the economics are also dealt with. The empirics are compiled and calculated in a manner which allows an indexing and the finalized result is presented as an Infrastructural Status Index (InfraStat Index). Some of the utilities of this index are that it can be a complementary part of the PEST- and SWOT-models and a supporting tool in companies’ strategic planning processes. The index has both business and macroeconomic scopes of use and one of the summarizing conclusions is that further research within this concept should incorporate more variables in order to retrieve a more comprehensive result.

Planning for offshore hydrocarbon development in Canada’s Beaufort Sea currently occurs on a project-by-project basis. This is despite a collective understanding that impact assessment should go beyond the evaluation of site-specific project impacts to consider the broader policy and regional planning context in which development projects operate. The need for such a regional and strategic approach to impact assessment in Canada’s Beaufort Sea, known as regional strategic environmental assessment (R-SEA), arises from the looming large-scale offshore hydrocarbon development in the region and the lack of a mechanism to plan for future energy development, establish a long-term regional vision, or assess and effectively manage the potential cumulative environmental and social effects arising from development. At such a critical moment, little research exists to advance R-SEA from a concept to an applied planning, assessment and decision-support process. This dissertation draws on experience from the implementation of strategic environmental assessment in offshore jurisdictions internationally, along with existing initiatives for marine planning in the Beaufort Sea, to advance effective R-SEA implementation in the region. The research methodology includes a literature review, case reviews and key informant interviews. The research results are reported in three manuscripts. The first manuscript examines the influence of R-SEA on planning and development decisions in Norway, Atlantic Canada and the UK. The second manuscript examines existing planning, assessment, and science initiatives in the Beaufort Sea. The third manuscript identifies key opportunities for, and challenges to, the implementation of R-SEA in the Beaufort Sea. Significant findings demonstrate that R-SEA can offer a much-needed framework to accommodate and address stakeholder issues and concerns regarding future offshore development in the Beaufort Sea, despite acute implementation challenges, such as scepticism of scenario-based planning. Key findings reveal many expectations of what R-SEA could deliver in the Beaufort Sea, a result of the varied stakeholder priorities and goals. Understanding the root of different expectations and perceptions, ensuring follow-up programs pay attention to horizontal linkages between R-SEA strategies and current marine planning initiatives, and that supporting institutional arrangements are in place for a preferred strategy to succeed lie at the core of advancing R-SEA as a viable tool in the Arctic.

The purpose of this research was to determine the potential capacity for improved participation through community-based approaches to small hydroelectric development in the Indian Himalayas. The objectives of the research were: (1) to establish the current roles of the civic, public and private sectors in small hydro development; (2) to examine the potential for learning through participation during the development of small hydro projects; (3) to determine the potential for using community-based environmental assessment in future projects; (4) to investigate the benefits of community-driven small hydro development, and (5) to determine the implications of the findings for environmental policy and decision-making. Data were gathered using Participatory Rural Appraisal methods including semi-structured interviews, transect walks, and landscape analysis. There were five case study projects (Niti, Bampa, Jumma, Malari and Bamini/Badrinath), each in the Indo-Tibetan border region of the Indian Himalayas. The plants are all run of river, and range in capacity from 25 kW to 1.2 MW. Four of the villages had no electricity prior to the development of the small-hydro plants, while one had a prior connection to the state electrical grid (Bamini/Badrinath). The villages are inhabited by Bhotia tribespeople, and are occupied only during the summer growing season. The residents travel to lower altitude villages for the winter months. The most successful project examined, in the village of Malari, was one where community development and energy needs were considered simultaneously, and where the local community was highly involved in planning, construction and operation. The less successful projects were those where community involvement and development, sound planning, and detailed geographic information about the site were lacking in their development and operation; such as was observed in the village of Jumma, where the plant never began operations because it was damaged by an avalanche prior to its inauguration. PLEASE NOTE: As of January 2007 the State of Uttaranchal was renamed Uttarakhand. The change is not reflected in this thesis. / May 2007

In a mineral development scenario, Aboriginal groups rely heavily on Environmental Assessment (EA) and Impact and Benefit Agreements (IBAs) to address their interests and concerns. While EA and IBAs are separate processes – EA is legislated and informed by the Crown, and IBAs operate in the realm of private contract law – together, the two are ostensibly part of a parallel process that connect the Aboriginal group(s), Government and the mining proponent. Indisputably, IBAs support a more inclusive development based on consultation, partnership and participation. IBAs and EA have the potential to enhance Aboriginal involvement in mineral development and positively influence the design and planning of the mine. This thesis examines the Tahltan Nation’s involvement and participation in the Galore Creek Project in British Columbia, and demonstrates the challenges and opportunities that arose during the EA and IBA process. It uses key informant interviews to gain multiple perspectives – from the proponent, Tahltan, and Government, to understand how the Tahltan utilized the EA and IBA to participate in the mineral development.

In Sweden, detailed development plans (DDPs) go through a screening process to decide whether their implementation could cause significant environmental impact or not. The criteria in the legislation were studied to see if an environmental impact assessment was needed. This study also investigated 26 DDPs from 12 out of 13 of the municipalities in Östergötland and how they meet up to the demands in relevant legislation, for example the rules for Environmental Impact Assessments. Plans that concerned suburban communities and new housing were selected. The environmental issues highlighted in the plan documents were compared to selected topics from the GIS data base 'Östgötakartan' to see if the assessments made by the municipalities were reasonable judged. The results showed that in 54% of the municipalities, the screening processes corresponded with the Environmental Impact Assessment criteria. The most common flaws were that neither the national environmental goals nor the motivation of the decision was given any significant attention. The results of the questions that were sent to the municipalities showed that the working procedures vary among the municipalities. 73% of the municipalities used checklists as a basis for their assessments, whereas the rest worked in workgroups. Further the results indicated that there was a correlation between screening processes which had large flaws, according to the legislation criteria, and the lack of a county ecologist. In Sweden there is no real monitoring of how the legislation is implanted in the screening processes in different municipalities, which means that the processes can have flaws.

The objective of this study is to test if the hypothesis of the environmental gerontology theory can be applied to a cross-cultural environment. This study examined the applicability and functionality of the Multiphasic Environmental Assessment Procedure (MEAP), a tool based on the environmental gerontology theory, and assessed the quality of elderly care facilities in Taiwan. Special emphasis was placed in examining the functionality of the MEAP from the cross-cultural standpoint and also in identifying the associations or potential impacting factors of care quality. This is the first study with the application of the MEAP to examine the quality of the two major care facilities in Taiwan. Results of this study provide not only an insight into the characteristics of the elderly care facilities ,and a reference for policy making and regulation, but also valuable data for cross-cultural comparisons. The study employed the MEAP to achieve the stated objectives and further evaluated the differences in the characteristics of the two major elderly care facilities, namely the nursing homes and assisted-living facilities in Kaohsiung city in Taiwan. This cross-sectional research was conducted with questionnaires by 687 employees (excluding foreign workers) and 429 residents in 35 nursing homes and 41 assisted living facilities in Kaohsiung city were interviewed. Participants were selected from residents who were conscious and without cognitive disorder for face-to-face questionnaire interviews. For facilities with ten or more residents, 50% of the eligible residents were selected for this interview. For facilities having less than ten residents, all those qualified residents were interviewed. Results were analyzed on the basis of institutional units rather than the individual basis. Results showed that the MEAP effectively evaluated the associations of the multiple environmental factors with the quality of life of the two major elderly care facilities in Kaohsiung city. Standardized multiple quality indexes mode showed that the assisted-living facilities have better overall quality than nursing homes do. The major findings are: 1.The major residents of elderly care facilities in Kaohsiung city were the socioeconomically less privileged residents, including house wifes, the disabled, and widowed. The service most needed was personal care such as bathing. 2.Based on the MEAP, a total of eight significant variables were compared between nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Among these variables, nursing homes were better in staff resource than that of the assisted living facilities. Assisted-living facilities were better in all other seven variables including functional abilities, activities in community, acceptance of problem behavior, physical amenities, social-recreational aids, and orientational aids and staff facilities. 3.The staff members of both nursing homes and assisted living facilities have better SCES than that of their residents. 4.Compared to assisted living facilities, the nursing homes were superior in staff level and staff resources but inferior in comfort, security, and control. No differences were observed in services, autonomy, rapport and morale. 5.The characteristics of organizational management, such as ownership, type and size, were important impacting factors of care quality. The nonprofit-nursing homes were better scored in six of the eight quality indexes than the ones owned by privately-for-profit. 6.Factors that influenced the quality of the nursing homes include number of workers, number of beds, number of residents, ownership, functional abilities, actively level, activities in community, occupancy rate and type of elderly care facility. 7.Factors that influenced the quality of assisted living facilities include occupancy rate, number of residents, number of workers, activity level and type of elderly care facility. 8.The regression model for the outcome of multiple environmental quality indexes with the structure and process indexes is related in nursing homes. The regression model indicates that the model significantly predicted outcome quality index (morale) (R2 = 49.4%). Both structure quality index (comfort and safety) and process quality index (autonomy and rapport) were significant predicting factors of outcome quality index (morale). Autonomy was a negative predicting factor. 9.Standardized multiple environmental quality index indicated that based on the MEAP, assisted living facilities had a little bit higher quality than that of nursing homes in Kaohsiung city. In conclusion, this study confirmed the hypothesis that the MEAP can be applied effectively to evaluate the quality of elderly care facilities in a cross-cultural environment. However, cultural differences do have an impact on the functionality of the tool. Results of this study indicate that the two major elderly care facilities in Kaohsiung city have relatively similar characteristics, but the assisted living facilities are slightly better in overall quality than that of nursing homes. The major factors that impact the quality of elderly care facilities are the operational characteristics and efficience. Results of this study indicate that the MEAP provides very useful indicators for assessing the quality of elderly care facilities in Taiwan, especially for nursing homes. The MEAP identified more structure and process-related impacting factors than outcome-related impacting factors in this study. Concerning cultural difference, the MEAP could be benefited from some modification in certain measurements, especially in facility atmosphere(SCES), when applied in Taiwan.