Many organisations produce newsletters and one of my approaches with CMS News has been to make people aware of these. For those involved in the socio-economics of the environment the eftec newsletter is really interesting.

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Baseline Evaluation of Environmental Appraisal and Sustainable Development Guidance Across Government for Defra

This final report was published on 14^th March and featured at envecon 2014 where Colin Smith from Defra introduced the publication and Rob Tinch (eftec) presented it. To view Rob’s presentation please click here.

The project involved reviews of Impact Assessments and interviews with government staff on the  use of environmental appraisal and sustainable development guidance. The uptake of recent changes to guidance was investigated. Such changes include the Impact Assessment toolkit (2011), Supplementary Green Book Guidance on “Accounting for environmental impacts” (2012) and on “Valuing impacts on air quality” (2013), and the consolidation of Impact Assessment guidance in the Better Regulation Framework Manual (BRFM). This research fills the need for qualitative and quantitative evidence on the uptake of new appraisal guidance on sustainability, values of nature and ecosystem services.

OSPAR members’ Cooperation on Economic and Social Analysis for MSFD implementation

Countries bordering the North East Atlantic Ocean are seeking to respond to challenging objectives set by the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) through their cooperation under the Oslo-Paris Convention (OSPAR). In 2013, eftec and partners completed work providing strategic support for the OSPAR region’s Economic and Social Analysis which identified areas for cooperation and gaps in evidence. The final report can be found here.

Building on this work, eftec led a workshop for OPSAR in November 2013 to discuss the next steps towards developing the economic and social evidence required to support the implementation of the MSFD. OSPAR has a key role to play in delivering the MSFD requirement that analysis is coordinated across regional seas, such as the North East Atlantic. This workshop and subsequent report have been prepared for OSPAR by eftec and Swedish partners – Enveco.