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b. Assessment by Resource Persons, Facilitators and
Organisers
On the day following the workshop, the resource persons, facilitators and
organisers met in order to assess the participant feedback and to provide and
discuss their own personal assessments of the workshop.
Comments made during the discussion included:
Re workshop participants and their involvement:
- The workshop organisers succeeded when they went out of their way to have an
appropriate mix of participants from the private sector, regulators, policy
makers, educators and NGOs;
- The workshop raised awareness and empowered individuals to take further
action; it also identified opportunities for strengthening environmental
management systems;
- There was a high level of enthusiasm and participation during the workshop -
even those less competent in English seemed to benefit; they listened and
assimilated, even though they did not participate as much as some others;
- The workshop participants had a committed and disciplined spirit - to the
extent that had never been seen before by a resource person with long
experience; the organisation and the implementation created a climate very
conducive to success;
- The diversity of backgrounds, and of national circumstances, was a strength
- but also a challenge; there was a spectrum from people/countries with little
awareness of any environmental management tools, to those who had an entrenched
EIA protocol and who had difficulty seeing where EnTA fitted in; and
- A number of CDG alumni had some difficulty understanding the relevance of
aspects of the EnTA process. For them the workshop proceeded too fast,
especially the field trip and the completion and interpretation of the
worksheets; this allowed English speakers to dominate.
Re EnTA as an environmental management tool:
- EnTA is a useful and appropriate tool to facilitate dialogue between
multiple stakeholders and to gain a comprehensive appreciation of a situation;
it is very good at enhancing understanding and raising awareness of technical
and related issues, in ways that enables an assessment as to whether the
technology would contribute to sustainability; it can aid in the identification
and understanding of the issues, as a prerequisite to an effective
multi-stakeholder dialogue, with the aim of bringing all stakeholders to a
common level of understanding;
- But EnTA is not a decision making facilitation tool - it is too imprecise;
- Most assessments end up as (subjective) judgements even if they endeavour to
be objective; but there may be value in weighting some of the categories so that
there is more benefit from aggregation of the impacts;
- The subjective character of EnTA is elevated by its position as a tool in a
multi-stakeholder process, with a focus on education and a comprehension of the
technical aspects, rather than on decision making
- EnTA is subjective, and there is a need to either clarify the meaning of
such categories as "high, medium and low", or relate the terms to an
agreed base line;
- As a tool for informing, generating discussion and advising multiple
stakeholders, the subjectivity of EnTA is not a problem;
- A key to the success of EnTA is harmonizing considerations with respect to
the economy and the environment - i.e. to facilitate integration;
- There are different roles for EnTA, depending on a country's level of
development and the status of environmental management in that country; EnTA can
also be used within a company, or at national level to facilitate a dialogue by
raising awareness and identifying key issues;
- NGOs and regulators saw EnTA as an excellent awareness raising tool - it
facilitates a dialogue between multiple stakeholders, forcing people to look at
the full breadth of issues;
- In the ideal application of EnTA, one would need all the lifecycle costs
reflected in prices (i.e. internalized) and all decisions could then be made on
the basis of a cost-benefit analysis; but there are departures from the ideal:
i) all costs are not internalised; ii) currently most technology systems are
based on not all costs being internalised - to do so would make many of the
present systems uneconomic and redundant and; iii) for certain emerging
technologies a complete cost analysis is not available
- EnTA demonstrated how it can be used to change a viewpoint from seeing
something as a waste to viewing it as a product;
- Should EnTA be compulsory/binding or optional and more a means to
facilitating discussion?
- EIA is not working in many Asian countries and where it is working, it is a
specialized tool in the hands of a few regulators and consultants - while EIA
may allow industry to meet its regulatory requirements, only EnTA can ensure
inputs from all stakeholders, and only EnTA requires all options to be
considered; and
- A key concern is to identify what is wrong with EIA and identify what EnTA
can achieve that EIA cannot.
Re the EnTA Manual:
- There are real concerns about the lack of any requirement to consider
economic factors when determining the viability of a technology, and hence its
contribution to environmental sustainability;
- The EnTA Manual needs to define the basic documentation and information
required to undertake the assessment - especially when a base line is being
established or a comparison is being undertaken. There is a need to have
comparable information for all alternatives to be considered; thus there is a
need to define the technical documents that give a description of the process,
present a process diagram, provide simplified materials and energy balances,
define raw material and final product amounts and their physical and chemical
forms, the costs, conceptual basic engineering information, and critical points
where decisions have to be made on environmental, economic and social grounds;
- The Manual should help people feel comfortable with the fact that personal
understanding will vary and individual contributions will differ;
- The Manual should be as developmental unbiased and as least prescriptive as
possible;
- The Manual should facilitate objective decisions based on goals that are set
by the local stakeholders, not by outsiders;
- The Manual should retain the flexibility of the tool, showing that EnTA can
be either a simple tool or as advanced as required;
- The Manual should ensure that EnTA is not locked into having specific
information requirements - stakeholders will determine/decide the information
requirements; but for training there is a need to have at hand as much of the
relevant information as is possible;
- The Manual should contain advice on how to define the technology
intervention - i.e. how to define the boundaries;
- The Manual needs an index; and
- p 51 of the current Manual refers to gaps and uncertainties in identifying
"pressures" - the same terminology should be used elsewhere; The
question "can environmental impacts be sustained?" needs to be
clarified.
Re workshop structure and approach:
- Learning by doing is very appropriate for EnTA - the use of a real case
study was very positive - much better than working solely in theory;
- There is a need to clarify the objectives and target group for EnTA - this
will help define the process for the workshop;
- The length of the workshop was inappropriate and needs to be about half a
day longer to allow sufficient time for the application of the practical
exercise; the plant visit should occur on the afternoon of day 2, leaving day 3
for working up the assessment results; this might mean that the first day needs
to be a longer session, or extended into the evening;
- The workshop design needs to be improved, especially given that 6 hours
spent on the worksheets was insufficient; the favoured solution was to separate
the baseline and new technology exercises into two separate and distinct
sessions.
- In relation to the pedagogical approaches used, how much progress could
participants with poor English skills make during the workshop?
- The moderator/facilitator role was a struggle - there was not sufficient
opportunity to prepare; better preparation would have allowed the process to be
improved;
- There is a need for better briefing and training of facilitators in a
multi-stakeholder dialogue, such as that which arises in an EnTA
- There is a need to maximize/optimize the use of the four days - training the
trainers (moderators/facilitators) would help in this respect; there was only
one day to preview the materials;
- Often the chemistry and composition of the teams was such that they were
dominated by one person - thus a team came up with results, but it was unclear
if all participated in producing these results;
- The purpose of the workshop was to train the participants, but another
priority was to trial the EnTA Manual and worksheets - in these respects the
workshop process was excellent; but there is a need to consider the context in
which EnTA is to be used - e.g. in relation to EIA, CBA, where it is used, by
whom;
- Given the complexities of the science, economics, social pressures,
legislation and international conventions, was lead recycling a good test of the
EnTA methodology? What if the EnTA had been applied to copper recycling, for
example?
- What were the expectations of the organisations that participated in the
workshop (as sponsors etc) and were these expectations realised?
- The EnTA process is likely to be very suitable in a multi-stakeholder
situation where parties with different views and objectives are required to
discuss and consider environmental management in order to determine whether a
process is environmentally sound.
The post workshop review concluded with identification of a number of
follow-up activities. In the list below, those designated with an * have already
been allocated funding by UNEP.
- Send participants the PowerPoint presentations on environmental management
and on EnTA;
- Prepare and circulate the workshop report;
- Revise the Manual on the basis of feedback from the EnTA workshops in Manila
and South Africa*
- Circulate the revised Manual to the EnTA contact group, for comment and
feedback;
- Revise the Manual, as appropriate*
- Distribute revised Manual to Manila workshop participants for their
comments;
- Prepare and distribute a CD containing all the workshop presentations and
materials;
- Monitor implementation of the personal EnTA action plans prepared during the
workshop;
- Develop and evaluate success indicators for the workshop, showing the impact
of follow-up implementation and the difference the workshop has made;
- Prepare case studies using the revised Manual*:
- Recycling of lead acid batteries - based on workshop materials;
- Disposal of medical wastes - the Basel Convention Secretariat is active on
this topic; UNCTAD has most of the information and before the last COP a
echnical working group drafted guidelines for disposal of such wastes;
- Prepare a comparative, comprehensive study of existing and new lead acid
battery processing technologies;
- Prepare a training package in EnTA*;
- Assess and identify regional centres for capacity building in EnTA:
- Africa;
- South and Latin America;
- Asia-Pacific, possibly on a sub-regional basis;
- Eastern Europe and Russian Federation; and
- Small Island Developing States;
- Strengthen the regional centres, through training the trainer programmes and
other initiatives such as preparation of case studies and publication of the
Manual in appropriate regional/national languages - use the UN Asia and Pacific
Centre for Technology Transfer (APCTT) to integrate the activities in the
Asia-Pacific region, in conjunction with the proposed Department of Science and
Cleaner Technologies Institute (in Philippines) and national Cleaner Production
Centres in Vietnam, China etc; and
- Develop and implement an interactive, computer-based training package for
use and distribution via the Internet.
M. Close
On behalf of the workshop sponsors and other contributors, Mr Niclas
Svenningsen, Industry Programme Officer, UNEP/ROAP, Bangkok, Thailand,
highlighted the fact that the workshop had exceeded the high expectations
regarding achievement of its multiple objectives. Summing up the workshop, Mr
Svenningsen commented that the workshop had been a learning experience for the
trainers and resource persons, as much as it had been for the other
participants. The EnTA Manual used in the workshop is new and was being tested
for the first time. He said that the workshop had been successful in providing
insights into how best to use the Manual in support of the EnTA process. It also
provided experience that showed how best to use the Manual in a training
environment and how to conduct future workshops to maximize their efficiency and
value for the participants.
Mr Svenningsen noted that EnTA is a relatively new tool. It has yet to be
recognised by ISO 14000 and is yet to become part of the environmental
management vocabulary, as have the terms Environmental Impact Assessment, Waste
Minimization or Cleaner Production. But EnTA is a tool of growing importance. Mr
Svenningsen said he was personally convinced that it will not be long before
EnTA is a very common and widely applied tool, maybe even more so than EIA and
life cycle analysis, as EnTA is a much more convenient and an easy-to-use tool.
He concluded by again acknowledging and thanking the workshop sponsors and
contributors, expressing his appreciation to the workshop participants for their
commitment and enthusiasm and by wishing all participants a safe journey to
their homes and success in their follow-up activities with EnTA.
The full text of the closing speech is provided in Annex 5.
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