Advancing the consideration of ecological connectivity in environmental assessment – Part 2 of the special issue

Abstract

Despite a rapidly growing body of research about ecological connectivity, studies explicitly examining and advancing its inclusion and consideration in environmental assessment (EA) have remained surprisingly sparse. The primary purpose of this special issue is to compile and catalyse research that explicitly links connectivity and EA practice, showcasing the work of researchers and practitioners that recognizes the significance of connectivity and addresses knowledge gaps. We are pleased to introduce the second part of this special issue, featuring three additional papers that delve deeper into the topics and insights presented in the first 7 articles and first editorial. The first part of this special issue, published in November 2022 (IAPA vol. 40, no. 6), emphasized the need for studies that combine EA and ecological connectivity and aimed to promote interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral collaboration and to improve current EA practices. It started with an overview of current practices and common issues regarding the treatment of connectivity in EA, drawing on a global survey of EA actors (Patterson et al. 2022b), followed by national overviews about urban planning in Sweden (Karlsson and Bodin 2022) and road planning in Brazil (Oliveira Gonçalves et al. 2022), as well as the EA process in Canada (Patterson et al. 2022a) and in the United Kingdom (Kor et al. 2022). Subsequent papers zoomed into specific cases that (1) explicitly incorporated connectivity assessments in the EA process across scales and EA tiers ranging from project-level environmental impact assessments to strategic environmental assessments (Cumming and Tavares 2022), (2) developed and applied strong quantitative approaches to model habitat connectivity for certain target species in EAs (Kor et al. 2022), and (3) explored the contribution of mitigation measures to the connectivity of ecological networks for amphibians (Clevenot et al. 2022). The first editorial summarized the findings of these studies in terms of challenges, uncertainties, and opportunities associated with quantifying, assessing, and mitigating impacts on connectivity as part of the EA process (Torres et al. 2022). It laid out the need for systemic changes and further research efforts for better integration of connectivity into EA practice. Some of the challenges identified refer to the accurate quantification of the effects of development projects on connectivity and the use of the results. For instance, they point to the need to avoid the Fallacy of Stressed Systems and the Shifting Baseline Syndrome to prevent an underestimation of impacts on connectivity, to the danger of mis-use of connectivity assessments to mask or ‘compensate’ for habitat loss, and to the need to set up and follow through with monitoring for sufficiently long time periods. In the planning and regulatory perspective, the editorial highlighted that it is crucial to raise awareness and explicitly consider connectivity in national planning and in strategic environmental assessments and that clear roles and responsibilities among EA stakeholders must be established to substantiate accountability. These efforts would contribute to the advancement of evidencebased EA and enhance the decision-making process. The second part of the special issue aims at improving the understanding of connectivity analysis in EA phases that were examined less closely in the first part, i.e., the comparison of alternative designs and the phase of mitigation and compensation. It expands applied knowledge by presenting good examples of connectivity analysis in EA through an examination of case studies. These articles also expand the geographical scope of the special issue, with studies from Brazil and Australia and a comparison of case studies from countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, and Sweden. In the first article, Sales Rosa et al. (2023) emphasize the importance of connectivity assessments for planning mitigation strategies and compensation schemes, such as biodiversity offsets. Their study models and compares ecological connectivity for large mammals in a mining region located in the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest at present and for future scenarios with the implementation of biodiversity offsets. The findings indicate that offsets can improve ecological connectivity by providing alternative habitats for affected species and emphasize the importance of carefully planning the locations of restoration areas to maximize their contributions to connectivity and habitat quality. To improve the treatment of connectivity in EA, the study recommends the incorporation of biodiversity monitoring, the modelling of offset areas for conservation and restoration, and a thorough analysis of project alternatives. The second article by Fung et al. (2023) from Australia makes two major contributions. It first provides an overview of spatially explicit studies in EA that assessed the effects of linear infrastructure on IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND PROJECT APPRAISAL 2023, VOL. 41, NO. 5, 330–332 https://doi.org/10.1080/14615517.2023.2239586