Development of causal chains for the priority transboundary issues

2.2.3. Development of causal chains for the priority transboundary issues

This is one of the most useful aspects of the TDA for the development of future corrective actions. The causal chain relates the issues with their immediate physical causes and their social and economic underlying causes. The approach used in this TDA is to examine the separate role of various economic sectors and then integrate the results in a single framework. This ‘sectoral analysis’ approach helps to translate the findings into potential actions. Beyond the sectoral causes however, are deeper root causes of the problems, often related to fundamental issues of macroeconomy, demography, consumption patterns, environmental values and access to information and democratic processes. Most of these are beyond the scope of GEF intervention but it is useful to document them. The reason for this is that some proposed solutions may be unworkable if the root causes of the issue in question are overwhelming. The completed causal chain analysis should help to locate potential areas of intervention for the GEF.

The GIWA causal chain methodology examines the causes of individual GIWA issues within the GIWA sub regional context. The methodology itself is based upon a number of templates that help the causal chain team through the process in a stepwise manner. Having selected the priority issue to be addressed by the chain, the team of experts examines the immediate causes of the issue. The team then assesses from which sector of the human economy the immediate causes have arisen through a sectoral analysis approach using seven generic sectors: agriculture, industry, urban development, energy production, transport, fishing and recreation (including tourism). For each of the sectors, report sheets have been developed that facilitate the identification of the most significant resource uses or practices that contribute to the particular immediate cause and GIWA issue.

Figure 2.1 Driver/Pressure/State/Impact/Response Framework for GIWA: The Continuous Feedback Process

The methodology then explores the social and economic reasons for the key resource uses and practices. This tertiary stage in the chain also includes a simple analysis of existing measures taken to limit the cause. It explores factors related to governance, legislation and stakeholder involvement and provides important information for examining future options for intervention. It is also the first step in a more comprehensive governance analysis to be completed in parallel with the causal chain.

The final step in the methodology is a simple analysis of underlying or root causes. Existing and/or emerging transboundary environmental issues can be attributed to a range of socio-economic and legal root causes. The Socio-economic root causes themselves represent social and economic issues whereas the Legal root causes are associated with policy, legal and governance issues. Economic, political, legal and governance issues constitute a suite that in itself is a cause of social issues and underlying sectoral causes, (resource uses and practices).

As with the GIWA impact analysis, the causal chain analysis is very generic and prescriptive in its nature and was developed as a tool to enable some degree of intercomparison between GIWA sub regions. It was not designed as a tool for TDA development. The third stage in the development of the TDA methodology concentrated on the modification of the GIWA approach and the production of draft causal chains for the priority transboundary issues. The complete causal chain methodology will be presented in a Dnipro Basin TDA Methodology Report.

An illustration of the layout of a generic TDA causal chain outlining the root, underlying sectoral and immediate causes of transboundary issues is presented in Figure 2.2.

Part 1: Immediate cause analysis

The immediate causes listed for each environmental issue in the GIWA methodology were considered to be too generic for the Dnipro Basin TDA. However, pressure indicators are in essence indicators of immediate causes and consequently, the list of pressure indicators developed in stage 2 were rephrased as immediate causes and reviewed by the TDA expert team. The complete set of immediate cause report sheets will be presented in the full Dnipro Basin TDA methodology report. There was general agreement between the experts that the GIWA approach to assigning significance of the contribution of each sector to the immediate cause using percentages was not appropriate. Therefore an alternative method using a simple scoring exercise on the scale 0-3 was applied where 0 indicated no significant contribution and 3 indicated a very significant contribution.

Part 2: Underlying sectoral analysis

The general headings within the resource use and practice and social and economic cause components of the sectoral analysis were acceptable, if simplistic. However, it was considered that determining the significance of cause to the issue and the determination of perceived trends in the prescriptive manner required by GIWA would not result in the level of detail required for TDA causal chains. The sectoral analysis was used as a means of focusing the expert team allowing them to rephrase or alter the resource uses and practices and social and economic causes when constructing the causal chains, so that they fully reflected the situation in the Dnipro Basin.

Part 3: Root cause analysis

The root cause section was also considered to be too generic for the TDA. Therefore a draft list of underlying causes was developed. The underlying causes were divided into social and economic causes together with a list of over-arcing policy and legislative barriers.

Part 4: Governance

No changes were made to this section.

Figure 2.2 Outline of the approach employed for the causal chain analysis

Next: Description of the Basin

Previous: Development of an indicator based approach for the state of the environment report and environmental impact assessment