EIPOT Final Project Report - Stockholm Environment Institute

ERA-NET SKEP Project EIPOT (www.eipot.eu)
“Development of a methodology for the assessment of global environmental impacts of traded goods and services”
More specifically, the project aimed to:
• review and evaluate existing environmental accounting techniques that can be used to illustrate the
transnational impacts of traded goods and services;
• specify the (theoretical) framework and criteria for environmental accounting methodologies to
assess the environmental impacts of imported and exported goods and services;
• identify the most suitable methodology and expand it into an accounting approach which can be
applied by all SKEP member states;
• identify data requirements and possible data sources for the recommended methodology; and
• elaborate the roles of different regulatory authorities in providing data and advice to implement the
methodology.
The original project proposal aimed to "develop and specify an environmental accounting
methodology"; this is also reflected in the full project title. It was intended to progress the work to a
level of methodological specification detailed enough to provide explicit 'guidelines' for the use of the
'best suited methodology'. However, early on in the project it became clear that a) given the variety of
possible research and policy questions, it would not be appropriate to stipulate one single method but
rather put forward a flexible range of compatible methods and b) as a consequence, the focus should
be on the developments needed in data and organisational roles. In that respect, this project can be
seen as a critical milestone in the development of the ultimate methodology rather than as an actual
and complete development of one particular technique.
1.3 Project approach
RACER is an evaluation approach used by the European Commission Directorate General
Environment (DG ENV) to assess the suitability of methods and indicators for policy-oriented
applications and uses five major evaluation categories. In the EIPOT project, RACER was adapted
(Lutter and Giljum 2008) to include specified sub-categories. RACER stands for:
• Relevant – closely linked to the objectives to be reached
• Accepted – for example, by staff and external partners
• Credible for non-experts, unambiguous and easy to interpret
• Easy to monitor - for example, data collection should be possible at low cost
• Robust – for example, against manipulation
In EIPOT, the evaluation of methods was carried out using a system of scoring from zero to two. This
scoring enabled judgement on whether a method did not fulfil a criterion (score zero), partly fulfilled it
(score one), or was perfectly appropriate to answer the criterion’s question (score two). Then, for each
RACER category (R-A-C-E-R) the mean score was calculated. These mean values were compared
without further weighting into one aggregated score, to produce a more comprehensive picture of the
differences between methods. This approach enabled us to distinguish between the performances of
different methods with respect to categories linked to the project’s aim. As mentioned earlier, the
RACER analysis was not intended to select one ‘winner’, since the best method depends on the policy
question. The evaluations carried out by one member of the research team were reviewed by all the
other team members to ensure completeness and integrity. The procedure and results of this RACER
evaluation are described in detail in two separate reports (Lutter and Giljum 2008, Lutter et al. 2008).
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