Corresponding author: Jesper Persson (
Academic editor: A. Seiler
Environmental compensation includes a range of activities intended to counterbalance such negative impacts of development projects that remain in the environment after all preventive and corrective measures have been fully implemented. Sweden, being a member state of the European Union (EU), must implement environmental compensation under EU directives such as the Habitat Directive. However, like in other countries, implementation is not yet widespread in Sweden, and new practices and guidelines remain to be developed both nationally and at European level. This need is all the more urgent considering that the European Commission estimates that, within the EU, about 100,000 hectares of land is converted from its natural state each year.
The aim of this paper is to describe current environmental-compensation practices in Swedish road and railway projects and to discuss issues of vital importance to the development of compensation policy, such as what to compensate for, how much, and how.
A national inventory was performed, for the first time in Sweden, to identify compensation measures in road and railway projects. Data were collected from a national mailing list including 141 officials at county administrative boards (CABs), internal e-mail correspondence within the Swedish Transport Administration and databases of court decisions. The inventory focused on compensation measures ordered by virtue of the Swedish Environmental Code. In addition, two case studies were carried out to investigate the planning of compensation measures.
The results showed that CABs and courts rarely order compensation in infrastructure projects, even though this is possible under Swedish law. Between 1999 and 2012, 37 cases (i.e. permits issued) were found for which compensation was ordered. Of these cases, 76% concerned compensation for encroachments on minor habitats such as small ponds and cairns. No CAB ordered compensation for non-protected areas. Compensation ratios were never explicitly mentioned in permits, but in practice a ratio of 1:1 (often measured as area or length) was usually applied. The compensation measures typically consisted in recreating the same kind of natural asset that was affected, in a location close to the damaged area. In the two cases specially studied, the road and railway planning processes were not properly adjusted to integrate compensation issues, resulting in unnecessary bureaucracy and insufficient co-ordination between different projects, such as between the environmental-impact assessment process and the compensation process or between closely related sub-projects in the same region.
To meet the EU’s goal of no net loss of biodiversity, we suggest that policy requirements should be made stricter and that incentives for voluntary compensation should be created. In line with the goals of Swedish national transport policy and the European Landscape Convention, account should be taken of social and cultural aspects, and there should be a shift from a narrow focus on individual projects to a broader planning approach, since this would allow compensation measures to be taken where they can deliver the greatest environmental benefits.
Persson J, Larsson A, Villarroya A (2015) Compensation in Swedish infrastructure projects and suggestions on policy improvements. In: Seiler A, Helldin J-O (Eds) Proceedings of IENE 2014 International Conference on Ecology and Transportation, Malmö, Sweden. Nature Conservation 11: 113–127. doi:
The idea of environmental compensation is far from new. This may not be so surprising, given that it is essentially based on the polluter-pays principle and the idea that people should make amends for their actions (
Environmental compensation has been in use for longer in some countries, such as the United States and Germany, as described by
The aim of this paper is to describe the current state of environmental-compensation practice in Swedish road and railway projects and to discuss issues of vital importance to the development of compensation policy, such as what to compensate for, to what extent (i.e. compensation ratios), and how.
No previous nationwide inventory had been performed in Sweden of the extent to which environmental compensation is used, either in general or in conjunction with road and railway projects. To form an idea of the number of compensation measures carried out for projects involving an investment by the Swedish Transport Administration since 1999, when the possibility and/or requirement to order such measures was introduced in the Swedish Environmental Code, the approach chosen involved identifying projects that had been examined on the basis of the Environmental Code and where an order to carry out compensation measures had been issued, as well as studying the conditions for compensation laid down by the authorities issuing such orders. Under the Swedish Environmental Code, the authority examining a project must order environmental compensation if Natura 2000 areas or nature reserves are affected, and it may also choose to order compensation by virtue of provisions relating to protected biotopes, the protection of species and effects on aquatic environments.
To begin with, all instances of examination by public authorities were included, i.e. those carried out by municipalities (local authorities) and county administrative boards (CABs) as well as those carried out by courts of law. A first search of legal databases (
The inventory was carried out by means of two questionnaire surveys. One was sent out on 16 November 2012 as an internal mailing within the Swedish Transport Administration. The other was sent on 19 November 2012 to all CABs through a mailing list for officials handling nature-conservation cases; it included 141 addresses. Telephone calls were made in January and February 2013 to those CABs that had not yet responded. Here it should be noted that this approach did not necessarily capture all cases of environmental compensation, since compensation measures do not have to follow from formal examination under the Environmental Code but may also be undertaken on a voluntary basis. However, voluntary compensation is probably not that usual; only six such cases were identified through interviews and other methods.
Two cases, one from Järfälla near Stockholm and one from Umeå, were studied more closely. In both of these cases, concrete work on the environmental impact assessment (EIA), environmental compensation, etc., started around 2010, but this was of course preceded by a lengthy preparatory phase. The criteria used to select cases were that they should represent both municipal and CAB decisions and both road and railway projects, and that they should be relatively complex and involve several different aspects of compensation. Preferably, some time should also have passed so that it would be possible to study the entire planning and implementation process. The two cases selected were the only ones that fully met the criteria. We could also have chosen several smaller, more specific cases in specific counties, using a ‘county’ criterion as the basis for selection, but we decided to restrict our study to the two above-mentioned cases because they complement each other very well. All documents relating to the compensation issues in these two cases that we were able to find were studied closely. The remaining documentation (such as the EIA and the work schedule) was studied in a more cursory manner. Project leaders were interviewed over the telephone and given complete freedom to describe their version of the course of events. Supplementary and follow-up questions where we had identified points of unclarity were asked both over the telephone and by e-mail, and we also contacted other involved parties in individual cases (by telephone or e-mail).
The most remarkable finding is that the inventory yielded relatively few cases: only 37 decisions. It is difficult to quantify the total number of road and railway projects planned or implemented since 1999; however, it can be noted that the Administration allocates more than 4 billion euros each year to the building, operation and maintenance of infrastructure. The earliest case found was from 2004; since 2008, the average number of cases per year has been slightly below seven. Of all 37 cases identified, 12 related to railways, 22 to roads and 3 to both. Further, CABs accounted for 36 of the 37 decisions found while only a single one was made by a municipality.
By way of comparison, it can be noted that compensation requirements seem to be more common in Spain. Of all road and railway projects approved by Spanish national and regional authorities in 2006 and 2007, 40% (85 out of 214) included provisions regarding compensatory measures (
Table
Decisions taken by Swedish county administrative boards (CABs) and municipalities in 1999–2012 involving an order for environmental compensation. Note that a decision may refer to more than one legal provision; the right-hand column indicates the actual number of decisions.
Legal provision relating to | Number of decisions | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
protected areas |
protection of species |
water use |
||
|
||||
Blekinge | 1 |
|
||
Gävleborg | 1 |
|
||
Stockholm | 1 |
|
||
Värmland | 1 | 1 |
|
|
Västerbotten | 1 |
|
||
Västernorrland | 1 |
|
||
Västra Götaland | 23 | 1 | 1 |
|
Östergötland | 5 | 1 |
|
|
|
||||
Järfälla | 1 |
|
||
|
34 |
3 | 2 |
|
Chapter 7 of the Environmental Code (SFS 1998:808), which concerns,
Species Protection Ordinance (SFS 2007:845). Ordinances are regulations issued by the Government. This and the next ordinance were issued in implementation of provisions of the Environmental Code proper.
Water Use Ordinance (SFS 1998:1388).
Where 28 concerned habitat protection (i.e. protection of small ponds and cairns).
Of the 37 decisions, 32 lay down specific requirements to be met by the compensation measures while 2 of them state that the measures are to be designed later and 3 of them provide for compensation in the form of an amount of money being allocated to a fund. Further, the inventory showed that the compensation measures tended to resemble the damage done and that the prevailing view is that the measures should be on a par with the intervention, i.e. that the compensation ratio should be 1:1. A typical example is a habitat-protection case in eastern Sweden (Lilla Edet on route E45) where an encroachment entailing the loss of 152 m of stone walls and 176 m of open ditches was compensated for through the addition of 150 m of new stone walls and 150 m2 of new wetland (
Two cases were studied in greater detail: (1) Röbäck/Röbäcksdalen, a project to build a new bypass on route E12 west of Umeå in relation to which the CAB ordered compensation measures; and (2) Järfälla, a project involving the expansion from two to four tracks of the railway stretch between Barkarby and Kallhäll in conjunction with the Mälarbanan line between Stockholm and Örebro, where the compensation order was issued by the municipality. The purpose of these two case studies was not only to illustrate the practicalities of environmental-compensation cases, but also to highlight a few concrete examples of implementation problems and opportunities for improvement from a planning perspective.
The Röbäck case is a rather traditional habitat-protection case, but a large and complex one. Its outcome was that an encroachment on a Natura 2000 area was compensated for through the establishment of a new nature area elsewhere. It was not possible to do this within the actual Natura 2000 area because of difficulties relating to land ownership, as revealed by the interviews – a large number of private land owners would have been involved, the situation regarding financial compensation and management issues was unclear, and the Swedish Transport Administration lacks the power to expropriate land for compensation measures. Therefore it was decided to use land owned by the municipality instead. The Järfälla case, by contrast, represents a broader problem complex because the expansion of the railway will entail both an encroachment on a nature reserve and impacts on the natural and cultural environment as well as on opportunities for outdoor and recreational activities. The Swedish Transport Administration was therefore ordered to compensate for the encroachment and impacts involved, for example by moving cultural remains and by building new bridges for better access to the recreation area by foot or bicycle as well as eco-passages. The compensation process in the Järfälla case has proceeded smoothly and the various interested parties have co-operated well. Measures have begun to be planned and implemented, and issues of maintenance are being discussed.
One general conclusion drawn from the case studies was that both projects were highly dependent on the skill of the parties involved and on their will to carry through the compensation measures in the best possible way.
A further conclusion specific to the Röbäck case concerns the fact that, in recent years, the region around Umeå – especially the many bird-protection areas to be found there – has seen the implementation of a large number of major road and railway projects giving rise to orders for environmental compensation. However, in the Röbäck case it was difficult to gain access to the various formal documents that circulated in relation to each individual part of the road project, not to mention experiences made by the various involved parties that had not actually been written down anywhere. One might think that by now some form of regional co-ordination of the environmental issues concerned would have evolved. This should have been able to bring about not only a more coherent approach both to the assessments and to the interaction between them, but also a package of environmental measures yielding maximum nature-protection benefit. That would have greatly enhanced both efficiency and transparency.
As regards the Järfälla case, it turned out that sub-projects that should in theory be capable of co-ordination, such as the EIA for the work schedule and the compensation case, were in fact carried out separately and in parallel, with no systematic cross-referencing. Indeed, sometimes the same individuals were involved in preparing parallel information for different documents. As a result, those documents may be very similar in part while there are also clear differences between them; in the absence of an explanation, this may be confusing to external reviewers (indeed, it was not clear to us until we had the opportunity to ask some follow-up questions in a second interview). In all likelihood, each individual sub-project has its own planning, budget, staff, etc., meaning that the work is governed by a project-based logic rather than being part of a coherent process where the site and the problems are in focus. From the perspectives of transparency and efficiency, it should be possible to achieve improvements through a clearer formal description of how compensation cases are to be incorporated in the overall road- or railway-planning process, as previously discussed by e.g.,
Before discussing the policy implications of environmental compensation, it might be a good idea first to ask why anyone should undertake compensatory efforts in the first place. A list of arguments for and against compensation can be found in
There is an ethical responsibility to preserve common (i.e. public, in the sense that they are enjoyed by many people) goods such as nature. This is in line with the idea of ecosystem services: nature provides humans with benefits, and destroying the capacity of nature to do so will decrease the quality of life of humans (
People should make amends for their actions. This argument rests on the polluter-pays principle (
The overall stock of environmental assets should not be reduced. This is also the rationale behind the principle of the mitigation hierarchy. This hierarchy consists of four (sometimes counted as three) consecutive steps: first, avoid causing impacts; second, minimise any impacts that cannot be avoided; third, restore any impacts that cannot be minimised; and fourth, compensate for or offset any remaining damage that could not be avoided, minimised or restored (see, e.g.,
To this should be added that there is reason to believe that a smart use of environmental compensation will shorten planning processes and reduce conflicts (
One way of increasing the use of environmental compensation is to improve the relevant legislation. However, considering the arguments above, it may well be that an even more important action to take in order to increase its use is to draw attention to all of its advantages so as to promote voluntary compensation.
The inventory showed that compensation had mainly been undertaken by reference to habitat and species protection, and also that no compensation order had been issued in relation to encroachment on the everyday landscape, i.e. unprotected areas, whose importance has been increasingly stressed by numerous authors (e.g.,
the impact on cultural environments or characteristic features of the landscape;
the risk of ill-health (caused, for example, by noise and air pollution);
opportunities for recreation;
encroachments that affect farming, forestry, fisheries or other land-dependent economic activities, such as by reducing the amount of arable land.
The legislators adding provisions on environmental compensation to the Environmental Code may not have included these issues, but they still underpin not only the concept of sustainable development but also initiatives such as the European Landscape Convention. It should also be noted that an emphasis on habitat and species protection similar to the one in Swedish legislation exists in countries such as Norway and Germany, whereas aesthetical values are given more weight in the corresponding British legislation (
The inventory showed that the level of compensation ordered was on a par with the extent of the intervention – in practice, the compensation ratio was thus 1:1. There is a Swedish legal precedent in the form of a decision by the Land and Environment Court of Appeal (
When ecological criteria are applied, high compensation ratios may be needed to guarantee a fair exchange (
It is clear from the inventory that Swedish decision-making authorities have consistently proposed compensation measures of the same type as the intervention and usually also located close to the intervention (i.e. ‘in-kind’ and ‘on-site’ compensation). This was also the case in Järfälla (however, an exception could be seen in the Röbäck case, where the mitigation measures were out-of-kind and located off-site). This is in line with a principle which is advocated in the guidelines of the Business and Biodiversity Offset Programme (
The core of this issue can be summed up as follows: on-site and in-kind compensation is a way to make a contribution close to the site of the damage in order to safeguard local assets (such as ecosystem services), while off-site and out-of-kind compensation may be a necessary option for the promotion of assets of a more general type deemed to be more important or in cases where it is not possible to find an on-site and in-kind option, i.e. in the context of a strategy governed by objectives (
A national inventory was performed, for the first time in Sweden, to identify compensation measures in road and railway projects. The results showed that CABs rarely order compensation in infrastructure projects, even though this has been possible under Swedish law since 1999. When compensation measures are ordered, they are typically intended to compensate for encroachments on minor habitats such as small ponds and cairns (76%) or for damage to nature reserves or Natura 2000 areas. This is because these aspects are the ones addressed in the Swedish Environmental Code, and so it is in relation to them that developers need to obtain permits from county administrative boards. Hence legislation plays a crucial role in determining what is compensated for. No cases were found where compensation was ordered for non-protected areas. The actual measures mainly amount to the recreation of the same kind of natural asset that was affected, with a compensation ratio of 1:1. In the two cases specially studied, the road- and railway-planning processes were not properly adjusted to integrate compensatory issues, resulting in unnecessary bureaucracy and insufficient co-ordination between different projects, such as between the EIA process and the compensation process or between closely related sub-projects in the same region.
The study shows that the use of environmental compensation is neither well developed nor widespread. To increase the use of compensation, there is a need for further policy development – but it may actually be even more important to draw attention to all of the advantages of environmental compensation in order to promote voluntary compensation and compensation directed towards non-protected areas, i.e. people’s ‘everyday landscape’. It may be useful to consider the following aspects in the development of new practices, both in Sweden and elsewhere:
‘Nature’ or ‘the environment’ should be understood broadly to encompass all relevant dimensions, including recreational opportunities, farmland, noise, climate, culture, etc.
Compensation ratios higher than 1:1 should be used in order to take account of the perspectives of different actors and the issues of time, uncertainty and quality.
To prevent inconsistencies when several projects are being planned in parallel, an overall landscape perspective yielding increased flexibility should be used, so that cumulative impacts can be taken into account and so that the effectiveness of mitigation and compensation measures can be enhanced. When used within the context of the mitigation hierarchy, tools such as habitat banking may assist the implementation of compensation in certain cases.
The planning process should be transparent and well co-ordinated with other regional activities.