Environmental Impact, Pollution and Management: Waste, Air and Water Pollution, EIA, Protected Areas and Sustainability
This domain covers the legal and technical machinery of environmental assessment, the main pollution pathways, waste hierarchy and the protection instruments that apply on the islands.
Environmental assessment
- Strategic environmental assessment (evaluación ambiental estratégica) applies to plans and programmes; environmental impact assessment (evaluación de impacto ambiental) applies to projects, under Spanish Law 21/2013.
- Stages: screening (whether assessment is required), scoping, baseline inventory, identification and assessment of impacts, mitigation measures, monitoring programme and public participation.
- The competent authority issues the Declaración de Impacto Ambiental (DIA), not the developer.
- Tools: Leopold matrices, Conesa method, cumulative and synergistic effect analysis.
Pollution
- Air: PM10/PM2.5, NOx, SO2, tropospheric ozone, CO and volatile organic compounds. Tropospheric ozone is secondary, formed by sunlight acting on NOx and VOCs.
- Water: organic load measured as BOD5 and COD, nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus) causing eutrophication, heavy metals, hydrocarbons, microplastics.
- Soil and groundwater: spillage, legacy industrial sites, landfill leachate, especially dangerous in karst.
Waste hierarchy
Prevention → reuse → recycling → other recovery (including energy recovery) → disposal. Construction and demolition waste is abundant on islands because of tourism-related building. Hazardous waste requires separate collection and treatment.
Protection and sustainability
- National park: Marítimo-Terrestre del Archipiélago de Cabrera.
- Natural parks and protected landscapes: S'Albufera de Mallorca, Mondragó, Sa Dragonera, Serra de Tramuntana (also UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape), ses Salines d'Eivissa i Formentera.
- Natura 2000 designations: ZEC (habitats) and ZEPA (birds). Ramsar wetlands include S'Albufera de Mallorca and the Salinas de Ibiza y Formentera.
- Sustainability concepts: carrying capacity, ecological footprint, circular economy and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Worked example
A proposal to build a coastal footpath across a dune system inside a Natura 2000 site. Impacts: loss of foredune vegetation, trampling, fragmentation, disturbance to nesting birds. Mitigation: reroute behind the dune, boardwalks, seasonal closure, restore with native species. Monitoring: vegetation cover and bird counts. Because the site is protected and the project is listed in the annexes, formal impact assessment with a DIA is likely.
Traps that cost marks
- Mixing up strategic assessment (plans) and impact assessment (projects).
- Stating the developer issues the DIA.
- Treating recycling as the first option instead of prevention.
- Confusing ZEC (habitats) with ZEPA (birds).