DPSIR is a general framework for organising information about state of the environment. The idea of the framework was however originally derived from social studies and only then widely applied internationally, in particular for organising systems of
indicators in the context of environment and, later, sustainable development.
The framework assumes cause-effect relationships between interacting components of social, economic, and environmental systems, which are
- D
riving forces of environmental change (e.g. industrial production)
- P
ressures on the environment (e.g. discharges of waste water)
- S
tate of the environment (e.g. water quality in rivers and lakes)
- I
mpacts on population, economy, ecosystems (e.g. water unsuitable for drinking)
- R
esponse of the society (e.g. watershed protection)
Variations of DPSIR framework include PSR (e.g. OECD 1994), DSR (e.g. UNCSD 1996) and many others.
The use of the framework within CEROI allows for a minimum comparability of information as it is always obvious what kind of information each part of a report is supposed to contain. It however does not require a full harmonisation of e.g. indicators thus making it possible to retain a certain level of diversity and flexibility among participating cities.
One should be warned however that the DPSIR framework does not necessarily have to be an explicitly visible part of a report. Most often the use of DPSIR terminology in the text will rather scare users away, since few of them have enough background and time to understand the technical description of the framework.
If on the other hand, without making a reference to DPSIR directly, the report follows its logic and uses common language to explain what is presented under which category, the end result (the SoE report) will likely be understood and welcomed by a regular user.
It obvious that not all issues or themes of a state-of-the-environment report need a full DPSIR presentation, in many cases some aggregation of DPSIR elements will only make them easier to work with and understand. For different groups of themes in the report aggregation of DPSIR elements is proposed:
¤ = Link
- green colour highlights most important DPSIR element(s) which would normally appear first on the issue introductory page
- other DPSIR elements on the issue page are light-blue
- merged cells mean that these DPSIR elements can be described together
- "A" in the last column (dark-blue colour) stands for individual Action, which is what an individual can do to help improve the situation
The diagram above suggests that
- for Physical Environment, the State part (e.g. drinking water quality) is most interesting ("green") and comes first on the page, then it is generally sufficient to describe Driving forces and Pressures together (e.g. side by side industrial production and water consumption by the industry), followed by a separate Response part;
- for Social Environment, the State part is still the most interesting (e.g. housing availability), and it may also be difficult to draw here a border with Impact, therefore they form one "green" block;
- External Impact is described best from the city's point of view through Driving forces causing Pressures on the regional and global environment (e.g. waste water allocation), this "green" block would appear first on the issue page followed by the presentation of resulting regional and/or global environmental change, i.e. State/Impact (e.g. change of ambient water quality downstream of the city);
- the most interesting part of Economic Sector's
description is this sector's interactions with various components of the
environment (e.g. for transport, direct Pressures caused
by transport trough e.g. emissions, resulting changes in the
State of the environment and Impacts), and
it is normally acceptable to treat these three parts altogether
(one long "green" block) since
individual environmental components and issues are already well
described in other chapters; follows this part is the presentation of sector, e.g.
transport in the city as such, in economic terms (Driving force);
- for Instruments and policies, the most interesting ("green") part is their application to environmental problems, this includes an environment-specific portion of the Response (e.g. environmental NGOs as part of all NGOs), and changes in State of the environment, Pressures and Driving forces as caused by the application of an instrument (e.g. a reduced use of private cars as a result of a public awareness campaign); the second ("blue") part of the Response cell is the description of the instrument as such, in full (e.g. public participation in the city in general, not only devoted to environmental issues).
If the proposed aggregation scheme needs to be adjusted for concrete cases in order to make presentation simpler, this certainly can be done by the authors of the report who will then produce a modified framework most convenient for them to use.
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