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The principal aim of environmental impact assessment (EIA) is to foster sustainable development. Sustainability can be conceived along a 'weak' and 'strong' continuum, in which the latter holds that substitution of natural capital is severely limited, and evidence suggests that weak sustainability prevails in decision-making supported by EIA. Therefore, based on the assumption that strong sustainability is the required goal to protect biodiversity and mitigate future climate change, the aim of this paper is to establish the concept of transformative effectiveness to better evaluate how EIA can foster the transformation of stakeholders' frames of references towards strong sustainability. The EIA systems of the US, EU, and Brazil were analyzed to identify the implicit and explicit drivers towards transformative change to a strong sustainability goal. A literature review of transformative change within impact assessment was used for identifying the necessary changes that need to come from both within policy actor networks and from the wider social-ecological-technological system in which EIA operates. From this, a new dimension of transactive effectiveness is characterized that can help to evaluate the extent to which EIA practice is transforming towards strong sustainability as a goal. • Transformative effectiveness for evaluating EIA introduced. • Strong sustainability purpose and principles in EIA identified. • Transformative purposes of EIA in Brazil, European Union, and US detailed. • How learning in EIA can transform stakeholders' values. • Transformation change in EIA at micro- macro- and meta-scales discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fundamental differences between the dimensions of sustainable development have been identified by researchers and many assessment tools have been developed in several countries. This paper introduces the development of a methodology for determining the weight of each dimension employed in sustainable construction assessment through the use of assessment tools that use the Brazilian indicators of sustainable development in accordance with the Commission on Sustainable Development, and also through the utilization of a database provided by the Brazilian Geography and Statistics Institute (IBGE). Firstly, the Sustainability Panel tool was employed to reveal separately the status of dimensions in sustainable development (environmental, social and economic) and then it was made a statistical analysis of the results for each region in Brazil (north, northeast, midwest, southeast and south). The solution presented in this paper aims to reduce the inconsistencies found in the adjustments of the assessment tools considering regional differences based on political actions included in governmental agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to analyze a tiering scoping approach developed to identify critical multidimensional sustainability issues and impacts of a large infrastructure project: the land transport project linking northern Brazil with a new port on Guyana's coast. The Inter-American Development Bank awarded a technical assignment to develop the terms of reference of a country environmental assessment, a strategic environmental and social assessment and an environmental and social impact assessment of the project(s). The complexity of the issues at stake lead to the design of a tiered assessment process supported by wide-ranging participative sessions involving 170 individuals from Guyana and Brazil and from diverse sectors. The process identified ex ante conditionalities, critical factors for decision-making and valued socioenvironmental and governance components. Such complex and determinant planning initiatives for the future of a country need to be supported by comprehensive, well-sequenced scoping processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]