The new rational approach to dealing with environmental issues

In principle the society should seek the balance economical and ecological issues. In practice our emotions and many socio-psycological processes get involved. Decision-making becomes difficult because there is no measure for the magnitude of environmental impact. The present stagnation and social pain in Europe is partly due to this difficulty in decision making.

In a rational world one deals with environmental issues by putting them into perspective. The following questions are addressed:

1. What is the problem?
2. What is the magnitude of the problem?
3. How much ecological gain is to be achieved?
4. What is the cost and who will eventually pay?

Eranti Engineering Oy has developed a method to estimate environmental impact simply based on the area of impact, the duration of impact and the relative power of impact on the biodiversity and richness of nature. Ecoscale, ecobalance and ecoimpact are different angles of this approach and are described in the following. Providing answers to the key questions is our bread and butter.

Issues are quite easily put in perspective as shown in the following example dealing with new harbour and navigation channel projects. In many cases it is quite sufficient to compare environmental impacts of a infrastructure project or new productive activity to familiar things that are more familiar to the society by large such as establishing a new residential area or farming.

(Click to enlarge)