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Hannah Leggatt is an award-winning environmental specialist who has over 15 years of experience in delivering environmental excellence on major projects and within previous organisations, including Kier Group and Amey and being the client side on the HS2 project. Her most recent role is as Head of Environment & Sustainability (Operations & Delivery) at The Clancy Group. She is also a published technical co-author whose paper on “Minimising Carbon Emissions at HS2 Phase One Stations” was published in the ICE’s High Speed Two (HS2): Infrastructure Design and Construction (Volume 2) 2021 and a recognised member of the Institution of Environmental Sciences (IES).
Hannah Leggatt, Head of Environment and Sustainability (Delivery) at Clancy
Through this article, Leggatt highlights the importance of environmental awareness and the role of Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) in protecting the environment and fostering sustainable development.
To see the visible impacts of climate change through climatic weather events and the devastation caused to our natural world, we are now living in a world where Environmental Awareness and consciousness have never been more crucial. We must work to find ways to foster a more sustainable future that also preserves our precious planet and its resources.
So, what is environmental awareness, and how do you obtain it, in simple terms, it is the recognition of the importance of protecting the environment and the world around us and the understanding of how individual actions can directly impact that delicate ecological balance. It is also about understanding how human activities are directly contributing to climate change whilst understanding how important the variety of species and life on earth is to ensure good ecosystem health.
Promoting environmental awareness involves many aspects, including education, community engagement, and advocacy. By raising awareness and actively seeking ways to do things that don’t have an environmental cost, businesses, individuals, and communities can make better, more informed decisions. This will also directly contribute to helping individuals make better, more informed and sustainable choices that also protect the delicate balance of the natural environment around us. Within my current role as Head of Environment and Sustainability at Clancy, this is something both myself and my team implement and is at the forefront of consideration for any work we undertake.
One way to successfully do this within our industry is through Environmental Impact Assessments or, as they are more commonly known, EIAs. EIAs are a process that can be used to evaluate the potential environmental effects of potential projects or developments before they happen or are delivered on-site. For most, if not all, Environment and Sustainability professionals, Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) will, at some point, have played a crucial role in sustainable development, environmental protection and decision-making.
There are many reasons why EIAs are so important, but I am going to share my view of some of the key reasons why I think they play such a vital role within the industry and as an E&S professional.
One of the most important reasons is that the EIA helps identify and assess potential environmental impacts of projects before they are even implemented, so they are a great way to assess impacts before any decisions have been made. This proactive approach allows decision-makers to understand the effects on the natural environmental around us, directly enabling them to mitigate negative imapcts effectively. They also help to make sure that through the works being undertaken, there are no deterioration impacts on biodiversity whilst also identifying opportunities to integrate nature-based solutions into projects from the concept stage.
By integrating environmental considerations into project planning, EIA actively helps promote development that is economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable. It can enable us to Optimise water and energy usage, reduce consumption and, where possible, recycle materials over virgin, and embed and promote circular economy approaches.It also ensures that projects are not compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
EIA processes also often involve public participation, directly allowing communities and stakeholders to voice their concerns and contribute to decision-making. It helps us make sure that we are actively engaging with the local communities whilst helping to ensure that those who wish to be responsible can aim to create additional social, economic and environmental benefits for communities and society as a direct result of their actions.
We also know that there are numerous legal requirements for conducting EIAs, ensuring that projects adhere to national and international environmental standards.This compliance helps prevent environmental degradation and promotes responsible and sustainable development practices that can be incorporated early in the planning process. This also helps to embed more environmentally conscious decision-making at the concept stage of a project. Identifying potential environmental risks early in the planning stage can also have cost benefits as it can directly save costs associated with mitigating damage after a project has begun. This also helps avoid costly mistakes and enhances the overall sustainability of projects.
For the works we undertake at Clancy, environmental assessment and scoping are critical to ensure environmental risks, constraints and opportunities are identified as early as possible in the project, this also means we can advise and guide the project teams to make sustainable choices. There are also wider benefits from adopting this approach for both us and our clients, as the sooner environmental risks are identified on a project, the less risk there is that delays will occur as we can mitigate them in the planning stage.
In summary, Environmental Impact Assessments are a vital tool that not only helps to protect the environment but also actively supports informed decision-making, which reduces cost impacts and enables us to embed sustainable development practices at the very beginning.
Finally, it is key that sustainability is embedded across all project levels, ensuring we have a continuous feedback loop that enables us to capture learnings and share knowledge and success that will help us all to support leaving a sustainable legacy now and into the future. At Clancy, we have found this to be helpful to reinforce the reasons why we are asking the teams to make more sustainable decisions and share where we have had success elsewhere within the business.
We can also do this by ensuring the Sustainability Principles and its key pillars are incorporated into early decision-making, ensuring we consider the environment, as well as the social and economic impacts.
By increasing our environmental awareness, undertaking EIAs and understanding the impacts of our decisions before we make them, and through committing to sustainable practices, we can work to find ways to foster a more sustainable future that also preserves our precious planet and its resources, and together we can all play a part in securing a more sustainable and successful future.
