Tomás B. Ramos

• PhD
• Professor at NOVA University, School of Science and Technology, Lisbon, Portugal

Although the circular economy (CE) is increasingly reflected in policy and private sector activities, research has shown that ‘circular’ strategies are not necessarily more sustainable than alternatives. Organisations thinking about implementing such strategies can use various metrics and methods to assess both their resource efficiency and the sub...

This paper examines the role of place in the local development of a circular economy and the potential for consequent social redistribution. Based on a case study of public, private and third-sector approaches to a circular economy in Hull, an industrial city in the northeast of England, it offers a critical analysis of the geographic distribution...

Establishing a circular economy is assumed by some definitions to include social benefits such as employment opportunities; however, research beyond quantitative job creation projections is only recently emerging. While the repair sector is well-established, it has been suggested that increasing circularity implies significantly expanded demand for...

Circular economy (CE) is becoming an increasingly mandatory material issue within corporate sustainability reporting, however, what remains unaddressed within literature are the perspectives and capacities of the companies which must soon adapt to meet the evolving reporting requirements. This research aims to capture insights from companies engage...

The Circular Economy (CE) is generally understood as an opportunity to transform the current unsustainable linear economic system by redesigning the way organisations provide goods and services rethinking how society consumes and uses those resources. In this context, the public sector is mainly recognised as an actor enabling the implementation of...

Circular economy (CE) is a concept that is gaining attention as an approach to help accelerate the transition towards sustainability. Research has focused on the adoption of CE practices in the business sector while the adoption within public sector organisations has been relatively overlooked. Examining CE adoption in the public sector through the...

Circular economy (CE) continues to become an increasingly important topic within disclosure frameworks and taxonomies for sustainable finance, however, early evidence points to CE not readily being included within corporate sustainability reports. Therefore, this research aims to explore how CE is emerging within the sustainability reports of compa...

The shift towards sustainable development is argued to be achieved by a circular disruption triggered or supported by circular economy (CE) policies. CE policies can pressure the disruption of currently predominant linear socio‐technical systems across sectors towards a circular paradigm. Knowledge on how these policies appear on the agenda is esse...

International agencies, non-governmental organisations, technical experts, and academia have strongly recommended that water resources planning and strategic environmental assessment (SEA) processes should be supported by indicators that can be used to characterise, assess and monitor water resources overtime against management objectives. Moreover...

The circular economy (CE) is seen as a model of production and consumption where resource use is reduced and extended in closed‐loop life cycles. Organisations have been fundamental in contributing towards CE for which limited outcomes are known from public organisations. This research aims to identify the factors influencing the implementation of...

Organisations are increasingly being pushed to manage, assess and report their sustainability performance, including public sector organisations (PSO). Several approaches were developed to implement sustainability assessments at organisation level. However, the majority are still for the private sector and are often not supported by active stakehol...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43615-021-00086-1

A growing commitment from companies to implement circular economy (CE) strategies demands the development of guidelines for consistent related external communication. The fields of non‐financial reporting and sustainability are well established with numerous available international reporting frameworks and approaches; however, there is still an abs...

To seize the potential of Circular Economy (CE) organisations need to evaluate and communicate their progress moving away from the non‐sustainable paradigm of ‘take‐make‐dispose’ towards circularity. Existing CE assessments for organisations focus on companies. Although the need for CE assessment is recognised in both public and private sectors, li...

Repair is an essential aspect of circular economy (CE) strategies to extend the life of products and materials, and has further been suggested as a key sector to benefit from employment through CE transitions. At the same time, CE narratives around repair have been criticised as highly technocratic, neglecting the body of literature exploring repai...

Circular Economy (CE) is seen as a key strategy in achieving sustainable development and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To seize the potential of CE, public and private organisations need to evaluate and communicate their progress moving away from the non-sustainable paradigm of “take–make–dispose” towards circularity. The...

Sustainability assessment tools have provided a way for local authorities to assess their performance towards sustainable development. However, a major problem of existing methods is the lack of an integrated assessment approach to cover significant aspects of municipalities’ activities, namely Health, Safety and Environment (HSE). This study was c...

The concept of the Circular Economy (CE) is an increasingly attractive approach to tackling current sustainability challenges and facilitating a shift away from the linear “take-make-use-dispose” model of production and consumption. The public sector is a major contributor to the CE transition not only as a policy-maker but also as a significant pu...

The Solid Waste (SW) topic within the local sustainability assessment (LSA) system context remains little explored. This article is a literature review on this topic, with emphasis on the analysis of SW indicators and of systems they concern to. It assessed whether these indicators can represent SW complexity and sustainability aspects. Results in...

The review of environmental impact statements (EIS), despite its relevance to impact assessment effectiveness, has received scarce scholarly attention. Few studies have gone beyond the realm of regulatory evaluations to understand the managerial meanders of the review process. This study evaluated the responsibilities, procedures, information input...

Water resources planning is currently designed to meet emerging challenges and encompassing a more comprehensive and integrated water management. The main focus of current water resources planning is to promote good water resource conditions through the implementation of innovative water policies. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to characteri...

Sustainability assessment approaches could support all levels of decision-making and policy processes (including strategies, policies, plans, programs, projects, and activities/operations), thus improving the management of natural and human systems. Sustainability Indicators (SIs) have been extensively used to assess and communicate the progress to...

Researchers have adopted a concept for sustainable development (SD) that has given rise to different systems of sustainability assessment, systems to which several authors have suggested non-material components should be incorporated. This work aims at developing a conceptual model to integrate these components into systems of sustainability assess...

[ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION] Land use and land cover (LULC) changes, particularly land take by urbanization, can jeopardize ecosystems and their capacity to provide humans with numerous benefits, known as ecosystem services. A better understanding of the connections between land take, changes in complex LULC patterns and ecosystem services is still...

The adoption of sustainability policies and practices in organisations is a rising trend, in particular in companies. Public sector organisations are also following this occurrence but with slower signs. Despite a relevant amount of research work on sustainability practices implemented by private organisations and by some public agencies, central p...

Local governments are close to citizens and are moving faster than other public sector levels with regard to the integration of sustainability values in their operations and strategies. The assessment of sustainability aspects in local governments is an important issue as public sector organisations are major employers, providers of services and co...

Small islands provide an opportunity to influence the debate on Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) towards sustainability, due to their specific natural and human features. The research goal was to understand how sustainability might be advanced through SEA in small islands, supported by the development of a conceptual framework and recommend...

The motto of this special issue is to link lessons learned both from the North and the South or from the East and the West, and from new small‐scale sustainable development changes to wider and global transitions. It brings together contributions that were debated at the 22nd International Sustainable Development Research Society Conference (ISDRS...

Ocean governance frameworks are aimed at achieving sustainable use of the marine environment and its finite resources. They are increasingly being developed and implemented worldwide. Although the importance of evaluating the success of integrated ocean management initiatives is widely recognized, so is its complexity, and there is still limited kn...

Sustainability indicators have been extensively used to measure and communicate the state and progress of sustainability issues by covering robust and meaningful information for a variety of stakeholders. Sustainability indicators allow informal and, many times, sporadic actions of sustainability data collection and evaluation that can be conducted...

The sustainability assessment of public sector organizations including municipalities, with a focus on the integration of health, safety, and environmental (HSE) issues in the context of sustainability performance indicators , has almost remained underexplored. Moreover, since a large number of the activities of megacities' municipalities have dire...

The use of Ecosystem Services (ES) indicators can help designing, implementing and monitoring public environmental policies. Such indicators may be used as a support tool for natural resources management, like in forest areas, which are important ES providers. In this context, military areas are particularly challenging due to the nature of the act...

River Basin Management Planning (RBMP) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) processes often rely on the use of indicators to assess the sustainability of planning options, to communicate with stakeholders and to support decision-making. The aim of this research was to investigate the adoption of indicators to support these processes and to...

Sustainability indicators are essential tools to ensure the identification of a comprehensive strategies and realistic way of assessing and improving sustainability.This tool can be used for river basin planning and management, including monitoring,assessment and reporting. Also, indicators are important assessment tools to identify social needs an...

Sustainability Reporting has become a key element in different organisations. Although there have been a number of academic publications discussing the adoption of sustainability reports in the public sector, their numbers have been quite low when compared to those focussing on corporate reports. Additionally, there has been little research on the...

The adoption of sustainability strategies and practices in local public organizations is an increasing topic of research and discussion. Many efforts have been made to develop sustainability tools that aim to evaluate, monitor and compare the integration of sustainable development polices, plans and practices at this organizational level. Despite t...

The introduction of a revised Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive in the European Union brings along questions about the feasibility and effectiveness of its transposition by the Member States. Even though a harmonisation between Member States is desirable, cultural, administrative and institutional differences, as well as political and...

(Full text freely available until April 17 at http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Sck17szSIn9ar) Ecosystem services (ES) assessments have been undergoing rapid developments. Despite considerable advancements it is still difficult to comprehensively assess a large suite of ES, often requiring a selection of the most relevant ones. However, documented and...

Small islands have the attention of the international community because they are territories with unique features, and a pressing need for the enhancement of sustainability. Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) has characteristics that may promote the development and improvement of sustainability in these territories: (i) changing the mind-set,...

The literature concerning Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) often refers to the importance of context-specific approaches. However, there is a lack of systematised and consistent studies that enhance tailor-made SEA practices and procedures. Small islands are bounded units of study which may help explore SEA theory and practice in special te...

A incorporação da perspectiva da sustentabilidade tem sido uma questão relevante considerada na aplicação dos Planos de Gestão de Bacias Hidrográficas. A aplicação da Avaliação Ambiental Estratégica (AAE) tem sido uma alternativa reconhecida para promover a consideração da sustentabilidade em planos e outras ações em instâncias estratégicas de deci...

Environmental Impact Assessment is well established in higher education worldwide, with a history going back to the 1970s. In contrast, the teaching and training of Strategic Environmental Assessment is a relatively novel, less consolidated and implanted, but of growing importance as a decision support tool in planning and policy. Therefore, traini...

The assessment of sustainability of public services is an important issue, especially at local level, taken into account the central role of local governments as a major public employer and provider of a diversity of services. Local governments are close to citizens and are moving faster than other public sector levels with regard to the integratio...

This special volume (SV) of the Journal of Cleaner Production (JCLP) evolved from the papers presented at the combined Environmental Management for Sustainable Universities (EMSU) and the European Roundtable for Sustainable Consumption and Production conference held in Istanbul, Turkey in June 2013. It was the second time the two conferences were h...

During the last decades several international initiatives have emphasised that education is an imperative for societies to become more sustainable. This special volume stream is comprised of 33 papers that illustrate some of the efforts being taken by higher education institutions to contribute to sustainability. The majority of the papers were pre...

The scoping phase in strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is considered a central issue for the effectiveness of the whole SEA process, enhancing decision-making. Understanding SEA should be context-specific and scoping is paramount for a robust SEA; the main goal of this research was to develop a framework for the evaluation of the procedural...

The role of spatial planning for sustainable development has been widely acknowledged in academia and in policy. Monitoring spatial plans increases knowledge of whether they achieved their goals in guaranteeing sustainable development on a territorial level. Indicators are suited for this task and could play an important role in determining the app...

Spatial plans shape land-use changes, which in turn are main drivers of anthropogenic ecosystem alterations, therefore influencing the ecosystem services (ES) delivered by a given territory. However, integration of the ES concept in policies and plans is reported as poor in literature. The main goal of this research is to gain insight on the views...

The adoption of environmental practices and tools in overall management is an increasing occurrence in local public organisations. These institutions are shifting their management towards sustainability, although local governments are moving faster than other public sector levels regarding the integration of environmental and sustainability aspects...

Small islands are territories that are subject to different environmental, economic and social problems and pressures. Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is a systematic approach that integrates sustainability issues into policies, plans and programmes promoting the participation of different stakeholders including the communities. In this re...

One of the main roles of indicators is communication with stakeholders. However, different types of stakeholders can interpret indicators differently, due to different values, interests or cultural and academic context. Significant gaps between indicator data and stakeholders’ perceptions can point to a failure of indicators in fulfilling their com...

Em 2010 o Comité das Regiões da União Europeia referiu que a introdução da Avaliação Ambiental Estratégica (AAE) aumentou em 0,1 a 1 % os custos de operação e em 20 a 25% os tempos de aprovação dos processos de planeamento. Urge a necessidade de estudar métodos que tornem a AAE eficaz e eficiente. Esta necessidade é tão ou mais premente em territór...

It is fundamental to monitor, evaluate and report the state of the environment at global and local levels, to better implement sustainable development principles and practices. The State of the Environment and Sustainability Reports should be written in an understandable and accessible way for stakeholders and also be developed from the beginning w...

This paper assesses how sustainability reporting practices have been adopted in organizations which operate in a Southern European country, Portugal, and how those practices are related with environmental management and evaluation systems. A questionnaire survey was carried out in 2006, involving a statistical population of 69 firms, specifically t...

Mais do que um projeto, o MARGov – Governância Colaborativa de Áreas Marinhas Protegidas (margov.isegi.unl.pt) – consistiu no desenvolvimento de um diálogo colaborativo envolvendo os atores chave do Parque Marinho Professor Luiz Saldanha, na Arrábida. Este projeto apostou num modelo de governância colaborativa, em que cada parceiro se tornou um age...

Recently there has been an effort to put in practice integrated management plans in Marine Protected Areas (MPA) not only because of their high natural and cultural importance but also due to usual conflicts related to local activities. These plans should include the use of adaptive sustainability indicators that reflect stakeholders concerns, and...

Monitoring is a challenging and fundamental issue within planning processes, yet there is little understanding as to whether plans achieved their goals in guaranteeing sustainable development on a territorial level. Follow-up of spatial planning is rather difficult due to insufficient methodologies, deficiencies in plans’ contents and resource limi...

Regional sustainability indicators are increasingly being developed. Their significance becomes obvious when important public policy-making strategies are decentralized to regions or local governments. This research designed a framework for the development of regional sustainability indicators. Its main goal is to assess and report regional sustain...

Sustainable development indicators (SDIs) are one of the most frequently used tools to assess sustainable development from an international to a local scale, supporting evaluation and reporting purposes. Indicators can also be particularly useful in addressing the growing need for interaction at regional and local scale in sustainability initiative...

There are many different kinds of frameworks for evaluating environmental and sustainability performance at the organizational level (profit or not-for-profit, private or public), sectoral level (e.g. industry, transport, agriculture and tourism), and local, regional or country levels. Despite the diversity of methods and tools to measure sustainab...

There are several different approaches to evaluate regional environmental and sustainability performance, where regional indicators are an emerging issue. Academia could play an important role in many sustainable initiatives, giving credibility, scientific and technical support and contribute to increasing public participation. This paper intends t...

The purpose of this work was to integrate different methodologies to assess the potential ecological risk of estuarine sedimentary management areas, using the Sado Estuary in Portugal as case study. To evaluate the environmental risk of sediment contamination, an integrative and innovative approach was used involving assessment of sediment chemistr...

The environmental performance evaluation (EPE) of organizations is becoming an autonomous management tool. The main goal of this research was to assess the state of EPE practice in the Portuguese defence sector, as a particular part of public services. A questionnaire survey was conducted involving all Portuguese military units that have a person i...

This paper compares Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) practices and effectiveness in the Portuguese islands of the Azores and Madeira. This was accomplished by qualitative appraisal and evaluation of the contents of EIA statements and the characterisation of the EIA practices. Data was collected from the islands' regional environmental agencies...

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) education has been a reality for years in many graduate and undergraduate programs worldwide. As EIA has grown as a widely accepted environmental policy tool, several professions have tried to incorporate these skills into their academic training. The main aim of this research was to assess the Portuguese profi...

Public institutions are beginning to realise that they must shift their management towards sustainability. Thus, public sector, including defence services, environmental performance evaluation is a growing reality. The main objective of this research was to assess the environmental pressures and impacts profile of the Portuguese defence sector. A q...

The development of environmental performance policy indicators for public services, and in particular for the defence sector, is an emerging issue. Despite a number of recent initiatives there has been little work done in this area, since the other sectors usually focused on are agriculture, transport, industry, tourism and energy. This type of too...

At an international level, the implementation of environmental management practices in military facilities is now a growing reality, particularly with the implementation of environmental management programmes and/or systems. The main goal of this research was to assess the Portuguese military sector's environmental performance through an index – th...

Environmental and sustainability measurement and reporting is a growing reality in major private organizations worldwide and is becoming one of the essential criteria for assessing the environmental and social responsibilities of organizations. Thus, many organizations (private or public), irrespective of their activity sector and their economic di...

Environmental management practice in the military is a growing reality in many countries. The goal of this research was to assess Portuguese military environmental profile, as a first step towards evaluating environmental performance. This paper assesses how environmental practices have been adopted in this sector, based on a self-assessment by the...

The Sado Estuary in Portugal is a good example of a site where human pressures and ecological values collide with each other. An overall contamination assessment has never been conducted in a way that is comprehensible to estuary managers. One of the aims of this work was to select different types of index to aggregate and assess heavy metal contam...

This article focuses on the design of a conceptual framework to design and assess environmental estuarine monitoring programmes, including the networks, to detect quality status changes in coastal areas within environmental management programmes. Monitoring is a fundamental component in any management system, and in particular in sensitive areas un...

Monitoring is fundamental to environmental impact assessment (EIA) both to assess adherence to standards and to support management options. The use of indicators assures that a monitoring program addresses only the key variables associated with significant environmental impacts and also improves monitoring communication and reporting processes. Thi...

Desenvolve-se uma metodologia de avaliação do desempenho ambiental que pode ser utilizada como referência para o cálculo das pressões ambientais. Entende-se aqui por pressão ambiental qualquer factor de produção que represente um consumo de recursos naturais ou potencial degradação ambiental (consumo de materiais e água, ocupação de área, potencial...

Relatório do Grupo de Trabalho

Despite the diversity of tools to measure household consumption, indicators are one of the approaches with great potential, due to their communication and comprehensible easiness for non-scientific public, like families. The main objective of this research was the development of a framework to define the main steps and criteria to built household s...

SUMMARY Finding the most appropriate tools that help to assess and manage the estuarine environments, allowing their restoration, are one of the main issues in coastal zone management. This paper describes the application of the DPSIR (Driving Forces-Pressures-State-Impact-Response) indicators framework to an estuary in Portugal based on a Geograph...