Auc Geographica 54 2/2019

ACTA UNIVERSITATIS CAROLINAE AUC GEOGRAPHICA 54 2/2019 CHARLES UNIVERSITY • KAROLINUM PRESS AUC Geographica is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. © Charles University, 2019 ISSN 0300-5402 (Print) ISSN 2336-1980 (Online) Original Article 117 Territorial Impact Assessment – European context and the case of Czechia Štěpán Nosek* Charles University, Faculty of Science, Department of Social Geography and Regional Development, Czechia * Corresponding author: [email protected] ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to critically review recent EU level debates on territorial impact assessment, which serves as a tool to improve the understanding of uneven territorial impacts of the EU sectoral policies. The paper also seeks to elicit (1) which Europe- an countries employ territorial impact assessment when designing various national policies and (2) how this tool is used in different governance environments. Particular attention is paid to the case of Czechia. The paper elaborates upon the state-of-the-art tools used on a national level and analyses the motivation of actors on regional and local levels to use such tools in their decision-making process. The research shows that EU member states that employ this tool can be categorized into four groups, for instance, depend- ing on whether they enrich other impact assessments tools by territorial aspects, or whether they focus coherence of regional development strategies and sectoral strategies. Territorial impact assessment is not implemented in Czechia, although recent years have witnessed an upsurge of interest concerning territorial aspects of investments. KEYWORDS Territirorial Impact Assessment; European Union; Czechia Received: 27 April 2019 Accepted: 4 July 2019 Published online: 20 August 2019 Nosek, Š. (2019): Territorial Impact Assessment – European context and the case of Czechia. AUC Geographica 54(2), 117–128 https://doi.org/10.14712/23361980.2019.1 © 2019 The Author. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). 118 Štěpán Nosek 1. Introduction with special attention to TIA. Chapter 3 analyses the current state of the art in selected European coun- For a long time, there has been a quest to understand tries in using TIA or similar tools. Chapter 4 focuses spatial or territorial consequences of public policies on Czechia and explains how TIA or similar tools are (Nijkamp and Van Pelt 1989). Some public policies are employed. Chapter 5 summarizes the main conclu- focused directly on increasing the development poten- sions and presents several suggestions for further tial of certain regions (regional policy). Other public development of TIA in the Czech context. policies are not directly focused on regions, but their From a methodological standpoint, the paper is impact is often greater compared to explicit region- based mostly on content analysis of available docu- al policies. For decades, there have been attempts to ments dealing with the topic of policy evaluation and develop tools which would enable to assess or to mea- (territorial) impact assessment in particular coun- sure a spatial impact of public policies. tries. This source of information has been comple- mented with questionnaires sent to academics and to assess the impact of policies or projects with a focus on Inenvironmental the 1970s, first and tools economic emerged impacts in the (e.g. USA Caldwell in order the study was to elaborate on the current situation in 1988; Bond and Pope 2012; Francis 1975). However, TIApublic use officials in all EU in countries.several countries. Thus, respondents The ambition were of geographers have been traditionally interested in asked an open question, i.e. to describe use of TIA in more complex tools assessing all aspects of territorial particular EU member states. Combination of those development. Discussions at the EU level regarding the two sources (content analysis and questionnaires) territorial dimension and territorial cohesion paved enabled to divide EU member states into four cate- the way for more complex tools enabling a holistic gories (see Chapter 3 and Table 2). Nonetheless, rel- approach in the evaluation of impact on territorial evant information has not been found in case of par- development (e.g. Medeiros 2017). ticular countries. The analysis concerning Czechia is based on this assessment (TIA) is a distinctly EU policy assessment author’s experience gained at the Czech Ministry closelyAccording connected to Fischer to the et al. EU territorial (2015), territorial cohesion impact agen- of Regional Development and at the International da and “does not make much sense in, e.g. the USA Advisory Centre for Municipalities, which imple- where people are used to move to areas of greater mented impact assessment techniques in the city of economic opportunity” (p. 9). The Territorial Agenda of the European Union 2020 (European Commission 2011) states that territorial cohesion “enables equal Litoměřice. opportunities for citizens and enterprises, wherever 2. The Role of Impact Assessment Tools they are located” (p. 3). Following the addition of ter- in Policy Coordination ritorial cohesion among strategic goals of the Europe- an Union in 2009, it seems to be even more important It is only natural that since the addition of territo- to evaluate potentially uneven territorial impacts of rial cohesion among the European Union’s goals, it particular projects, strategies, or policies. has become even more pressing to assess territorial Territorial Impact Assessment is a tool which impacts of sectoral policies that do not explicitly fol- appeared in a practical debate in 1989 with the launch of the European Spatial Development Perspective particular regional policies in different national con- (ESDP; Zonneveld and Waterhout 2009). textslow regional are, the policy Territorial goals – no Impact matter Assessment what the method goals of- - ology has been developed as a tool to measure poten- ically review recent developments regarding impact assessmentThe aims tools of this at thepaper EU arelevel twofold: and, secondly, firstly, toto anal crit- Marot 2011). yse awareness about these tools and the current state tialTIA territorial might effectsbe understood of sectoral as policies a new (Golobič addition and to a vast array of impact assessment tools that have Czechia. Czechia was selected for a case study due to been applied since the 1970s. Impact assessment, theof their fact thatimplementation the author of in this one paper EU member has followed state – in the which is mostly used and embedded in legislation of discussion and subsequent application of territorial many countries all over the world focuses primarily on economic and environmental dimensions (see years. Therefore, the paper seeks primarily to answer Table 1). However, proper evaluation of impacts on theseimpact questions: assessment in this country over the past five territorial development should include other dimen- (Q1) How do European countries deal with the sions as well. Stutz and Warf (2012) state that, “in challenge of evaluating territorial impacts of their conventional usage development is a synonym for policies? economic growth” (p. 268). Nevertheless, territorial (Q2) What is the current state of Territorial Impact development should be understood in a more com- Assessment implementation in Czechia? plex way, Medeiros (2017) concludes that territorial The paper unfolds as follows: Chapter 2 presents - an overview of different types of impact assessment ic competitiveness, social cohesion, environmental development should follow five main goals: econom Territorial Impact Assessment – European context and the case of Czechia 119 Tab. 1 Types of Impact Assessment. Impact assessment focused on Complex Impact Assessments Economic dimension Environmental dimension Social dimension Examples Cost-benefit analysis Environmental Impact Poverty Impact Assessment Territorial Impact Assessment Assessment Regulatory Impact Health Impact Assessment Impact Assessment (European Union) Assessment Strategic Impact Assessment Source: Author sustainability, sound processes of territorial gover- assessments embedded in the law in other advanced countries. However, according to Nijkamp and Van or territorial articulation. TIA is then supposed to Pelt (1989), the OECD collected a number of case encompassnance, and allefficient those dimensions. processes of spatial planning studies of urban impact analyses in Sweden, Canada, or France. 2.1 Impact assessment – definition and origins In the late 1980s, the term strategic environmen- The purpose of impact assessment is to assess poten- tal assessment was coined in an interim report to tial impacts of certain actions before they are imple- the European Commission (Fungisland Tetlow and mented (Hayes 2017). Impact assessment is thus Hanusch 2012). Strategic environmental assessment supposed to evaluate what might happen as a direct of policies and strategies has been clearly developed consequence of a particular project, strategy, or a poli- upon the practice of Environmental Impact Assess- cy. Today, there are more than 40 types of IA discussed ment (EIA) focused on the level of projects. However, whereas EIA is primarily concerned with how a cer- most frequently

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