Evaluating the environmental audit: Case study into the Centre for Waste Management's (CWM) European Regional Development Funded (ERDF) project's success at promoting sustainable development in small to medium enterprises (SMEs).

Abstract

Sustainable development has evolved rapidly over the last 30 years to fonn an integral part of business and political agendas (Smith, 1993). Although the overarching definition of sustainability is understood to represent the long-term maintenance of social, environmental and economic systems (Gudmundsson et aL, 1996; Hughes et aL, 2005), many aspects of sustainable development are far from having integrity in terms of political and business agendas due to the lack of viable accounting techniques.
This study was designed to assess the methods of evaluating the sustainable development achievements of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) project at the Centre for Waste Management (CWM), based at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK. The research was developed as a result of the author completing the CWM ERDF project closure report; the report identified a lack of collaboration between the project's achievements in the area of sustainable development and the ERDF targets.
The report illustrated that the quantitative measures, results and cross-cutting theme targets of the ERDF were insufficient at demonstrating the actual benefits of project assistance. Whilst the monetary unit is the most universally recognised component of measurement (Bateman et aL, 2003) and is used extensively in the evaluation of ERDF programmes. The
calculation of increased and safeguarded jobs and sales were perceived to be extremely subjective by project managers and beneficiary small and medium-sized enterprises (SME5) alike.
Initial proposals advocated the creation of specific sustainable development measures, however extensive research demonstrated that weak sustainability was present in the cuntnt ERDF targets and further project measures would only serve to dissuade SME participation. The economic, environmental and social benefits of the project were obscured due to an absence of fixed calculation methods and no long term project evaluation.