4. Communication (phase III)
The production and dissemination of reports (Activity 11) is an important element of an EMSP. The frequency and number of reports that must be produced will be determined during the EMSP drafting phase. These reports should allow:
- the government departments to verify the effectiveness of the environmental assessment methods in place (the reports must be associated with recommendations for this purpose);
- the managers to integrate the outcomes into a database covering all EMSP outcomes in order to allow consultation of the database by specialists who will draft the future EMSP;
- decision-makers, the public and managers to access the information essential to allowing them to better protect the environment;
- the scientific community to increase and integrate knowledge in order to verify, validate and refine the verifiable impact hypotheses and the forecasting models.
The reports must describe the elements of the EMSP in detail, from its justification to the interpretation of the outcomes. They must clearly present the links that exist between the EMSP’s objectives, the impact hypotheses resulting from the conceptual model and the outcomes obtained. The processes of drafting the verifiable impact hypotheses and the characterization plan must be explained, justified and documented. The reports must also explain the differences between the forecasted impacts and the observed impacts, if any, and describe the actions taken when the contingency plan is triggered.