ABSTRACT
The most significant environmental issues currently facing society (for example, climate change, loss of biodiversity and habitat fragmentation) are the result of cumulative effects – the complex additive and synergistic effects in time and space of repeated and multiple actions (Hegmann et al, 1999; Shoemaker, 1994). Cumulative effects arise from a variety of situations and activities, such as large projects that produce significant environmental change, to numerous small, individually insignificant projects that in combination have a compounding and degrading effect on the environment (Kennett, 1999; Piper, 2002). Cumulative effects are pernicious because each individual action, when considered in isolation, may seem insignificant. However, the interaction of these effects in time and space results in highly complex and often unpredictable changes to ecological and social systems. Frameworks for understanding cumulative environmental effects (cumulative effects assessment) generally consider the sources, pathways and effects of environmental change (Cocklin et al, 1992a, 1992b; Contant and Wiggins, 1991).
