Environmental Impact Assessment

A Comparative Review

Chris Wood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780582369696
• eBook ISBN: 9781317878414
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has become a vital management tool worldwide. EIA is a means of evaluating the likely consequences of a proposed major action which will significantly affect the environment, before that action is taken.This new edition of Wood's key text provides an authoritative, international review of environmental impact assessment, comparing systems used in the UK, USA, the Netherlands, Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia and New Zealand and South Africa.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Nature of environmental impact assessment

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) refers to the evaluation of the effects likely to arise from a major project (or other action) significantly affecting the natural and man-made environment. Consultation and participation are integral to this evaluation. EIA is a systematic and integrative process, first developed in the United States as a result of the National Environmental Policy Act 1969 (NEPA), for considering possible impacts prior to a decision being taken on whether or not a proposal should be given approval to proceed. NEPA requires, inter alia, the publication of an environmental impact statement (EIS) describing in detail the environmental impacts likely to arise from an action.

The EIA process should supply decision-makers with an indication of the likely environmental consequences of their actions. Properly used, EIA should lead to informed decisions about potentially significant actions, and to positive benefits to both proponents and to the population at large. As the UK Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions put it (DETR, 1999b, paras 9, 14) formal EIA:

is a means of drawing together, in a systematic way, an assessment of a project’s likely environmental effects. This helps to ensure that the importance of the predicted effects, and the scope for reducing them, are properly understood by the public and the relevant competent body before it makes its decision. … EIA can help to identify the likely effects of a particular project at an early stage. This can produce improvements in the planning and design of the development; [and] in decision-making.

As Glasson et al. (1999, p. 9) have noted:

Underlying such immediate purposes is of course the central and ultimate role of EIA as one of the instruments to achieve sustainable development: development that does not cost the Earth!

Sadler (1996) also asserted that EIA is a key technique for incorporating concepts such as the precautionary principle and the avoidance of net loss of natural capital, central to the achievement of sustainable development, into decision making.

In principle, EIA should lead to the abandonment of environmentally unacceptable actions and to the mitigation to the point of acceptability of the environmental effects of proposals that are approved. EIA is thus an anticipatory, participatory environmental management tool, of which the EIA report is only one part. The objectives of the Californian EIA system make this very clear (Bass et al., 1999, p. 1):

1. To disclose to decision-makers and the public the significant environmental effects of proposed activities.
2. To identify ways to avoid or reduce environmental damage.
3. To prevent environmental damage by requiring implementation of feasible alternatives or mitigation measures.
4. To disclose to the public reasons for agency approvals of projects with significant environmental effects.
5. To foster interagency coordination in the review of projects.
6. To enhance public participation in the planning process.

Appropriately employed, EIA is a key integrative element in environmental protection policy, but only one element in that policy (Lawrence, 1994). Because EIA is part of a wider approach to environmental protection it is influenced by the system of which it is an element. Generally, the more committed a jurisdiction is to environmental policy, the more influence EIA will have over decision making within that jurisdiction.

EIA is not just a procedure, or for that matter just a science. Its nature is dichotomous, rather like the duality of matter. As Kennedy (1988, p. 257) has put it, EIA is both science and art, hard and soft:

EIA as ‘science’ or a planning tool has to do with the methodologies and techniques for identifying, predicting, and evaluating the environmental impacts associated with particular development actions.

EIA as ‘art’ or procedure for decision-making has to do with those mechanisms for ensuring an environmental analysis of such actions and influencing the decision-making process.

Caldwell (1989, p. 9) has summarised the significance of EIA as follows:

1. Beyond preparation of technical reports, EIA is a means to a larger end – the protection and improvement of the environmental quality of life.
2. It is a procedure to discover and evaluate the effects of activities (chiefly human) on the environment – natural and social. It is not a single specific analytic method or technique, but uses many approaches as appropriate to a problem.
3. It is not a science, but uses many sciences (and engineering) in an integrated interdisciplinary manner, evaluating relationships as they occur in the real world.
4. It should not be treated as an appendage, or add-on, to a project, but regarded as an integral part of project planning. Its costs should be calculated as a part of adequate planning and not regarded as something extra.
5. EIA does not ‘make’ decisions, but its findings should be considered in policy and decision-making and should be reflected in final choices. Thus it should be part of decision-making processes.
6. The findings of EIA should focus on the important or critical issues, explaining why they are important and estimating probabilities in language that affords a basis for policy decisions.

It is not clear precisely how the EIA process works. Bartlett and Kurian (1999, p. 415) suggested that:

Writing about EIA has been guided by assumptions and models that have been implicitly assumed rather than explicitly and systematically explored, formulated, or articulated.

They advanced six categories of implicit models used in the EIA literature. One of these, the ‘information processing model’ assumed that the key to better decision making was the availability of high-quality information. This model, which was the most commonly used in the contemporary EIA literature, tended to underplay, or even disregard, the influence of politics in the decision-making process of which EIA forms part. Mostert (1996, p. 191) has highlighted the subjective nature of the supposedly rational EIA process assumed in this model: ‘Subjectiveness occurs whenever the results of EIA are influenced by the subjective norms, values and interests of one or more of the parties involved.’ (Weston, 2000, p. 190) emphasised this point: ‘there are within the [EIA] process itself many key decisions to be made which will almost certainly not be based upon the rational principles of value free objectivity’.

The political nature of the decision-making context of EIA is inescapable. It cannot be assumed that the provision of high-quality environmental information, of itself, will lead to decisions that are consistently ‘environmentally friendly’. It is increasingly acknowledged that the information generated by the EIA process is considered within a political decision-making arena, and is therefore influenced by its norms and values, as well as by its procedures. Any changes to the decision-making process that result from EIA will be changes made as a consequence of the evolution of the values and perspectives held by elected decision-makers and by their advisers or as a result of successful public intervention.

It should be emphasised that EIA is not a procedure for preventing actions with significant environmental impacts from being implemented, although in certain circumstances this could be the appropriate outcome of the process. Rather the intention is that actions are authorised in the full knowledge of their environmental consequences. Because EIA takes place in a political context, it is therefore inevitable that economic, social or political factors will outweigh environmental factors in many instances. This is why the mitigation of environmental impacts is so central to EIA: decisions on proposals in which the environmental effects have palpably been ameliorated are much easier to make and justify than those in which mitigation has not been achieved.

This chapter briefly describes the evolution and diffusion of EIA from its origins in the US National Environmental Policy Act 1969. It goes on to discuss the elements of the EIA process and the effectiveness of EIA systems, and to suggest a number of criteria against which EIA systems can be evaluated. The purpose of the comparative review of the selected EIA systems presented in this book is then explained. Finally, an overview and explanation of the structure of the book is presented.

Evolution and diffusion of EIA

California was the first of the American states to introduce an effective ‘little NEPA’, in 1970 (Bass et al., 1999). (The majority of US states have still not done so.) International attention was soon being directed to EIA as a result of several celebrated legal cases in the United States, which clarified NEPA’s significance. The ramifications of NEPA were beginning to be accepted at a time of unprecedented interest in the environment occasioned by the United Nations conference on the environment in Stockholm in 1972. The problems of burgeoning development, pollution and destruction of the natural environment that NEPA was intended to address were perceived as universal. The rigorous project-by-project evaluation of significant impacts inherent in EIA was seized upon as a solution to many of these environmental problems by many other jurisdictions, and elements of the US EIA process were adopted by them. Most were, however, cautious about importing NEPA-style litigation with EIA and made strenuous efforts to avoid doing so.

The methods of adoption varied; cabinet resolutions, advisory procedures, regulations and laws were employed. Probably the first overseas jurisdiction to declare an ‘extremely rudimentary environmental impact policy’ (Fowler, 1982, p. 8) was the Australian state of New South Wales in January 1972. The Commonwealth of Australia announced an EIA policy in May 1972 and passed the Environment Protection (Impact of Proposals) Act in December 1974. Canada preceded Australia, approving a federal cabinet directive on EIA in 1973. New Zealand instituted EIA procedures by cabinet minute in 1974. Columbia (Verocai Moreira, 1988) and Thailand (Nay Htun, 1988) established EIA systems through specific legislation in 1974 and 1975, respectively, followed by France in 1976. Ireland passed legislation that permitted, but did not require, EIA in 1976, and the cabinet of the West German government approved an EIA procedure by minute in the same year. The Netherlands governmental standpoint on EIA followed in 1979. There was also considerable EIA activity in numerous developing countries (Biswas and Agarwala, 1992; Lee and George, 2000). The diffusion of EIA was gathering pace and has continued unabated.

Several international agencies have involved themselves with EIA. In 1974 the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recommended that member governments adopt EIA procedures and methods and more recently, that they use EIA in the process of granting aid to developing countries (OECD, 1992). In addition, in 1985, the Council of the European Communities adopted a directive that required member states to implement formal EIA procedures by 1988. These procedures were strengthened by a further directive that came into effect in 1999.

In 1989 the World Bank ruled that EIA for major projects should normally be undertaken by the borrower country under the Bank’s supervision (Council on Environmental Quality – CEQ, 1990, p. 45). The World Bank (1999) has recently updated its guidance on EIA. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) also made recommendations to member states regarding the establishment of EIA procedures and established goals and principles for EIA. It subsequently issued guidance on EIA in developing countries (UNEP, 1988). The 1992 Earth Summit provided additional momentum to these developments. Principle 17 of the Rio Declaration (in Sadler, 1996, p. 24) stated that:

Environmental Impact Assessment, as a national instrument, shall be undertaken for proposed activities that are likely to have a significant adverse impact on the environment and are subject to a decision of a competent national authority.

EIA is now practised in more than one hundred countries (Donnelly et al., 1998).

This diffusion of EIA has resulted in a diverse vocabulary. In the Netherlands, EIA is known as MER (milieu-effectrapportage) and in Canada as environmental assessmen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Boxes
• Figures
• Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations and national EIA terms
• Chapter 1. Introduction
• Chapter 2. EIA in the United States
• Chapter 3. The European Directive on EIA
• Chapter 4. EIA in the UK
• Chapter 5. EIA in the Netherlands, Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa
• Chapter 6. Legal basis of EIA systems
• Chaper 7. Coverage of EIA systems
• Chapter 8. Consideration of alternatives
• Chapter 9. Screening of actions
• Chapter 10. Scoping of impacts
• Chapter 11. EIA report preparation
• Chapter 12. EIA report review
• Chapter 13. Decision making
• Chapter 14. Monitoring and auditing of impacts
• Chapter 15. Mitigation of impacts
• Chapter 16. Consultation and participation
• Chapter 17. Monitoring of EIA systems
• Chapter 18. Benefits and costs of EIA systems
• Chapter 19. Strategic environmental assessment
• Chapter 20. Conclusions
• References
• Index