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Introduction to EIA Follow-up
Angus Morrison-Saunders and Jos Arts
Introduction
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a process for taking account of the potential environmental consequences of a proposed action during the planning, design, decision-making and implementation stages of that action. Follow-up should be an integral part of this process. From its origins under the National Environmental Policy Act 1969 in the US, EIA procedures have been widely adopted throughout the world. EIA can be undertaken at many different jurisdictional levels including:
- local level (e.g. local government procedures)
- state or provincial level (e.g. state governments in the US, Canada and Australia have implemented their own EIA procedures)
- national or federal level (e.g. countrywide procedures)
- supranational or international level involving more than one country (e.g. European Community Directives for impact assessment that apply throughout the European Union).
As might be expected, EIA procedures vary considerably between jurisdictions (a comparative review of various systems can be found in Wood, 2003). However, a generic EIA process can be identified which consists of a series of iterative steps (Box 1.1). Despite these generic steps indicating an established role for follow-up, it remains the weakest stage in most jurisdictions where EIA is practised.
Box 1.1 Generic Steps in the EIA Process
The following generic steps in EIA can be distinguished (after Sadler, 1996).
Preliminary Assessment
- Screening to establish whether EIA is required and the likely extent of process application
- Scoping to identify the key issues and impacts that need to be addressed and prepare terms of reference for EIA and proponentâs Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
Detailed Assessment
- Impact analysis to identify, predict and evaluate the potential significance of risks, effects and consequences
- Mitigation to specify measures to prevent, minimize and offset or otherwise compensate for environmental loss and damage
- Reporting to document the results of EIA in an EIS, including recommended terms and conditions
- EIS review to ensure the report meets terms of reference and standards of good practice
- Decision-making to approve (or not) a proposal and establish terms and conditions (i.e. the consent decision).
Follow-up
- Monitoring to check that actions are in compliance with terms and conditions, and impacts are within the ranges predicted
- Audit/evaluation to compare the monitoring results with standards, predictions and expectations, to appraise and document the results, to learn from experience, and to improve EIA and project planning
- Management activities to address unforeseen events or unanticipated impacts.
Much of the considerable body of literature on how to conduct EIA focuses on the lead up to the project consent decision by the appropriate (usually government) EIA decision-making authority. EIA follow-up is more concerned with events once approved actions are actually implemented. In a sense the term can be taken to mean âfollow-up to the consent decisionâ. The ultimate success of EIA is determined by the outcomes of proposals. In its simplest conception EIA follow-up seeks to understand EIA outcomes. Implicit in this process are activities such as checking, feedback, learning and communication.
In order to understand EIA outcomes, follow-up might address questions such as:
- How did the actual impacts of a project compare with the predictions made in the EIS?
- Were impacts mitigated and managed in accordance with approval conditions set by decision-makers?
- Is some additional action needed to prevent unacceptable environmental impacts?
- How effective was the EIA process itself?
To address questions such as these, EIA follow-up draws upon monitoring and auditing data. However, it involves more than just an analysis of such data and includes tasks such as evaluation, mitigation and management, and communication (reporting) of environmental outcomes. Clearly it is not enough to simply identify and investigate environmental protection options before decisions are made; it is equally important to monitor and evaluate what happens afterwards and to take corrective action when needed. This is the role of EIA follow-up. Without some form of follow-up, the consequences of EIA and the environmental outcomes of development activities will remain unknown.
Having introduced the concept of EIA follow-up, this chapter clarifies some important terminology, including a definition of follow-up and consideration of the different levels at which follow-up can be undertaken. The need for and importance of EIA follow-up are examined and a brief account of the historical evolution of EIA follow-up is provided. The contextual setting for follow-up, which determines the scope and effectiveness of EIA outcomes, is then explored. The chapter ends with some challenges for EIA follow-up and the overall book structure is explained.
What is EIA Follow-up?
The term âfollow-upâ has been in use for some time (e.g. Caldwell et al, 1982; McCallum, 1985, 1987) and is used here as an umbrella term for various EIA activities, including: monitoring, auditing, ex-post evaluation, post-decision analysis and post-decision management. These words are used quite loosely and overlap considerably, and so it is convenient to group them under the generic term of EIA follow-up.
When discussing follow-up, it is useful to divide the EIA process into two stages based around the principal consent decision for a proposal. The pre-decision stage incorporates the early components of EIA prior to proposal implementation (e.g. project planning, screening, scoping, impact prediction and mitigation design, extending through to the decision itself). Planning for EIA follow-up programmes is important when these pre-decision activities are being undertaken. For example, identifying significant impacts during the screening and scoping stages of EIA can provide a focus for subsequent impact monitoring and follow-up evaluation.
Generally though, EIA follow-up is concerned mainly with the post-decision stage of a proposal. It relates to the various components of the plan or project life cycle after the consent decision has been taken (e.g. final detailed design; construction, operation and decommissioning phases; project and environmental management). A definition of EIA follow-up is provided in Box 1.2.
Box 1.2 A Definition of EIA Follow-up
Building upon earlier work (e.g. Munro et al, 1986; Sadler, 1996; Au and Sanvicens, 1995; Arts and Nooteboom, 1999; IAIA, 1999) and various workshops during recent International Association for Impact Assessment conferences, EIA follow-up at the proposal level can be simply defined as:
The monitoring and evaluation of the impacts of a project or plan (that has been subject to EIA) for management of, and communication about, the environmental performance of that project or plan.
Thus, EIA follow-up comprises four elements (Arts et al, 2001):
- Monitoring â the collection of data and comparison with standards, predictions or expectations. Base-line monitoring measures the initial state of environmental indicators during the pre-decision stages and provides the basis for prediction and evaluation in the EIS. In the post-decision stages, monitoring may relate to both compliance with and effects of that decision. Area-wide monitoring is the monitoring of the general state of the environment in an area, which may incorporate multiple projects (e.g. cumulative effects). Closely related to the continual activity of monitoring is auditing, the periodical objective examination of observations by comparing them with pre-defined criteria (e.g. standards, predictions or expectations).
- Evaluation â the appraisal of the conformance with standards, predictions or expectations as well as the environmental performance of the activity. It often relates to subjective policy-oriented judgements in addition to purely scientific and technical analysis, and consequently may require value- judgements to be made. Ex-ante evaluation is âforward lookingâ and predictive in nature. It focuses on the pre-decision activities (e.g. EIS preparation). Ex-post evaluation has a âbackward lookingâ nature. It concerns the appraisal of a policy, plan or project that has been or is currently being implemented. It especially involves an evaluation of the activities and situations that followed a particular decision.
- Management â making decisions and taking appropriate action in response to issues arising from monitoring and evaluation activities. Ongoing management decisions may be made by both proponents (e.g. responding to unexpected impacts) and EIA regulators (e.g. reviewing consent conditions and management requirements) alike. An environmental management system (EMS) is a voluntary system of compliance that operationalizes the implementation of environmental protection and management measures.
- Communication â informing the stakeholders as well as the general public about the results of EIA follow-up (in order to provide feedback on project/plan implementation as well as feedback on EIA processes). Both proponents and EIA regulators may engage in communication programmes. Some follow-up programmes extend beyond simple communication to specifically include direct stakeholder participation in the monitoring, evaluation and management steps as well.
EIA Follow-up and SEA Follow-up
Environmental assessment can be carried out at different planning levels. Correspondingly it has become common to use the term Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for project assessments and the term Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) for the assessment of policies, plans and programmes. Follow-up can be applied to both EIA and SEA situations. This book focuses mainly on EIA follow-up, as greatest emphasis has been on the follow-up of projects, although SEA follow-up is becoming more evident (Chapter 10 focuses on SEA follow-up). In this book (especially in Chapters 1 and 2) the term âEIA follow-upâ is used as a generic term referring to both EIA and SEA follow-up. If a distinction is needed, the more specific term SEA follow-up is used.
Meta, Macro and Micro Scale Follow-up
EIA follow-up can be conceptualized at three different abstraction levels:
- the individual proposal level (micro scale)
- the EIA jurisdiction/system level (macro scale)
- the conceptual and/or multi-jurisdictional level (meta scale).
These are defined in greater detail in Box 1.3. It should be noted that EIA follow-up, as discussed in this book, relates mainly to the follow-up of individual plans or projects that have been subject to environmental assessment (i.e. micro scale).
Box 1.3 Approaches to EIA Follow-up
Three conceptually different approaches to EIA follow-up can be distinguished based on the level of analysis.
Monitoring and Evaluation of EIA Activities (Micro Scale)
Conducted on a project-by-project basis, this relates directly to specific components of EIA (or SEA) such as impact prediction, impact monitoring, compliance auditing and implementation of mitigation and environmental management actions. A key question is: was the project and the impacted environment managed in an acceptable way?
Evaluation of EIA Systems (Macro Scale)
This examines the effectiveness of an EIA (or SEA) system as a whole in a certain jurisdiction (e.g. the influence of the EIA process on decision-making, efficiency of EIA procedures and utility of EIA products). A key question is: how efficient and ef...
