Routledge Handbook of Environmental Impact Assessment

Kevin Hanna

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000571417
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Ecology

Globally, environmental impact assessment (EIA) is one of the most enduring and influential environmental management tools. This handbook provides readers with a strong foundation for understanding the practice of EIA, by outlining the different types of assessment while also providing a guide to best practice.

This collection deploys a research and practice-based approach to the subject, delivering an overview of EIA as an essential and practical tool of environmental protection, planning, and policy. To best understand the most pertinent issues and challenges surrounding EIA today, this volume draws together prominent researchers, practitioners, and young scholars who share their work and knowledge to cover two key parts. The first part introduces EIA processes and best practices through analytical and critical chapters on the stages/elements of the EIA process and different components and forms of assessment. These provide examples that cover a wide range of assessment methods and cross-cutting issues, including cumulative effects assessment, social impact assessment, Indigenous-led assessment, risk assessment, climate change, and gender-based assessment. The second part provides jurisdictional reviews of the European Union, the US National Environmental Policy Act, recent assessment reforms in Canada, EIA in developing economies, and the EIA context in England.

By providing a concise outline of the process followed by in-depth illustrations of approaches, methods and tools, and case studies, this book will be essential for students, scholars, and practitioners of environmental impact assessment.

PART I
Types of Assessment, Issues, and Practices

1 An introduction to environmental impact assessment

Kevin Hanna and Lauren Arnold

DOI: 10.4324/9780429282492-2

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a process used to assess projected development proposals, understand their impacts, mitigate negative effects, and support decisions about whether or not to allow a project or activity to go ahead. It is a planning and decision support tool, and it can help advance sustainability objectives. Globally, EIA is arguably one of the most influential and consistent tools for environmental management and protection. EIA now appears in some form or the other in the project reviews and permitting processes of most nations.

Beginning with the United States National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in the 1970s, EIA has grown into a complex policy area, and the definition of the environment has become more comprehensive to include social and economic environments as well as the biophysical environment (see Chapter 17 for a review of NEPA). EIA now includes the evaluation of cumulative, social, health, economic and cultural impacts, and climate change. It is fundamentally interdisciplinary. In a sense, EIA is the “original version” or “brand”. Processes – such as social impact assessment, health impact assessment, sustainability assessment, and gender-based assessment, cumulative effects assessment, and regional and strategic assessments (which are all covered in this book) – have developed to address our growing understanding of the impacts of development.

This chapter provides an overview of the basic stages or actions involved in EIA and consideration of best practices.¹ While the stages outlined in this chapter are common in many EIA systems, the specific requirements and emphasis on each will differ considerably across different jurisdictions. The emphasis in this chapter is on project-based assessment, but other chapters in this book provide discussions of the participatory, social, cultural, and technical qualities that also shape EIA practice and support its interdisciplinary nature and application at regional scales and to more strategic level issues and challenges.

Box 1.1 Environmental assessment or environmental impact assessment?

Environmental impact assessment and environmental assessment (EA) are terms that may respectively denote a specific assessment (an EIA of a pipeline proposal, for example), and the process of assessment (the overall EA system or regulatory review process), but the terms are now often used interchangeably. Here we use EIA to reflect a broader use of the term “EIA” in the assessment field, and to help emphasize a definition or practice that often emphasizes impacts on an environment that should be defined broadly as the biophysical and human realms (social, cultural, and economic). Some jurisdictions and some researchers use the term impact assessment to capture the range of assessment processes and scope of impacts considered; for example, environmental, strategic, social, and economic.

A few principles

Building on the fundamental idea that EIA is a process for identifying and considering the impacts of an action, we can articulate some basic norms to explain what EIA does (these are not to be confused with principles for effective EIA, those are discussed below):

1. EIA describes a proposed activity and the baseline conditions in the place where it will happen;
2. It identifies possible or likely environmental effects of the activity;
3. It proposes measures to mitigate or eliminate adverse effects while providing benefits;
4. It provides some sense of the remaining impacts and their significance;
5. It provides for project follow-up and monitoring; and
6. It engages the public and other interests in debate and conversation about development and the nature of growth.

(Hanna, 2016, 2)

What this describes is a process or system for gathering information that helps proponents, communities, and decision-makers design and implement an action with the best available knowledge of its likely impacts, outcomes, and performance (Hanna, 2016). The ability of EIA to shape and influence decisions is contingent upon the principles and values that shape it as a system and the linkages it has to policy processes.

Researchers and practitioners have outlined principles of an effective EIA – one which fulfills its objectives and contributes meaningfully to planning and decision-making. Sadler’s (1996) early work on evaluating practice and performance in EIA provides a seminal discussion of the principles and core values of impact assessment, or at least what they should be. Sadler (1996) wrote of five EIA guiding principles (also noted in Hanna, 2009, 2016):

1. A strong legislative foundation. EIA should be based on legislation that provides clarity with respect to objectives, purpose, and responsibilities. Application of EIA should be codified, based in law rather than in discretionary guidelines.
2. Suitable procedures. The quality, consistency, and outcomes of EIA should reflect the environmental, political, and social context within which EIA operates, and should demonstrate the ability to respond to divergent issues.
3. Public involvement (participation or engagement). Meaningful and effective public involvement must be present. Not only must those affected and interested be consulted, but also their concerns should be able to affect the decision.
4. Orientation towards problem solving and decision-making. The context of EIA is inherently practical and applied. Thus, the EIA system should have relevance to issues of importance, it should generate needed information, and it must influence, and be connected to, the settings where conditions of approval are set and decisions are made.
5. Monitoring and feedback capability. The consideration of impacts should not end with approval and implementation; rather, the process must have some capacity for insuring compliance, accuracy of impact prediction, and evaluation of project performance. Not only does such a role strengthen EIA, it provides information that can fine-tune the EIA process, provide knowledge of what impacts actually do occur, and measure project performance.

Sadler’s principles have been adapted, modified, quoted, and expanded over the years and have been used as the foundation for further principles of effective EIA (see also Gibson, Doelle, & Sinclair, 2015; Joseph, Gunton, & Rutherford, 2015, Senécal, 1999).

Hanna and Noble (2015) developed a set of criteria for effective EIA based on a Delphi study. Their approach provides a good understanding of effective EIA practices, processes, and systems based on the experiences of the public and private sectors, and academic experts. The outcome was a set of nine principles for an effective EIA system:

1. There is stakeholder ² confidence in the objectivity, accessibility, clarity, objectives, and unbiased application of the EIA process.
2. The process is integrative and linked to approval decision-making, has the capacity to incorporate multiple forms of knowledge, and is connected to other approval processes that must respect the information, or decision, provided by the EIA process.
3. EIA should promote betterment and longer-term and substantive gains to environmental management and protection; and it should be preventative, require monitoring and follow-up, and have provisions for reporting on such activities.
4. Comprehensiveness is a key quality in the definition of environment (biophysical, social, cultural, and economic). The process should also have the capacity to focus on significant issues and actions, require the consideration of alternatives, and it must account for cumulative effects and impacts.
5. The evidence-based decisions that follow the impact assessment process clearly and directly reflect the knowledge and data presented in the assessment and/or review proceedings, and that the process is open to hearing and considering all relevant, supporting, and opposing evidence.
6. The EIA process must be accountable to stakeholders and the public. Documentation and information disclosure requirements are binding on the process and its administrators, proponents, and other stakeholders. There is open and easy access to timely, accurate, and full and complete information. And, the process is independent.
7. There is a requirement and opportunities for stakeholder participation ³ throughout the process. Proceedings are open to the public and there are no unjustified limitations to open deliberation and the presentation of evidence; and stakeholders can clearly see how participation was accounted for in the decision. Where applicable, the rights and distinct requirements of Indigenous communities are accounted for in the EIA process and its outcomes.
8. A legal foundation for impact assessment provides clarity for stakeholders with respect to applicability, assessment requirements, disclosure requirements, process, reporting, and decision-making. The process contains a legal basis for participation and accountability requirements. It provides procedural fairness.
9. The EIA system possesses capacity and innovation features, and is administered by competent and impartial authorities with sufficient resources to ensure the integrity and effectiveness of the process. The process and supporting institutional framework should be flexible, adaptive, and open to new and innovative tools and approaches to assessment.

(Hanna & Noble, 2015)

Some of these echo the qualities we see in Sadler’s (1996) outline, which suggests that the field has come to accept common qualities for best practice.

In this book, effective EIA is seen as a process that conveys the above principles; essentially that the process is legislated, that it provides complete information about development impacts, includes effective stakeholder engagement and participation, and is connected to and shapes the decision.

Best practices may be applied to the institutional and governance qualities of EIA; specifically, the qualities of the process, system, and frameworks used for assessing, reviewing, and making decisions. Best practices can also refer to technical and other supporting tools for EIA. These include the scientific, analytical, and predictive tools and approaches used to identify baseline conditions, identify and assess impacts, choose mitigation strategies, determine significance, predict impacts and outcomes, and monitor the performance of facilities. This may encompass a broad range of disciplines, and many forms of knowledge (based on science, culture, history and other ways of knowing) and practice across applied-scientific and scientific fields. Professions will have their own concepts of best practices for methods of mitigat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of boxes
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• PART I Types of assessment, issues, and practices
• PART II Jurisdictional profiles
• Index