EIA Definitions and Origins

EIA Definitions

• EIA is defined by the UN Economic Commission of Europe (1991) as the assessment of a planned activity's impact on the environment.
• The UK DOE (Department of the Environment) (1989) defines Environmental Assessment as a process to collect information about the environmental effects of a project from the developer, and other sources, for the planning authority's judgements on whether the development should proceed.
• The Guidelines for Egyptian Environmental Impact Assessment (1996) defines EIA as the systematic examination of unintended consequences of a development project or program to reduce negative consequences and capitalize on positive ones.
• EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) is the document with the description of the environmental effects.
• It is a product of the EIA process.

Origins and Development of EIA

• EIA is an environmental management tool with the objective of providing decision-makers with an indication of the likely consequence of their decisions relating to new development projects.
• The US National Environmental Policy Act(NEPA) was passed in 1969.
• In 1973 Canada introduced EIA, followed by Australia in 1974, West Germany in 1975, and France in 1976.
• EIA gradually became implemented in less developed countries.

EIA Purposes

• The purposes of EIA include prevention of impacts, improvement of decisions, and transparency.
• Prevention of impacts includes environmental improvement, comprehensive analysis, and early consideration of negative impacts, compensation, and mitigation.
• Improvement of decisions includes providing legitimacy/acceptance and generating the best decision/decision optimization.
• Transparency includes raising public awareness, providing information, enabling participation, and ensuring coordination.

Projects, Environment, and Impacts

• Projects with substantial capital investment usually require an EIA study.
• EIA studies are also needed for projects that cover large areas and employ a large number of people (construction and/or operation).
• Projects that require EIA studies have a complex array of organizational links.
• EIA studies are critical for projects that have significant and wide-ranging environmental impacts.
• EIA studies are required for projects that require special procedures, and utilies, services and infrastructure.
• Development Projects like dams, roads, and industrial plants need EIA or SEA.
• The construction, operation, extension, modification, or decommissioning of projects may need EIA or SEA.
• Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is needed at the plans, programs and policies (3Ps) level and land use and infrastructure plans.

Dimensions of the Environment

• Dimensions include topography, geology and soil, air quality, water resources, biodiversity, visual quality, archaeology and culture, noise and vibration and socio-economic matters.
• Another classification of environment is separated into environmental factors, specifically abiotic and biotic.
• Abiotic factors include geology, groundwater/hydrology, soil, surface water, and climate.
• Biotic factors include soil organisms such as decomposers, plants (producers), and animals (consumers).
• The physical environment consists of climate, geology, geomorphology, hydrological profile, air quality, and the acoustic environment.
• The biological environment includes terrestrial and aquatic ecology (fauna/flora), rare/endangered species, and ecologically-sensitive areas/habitats.
• The social environment includes demography, land/agriculture, housing and settlements, health, infrastructures, workforce, and unemployment.
• The archaeological environment encompasses regional prehistory and archaeological heritage in the project area.

Change = Effect = Impact

• Time scales for impacts include:
• Continental drift (hundreds of millions of years)
• Sea level changes (thousands of years)
• Eutrophication (hundreds of years)
• Droughts, hurricanes, earthquakes (months, hours, minutes, seconds)
• EIA focuses on environmental effects/impacts that may occur or have occurred as a consequence of the pertinent activity.
• The nature of an environmental impact can be seen as the environmental parameter compared with and without the project.

Types of Impacts

• Types of environmental impacts include: physical and socio-economic, direct and indirect, short-run and long-run, local and strategic, adverse and beneficial, reversible and irreversible, and quantitative and qualitative.
• Direct effects are directly related to the proposed activity (e.g., change in flow regime caused by a hydropower dam).
• Indirect effects are related to "side-activities"(e.g., recreational use made of the reservoir created by the dam)
• Indirect effects can sometimes be more important than the direct effects.
• Effects that start occurring shortly after the proposed activity are considered short term. (e.g. flooding the reservoir area in case of a dam)
• Long term effects take a long time to present themselves (e.g. gradual siltation of the reservoir and gradual erosion of the river channel downstream of a dam).
• Effects are reversible if the previous situation can be restored after the proposed activity ceases.
• If permanent changes occur, the effects are irreversible.
• Cumulative effects are the combined effects of a proposed activity and other, already existing or planned, activities.
• Effects of several activities can cancel each other out, or reinforce one another (synergetic effects).
• What is positive for one individual or group may be negative for another individual or group.
• Local effects affect only the project site and its near surroundings.
• Regional effects affect areas far beyond the project site.
• Strategic effects affect a collective or national environmental component.

EIA Basic Considerations

• EIA is an instrument of environmental policy to help with planning and project development and authorization.
• EIA includes data gathering, prediction of impacts, comparison of alternatives and the framing of recommendations.
• The result of the EIA is summarized in an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
• EIA seeks to compare the various alternatives, which are available for any project.
• Each alternative will have economic cost and benefits as well as environmental impacts-both adverse and beneficial.
• The (zero) option alternative is the baseline for comparison and should be considered.
• The technical work involved in EIA estimates the changes in environmental quality, expected as a result of the proposed action.
• EIA attempts to weight the environmental effects on a common basis with economic cost and benefits in the overall project evaluation.
• Prevention is better than cure.
• Carrying out EIA does not delay processing.

Parties in EIA

• The parties are:
• Initiator; also called proponent, developer, or investor.
• It is the public or private body which proposes or undertakes the pertinent activity and its staff planners and designers,
• Competent Authority
• It is the public body which has to take the "final decision" on the pertinent activity.
• General Public, NGO's, Etc.
• In some countries the public has officially the right to participate in the EIA process "Public Hearing".
• Consultants
• Prepare the EIS on behalf of the initiator (e.g. Holland and in Brazil for instance); or on behalf of the competent authority (e.g. in the USA).
• Consultants are often hired for preparing the EIS.