Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)

Introduction

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is the systematic process of identifying the future consequences of a current or proposed action. EIA is one of the major instruments integrated with a goal of making development project environmentally sound and sustainable. EIA can be described as the process of identifying, predicting, and evaluating and managing the biophysical, social, and other relevant effects of development proposals before major decisions are taken or commitments made for their implementation. A typically institutionalized EIA is applied primarily to minimize the adverse effects that large-scale development projects has on natural resources and ecosystem, and to deliver the development project towards sustainability. The scope of EIA includes consideration of all potentially significant effects of a development project - direct, indirect, and cumulative.

The use of EIA began in 1970 in USA and spread rapidly throughout the world after the UN Earth Summit held in 1992. Implementation of EIA in developing countries is a new concept Initially the use of this instrument was the requirement of donors, however, at the later stage, the national governments also realized that the development related decisions could be substantially improved by the consideration of environmental aspects before decisions were made. To enable such a concept to be taken into account in decision-making, it was necessary to introduce systematic procedure of EIA.

Therefore, to date many developing countries of world have:
• provisions for EIA in their national policies
• legislation/regulation/standards/guidelines related to EIA
• institutions, government and private sector, for the implementation of EIA
• capacity of trained human resources
• funding for EIA to some extent

An application of EIA in economic development projects accrue a number of sustainable benefits such as:
• it triggers an institutional building, particularly with the government, public, private sector    agencies and at the level of the local communities
• it facilitates the public participation in the project construction and operation
• it provides an effective mechanism for coordination, environmental integration,   negotiations, and feedback
• it provides systematic methods of impact assessment
• it facilitates an application of definite process

An application of EIA is based upon the certain values and principles for an effective implementation at the project level. There are following three core values:
• sustainability – the EIA process will result in environmental safeguards and viability of the    project
• integrity – the EIA process will confirm to agreed standards
• utility – the EIA process will provide balanced, credible information for decision making