1.

Define environment impact assessment and what is its

relevance and significance?

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) may be defined as a formal process

used to predict the environmental consequences of any development
project. EIA thus ensures that the potential problems are foreseen and
addressed at an early stage in the projects planning and design.

The purpose of the environmental assessment process is:

• To support the goals of environmental protection and sustainable

development;
• To integrate environmental protection and economic decisions at the
earliest stages of planning and activity;
• To predict environmental, social, economical, and cultural
consequences of a proposed activity and to assess plans to mitigate
any adverse impacts resulting from the proposed activity.
• To provide for the involvement of the public, concerned department of
the government and government agencies in the review of the
proposed activities. Balanced assessment of effects on the
environment should encompass a number of considerations.
Depending on the nature, scope and significance of the project or
proposal, the assessment may include consideration of ecological,
economic, cultural, aesthetic, health and safety, social, and amenity
impacts in relation to decisions on the sustainable management of
natural and physical resources.

RELEVANCE

One of the aims is to prevent environmental degradation; but this is done in

two parts. The EIA is the first part, and all it does is to give planners and
decision-makers better information about the consequences, which
development actions could have on the environment. The second step is to
make sure that weight is given to such information, and that decisions are
taken in a direction that gives an environmentally favorable result and
depends on having additional policies or laws which aims at securing such
results.

This means that measuring the effectiveness of EIA is really about how well
taken are the decisions. The end result of a well taken decision might still
damage the environment; so the amount of environmental damage cannot
be used as an indicator of how good the EIA system is.
EIA is multidisciplinary, systematic and predictive; it is, therefore, different
from the more retrospective process of environmental audit. It can play a
role in checking conformity with regulations as well as investigating physical
impacts.

SIGNIFICANCE

The issue to be addressed today is how environmental damage can be

avoided or reduced so as to ensure that development initiatives and their
benefits are sustainable. The aim of environmental management should be
to achieve the greatest benefit presently possible for the use of natural
resources without reducing their potential to meet future needs and the
carrying capacity of the environment. Taking environmental considerations
into account in development planning does not imply that the pace of socio-
economic progress will be slowed down, and taking environmental
considerations into account in the various phases of the project cycle must
not be seen as placing undue constraints on a country's development
options. When a project is to be suspended on environmental grounds,
alternative opinions that are environmentally sound must be provided to
meet the country's developmental needs. Moreover, implications of
environmental impacts assessed from the global standpoint cannot be
insensitively translated into specific action in the developing countries in the
absence of concrete alternatives-that would enable the developing countries
to relate the short-term wellbeing of their populations to their long-term
wellbeing, and to that of the world.

For most projects, particularly those involving large public investments in

areas such as infrastructure, an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)
should be carried out and linked to the cost-benefit analysis. The objective of
the EIA is to ensure that environmental aspects are addressed and potential
problems are foreseen at the appropriate stage of project design. EIA should
be envisaged as an integral part of the planning process and initiated at the
project level from the start.