Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has become a vital management tool worldwide. EIA is a means of evaluating the likely consequences of a proposed major action which will significantly affect the environment, before that action is taken.This new edition of Wood's key text provides an authoritative, international review of environmental impact assessment, comparing systems used in the UK, USA, the Netherlands, Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia and New Zealand and South Africa.
This book challenges the prevailing assumption that Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) should be structured around a unitary EIA process. The book begins by identifying, through a scenario, eight recurrent problems in EIA practice. The characteristics of multiple variations of conventional EIA processes, at both the regulatory and applied levels, are then presented. The residual problems that remain after the conventional processes are described and assessed providing the springboard for a description and analysis of eight alternative EIA processes.
Written by experts, this text deals with how environmental impact assessment should be carried out for specific environmental components such as air and water.
This comprehensive treatment of environmental impact assessment (EIA) provides an authoritative contemporary review of theory and practice over the past ten years. EIA is viewed as both science and art, reflecting the concern both with technical aspects of appraisal and the effects of EIA on the decision-making process. Adopted in many countries, with different degrees of enthusiasm, since its inception in the early 1970's, EIA is established as a major procedure for assessing the environmental implications of legislation, the implementation of policy and plans and the initiation of development projects. EIA is increasingly an essential part of environmental management
This book provides a detailed treatment of the ecological, economic and social impacts in the context of environmental impact assessment (EIA) and makes clear the necessary link between EIA and the sustainability principles of protecting biodiversity, risk aversion, and inter and intra-generational equity. It proposes that the benefits and costs of a project need to be weighted according to who bears them, giving particular attention to the planet’s poor. Furthermore, this book presents a comprehensive analysis of environmental offsetting which has come to be commonly resorted to when negative impacts cannot be mitigated. In this context, the book argues that offsetting is only viable if advanced offsets are quarantined through a Strategic Environmental Impact approach. Finally, the book explores the role of the various disciplines which need to be mastered in undertaking an EIA. This book takes you on a journey from the beginning of environmental impact assessment to the present day. It is a scholarly warts and all study. For each trial and tribulation, Hundloe presents a remedy. It is essential reading and an invaluable reference for environmental practitioners, politicians, policy makers, academics and, the most important group, future environmental practitioners.
This book charts the history of the application of science in environmental impact assessment (EIA) and provides a conceptual and technical overview of scientific developments associated with EIA since its inception in the early 1970s. The Application of Science in Environmental Impact Assessment begins by defining an appropriate role for science in EIA. From here it goes on to reflect more closely on empirical and deductive biophysical sciences as they relate to well-known stages of the generic EIA process and explores whether scientific theory and practice are at their vanguard in EIA and related applications. Throughout the book the authors reflect on biophysical science as it applies to stages of the EIA process and also consider debates surrounding the role of science as it relates to political and administrative dimensions of EIA. Based on this review, the book concludes that improvements to the quality of science in EIA will rely on the adoption of stronger participatory and collaborative working arrangements. Covering key topics including foundational scientific guidance materials; frameworks for implementing science amid conflict and uncertainty; and emerging ecological concepts, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners of EIA.
