A Review Of Environmental Impact Assessment Methodologies

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.

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is one of the most important tools employed in contemporary environmental management. Presenting the component activities of EIA within a coherent methodological framework, Environmental Impact Assessment: A Methodological Approach provides students and practitioners alike with a rigorous grounding in EIA theory, including biophysical, social, strategic and cumulative assessment activities, and examines the crucial role, and limitations, of the science of EIA. Deliberately designed to be relevant world-wide, the author focuses on the common skills and generic aspects of EIA that underpin all impact assessment work, independent of country or jurisdiction, such as screening and scoping, impact identification, public involvement, prediction and monitoring, evaluation, and quality control. The variety of approaches are identified along with their associated strengths and weaknesses, enabling potential, new and experienced practitioners to make informed choices and to improve their working practices through a better understanding of EIA activity. The ultimate aim of this book is to move from the notion of EIA as a technical procedure towards a concept of EIA as a particular form of problem-solving with varied methodological requirements.

Written by practising specialists who teach a highly regarded MSc course in environmental assessment and management, and by experts from a major environmental consultancy, Methods of environmental impact assessment is invaluable for: people who organize, review, and make decisions about EIA; environmental planners and managers; students taking first degrees in planning, ecology, geography, environmental studies and related subjects with an EIA content; and postgraduate students taking courses in EIA or environmental management.

Many methodologies have been developed to help the environmental impact assessment/statement (EIA/EIS) preparer fully respond to the Executive Office of the President, Council on Environmental Quality guidelines for EIA/EIS content. This report presents guidance for individual project evaluation for the purpose of choosing a methodology; methodology categorization by type of impact identification; and criteria for methodology evaluation. In addition, the document presents a brief, critical review and analysis of 19 methodologies, with the intent of showing their strengths and weaknesses in terms of individual project applicability and introducing the user to the variety of techniques being developed. (Author).

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