Week 6
LESSONS FROM THE PAST
Worst Performance
Worst Performance
Worst Performance
Best Performance
• It has particular applications in emerging areas for EIA, such as the human
safety and health aspects of assessment, and impact and risk analysis can also be
used to scrutinise the introduction of new forms of technology, such as bio-
engineering or the genetic manipulation of wild and domesticated species.
• The notion of sustainable re-development points to EIA of damaged and
degraded ecosystems for purposes of rehabilitation and restoration. These
existing and emerging concerns will add new components and development
proposals.
• Above all, however, the key to fostering a more anticipatory approach to EIA
involves placing this process within a more integrated system for environmental
and economic decision-makings.
EIA IMPROVEMENT
• One of the most recent trends in EIA is its application at earlier, more strategic
stages of development at the level of policies, plans and programmes.
• In the USA the so called SEA has been carried out as an extension of project
EIA in a relatively low-key manner.
• The role of SEA is also seen to be more than merely expand EIA to the more
strategic levels of decision-making.
Environmental Management System and Environmental Auditing
• In IEA, the decision is based on the extent to which various biophysical, social
and economic impacts can be traded. For example, decision-makers might be
unwilling to trade critical biophysical assets (e.g. river system and the quality of
water supply) for jobs or lifestyle, but willing to trade less critical biophysical
assets.
• IEA differs from traditional EIA in that it is consciously multi-disciplinary, does
not take public’s participation or the ultimate users of EIA for granted and
recognises the critical role of complexity and uncertainty in most decisions
about the environment.
• Hence it tolerates a much broader array of methods and perspectives for
evaluating and judging alternatives courses of action.
Incorporation of Environmental Impact Design (EID)
• The EIA limitations on its original role as a stand alone report can be redressed
by transferring much of the philosophy, the insights and techniques which are
currently use in environmental assessments, directly into planning and design
activities.
• A further evolution of this concept is to use EIA to identify basic environmental
constraints before the design process is begun, but then allow designers freedom
to design innovative and attractive structures as long as they meet those
constraints.
• Traditionally, EIAs are carried out on projects in which most of the structural
elements have already been finalised. In EID-oriented approaches there is less
unmodifiable design and thus more scope for introducing environmentally sound
design as mitigation measures.