Environmental Management: Principles and practice

BOX 6.2 The figure below illustrates the typical stepwise EIA process.
Note the idealized steps or phases 0 to 6.
Source:  redrawn from various sources by the author
continued . . .

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Screening (phase 0) is concerned with deciding which developments require
an EIA. This should prevent unnecessary assessment, yet ensure that there is
no escape when assessment is needed (in practice that is difficult). Screening
may not be mandatory in some countries. Note that the term ‘environmental
assessment’ is used for screening in the USA, but in the UK has been applied
to EIA. In the USA if environmental assessment/screening (also called initial
environmental evaluation) indicates no need to proceed to a full EIA a
statement of Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) is issued publicly,
allowing time for objection/appeal before a final decision is arrived at.
Scoping (phase 1) overlaps phase 0 and should help determine the terms of
reference for an EIA, the approach, timetable, limits of study, tactics, staffing,
etc. By this stage the EIA should consider alternative developments. In practice,
a decision as to how to proceed may already have been made by a developer.
Identification, measurement and evaluation of impacts (phase 2) may
proceed with or without public review(s). A variety of techniques may be
used to determine possible impacts: as human judgement is involved, this
is an art rather than a wholly objective scientific process, regardless of the
statistics used. The difficulty of identifying indirect and cumulative impacts
makes this a tricky and often only partially satisfactory process. This phase
is much assisted if an adequate set of baseline data is available—often it is
not and extensive desk and field research is needed.
Check findings (phase 3) may follow a public review and/or may involve an
independent third party to ensure objectivity. A statement, report, chart or
presentation is usually released—effectively the product of an EIA, this is
termed the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and is what the decision
makers, environmental managers (and perhaps public) have to interpret.
Decision on proposal (phase 4): in practice, where a development has already
been decided on or is even under way, corrective measures can be perfected. It
is a way of passing on hindsight knowledge to planners in the future. The EIS
may not be clear or easy to use: some countries require irreversible, dangerous
and costly impacts to be clearly shown. It also useful if alternatives and potential
benefits are indicated. The environmental manager must be able to read the
EIS and identify gaps, weaknesses, limitations. An EIA must not be allowed to
give a false sense of security.
Implementation (phase 5): this is where an environmental manager is especially
active. Unexpected problems may arise.

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Monitoring and audit (phase 6): in practice it is often omitted or is poorly
done. If planning and management are to improve, efforts should be made to
assess whether the EIA worked well. It is also important to keep on monitoring
to catch unexpected developments. Efforts to assess EIA are generally termed
Post-EIA Audits. An EIA can easily be a snapshot view and ongoing monitoring
or a repeat EIA can help counter that.
By considering goals, realities and available alternatives, it should be possible to identify
the best options rather than simply acceptable proposals. EIA has tended to flag negative
impacts but can also ensure that opportunities are not missed. It is important to stress
that EIA should consider all options, including no development/ no change.
By improving understanding of relationships between development and
environment and prompting studies, EIA can actively lead to better environmental
management. If EIA is to become an integral part of planning, it must be applied before
development decisions are made. However, in practice, much is retrospective, initialled
after decisions have been made or even after development is under way or completed.
This is still of value because it can help clarify problems and add to hindsight knowledge.
Nevertheless, if EIA is done after key decisions have been made, it is unlikely to be able
to force a change of plan to less damaging options. At worst it may simply be cosmetic—
done to try to reduce opposition. Also, while not a blatant cosmetic exercise, EIA is
frequently an inflexible and devalued part of a development legitimization process.
The world is facing the possibility of damaging impacts that may be costly or
impossible to cure. There should be efforts to avoid them, and an ad hoc narrow
approach is not enough. EIA can be a powerful tool in the quest for sustainable
development, particularly through strategic environmental assessment (see later this
FIGURE 6.1 How impact assessment fits into planning

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chapter). What is needed is integration of environmental and development planning—
and EIA may help bring about this integration (Jacobs and Saddler, 1989; Dalal-
Clayton, 1992; D.Pritchard, 1993). Environmental managers must cope with
uncertainty, and err on the side of caution, following the precautionary principle,
which means where there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental changes,
FIGURE 6.3 Relationships, possible exchanges of information and methodologies for
environmental impact assessments, environmental audits, new systems of national accounts
and state-of-the-environment reports.
Source: Thompson and Wilson (1994:612, Fig. 5)
FIGURE 6.2 Relationship of environmental impact assessment (EIA), technology
assessment, social forecasting and social impact assessment (SIA)
Source: Adapted from Vlachos (1985:54, unnumbered figure)

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lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures
to prevent environmental degradation (Dovers and Handmer, 1995:92). The 1992
Earth Summit stressed the value of impact assessment—17 of its 27 principal
declarations deal with some aspect of EIA.
EIA should be more widely used early in planning and needs to be improved
to consider more effectively indirect and cumulative impacts (Gardiner 1989; Jacobs
and Sadler, 1989; Anon, 1990; Jenkins, 1991; Wallington et al., 1994). A cumulative
impact is the consequence of more than one direct or indirect impact acting together.
Such impacts can be very difficult to predict. An indirect impact is the result of a
second, third or subsequent impact in a chain of causation in space and/or time. A
number of direct or indirect impacts could combine to pose a cumulative impact.
Chemical and biological timebombs are insidious forms of cumulative impact: a
chemical accumulates, or a biological process continues, without causing a problem,
perhaps without being apparent, until a threshold is suddenly exceeded, either through
continued accumulation or activity, or because some environmental or socioeconomic
change(s) triggers it (Stigliani et al., 1991). For example, pesticide gradually
accumulating in the soil may suddenly be flushed out when acid deposition brings
soil chemistry to a threshold; another example might be the insidious accumulation
of a chemical in the environment which suddenly reaches a threshold where it triggers
infertility in a species. One vital role of environmental management is to recognize
threats and warn if thresholds are approached.