Environmental Management: Principles and practice

Strategic environmental assessment
Impact assessment should be better integrated into policy making, planning and
administration (Htun, 1990; Hare, 1991; Jenkins, 1991; Pearce, 1992; Van Pelt, 1993:

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99; Slocombe, 1993; Bowyer, 1994; Ortolano and Shepard, 1995:16). Strategic
environmental assessment (SEA) offers means of viewing and co-ordinating
development from policy and programme levels down to project level through a
tiered approach (Hill et al., 1994; Sadler, 1994).
Assessing the potential for development and impacts of
development: approaches other than EIA and SIA
Ecological impact assessment
This considers how organisms, rather than people, will be affected by activities
(Westman, 1985:86; Duinker, 1989). Recently the expression has been applied to
the description and evaluation of the ecological baseline used by EIA. More accurately,
ecological impact assessment is concerned with establishing the state of the
environment, whereas EIA focuses on predicted and actual effects of change. Treweek
(1995a; 1995b) has reviewed ecological impact assessment and reported it was a
valuable support for EIA. An aspect of ecological impact assessment which is growing
in importance is its application to biodiversity loss (Hirsch, 1993).
Ecological impact assessment may rely on selected ecosystem components as
indicators or on ecosystem modelling. Ecosystem function can be complex and often
is poorly understood, making accurate assessment difficult.
Habitat evaluation
Habitat evaluation seeks to assess the suitability of an ecosystem for a species or the
impact of development on a habitat (Suter, 1993:8). There may be more than one
habitat affected by a development, in which case each is dealt with separately. This
approach has been used by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, in assessments of the
impacts of US federal water resource development projects, and by the US Army
Corps of Engineers (Canter, 1996:390).