Environmental Management: Principles and practice

Integrated impact assessment, comprehensive impact
assessment, regional impact assessment, integrated environmental
management, strategic environmental assessment and related
approaches
The following approaches seek to cover more than just a restricted range of impacts,
to do so over more than a snapshot of time, and at wider scales, or up through all
project, programme and policy levels (or from local up to international). Some of the
approaches seek to cope better with indirect and cumulative impacts than mainstream
impact assessment (Nijkamp, 1986).
Integrated impact assessment is a generic term for the study of the full range
of ecological and socioeconomic consequences of an action (Lang, 1986; McDonald
and Brown 1990). It is difficult to predict the impacts of something if no account is
taken of other current and planned developments. It also seeks to promote closer
integration of impact assessment into planning, policy making and management,
adopting a tiered approach (Parson, 1995).
To assess cumulative impacts a regional impact assessment approach can be
an adopted (e.g. where successive tourism developments lead to regional problems
or a number of irrigation projects combine to cause difficulties). It is also useful for
establishing planning objectives, e.g. the impacts of a new shopping centre (mall)
were considered by Norris (1990) using such techniques. It makes sense to assess
developments in their spatial setting, rather than in isolation; it also allows the
interfacing of planning and environmental management at the regional level and

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offers possibilities for assessing exogenous impacts on the region. Economists use
econometrics and input-output analysis to explore economics and environmental
linkages at regional level: for example, the impacts of an irrigation development on
a region like Malaysia’s Muda Scheme (Bell and Hazel, 1980; Isard, 1972; Bell et
al., 1982; Solomon, 1985).
Integrated regional environmental assessment is similar to the approach just
discussed, having the following objectives:
♦
To provide a broad, integrated perspective of a region about to undergo or
undergoing developments.
♦
To identify cumulative impacts from multiple developments in the region.
♦
To help establish priorities for environmental protection.
♦
To assess policy options.
♦
To identify information gaps and research needs.
There is no single methodology for doing this, and the approach is more difficult
than mainstream EIA. A solution might be to subdivide regions into smaller units for
assessment (perhaps ecosystems or river basins, although there may be situations
where administrative regions offer better possibilities).
Integrated environmental management seeks to reconcile conflicting interests
and concerns, minimize negative impacts, and enhance positive results. It is an
approach which seeks to integrate impact assessment and evaluation into planning
and decision making. For an example of an integrated environmental management
procedure (proposed for South Africa), see Sowman et al. (1995).
While most EIA and SIA is applied at project level, it is also desirable to
assess at programme and policy level, for example to improve:
♦
overseas aid provision;
♦
structural adjustment programmes;
♦
free trade developments;
♦
public transport policies.
It is not easy to find an effective and flexible, integrated approach that can be applied
to, say, national energy policy, an industrial development zone, or to an extensive
area of scenic value. The greatest promise probably lies with tiered assessments
(Lee, 1978; 1982:73–75; Wood, 1988; Harvey et al., 1995). These adopt a sequential
approach with broad assessment at policy level (tier 1), e.g. impact assessment of
national road policy; followed by more specific assessment at the programme level
(tier 2), e.g. regional road programmes; and even more specific assessment of
individual (road) project(s) (tier 3), e.g. local road construction. Efforts are made to
cross-reference broad and specific assessments. Events in tier 3 are conditioned by
prior events or parallel events in higher tiers, so it is unsatisfactory to look at a lower
tier without also considering higher ones (or vice versa). Tiered impact assessment
can also adopt a multisectoral approach (horizontal tiers)—if sectors were considered
in isolation cumulative impacts might be missed (or a sector might get missed). This

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requires a holistic approach to avoid missing interactive effects. Tiered impact
assessment should acquire data that make subsequent or related impact assessments
easier, faster and cheaper to conduct. Tiered impact assessments should complement
each other and so avoid the duplication which might otherwise occur. It may be
possible with some types of development to do broad impact assessments and dispense
with a plethora of individual assessments, e.g. instead of factory-by-factory impact
assessment it may be possible to do a single industrial estate assessment. The USA
tries to encourage a tiered approach, and in other countries, such as The Netherlands,
and more recently Europe as a whole, the trend is towards this.
Impact assessment experience at programme level and policy level is more
limited than for project level, but it is growing. Such assessment differs from
mainstream project-focused assessments, in that it must allow for the fact that other
programmes and policies, cultural and other forces have considerable effect on what
is being assessed (projects can usually be studied in relative isolation). To cope with
these challenges strategic environmental assessment (SEA) (or programmatic EIA)
has been developed. This is a form of tiered, nested, or sequential environmental
impact assessment that seeks to provide a framework within which project, programme
and policy impact assessment can take place (EIA can be used at the project level,
tiered with SEA to link it to programme and policy levels or, as is increasingly the
case, SEA is applied to all levels) (Wood, 1992; 1995:266–288; Buckley, 1994;