CONTENTS

1. CONCEPTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT (EIA)

2. PROCEDURES / STAGES OF EIA

• SCOPING TECHNIQUES

• BASELINE DATA GENERATION

3. CLASSIFICATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS

4. BENEFITS AND FLAWS OF EIA

5. CHALLENGES OF CARRYING OUT EIA IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

 CONCEPT OF EIA
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA): is the process of identifying, predicting, evaluating
and mitigating the biophysical, socioeconomic, cultural, and human health impact so as to recommend
appropriate measures, programs & operational procedures to minimize the impact.

Aim of EIA:
Enable the admistrative competent authority, the local & central government & the developers to properly
consider the potential environmental consequences of a proposed project & to mitigate these
consequences if necessary.

Objective of EIA:
• to ensure that environmental considerations are properly addressed & incorporated into the
development and decision making of a project.

• to avoid and minimize adverse significance of biophysical, social & other relevant effects of
developmental proposal

• to promote environmentally sound & sustainable development

 PROCEDURE/STAGES of EIA
1. Project Identification:
 first step is to define a project
 study all likely activities involved in its process
 aid in understanding the range and reach of the project.

2. Screening:
 to determine if a project requires full or partial impact assessment study

3. Scoping: (most important step in an EIA)

 to identify which potential impacts are relevant to assess.
 to undertakes project’s effects on the air, water, soil, noise level, and physical impact.

4. Identification and prediction of environmental impacts:

 to predict and identify the likely environmental impacts of a proposed project both beneficial and adverse.
 scale and severity of an impact is determined (reversible or irreversible)
 reversible can be considered as low; irreversible adverse impact is said to be high.
 Impact duration is equally important
 Short-term (3-9 years) . Medium-term (10-20 years)
 Long-term (beyond 20 years)
 PROCEDURE/STAGES OF EIA cont.…
5. Mitigation measures:
 Preventive: public awareness programmes
 Compensatory: to reduce potential reactions
 Corrective: putting into place devices and installations.

6. Environmental appraisal report:

 preparation of the EIA report

7. Public Consultation:
 who are the public? how to involve them? what are the benefits & flaws?
 this mainly constitute the report of on the socio-economic environment.

8. Review:
 Once the final report is prepared, it may be reviewed based on the comments and inputs of stakeholders

9. Decision making:
 The final decision is based on the EIA to approve or reject the project.
 If approved implementation follows; if not, you redesign and resubmit.

10. Environmental Monitoring:

 Monitoring should be done both during construction and operational phases of the project
 Project proposal

No EIA required Screening EIA required

Impact
Analysis & Scoping
EIA report
Mitigation
Plan

Review &
Decision Public
making Consultation &
Participation

Approval Rejection Redesign

Implementation & Monitoring

 SCOPING TECHNIQUES
 Baseline studies: using available data & local knowledge. Once key issues have been identified, the
need for further in-depth studies can be clearly identified and any additional collection initiated.

 Checklist techniques: used in identifying project impact. It covers all possible impacts of a project.
its usually in form of a questionnaire.

 Matrix techniques: it indicates causes and effect by listing activities along the horizontal axis and
environmental parameters along the vertical axis. In this way the impacts of both individual components
of projects as well as major alternatives can be compared.

 Network techniques: technique for illustrating how impacts are related and what the consequences
of impacts are. E.g., predicting the impact of increased diversions of a higher irrigation efficiencies on the
flow regime of a river.

 Overlap techniques: techniques for illustrating the geographical extent of different environmental
impacts.
 BASELINE DATA GENERATION
Baseline refers to conditions existing before the development against which
subsequent changes can be referenced
Why acquire baseline data?
to access present status of noise, air, water, land, ecology components of the
environment in an area of 10km radius around the project site.

to identify & quantify significant impacts of processing operations on environmental

components.

to prepare EMP with pollution control techniques to be adopted for mitigation of
adverse impacts & site-specific remedial measures.

to delineate future environmental quality monitoring program to be pursed by the

proponents after commissioning the proposed projects.
Environmental Environmental
Component Indicators
 Water Quality  Flood plains
 Waste/ wastewater discharge
 Air Quality  Ambient; Respirable,
 Airshed Importance; Odor level
 Noise Quality  Traffic & transportation of vehicles
 Noise due to heavy equipment operations
 Duration & variation of noise over time
 Biological  Flora – (types, density & exploitation)
Environment  Fauna – (distribution, abundance, specie diversity, habitants, economic
significance, commercial values)
 Fisheries – (species with commercial or recreational values)
 Land use  Land use pattern
 Land cover
 Waste Type  Solid waste
 Hazardous waste
 Biomedical waste
 CLASSIFICATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS

 Direct Impact: occurs with direct interaction of an activity within an environmental, social and
economic component. (E.g. discharge of effluent into a river may lead to decline in water quality).

 Indirect Impact: impacts that are not of direct result of the project & often away from or as a result of
complex impact pathway. (E.g. decline in water quality due to rise in temperature of water bodies receiving
cooling/hot water discharge from a near by industry may impact on aquatic flora in water and cause
reduction in fish population).

 Cumulative Impact: occurs when impact of a project is combined with cumulative effects of other parts
of the present & foreseeable future project. (E.g. expansion in production capacity of a cement establishment
of captive power plants on same premises)
 BENEFITS AND FLAWS OF EIA
BENEFITS FLAWS
• Provides systematic methods of impact assessment • Time consuming

• Estimates the cost/benefits trade off of alternative • Costly

actions
• Facilitates the public participation • Little public participation in actual implementation

• Provides effective mechanisms for environmental • Unavailable for reliable data (mostly in developing
integration and negotiation countries)
• Top level decision making • Too focused on scientific analysis

• Trigger an institutional building • Poor presentation of EIA report (bulky volume, scientific
explanation, difficult to understand)

• Achieve a balance between the impact of • Compliance monitoring after EIA is seldom carried out
developmental & environmental concern
 Challenges of carrying out EIA in developing countries
 Lack of land use planning

 Lack of relevant regulation and law enforcement

 Lack of implementation of mitigation strategies & management guideline presented in the EIA
report

 Insufficient baseline environmental data

 Lack of provision for accessing the environmental impact of sectorial policies influencing the
behaviour of large number of decision makers

 Lack of integration of risk assessment & correspondingly lack of provision of contingency

planning

 Lack of monitoring, equipment, facilities, expertise & institutional capacity for implementation
 EMP: are set of mitigation, monitoring & institutionalized measures that must be ensured
during the implementation and operation of a project to eliminate adverse environmental & social
impact or atleast reduce them to acceptable levels.