What Is Wrong With Eia and Sea Anyway? A Sceptic's Perspective on Sustainability Assessment

Abstract

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) was initially introduced as an advocacy instrument for the biophysical environment in project decision-making. Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) evolved with a similar mission for strategic level proposals. However, recent trends towards more integration, particularly in the context of sustainability assessment (SA) mean that social and economic aspects are now frequently considered on a par with the environment in impact assessment processes. There are indications that this development will ultimately favour trade-offs towards socio-economic benefits, causing adverse environmental impacts. In this paper, we discuss problems connected with these types of integrated assessments. Based on observations of SA processes are actually environmentally unsustainable, we argue that the need for environment focussed EIA and true SEA in planning processes is now greater than ever. We suggest that until power relationships develop in a way that will allow integration in an environmentally sustainable manner, practitioners should not give up the benefits that have arisen from 35 years of EIA practice.We conclude that in our current world, there is nothing wrong with environmental advocacylet's continue to use EIA and SEA effectively to protect the environment!

Challenges for Integrating Strategic Environmental Assessment to Enhance Environmental Thinking: A Case Study of Taiwan Energy Policy

“…This kind of SEA focuses more on the policy planning process [19,21] and the integration process [23], and aims to make policy planning more strategic [24]. The main transformation compared with impact-oriented SEA is that the environmental effects should be part of the policy planning composition; furthermore, some studies have concluded social and economic issues are also considerations that should be covered [35,36]. This strategic feature leads to a more flexible and integrated SEA process, and attempts to achieve environmental goals and strategies by various strategic methods.…”

“…The former is the common understanding of sustainability [52], which considers the environmental, social, and economic aspects separately in the impact assessment process. However, some advocators reject any trade-off between natural resources and other socioeconomic objectives [26,53], and believe that sustainability should involve integrated and system-based thinking [35]. Gibson [36] also proposed the integrated principles of sustainability for sustainability assessment.…”

“…These sustainability principles were modified based on Morrison-Saunders and Hodgson [55] and Gibson [36] to include a very broad definition of sustainability. However, some studies suggest that the inclusion of too many sustainability aspects in the SEA process may influence or decrease the proportion of environmental thinking in the policy planning process [35,56].…”

Informational Asymmetry in Public Participation on Environmental Monitoring in Indonesian Regulation: A Preliminary Discourse

“…As noted by several authors (Younge & Fowkes, 2003;Stringer et al, 2007;Richards et al, 2004), increase in public participation has been linked to public skepticism of the complex, uncertain and impactful nature of environmental decision-making. This spike in public participation is also attributed to a more evidence-based policy making to achieve an understanding of the process, and its implications emerged (Morrison-Saunders & Fischer, 2006), one of them is EIA (Bawole, 2013). Public participation in impact assessment primarily aims to understand community perceptions regarding the proposed activity and to resolve conflicts and reach consensus regarding that activity (Furia & Wallace-Jones, 2000).…”

Editorial

“…However, when integrating different aspects that may pull in different directions, experience has shown that caution is required in order for bio-physical aspects not being systematically traded off for e.g. economic related social or health issues (Morrison-Saunders and Fischer 2006).…”