Environmental impact assessment: a review

The review is divided into two main sections. The first section contains a survey of the growth in the use of EIA during the 1970s in Western industrialized economies, Third World countries and international agencies. It highlights a number of key issues associated with these developments—notably the types and numbers of actions which should be submitted to EIA, and the quality of EIA studies and the time and cost incurred in their preparation—and recommends that the focus of future development should be directed towards a more cost-effective ‘tiered’ system of environmental impact assessment. The second section contains a review of the technical methods which are used in the preparation and publication of EIA studies. These are grouped according to the kind of task they perform in the EIA process: identification, data assembly, prediction, evaluation and communication. This review concludes with recommendations for improvement in the EIA methods in use in such areas as: clearer identification of ‘best existing practice’, publication of technical guidance based on best practice, provision of training facilities in the use of EIA methods, and re-examination of priorities in environmental monitoring and research.