Project justification and EIA: Anything goes?

Álvaro Enríquez‐de‐Salamanca

Published 2021 in Environmental Impact Assessment Review

ABSTRACT

Abstract Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) incorporates environmental aspects into decision-making, but sometimes it is not effective in rejecting projects with dubious justification, significant impacts and little social utility, especially when they have political support. EIA is expected to achieve sustainable development, but without calling development into question; however, it should be able to ask the question of whether development is really necessary. Although EIA is political, as a part of the decision-making process, politicization must be limited to prevent it from becoming a mere instrument for giving an “environmental veneer” to development. Some measures thar can help avoid unjustified projects are: adopting administrative justice approach to EIA; minimising politicization of EIA agencies; improving transparency in decision-making and proportionality of EIA procedures; carrying out pre-feasibility studies; increasing the scope of SEA; allowing more than one SEA or EIA procedure for the same development throughout the planning process; strengthening the justification of the project in EIA documents; or making the scoping phase mandatory at least for major projects.

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2021

  • Venue

    Environmental Impact Assessment Review

  • Publication date

    2021-03-01

  • Fields of study

    Political Science, Business, Environmental Science

  • Identifiers
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar

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