Inhalt
Block 1 Introduction to environmental impact assessment ..................................................................... 2
Lecture 1............................................................................................................................................... 2
Literature 1 ........................................................................................................................................... 6
Anne N. Glucker, Peter P.J. Driessen, Arend Kolhoff, Hens A.C. Runhaar, Public participation in
environmental impact assessment: why, who and how?, Environmental Impact Assessment
Review, ............................................................................................................................................. 6
Leonard Ortolano & Anne Shepherd (1995) Environmental Impact Assessment: Challenges And
Opportunities ................................................................................................................................... 8
Richard K. Morgan (2012) Environmental impact assessment: the state of the art ..................... 12
Joe Weston Eia Theories — All Chinese Whispers And No Critical Theory.................................... 18
Lecture 2 Deeper into EIA .................................................................................................................. 22
Literature 2 ......................................................................................................................................... 27
Page , J. (2012). Make it easy on your readers: ideas on environmental impact document focus,
organization, and style. .................................................................................................................. 27
Tenney, A., Kværner, J., & Gjerstad, K. I. (2006). Uncertainty in environmental impact
assessment predictions: the need for better communication and more transparency................ 30
Lecture 3............................................................................................................................................. 32
Literature 3 ......................................................................................................................................... 37
Regional Energy Strategies and Environmental Assessment in the Netherlands .......................... 37
Block 2 Methods of impact-prediction & EIA in the field ....................................................................... 40
Lecture 4 Law ..................................................................................................................................... 40
Literature 4 ......................................................................................................................................... 45
Craik 9781785369520 .................................................................................................................... 45
Lecture 5 – Impact prediction on Soil and Water .............................................................................. 47
Literature 5 ......................................................................................................................................... 52
Stapelton, C; Hawkins & Hodson (2009), Chapter 9 Soils, geology and geomorphology .............. 52
Kelday, Brookes, Morris (2009). Chapter 10 ‘’Water’’ ................................................................... 55
Judith M. van Dijk (2006) Water assessment in the Netherlands, Impact Assessment and Project
Appraisal, ........................................................................................................................................ 57
Lecture 6 Geospatial technologies and EIA........................................................................................ 60
Literature 6 ......................................................................................................................................... 62
Fothergill, J. and Murphy, J. (2021) The State of Digital Impact Assessment Practice, IAIA ......... 62
Ricker When open data and data activism meet: An analysis of civic participation in Cape Town,
South Africa .................................................................................................................................... 63
Lecture 8 Integrating climate change in EIA ...................................................................................... 65
Literature 8 – none ............................................................................................................................. 67
Lecture 9 Cultural Heritage and Landscape ....................................................................................... 68
, Literature 9 ......................................................................................................................................... 71
Jones 2010 Cultural heritage in environmental impact assessment – reflections from England
and northwest Europe ................................................................................................................... 71
Joks Janssen, Eric Luiten, Hans Renes & Eva Stegmeijer (2017) Heritage as sector, factor and
vector: conceptualizing the shifting relationship between heritage management and spatial
planning .......................................................................................................................................... 73
Lecture 10 Biodiversity ....................................................................................................................... 75
Literature 10 ....................................................................................................................................... 78
Hughes, A. C. (2019). Understanding and minimizing environmental impacts of the Belt and
Road Initiative. Conservation Biology, 33(4), 883-894. ................................................................. 78
Hughes, et al 2020. Horizon scan of the belt and road initiative. Trends in Ecology & Evolution,
35(7), 583-593. ............................................................................................................................... 80
The Belt and Road Initiative and the Sustainable Development Goals ......................................... 83
Lecture 11 Environmental Impact Assessment in developing countries ........................................... 86
Literature 11 ....................................................................................................................................... 93
SEA for sustainable development of the hydropower sector, June 2021 ..................................... 93
Kolhoff et al. 2016 The influence of actor capacities on EIA system performance in low- and
middle-income countries —Cases from Georgia and Ghana......................................................... 94
Exercise questions .................................................................................................................................. 99
Block 1 Introduction to environmental impact assessment
Lecture 1
Process
EIA process of identifying, predicting, evaluating, and mitigating the biophysical, social, and other relevant
impacts of development prior to major decisions being taken and commitments made. “International Association
for Impact Assessment (IAIA, website)
Process:
3. 6. Follow-up
1. Screening 2. Scoping 4. Review 5. Decision
Assessment Procedures
• Measure the environmental and social impacts of a proposed development surpassing
economic value
Purpose of EIA: For informed decision making
• Provide ‘objective’ environmental information to improve the knowledge base on which
government decision-making is taking place (rationalist approach)
• Enhance quality of government decision-making
, • Enhance transparency in government decision-making by involving all relevant stakeholders in
the process
Actors
Initiator competent authority/gov
• party seeking to gain authorisation for a • legal bases of the process they must ensure
proposed project that
• Can be the government, semi-state all relevant stakeholders are appropriately
organisation, or a private party involved in the EIA process
• Responsible for and carries out the EIA • Decides if the EIA report is of sufficient
(Environmental/social consultancies carry quality
out the EIA and produce the final report) to facilitate decision-making
• Develops various alternatives of project • When the EIA is sufficient for decision-
design making,
→ decision whether an alternative proposal
presented in the EIA can be given the green
light
• Different levels of government agencies that
could disagree with each other
independent experts The public is not a homogenous entity
• EIAs need to be reviewed by an • all interested stakeholders, depends on the
independent body by Dutch law characteristics of the policy/project at hand
(Netherlands Commission for Environmental • Participation can have various objectives:
Assessment (in Dutch: Commissie MER)
→ Enhancing legitimacy of the EIA procedure
• NCEA selects a working group of experts → → Redistribution of power, social justice: empower
affected communities, groups and/or individuals
assess the quality on various projects in NL
→ Enabling affected communities and
• NCEA international team works with stakeholders to influence the process and outcomes
of the project/policy
governments to strengthen EIA system → Social learning: becoming active citizens (Glucker
abroad et al., 2013)
→ ensure quality of life
Explores ways to avoid or reduce biophysical and social impacts of proposed development projects in case of
land use changes
,Background
• Environmental movement in the 1960s
• Post-World War II period industrialization characterized with severe pollution and
environmental disasters with catastrophic effect on human health
• 1969, NEPA (National Environment Policy Act) came into force in the United States
• European Union EIA Directive adopted in 1985, World Bank adopted in 1989
• Over approx. The past 50 years, EIA has become a key instrument in domestic and
international law and policymaking
• Environmental and Social impact assessment (ESIA) is a requirement by all major International
Financial Institutions (IFIs)
In rationalist model of decision making (Weston 2010)
Each development proposal and project are unique
• Project type and objectives
• Size (land requirements)
• Technical requirements
• The context of the affected environment:
o Legal systems, local cultures, socio-economic status, Indigenous Peoples
o Nature 2000, biodiversity hotspots,
endangered species
How EIA is undertaken
Steps in Videos: https://www.eia.nl/en/publications/videos
,Screening Is EIA required?
Scoping For the initiator
• Notification of intent, Terms of Reference (ToR): document describing what needs
to become assessed in the full EIA report
o Outlines scope of the proposed development
o Rationale for the proposed action
o Outlines alternatives: Most environmentally friendly, Preferred alternative
o Identify relevant environmental and social aspects
o Public participation meetings and integration
o NCEA: Advice on terms of reference (ToR)
• Final approval of ToR by Competent Authority
• For the public:
• Public groups can propose adjustments in project design
• Proposing to include more issues/impacts in EIA report
• Lobby against the project and/or organise protests
• For independent experts (NCEA)
• Advice to competent authority on the extent and detail EIA report should
have
• support government to determine and approve the final ToR that the
project Initiator MUST implement
Assessment • involve environmental and social consultants
• description of the project, objectives, the local context, and applicable
legislation
• description of the potential environmental and/or social impacts:
• Consideration of various impacts and methods
• Proposed mitigation and compensation measures
o Dropping environmentally damaging elements of a proposed project
o Minimizing adverse effects by scaling down or redesigning a project
, o Repairing, rehabilitating, or restoring those parts of the environment that
are adversely affected by a project
o Creating or acquiring environments similar to those adversely affected by
a project
(Ortolano and Shepherd, 1995)
Review • Review: the quality of the Impact Statement /EIA
• Extent: does it cover the relevant impacts?
• Detail: is it suitably in- depth?
• Publish review document
• Comment/lobby/protest on EIA process
Decision Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) of sufficient quality for decision-making?
YES → Competent Authority chooses alternative
NO:
• only part of the EIS insufficient → Supplementary EIS
• the entire EIS is insufficient → Restart process
Follow-up → environmental and social management plans: Description of measures how to
avoid/mitigate the adverse impacts of the project
→ to be implemented by the Initiator!
• initiator: monitor the impacts of the project during construction, operational phase and
decommissioning
• competent authority: monitoring independently from project initiator
Literature 1
Anne N. Glucker, Peter P.J. Driessen, Arend Kolhoff, Hens A.C. Runhaar, Public
participation in environmental impact assessment: why, who and how?,
Environmental Impact Assessment Review,
Volume 43,2013,Pages 104-111,ISSN 0195-9255,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2013.06.003.
Introduction
• Relevance of public participation to EIA, NEPA formally recognized importance p. 104
o UN Rio Conference 1992: environmental issues are best handled with the participation
of all concerned citizens at the relevant level”
o Arhus Convention 1998: “guarantee the rights of access to information, public
participation in decision-making, and access to justice in environmental matters in
accordance with the provisions of this Convention”
• Participation as goal in itself: consensus on key role to effective environmental (environ.)
assessment (assess.)
• literature reveals questions in this consensus:
o What is public participation in the context of EIA p. 105
, o What objectives of public participation in EIA can be distinguished?
o Who should participate in EIA and why?
Public participation in EIA context
• public participation directly linked to objectives that participatory process is to fulfil
• Public participation wide variety of understanding and targets in use (Adnan 1992)
• Conflicting definitions:
o IAIA 2006: “the involvement of individuals and groups that are positively or negatively
affected, or that are interested in, a proposed project, programme, plan or policy that
is subject to a decision-making process”→ extent of involvement remains unclear
o Hughes 1998: a process, which enables individuals or organisations affected by a
proposed project to significantly influence decision-making
o Adnan 1992 : a categorical term for citizen power: redistribution of power, enables
the have-not citizens (excluded from the political and economic processes) to be
deliberately included in the future → empowerment of marginalised individuals
• unclear boundary between consultation and participation, interchangeable use
→ Framework to differentiate forms of public participation: Arnsteins ladder 1969
• O'Faircheallaigh (2010) lower forms may trigger other (in)formal forms of public participation
(interrelation of different categories of public participation and, also in cases of usual
business)
• Discurs:
o equality or level of importance of forms
o application depends on the policy issues at hand (structured or unstructured)
(Runhaar and Driessen 2007)
o lower forms to instrumentalize public participation for politcans cause (Arnstein 1969)
o Different perceptions of public participation led to different expectations of
participation results
Objectives of public participation
Normative rationale Substantive rationale Instrumental rationale
• Influencing decisions: scale • Harnessing local • Generating legitimacy
of democracy (Hughes) and information and knowledge • Resolving conflict
extent of public • Incorporating experimental • reflection
involvement and policy and value-based
implications knowledge
, • Enhancing democratic • Testing robustness of
capacity information from other
• Social learning sources
• Empowering and
emancipation marginalised
Who should participate? p. 109
• interchangeable use of public, stakeholders, or citizens
• unclear definition of who the public are their respective interests (Petts 2003)
→ challenge of public as homogenous entity presents in EIA literature (Petts, Dietz and Stern)
• anyone who is interested of affected by the benefits or harms of decisions (Dietz and Stern
2008)
→ differentiate between segments as general public (may be interested) and stakeholders(are
affected) and their involvement depending on the context
• broad definition to not eliminate parties that could constructively contribute to the process
and should be permitted to participate (Doelle and Sinclair 2004)
• everyone affected by a decision should be given a chance to participate in public policy
making
• trade-offs of participation:
o EIA important to many people → democratic, inclusive approaches make sense
o but THE public entity challenged/nonexistant
→ harder to find consensus among heterogenous groups/expectations/ interests
→ frustration with the project and EIA participation + investment of human and financial resources
Conclusions
• Public participation is key to effective EIA
• No consensus on definition, breadth, objectives of PP in EIA
• Look at differences, make them explicit and reflect implications for practice
Leonard Ortolano & Anne Shepherd (1995) Environmental Impact Assessment:
Challenges and Opportunities
Impact Assessment, 13:1, 3-30, DOI: 10.1080/07349165.1995.9726076
Disparity between intended influence and real one on projects due to organizational and methodological reasons
Conceptions of EIA
• In technocratic paradigm in the rational model of planning and decision making
