Environmental Impact Assessment: Making it Work in Developing Countries

Progress in adopting EIA as an environmental management tool has been extremely slow in developing countries, with only nine of the 121 countries having established frameworks for its implementation. Even in these few countries, after more than a decade of EIA implementation, the performance of EIA has been dismally poor in spite of considerable efforts, especially in the Asian and Pacific region, devoted to the development of cost-effective EIA methods and techniques. This poor performance is attributed to serious flaws in their legislative, administrative, institutional and procedural frameworks. These are discussed and illustrated with specific examples. Suggestions for improvement include the use of a legislative rather than an administrative option to establish authority for EIA; establishment of an independent environmental agency with considerable political influence over sectoral agencies through placement in the office of the President or Prime Minister or a high-profile ministry with responsibility for national economic planning and budgetary control; the decentralization of EIA activities among tiers of government or sectoral agencies; mandatory involvement of the local people, the public and concerned agencies in scoping, reviewing, monitoring and auditing; a procedural arrangement characterized by two-stage assessment, mandatory scoping and preparation of terms of reference, use of registered consultants for EIA studies, provision for public hearings and time limits for review, and the conduct of EIA as a fully-internalized element of the planning process rather than a separate exercise divorced from the technical and economic aspects of project planning and design. EIA guidelines should contain these conditions and there should be adequate provision for judicial involvement in reviewing the actions of environmental agencies and project proponents.