Authors
Gerald G Singh, Jackie Lerner, Megan Mach, Cathryn Clarke Murray, Bernardo Ranieri, Guillaume Peterson St‐Laurent, Janson Wong, Alice Guimaraes, Gustavo Yunda‐Guarin, Terre Satterfield, Kai MA Chan
Publication date
2020/6
Journal
People and Nature
Volume
2
Issue
2
Pages
369-379
Description
- Governments around the world rely on environmental impact assessment (EIA) to understand the environmental risks of proposed developments.
- To examine the basis for these appraisals, we examine the output of EIA processes in jurisdictions within seven countries, focusing on scope (spatial and temporal), mitigation actions and whether impacts were identified as ‘significant’.
- We find that the number of impacts characterized as significant is generally low. While this finding may indicate that EIA is successful at promoting environmentally sustainable development, it may also indicate that the methods used to assess impact are biased against findings of significance. To explore the methods used, we investigate the EIA process leading to significance determination.
- We find that EIA reports could be more transparent with regard to the spatial scale they use to assess impacts to wildlife. We also find that few …
Scholar articles
GG Singh, J Lerner, M Mach, CC Murray, B Ranieri… - People and Nature, 2020