Assessing Environmental Impacts - A Global Review of Legislation

Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) are the most commonly known, used, and globally widespread, environmental planning and management tools, with Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEAs) also gaining increasing momentum over the last decade. The objective of these tools is to make sure that all critical information to predict future impact on the environment is supplied and considered in the decision-making process. While EIAs assess planned physical developments, SEAs target the strategic planning level, such as government plans, programmes or policies. Both aim to avoid the implementation of any activity or strategic planning document with significant negative impacts on the environment, as well as an enhancement of positive impacts.

The future development and implementation of EIAs/SEAs will be crucial in advancing environmentally friendly development. Thus, both EIAs and SEAs are of high relevance for delivering the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and related policy frameworks such as the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity. The ability of countries and communities to achieve sustainable development depends in no small measure on robust and effective EIA/SEA legislation and implementation as a major catalyst for overcoming current implementation gaps and achieving better environmental outcomes.

This report provides an overview of the current status of national legislation and institutional arrangements of relevance to EIAs and SEAs across the globe, as well as emerging issues and trends. It does this primarily through providing examples from a wide selection of countries of their EIA/SEA arrangements and in relation to the different steps of the EIA/SEA processes. These steps include: (1) Screening; (2) Scoping and Impact Analysis; (3) Review of the EIA/SEA report; (4) Decision-making; (5) Follow-up and Adaptive Management and (6) Public Participation as a cross-cutting issue.