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Environmental Impact Assessment and Management
Environmental Impact Assessment and Management
Environmental Impact Assessment and Management
UNIT – 1
SYLLABUS: Basic concepts of EIA – initial environmental examinations, elements of EIA –
factors affecting EIA, impact evolution and analysis, preparation of environmental base map,
classification of environmental parameters.
1. ENVIRONMENT IMPACT AND ASSESSMENT:
EIA is an activity designed to identify and predict the impact of a project on
biogeophysico - chemical environment and on human health so as to recommend appropriate
legislative measures, programs, and operational procedures to minimize the impact.
Environmental Impact Assessment, as a rational instrument, shall be undertaken for
proposed activities that are likely to have a significant adverse impact on the environment and
are subject to a decision of a competent national authority.
EIA is an exercise to be carried out before any project or major activity is undertaken to
ensure that it will not in any away harm the environment on a short-term or long-term basis. Any
developmental activity requires not only the analysis, the monetary costs and benefits involved
and of the need of such a project but also most important, it requires a consideration and detailed
assessment of the effect of a proposed development on the environment.
WHAT IS IMPACT?
An impact can be defined as any change in the physical, chemical, biological, cultural or
socio-economic environmental system as a result of activities relating to a project.
WHAT IS AN ASSESSMENT?
It means collecting, summarizing, organizing and understanding pieces of existing
knowledge and communicating them into planning.
WHAT IS MANAGEMENT?
Management is the planning, organizing, and controlling the efforts of all resources like
men, material and money to achieve goals.
2. SALIENT FEATURES OF EIA
(a) The EIA procedure identifies the possible positive and negative impacts to the
environment resulting from a proposed project. These impacts are identified over both "short-
term" and "long-term" time frame;
(b) The EIA provides for a plan, which upon implementation, will reduce or offset the
negative impacts of a project resulting in a minimum level of environmental degradation. This
consultation requirements so that necessary analyses or studies can be made concurrently with
EIA. This would reduce delay and eliminate redundant or extraneous discussion from EIA
reports. lEE is a means of providing the most efficient and feasible preparation of adequate
environmental management plans with or without the requirement of a full scale EIA. Therefore,
for most Industrial Development Projects, lEE is desirable simply from the economic point of
view.
8. ELEMENTS OF EIA REPORT or EIA PROCESS:
Proposal identification:
What is the problem?
What options / alternatives ae available to solve the problem?
What are the environmental implications of these options / alternatives?
What is the preferred options / alternatives? Why?
1. Screening: First stage of EIA, which determines whether the proposed project requires an
EIA and if it require EIA, then the level of assessment required.
2. Scoping: This stage identifies the key issues and impact that should be future
investigated. This stage also defines the boundary and time limit of the study.
3. Impact analysis: This stage of EIA identifies and predicts likely environmental and
social impact of the proposed project and evaluates the significance.
4. Mitigation: This step in EIA recommends the actions to reduce and avoid the potential
adverse environmental consequences of development activities.
5. EIA report: This stage presents the result of EIA in a form of report to the decision
making body and other interested parties.
6. EIA review: It examines the adequacy and effectiveness of the EIA report and provides
information necessary for the decision making.
7. Decision making: it decides whether the project is rejected, approved or needs further
change.
8. Fallow up: This stage play once the project is commissioned. It checks whether the
imparts of the project do not exceed the legal standards and implementation of the
mitigation measures are in the manner as described in the EIA report.
Public consultation:
A public hearing process in which only local affected people can participate.
A process for obtaining written comments from others who are concerned
citizens.
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