PENTAWII Workshop on Environmental Assessment Curriculum

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PENTA-WII Workshop on Environmental Assessment
Curriculum
EIA policies and processes THE
THREAT PERSPECTIVE

• Prepared by
• Dr Prafulla Soni, Chairperson
• Dr. Indra N. Sinha, Member
• Dr. Ajay K. Lal, Member
• Mr. Vipin Sahni, Member

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Policy Issues

• Political Will ?
• EIA initially introduced (1982)
• To fulfill donor agency requirements
• To comply with PIB Rules
• To cope with mounting internal pressure after
  Bhopal disaster(1985)
• Judicial Activism
• Took 12 years to give it legal standing
• THREAT
• It would be difficult to put in place an
  appropriate EIA system
• REMEDY
• ?????? Who will bell the cat?
• Awareness campaign

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Policy Issues

• Lack/Inadequate EIA Capacity Building
• Acute shortage of skilled EIA professional
• Acute shortage of EIA trainers
• No focused research on EIA Methodology/ Technique
• EIA techniques are obsolete/ outdated/
  mechanistic
• No attempt to internalize environmental costs
  into environmental decision making

4
Policy Issues

• Non-inclusive and unbalanced economic growth
• Less developed people/ regions demand development
  projects
• Consider EIA as deterrent to development activity
• Resistance to EIA

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Policy Issues

• Inability to consider environmental issues
  against a holistic perspective
• Biased and/or unrealistic EIA

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Policy Issues

• Lack of interdisciplinary approach
• Receiving environment is not considered as an
  assemblage of interacting environmental
  attributes
• Projects are not considered as an ensemble of
  linked activities in a space-time framework
• Activity-attribute interactions are not given due
  considerations
• Poor Impact Prediction and assessment

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Policy Issues

• Wide gap in Indian and international
  environmental standards
• Inability to meet international standards
• In future course correction may have to be done
  through retro-fitting activities
• Future non-viability of projects

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Policy Issues

• Globalization conflict of interest
• Rising role of global players in domestic market
• Ability to Influence national decisions

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Policy Issues Crisis of perception

• Definition galore leading to confusion
• 'a process to predict and consider both positive
  and negative environmental and social
  consequences of a proposed development project'
  (UNEP 1994).
• 'an assessment of all relevant environmental and
  resulting social effects which would result from
  a project' (Battelle Institute 1978).
• 'in establishing quantitative values for selected
  parameters which indicate the quality of
  environment before, during and after an action
  Heer and Hagerty (1977)

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Policy Issues Crisis of perception

• Resulting confusion
• These definitions often look towards EIA as a
  project level activity
• The word environment is often not clearly set,
  leaving options wide open to include everything
  from a very small (project boundary) to a very
  large (the entire biosphere) area.
• EIA is at best a process, enabling relative
  ranking of projects against environmental
  desirability point of view.
• The environmental desirability is limited to
  short term 'standard' attainment and little or no
  emphasis is placed on the long-term goal of
  attaining environmental sustainability
• THREAT
• EIA shall not become a planning tool and shall
  not contribute towards attaining environmental
  sustainability

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Policy Issues Crisis of perception

• REMEDY
• Accept revised definition of EIA
• EIA is a process to improve decision making and
  to ensure that the project/ programme options
  under consideration are environmentally and
  socially sound and sustainable (Roe et al. 1995)
• EIA is 'a process of environmental planning that
  provides a basis for resource management to
  achieve the goal of sustainability' (Smith 1993)

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Policy Issues Crisis of perception

• Environmental Impact Assessment is a systematic,
  reproducible and interdisciplinary study for
  evaluation of the potential changes in the
  natural capital stock (in terms of resource
  supply and waste assimilation capabilities)
  likely to occur due to a proposed or impending
  human activity or any of its feasible
  alternatives, and an evaluation of possible
  mitigation measures to ensure long-term
  environmental sustainability (Sinha 2001)

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Policy Issues Crisis of perception

• No tiered approach to EIA
• SEA not adopted (Policies, Plans, Programmes not
  subjected assessment)
• Cumulative Effects assessment not in practice
• THREAT
• EIA can not become an effective instrument for
  sustainable development

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Policy Issues Crisis of perception

• REMEDY
• EIA should be tiered in the following way.
• Screening economic and development policies for
  their conformity with sustainability goals and
  principles.
• Preliminary assessment of environmental costs of
  development programmes to identify low-impact,
  resource efficient energy, transportation and
  other sector strategies.
• Area wise assessment to establish resource values
  and land-use capabilities for regional
  development.
• Project EIA to identify in-kind compensation for
  natural capital losses (e.g. Affecting residual
  fish and wildlife losses by ex-situ habitat
  rehabilitation and enhancement).
• Strategic Environmental Assessment may be made
  mandatory. EU directive may act as a guide

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Policy Issues Crisis of perception

• Constitutional Provisions
• the State shall endeavour 'to protect and improve
  the environment' and 'to safeguard the forests
  and wildlife of the country' (Article 48A)
• It is the duty of every citizen of India 'to
  protect and improve the natural environment
  including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife and
  to have compassion for living creatures' (Article
  51A(g))
• THREAT
• The Constitutional provisions are not binding on
  companies as according to a SC judgment a company
  is not a citizen of India

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Policy Instruments Crisis of Intent

• Major policy resolutions affecting EIA
  effectiveness include
• Indian National Forest Policy 1988
• Statement on Industrial Policy 1991
• National Conservation Strategy and Policy
  Statement on Environment and Development 1992
• Policy Statement for Abatement of Pollution 1992
• National Mineral Policy 1993
• National Environmental Policy, 2006
• National Education Policy 1986 (as revised later)

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Policy Instruments Crisis of Intent

• Policy Instruments are high on rhetoric and low
  on action component
• EXAMPLE
• Mining operations will not ordinarily be taken
  up in ecologically fragile areas. Every mining
  project shall be accompanied by a mining plan
  including an environmental management plan and
  time bound reclamation programme for controlling
  the environmental damage and for restoration of
  mined areas (Policy Statement for Abatement of
  Pollution, 1992)
• In reality it required an active judiciary to set
  the things right
• The Environment Action Programme (1993) promised
  setting up of a National Centre for Training in
  EIA and also a network of regional EIA training
  centres
• Had appropriate action been taken, this workshop
  would have become redundant

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EIA Processes Inadequacies

• EIA is viewed both as either science or art but
  not both
• The 'art' of EIA aims at aiding the
  decision-making process by attempting analyses of
  actions and consequent impacts
• Identification, prediction and evaluation of
  environmental impacts fall in the realm of the
  'science' of EIA
• This tunnelled vision adversely affects EIA
  effectiveness

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EIA Processes Inadequacies

• Proponents prepare EIA
• He who pays the piper draws the tune
• EIA reports are essentially advocacy documents

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EIA Processes Inadequacies

• Cluster of small projects may not require
  comprehensive EIA after IEE although total
  adverse impacts may be significant
• REMEDY
• Screening criteria, introduced in 2006, may be
  revised to incorporate cumulative effects
  assessment

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EIA Processes Inadequacies

• Scoping
• TOR prepared by proponent and approved by MoEF
• No Public Participation
• high probability of missing out critical issues
• Basic objective of scoping should be to make the
  EIA report 'balanced and thorough' by identifying
  and studying the real problems and by ensuring
  that issues of no real concern do not consume
  undue time and effort
• This can be achieved through Public Participation
  at scoping stage

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Baseline studies

• Description of environmental baseline does not
  include the establishment of both the present and
  future state of the environment, in the absence
  of the project, taking into account changes
  resulting from natural events and from other
  human activities
• REMEDY
• In order to be an effective component of 'EIA as
  a planning tool' the baseline study should be
  modified to include preparation of a pre-project
  environmental inventory so as to suitably
  describe the supportive and assimilative capacity
  of the environment. It is also important to
  understand the natural interaction between the
  various environmental elements and the functional
  relationships involved
• It is important that preparation of a
  straightforward environmental inventory be
  complemented by focussing on valued ecosystem
  components (VECs) and by identifying key
  biological processes at the beginning of the EIA
  process

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Impact Prediction

• The term "impact" refers to the effects of a
  proposed human actively on both "ecosystem" and
  "human society Dooley (1979), Lee (1982)
• Prediction models for social impacts are not
  used
• gt social impact assessment is essentially a
  reflection of apprehensions, expectations and
  cover ups

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Impact Prediction

• The 'error of estimate' of impact forecasting are
  significantly high because
• Standard and sufficient predictive models are not
  used
• site-specific data are inadequate to support a
  quantitative assessment of environmental impacts
• No standard or unambiguous criteria is used for
  defining quantitative threshold to distinguish
  between significant and insignificant impacts
• Non-utilisation of quantitative/ statistical
  methodologies for objectively describing levels
  of impacts
• The inaccuracy of impact prediction increases
  because of the need for subjective scoring

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Impact Prediction

• The intrinsic problems associated with prediction
  of impacts within reasonable degree of accuracy
  make impact prediction 'technically most
  difficult and challenging activity' (Canter 1996)
• Impact prediction often requires technically
  demanding mathematical models
• Models are often presented as 'black-boxes',
  containing little information about the model
  arguments
• This makes the bases for impact prediction
  unclear and the inherent errors become
  untraceable.

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Impact Evaluation

• refers to determination of significance of
  predicted impacts against the total quality of
  the affected environment.
• significance determination invariably involves
  subjective or normative evaluation
• The main challenge of environmental impact
  assessment resides in analysing and assessing the
  likely impacts within acceptable level of errors
  (Julien 1995).

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Impact Evaluation

• Numerous methodologies are in use for impact
  summarisation and aggregation
• while overall rating definitely facilitates
  comparison of various alternatives, it often
  hides the judgement used in the calculation. The
  decision-maker is, thus, denied access to the
  thought process
• No standard methodology adopted in India
• The failure of impact evaluation exercises are
  largely due to inadequate expertise and error of
  intent of the evaluators
• Care must be taken to ensure that all the
  significant impacts associated with a proposed
  project are fully and adequately taken into
  consideration

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Impact Mitigation

• Only end-of-pipe measures are suggested to remedy
  the various impacts associated with projects
• Measures to avoid, reduce or compensate for the
  various impacts associated with projects are not
  planned

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Impact Mitigation

• REMEDY
• mitigation should include the following.
• Avoiding the impact altogether by not taking a
  certain action or parts of an action.
• Minimising impacts by limiting the degree or
  magnitude of the action and its implementation.
• Rectifying the impact by repairing,
  rehabilitating, or restoring the affected
  environment.
• Reducing or eliminating the impact over time by
  preservation and maintenance operations during
  the life of the action and,
• Compensating for the impact by replacing or
  providing substitute resources or environments.

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Concluding Remarks

• EIA is focussed on identifying, predicting and
  mitigating bio-physical effects
• opportunity for public involvement is limited
• Multi-dimensional EIA, incorporating social
  impact assessment (SIA) and risk analysis be
  introduced
• public consultation be made an integral part of
  development planning and assessment
• increased emphasis be laid on issues for
  justification and alternatives in project review.

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Concluding Remarks

• Efforts be made to integrate project EIA with
  policy planning and follow up phases
• Research and development work be carried out on
• effects of monitoring
• EIA audit and process evaluation
• mediation and dispute resolution approaches

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Concluding Remarks

• Scientific and institutional frameworks for EIA
  must be rethought in response to sustainability
  ideas and imperatives
• Research be carried out to find ways to address
  regional and global environmental changes and
  cumulative impacts
• Advantage be taken of growing international
  co-operation on EIA research and training

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Concluding Remarks

• Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) of
  policies, plans and programmes be introduced

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Threats - Process

• ScopingInadequate involvement of all
  stakeholders
• Capacity and capability for
• Carrying out EA studies
• Evaluation of EA reports
• Compliance monitoring

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THANK YOU