This document provides a history and overview of environmental impact assessments (EIAs). It discusses how EIAs emerged in response to environmental crises in industrialized nations in the 1960s-1970s due to issues like air pollution, and how developing countries now face serious environmental problems as well. The objectives of EIAs are to improve project design, ensure efficient resource use, identify mitigation measures, facilitate informed decision-making, and support sustainable development by avoiding harm. EIAs are also useful for conservation-oriented projects to consider secondary impacts and gather baseline information.

1. Environmental Impact
Assessment (EIA)
Abdiwali Abdullahi
BSc in Public Health,
MSc in Public Health(HM)
20 February, 2021

2. History of Environmental
Impact Assessment

3. History of EIA

4. To Understand Just Consider
• Will you drink this water?
It’s not clean
Unfit for drinking
History of EIA

5. History of EIA

6. History of EIA

7. History of EIA

8. • To define pollution, we need to look into 3 aspects:-
1. Introduction/Presence of contaminant
Contaminant – Dirty Water Contaminant – Fuel Emission
History of EIA

9. • To define pollution, we need to look into 3 aspects:-
2. Extent to which this presence/ Amount of Contaminant
History of EIA

10. • To define pollution, we need to look into 3 aspects:-
2. Extent to which this presence/ Amount of Contaminant
History of EIA

11. • Both the glass of water has contaminant – Ink.
Negligible amount
of contaminant
More amount of
contaminant
History of EIA

12. • Our Environment has a natural ability to
accommodate this contaminants by Recycling,
Storing, Breaking down, and Disposing them.
• But, if the addition or amount of contaminant is
more than what our earth can hold, only then we
call it POLLUTION!
History of EIA

13. • To define pollution, we need to look into 3 aspects:-
3. Contaminant is causing harm to life.
History of EIA

14. Environmental impact assessment
 Is the formal process used to predict the
environmental consequences (positive or negative)
of a plan, policy, program, or project prior to
the decision to move forward with the proposed
action.
EIA is defined as a systematic process of:
Determining and managing the Potential
impacts of Proposed human actions and their
alternatives on the Environment.
History of EIA

15. • The EIA is a systematic process to identify,
predict and evaluate the environmental impacts
of proposed actions and projects.
• The EIA is ‘the process of identifying, predicting,
evaluating and mitigating the biophysical, social
and other relevant effects of proposed
development proposals prior to major decisions
being taken and commitments made’.

16. Environmental impacts and Effects
The terms ‘impacts’ and ‘effects’ are used
synonymously, although some authors
differentiate between effects (changes in
the environment) and impacts (the
consequences of these changes).

17. Why did EIA started?
• By the early 1960s in the US and other
industrial countries, it was clear that
something was wrong.
History of EIA

18. History of EIA

19. • An estimated 220–240 deaths were
caused by the six-day 1953 smog; an
estimated 300–405 deaths were
caused by the two-week 1963 smog.
• Other minor episodes of smog occurred
in the city prior to 1966, but they
were not accompanied by statistically
significant excess deaths.

20. Cuyahoga River burns in 1969 (3rd time). Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
“30 Years of Environmental Progress,” USEPA, 2000.
History of EIA

21. Environmental Crisis in the Industrial Economies
• 1952 “killer fog” in London
History of EIA

22. • 1952 “killer fog” (great smoke of London) kills
12,000 in London
• The Killer Fog of 1952. Great Smog of London,
lethal smog that covered the city of London for
five days (December 5–9) in 1952, caused by a
combination of industrial pollution and high-
pressure weather conditions
• Clean air act 1956

23. Question?
 Howcan we reduce air pollution?
History of EIA
Answer
 Turn of the light when you are leavingfromyour room.
 Plant trees
 Take bus or ride a bike …
 Green energy
 Wind energy

24.  1962 Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring documents the
negative effects of DDT
History of EIA

25. What was cause?
 Looking back from today, the causes were obvious:
 Population Growth
 Natural Resource Pressures
 Urbanization
 Industrialization
 Unrestrained profit motive
 These forces were all combining to create unprecedented
environmental damage
History of EIA

26. EIA was one policy response
in industrialized countries
• In 1970, the US legislature passed the National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
• NEPA required EIA for US Government projects.
Mandated public input.
• Now over 200 similar requirements world-wide
• Other responses included regulation of industrial
activity, international treaties.
History of EIA

27. Why should developing
countries care about EIA?
 Easy answer: Donor requirements.
 In the early 1970s, several Pakistani workers died
as a result of negligent pesticide management
procedures on a USAID project.
 USAID was sued!
 Almost all donor agencies now have similar
procedures
History of EIA

28. Why should developing countries care about EIA?
 The difficult answer: Because the environmental crisis
faced by most developing countries is at least as serious
as that of the industrialized countries in the 1960s and
70s.
 Lower levels of industrialization
 BUT. . .
 High population growth and urbanization
 Use of hazardous substances
 Environmental degradation due to poverty
History of EIA

29. Land degradation and
desertification
History of EIA
Chemical pollution: obsolete pesticides
in Mozambique.
Deforestation: trees cleared for
planting in Guinea.
U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization

30. Environmental crisis in the
developing world
 1984 Methyl isocyanate cloud from Union Carbide plant
accident in Bhopal, India kills 2,000+
 Cities with worst air quality: Developing country mega cities
 Millions of deaths/year from environmental conditions—
particularly poor sanitation
History of EIA

31. What are the aims and objectives of EIA?
• Immediate objectives of EIA are to:
• Improve the environmental design of the proposal;
• Ensure that resources are used appropriately and efficiently;
• Identify appropriate measures for mitigating the potential
impacts of the proposal; and
• Facilitate informed decision making, including setting the
environmental terms and conditions for implementing the
proposal.

32. Objectives continue……..
• Long term objectives of EIA are to:
• Protect human health and safety;
• Avoid irreversible changes and serious damage to
the environment;
• Safeguard valued resources, natural areas and
ecosystem components; and
• Enhance the social aspects of the proposal.

33. EIA supports sustainable development
 Like medicine, the first principle of development should
be to “first, do no harm.”
 In its history, the development profession has often not
fulfilled this basic mandate
 The environment is complicated—without EIA, it is
difficult to know when harm will come
 EIA should also be proactive.
History of EIA

34. The role of EIA in conservation-oriented projects
EIA was developed to assure that the
environmental consequences of
economic/social development projects
were adequately considered.
History of EIA

35. Question?
Is EIA necessary if the goalof the project is environmental in nature?
The role of EIA in conservation-oriented
projects
History of EIA

36. The role of EIA in
conservation-oriented projects
YES!
History of EIA

37. The role of EIA in conservation-oriented
projects
 Because EIA is:
 a tool for considering secondary effects
 environmental, social and economic
 essential to gathering baseline information for
the project
 . . .and to assessing results
 The result: The separation between EIA and
project development becomes indistinct.
History of EIA