The document discusses the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process, which aims to identify the potential environmental consequences of proposed projects before their implementation. It outlines major issues in the EIA process, salient features, criticisms, and general steps involved, such as project screening, scoping, and public consultation. Various methodologies for conducting EIA, including checklists, matrices, and risk assessment, are also examined.

1. Basic Process Of EIA
Dr. K. Pavan Kumar
Associate Professor
SCALE, VIT University

2. What is EIA?
 EIA can be described as a process for identifying the likely
consequences for the bio-geophysical environment and for man’s
health and welfare of implementing particular activities and for
conveying this information, at a stage when it can materially
affect their decision, to those responsible for sanctioning the
proposals (Munn, 1979).
 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.
 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.

3. • The outcome of an EIA is usually some formal document. This
report has a variety of names throughout the world, although the
term ‘environmental impact statement’ (usually abbreviated to
EIS) is most widely known and carries the least scope for
confusion.

4. Environmental Impact
 The terms ‘impact’ and ‘effect’ are frequently used synonymously
 An impact has both spatial and temporal components and can be
described as the change in an environmental parameter, over a
specified period and within a defined area, resulting from a
particular activity compared with the situation which would have
occurred had the activity not been initiated

5. Major Issues in the EIA Process
1. IDENTIFICATION OF PROJECTS REQUIRING EIA
- Screening
- Finding threshold of significance
- Use of matrices
2. IDENTIFICATION OF IMPACTS TO BE ASSESSED
- Scoping
- Delineate the issues which should be considered
3. ASSESSMENT OF IMPACTS
- A clear distinction should be drawn between methods for
predicting individual changes and EIA assessment methods

8. Salient Features of EIA
The EIA procedure identifies the possible positive and
negative impacts to the environment resulting from a
proposed project.
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
To measure the level of plan implementation and the
degree of effectiveness of the above environmental
protection provisions, the EIA provides a monitoring
programme

9. Criticism Levelled Against EIA
 Tokenism
 Unrealistic time constraints
 Failure to accommodate uncertainty
 Poor coordination and poorly stated objectives
 Inadequate research
 Limited use of protective techniques and limited study of indirect
and cumulative consequences
 Being too descriptive and voluminous

10. General Steps in an EIA Process
 Project screening
 Scoping
 Consideration of alternatives
 The description of the project/development action
 The description of the environmental baseline
 The identification of the main impacts
 The prediction of impacts
 The evaluation and assessment of the significance
 Mitigation
 Public consultation and participation
 EIS presentation
 Review
 Decision making
 Post decision monitoring
 Auditing

11. Figure: Flow diagram showing the main
components of an EIA system.

12. EIA Methodologies
1. Checklists
- Checklists of potential impacts
- They may be exhaustive if no serious impact is to be overlooked
- Can be unwieldy and may stifle initiative during assessment
2. Leopold’s Matrix
- Developed by Leopold et al., in 1971
- Suggested use of matrix method for EIA
- Matrices are particularly useful for EIA as they reflect the fact that
impacts result from the interaction of development activities and
the environment
- The matrix format is ideally suited for impact identification,
although the ability of the Leopold matrix to identify indirect
impacts has been questioned
- Also used to present results of an appraisal

13. 3. Network Method
- A hybrid approach developed by Sorensen (1971)
- Networks are relatively effective at revealing indirect impacts as
the ramifications of a change can be followed through chains of
intermediaries
4. Aggregation Methods
- Combining numerical values indicative of individual impacts into a
surrogate reflecting overall impact
- These methods have two elements, scaling and weighting
- Many subjective elements are subsumed within both the
weighting scheme and the value functions
- In effect the basis for a decision is created by the method
- The preferred option logically can be taken as the one with
highest environmental quality score

14. 5. Overlay Techniques
- Have a long history of use in environmental planning being ideally
suited for the consideration of spatial aspects
- Their use in impact analysis predates NEPA
- Transparencies are produced showing the spatial distribution and
intensity of individual impacts
- They can be overlain to show total impact
- Only a small number of impacts can be overlain successfully,
about a dozen, although photographic and hierarchical clustering
approaches overcome this practical constraint

18. Figure: Hypothetical environmental quality indices for landscape features.

20. The EIA Process
 The structure of an EIA process is dictated primarily by
the need to accommodate each of the key issues
 From a technical point of view, EIA can be thought of as
a data management process. It has three components.
• First, the appropriate information necessary for a
particular decision to be taken must be identified and,
possibly, collected
• Secondly, changes in environmental parameters
resulting from implementation must be determined and
compared with the situation likely to accrue without the
proposal
• Finally, actual change must be recorded and analysed

21. EIA In The Decision Making Process
The objective of EIA is not to force decision makers to
adopt the least environmentally damaging alternative
Environmental impact is but one of the issues addressed
by decision makers as they seek to balance the often
competing demands of development and environmental
protection
CBA (Cost Benefit Analysis) was the basis for project
appraisal prior to the advent of EIA and it is still
routinely used

22. Risk Assessment
 Risk assessment (RA) is of particular interest as, in many respects, it
parallels EIA
 RA is frequently used to assess the probability and likely
consequences of a particular catastrophic event, such as an
explosion, associated with a hazardous installation
 Risk assessments tend to be highly numeric appraisals; they are
essentially statistical analyses of likely events based upon certain
probabilities of occurrence.
 However, risk analysis suffers from the following weakness:
- Difficult to quantify non-quantifiable effects
- Robustness may not be determined
- Subjectivity of impact assessment

23. An Integrated Approach to Project Appraisal

24. Screening and Scoping