6 - Environmental Impact Assessment

Summary

There is an urgent need to identify a tool, which is capable of harmonizing developmental activities with the associated environmental concerns. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) can be viewed as one such tool capable of guiding and harmonizing development. EIA has been introduced as an important policy initiative to ensure conservation of natural resources and to promote integration of environmental concerns in developmental projects. The Indian notification on EIA of developmental projects was issued on January 27, 1994 under the provisions of Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 making EIA mandatory for 30 categories of developmental projects. EIA has now been accepted as an integral component of sound decisionmaking with the objective to foresee and address potential environmental problems/concerns at an early stage of project planning and design.

This chapter has been designed to familiarize the reader with EIA-related issues including regulatory requirements, methodology, key considerations, data analysis, and delineation of remedial measures. These discussions are only indicative and we recommend further reading of literature cited in the bibliography to learn more about the theory and practice of EIA. This brief chapter on EIA finds its place here because EIA exercises have helped various countries in permitting eco-friendly and pro-people development. In that sense, EIA is a tool for PEM. The PEM specialists have often ignored this particular significance of EIA.

Further, two case examples have been included at the end of this chapter. The first example is of the EIA exercise performed for environmental clearance of Mumbai-Talasari Expressway Project.