Environmental Impact Assessment

The impacts of a land development project upon the environment can be assessed at many different levels and many assessment systems have been developed to do this. This website is mainly concerned with formal Environmental Impact Assessment, which was first developed in the early 1970's in the United States. Since then many countries have adopted and refined a formal system for environmental impact assessment wihtin their statute books. For instance the member states of the European Union have included the EIA requirements that are set in two EU directives within their legal framework.

The purpose of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is to provide a recognised and replicable process to identify the potential environmental effects ao certain development types. An Environmental Statement (ES) contains the findings to the EIA process. The Environmental Statement an its supporting technical literature is used to assist the determining authorities in their consideration of the likely effects on the environment resulting from the development. It therefore informs their decision on whether a development should be approved and if so, what additional controls and conditions will be placed on that development.

Although this website is currently providing EIA information from a UK perspective, we feel that much of the information can be used to inform environmental impact assessments that are crried out under other legal frameworks. We do anticipate that as the site develops specific details of EIA processes under other legal frameworks will be added to the site.