Concept of an EIA

EIA stands for Environment Impact Assessment. It is normally carried-out prior to any major project or development activity to ensure that the activity will not damage the environment in the long-term or short-term.

Good intentions behind a proposed development project might have serious negative ramifications. The aim of an EIA is to assess the overall impact of any new development project on the environment.

EIA is designed to identify and predict the impact of a project on biogeo-physico-chemical environment and on human health in order to recommend appropriate legislative measures, programs and operational procedures to minimize the impact.

EIA is not against development projects. The development of natural resources for economic development is always desirable. However, the benefits or adverse effects of any activity largely depend on the collection of scientific knowledge and the ability of the government to control its implementation.

Critism levelled against EIA include:
Tokenism
Unrealistic time constraints
Failure to accommodate uncertainity
Poor coordination and poorly stated objectives
Inadequate research
Limited use of protective techniques and limited study of indirect and cumulative consequences
Too descriptive and voluminous
EIA is criticised as becoming more of an end in itself rather than a means to a more balanced process of decision making. The accuracy and prediction of impact prediction is being questioned as is the appropriateness of mitigation and the effectiveness of its implementation.

In the context of EIA, an audit refers to:
-The organization of monitoring data to record changes associated with a project and
-The comparison of actual and predicted impacts.
An audit can be applied to both pre-project and post-project approval stages and proves beneficial to the project in the long run.

EIA procedure is divided into:
-Initial Environmental Examination (IEE) and
-Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)

Initial Environmental Examination reviews environmental integrity of projects to determine if a detailed EIA is needed. IEE is used for project screening to determine if the project needs a full-scale EIA. IEE helps in project-oriented environmental management as well as minimizing efforts, expense and delay in projects.
IEE helps determine the potential environmental effects of a project and is mostly carried-out in a limited budget. It is based on available recorded information or on the professional judgement of an expert.
If IEE results indicate that a full scale EIA is not required, then any environmental management parameters or a monitoring program is carried-out to complete the EIA.
If a full-scale EIA is required, IEE helps to determine and identify key issues that merit full analysis in EIA and delineate issues that need only a cursory discussion. IEE helps identify necessary analyses that need attention concurrently with EIA. This eliminates delay and extraneous discussions from EIA reports. Hence, for industrial development projects, IEE is desirable from the economic point of view.