Impact prediction, evaluation and mitigation - Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment - page 150

could, for example, be an adverse impact, such as noise from an airport (the producer) on
the local community (the consumers), or a beneficial impact, such as the time savings
resulting from a new motorway development (the producer) for users of the motorway
(the consumers). For each producer and consumer group, costs and benefits are quantified
per transaction, in monetary terms or otherwise, and weighted according to the numbers
involved. The findings are presented in tabular form, leaving the decision-maker to
consider the trade-offs, but this time with some guidance on the distributional impacts of
the options under consideration (Figure 5.6). More recently, Lichfield (1996) has sought
to integrate EIA and PBS further in an approach he calls community impact evaluation
(CIE).
Partly in response to the “intangibles” problem in CBA, there has also been
considerable interest in the development of monetary valuation techniques to improve the
economic measurement of the more intangible environmental impacts (Barde & Pearce
1991, DoE 1991, Winpenny 1991). The techniques can be broadly classified into direct
and indirect, and they are concerned with the measurement of preferences about the
environment rather than with the intrinsic values of the environment. The direct
approaches seek to measure directly the monetary value of environmental gains—for
example, better air quality or an improved scenic view. Indirect approaches measure
preferences for a particular effect via the establishment of a “dose—response”-type
relationship. The various techniques found under the direct and indirect categories are
summarized in Table 5.7. Such techniques can contribute to the assessment of the total
economic v a lue of an action or project, which shou l d not only include user values
Plan A

Plan B

Benefits Costs Benefits Costs

Capital Annual Capital Annual Capital Annual Capital Annual

Producers

X £a £b - £d - - £b £c

Y i 1 i 2 - - i 3 i 4 - -

Z M 1 - M 2 - M 3 - M 4 -

Consumers

X′ - £e - £f - £g - £h

Y′ i 5 i 6 - - i 7 i 8 - -

Z′ M 1 - M 3 - M 2 - M 4 -

£=benefits and costs that can be monetized
M=where only a ranking of monetary values can be estimated
i=intangibles

Figure 5.6 Example of structure of a
planning balance sheet.