Introduction and principles - Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment - page 3

judgements on whether the development should go ahead.” The UNECE (1991) has an
altogether more succinct and pithy definition: “an assessment of the impact of a planned
activity on the environment”.
1.2.2 Environmental impact assessment: a process
In essence, EIA is a process, a systematic process that examines the environmental
consequences of development actions, in advance. The emphasis, compared with many
other mechanisms for environmental protection, is on prevention. Of course, planners
have traditionally assessed the impacts of developments on the environment, but
invariably not in the systematic, holistic and multidisciplinary way required by EIA. The
process involves a number of steps, as outlined in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1 Important steps in the EIA
process.