Improving the effectiveness of project assessment - Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment - page 348

Appraisal 1996). The Integrated Assessment Workshop at the IAIA 2002 Conference
highlighted the continuing problems of including social processes in integrated
assessment (IAIA 2002).
Another equally important perspective is of the integration of relevant planning,
environmental protection and pollution procedures. At the one extreme the UK still has
over 20 regulations for EIA, grafting the procedures into an array of relevant planning
and other legislation; there is also parallel environmental protection and pollution
legislation. At the other, there is the New Zealand “one-stop shop” Resource
Management Act . A better integration of relevant procedures represents another challenge
for most EIA systems.
11.3.7 Extending EIA to project design: towards environmental impact
design
An important and positive trend in EIA has been its application at increasingly early
stages of project planning. For instance, whilst the DoT's 1983 Manual of environmental
appraisal applied only to detailed route options, its 1993 Design manual for roads and
bridges requires a three-stage approach covering, in turn, broadly defined route corridors,
route options and the chosen route. British Gas also now uses three levels of
environmental analysis for its pipelines, from broad feasibility studies to detailed design
(Parkinson 1996). This application of EIA to the early stages of project planning helps to
improve project design and to avoid the delayed and costly identification of
environmental constraints that comes from carrying out EIA once the project design is
completed.
McDonald & Brown (1995) suggest that the project designer must be made part of the
EIA team:
Currently, most formal administrative and reporting requirements for EIA
are based on its original role as a stand alone report carried out distinct
from, but in parallel with the project design… We can redress [EIA
limitations] by transferring much of the philosophy, the insights and
techniques which we currently use in environmental assessments, directly
into planning and design activities.
A further evolution of this concept is to use EIA to identify basic environmental
constraints before the design process is begun, but then allow designers freedom to
design innovative and attractive structures as long as they meet those constraints.
Holstein (1996) calls this postmodern approach “environmental impact design” (EID), 1
and distinguishes it from EIA's traditionally conservative, conservation-based focus. The
following paragraphs explain Holstein's view of EID.
EIA as presently practised deconstructs a site: it takes an environment
apart to highlight the different interacting components within it (e.g. soil,
water, flora). EIA suggests that the site has another (environmental)
function other than that for which it is being developed. Yet this
relationship to deconstruction is only superficial because EIA is