Introduction and principles - Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment - page 20

Demography
Housing
Local services

Population structure and trends
Supply and demand
Supply and demand of services: health, education, police, etc.

Socio-cultural Lifestyles, quality of life; social problems (e.g. crime); community

stress and conflict

Figure 1.6 Environment: components,
scale and time dimensions.

Water Standards, may provide some relevant data. However, tailor-made state-of-the-
environment reports and audits are still in limited supply (see Chapter 11 for further
information). Even more limited are time series data highlighting trends in environmental
quality. The environmental baseline is constantly changing, irrespective of any
development under consideration, and it requires a dynamic rather than a static analysis.

1.5.3 The nature of impacts

The environmental impacts of a project are those resultant changes in environmental
parameters, in space and time, compared with what would have happened had the project
not been undertaken. The parameters may be any of the type of environmental receptors
noted previously: air quality, water quality, noise, levels of local unemployment and
crime, for example. Figure 1.7 provides a simple illustration of the concept.