Environmental risks and impacts - Environmental Deterioration and Contamination: Problems and their Management - page 205

of EIA is a key step of the process. Local and short-term evaluation, taking only direct
effects into consideration, often jeopardizes sustainability in the long term and neglects
regional and global interests. The indirect effects of developments may last much longer
than the direct effects assessed by EIA. Large projects such as switching from coal to
wind energy in a region, or construction of a dam on an international river, may cause
wide-ranging international or global environmental, ecological, social and economic
effects (see also Holder, 2004; Wood, 2002; Lenzen et al. , 2003).
EIA in Europe is regulated by Directive 2011/92/EU, the latest revision of the
original EIA Directive of 1985 (Directive EIA, 2011). The process required by the
directive is as follows:

- The developer of a project may request the competent authority to determine what

should be covered by the EIA information to be provided by the developer: scoping
stage;

- The developer must provide information on the environmental impact: EIA report;

- The environmental authorities and the public must be informed and consulted;

- The competent authority decides. The public is informed of the decision afterwards

and can challenge the decision before the courts.

The required project information for the purpose of EIA is the following:

- A description of the project: physical characteristics, land-use requirements during

implementation, the planned production or service, materials used, emissions and
residues;

- The existence of realistic alternatives and their evaluation;

- Description of the impacted environment: environmental compartments, ecologi-

cal services, land uses, the potential human and ecological receptors;

- Evaluation of sustainability indicators of the project such as the use of natural

resources, emitted pollutants, etc.;

- Identification of the methods used for forecasting the impacts and estimating the

size of effects;

- Description of the measures envisaged to prevent, reduce or eliminate additional

environmental risk owing to the project;

- Summarizing impacts and foreseen difficulties in assessing impacts of the project.

The outcome of EIA is the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The certified
release of an environmental assessment results in either a Finding Of No Significant
Impact (FONSI) or an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
The shortcomings of EIA, - i.e. not being strategic enough, concentrating on
local and direct impacts only - are supposed to be eliminated by a Strategic Envi-
ronmental Assessment . The concept of strategic assessments was already practised by
regional development and land use planning in the US and in other developed coun-
tries. The first guidance on such a wider scale environmental assessment dates back
to 1981 when the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD, 2013)
published the Area-wide Impact Assessment Guidebook (Merril, 1981). In Europe
the so-called Espoo Convention (1991) laid the foundations for the introduction of
Strategic Environmental Assessment.