Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
public scrutiny and a much more open decision-
making process is in evidence. Nevertheless,
examples can be found of attempts to subvert the
EIA process.
For the EU, the enactment of its Directive has
allowed member states a considerable degree of
latitude in the way in which the systematic
approach of the EIA is allowed to work out in
practice in each member country in the name of
subsidiarity. The government of the UK, because of
its ideological objection to EIA, therefore allowed
four major national infrastructural developments—
the Twyford Down extension of the M3, the M11
link road, the East London River Crossing and the
Channel Tunnel Rail Link —to provoke direct and
unprecedented political confrontation with the EC
in Brussels. All had infringed Directive 85/337,
since preparatory work had been carried out on
these but none had been subject to a formal EIA.
When steps were taken by way of enforcement
procedure to prevent further work on these
projects, the EC was ignored by the British
government. Unfortunately, from an environmental
point of view, this head-on collision between
government and Commission came at a time when
the rejection of the Maastricht Treaty by the Danes
(2 June 1992) meant that the EU needed the
support of the UK government. By the end of the
same month, in order to achieve this support, all
proceedings relating to these projects were dropped,
with the Commission using the flimsiest of pretexts
to justify its
volte-face
. It is perhaps unfortunate that
these changes of mind were possible 'without
giving full explanations to complainants or to
Parliament and that in the absence of the possibility
of judicial review neither complainants nor Court
can challenge the reasoning' (Kunzlik 1995).
have used the US federal model, whereby specific
laws are enacted to make EIA mandatory and a
clear system of procedures for environmental
assessment laid down, albeit modified to suit local
conditions. While this may well reflect a
government's desire to enforce consideration of
environmental issues in the decision-making
process, the efficiency of the institutional
arrangements that this implies have been
questioned (Sankoh 1996; Ibaara 1987; Szelely
1987) and the suggestion made that these work
only where the responsible environmental agency
is placed within the office of president, prime
minister or some other high-profile ministry such
as those dedicated to national economic planning
and budgetary control. Unfortunately, most
agencies in developing countries are subsidiary
functions of one ministry or another and thus have
low status in the bureaucracy, and lack funding,
trained staff and the status necessary to enforce
compliance with environmental laws and
regulations. In such a general situation of
functional decentralisation, these problems are
particularly manifest in the inability of the
environment agency to muster the right degree of
interorganisational coordination and cooperation
between the many sectoral agencies and tiers of
government that have some responsibility for one
or another aspects of the environment. Without
this, it is especially difficult for the EIA-to achieve
its primary objective of incorporating
environmental considerations into project
planning, design and implementation through the
disclosure of environmental effects and public
scrutiny (Ebisemiju 1993).
However, as if to compound the chances of not
achieving such a goal, in most developing
countries the EIA is conducted as a separate
exercise divorced from the technical and
economic aspects of project planning and design,
often appearing as an afterthought. This implies
that there is little prospect of considering
alternatives, with the EIA being used as a
perfunctory endorsement of public or private
actions rather than to influence decisions. Thus,
although Thailand and the Philippines have been
cited as having the most elaborate EIA systems in
Performance variables
Institutional and procedural arrangements—the
developing world
In terms of the operationalisation of the EIA
process, an overwhelming majority of the small
number of developing countries with EIA systems
