Assessing environmental impact

CONDUCTING ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: Prasad Modak and Asit K. Biswas; United Nations University Press, Tokyo/Oxford University Press. Rs. 595.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT Assessment (EIA), basically is a policy and management tool for planning and decision-making in developmental projects, plans and policies.

Ever since the Stockholm Conference on Human Environment in 1972, the EIA has become mandatory for all major developmental projects, which have impacts on environment and people. One of the present authors, Asit K. Biswas, has been the Senior Adviser on EIA to 17 developing countries, and his three decades of experience is incorporated into this book.

The basic principles of the EIA as a process, the methods like preparing checklists, matrices, networks and experimental, mathematical models, and the Geographic Information System (GIS) for valid EIA exercise are explained first. Environmental Management Plan (EMP) is a necessary remedial part of an EIA report, to protect, mitigate and monitor the likely damages of a project, and EIA should include also post-project monitoring, post-auditing and continuous evaluation. Techniques for effective communication of an EIA report to target groups like the government, project proponents and opponents and to the public at large, are explained. People's participation, including their opinions expressed at a public hearing is to be kept in mind, right through.

Guidelines, along with chapter headings for writing an acceptable EIA report, given in this book, are of great practical value.

During the last three decades of EIA implementation, it has ramified into several areas like Health Impact Assessment (HIA), Social Impact Assessment (SIA), Regional Environmental Assessment (REA) and Capacity-Building for EIA, which are all explained with illustrations.

EIA reports for seven projects from the developing countries are given as case studies and as models, at the end, rendering this book as an excellent guide for preparing EIA reports needed by all stakeholders, industrialists, pollution control boards, governments and above all, for the target people, in the project area.

P.J.SANJEEVA RAJ

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