Environmental impact assessment for wetlands: Overview

Abstract

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a process of evaluating the likely environmental impacts of a proposed project or development, taking into account interrelated socioeconomic, cultural, and human-health impacts. The main objectives of EIA are to incorporate environmental considerations into the decisionmaking process, and to minimize or offset the adverse effects of development proposals. EIA initially developed in the USA in the late 1960s in response to growing concern about environmental degradation and was later adopted more widely by various international agencies and the EU. EIA consists of various stages: Screening, scoping, impact assessment and evaluation, reporting, review, decision-making, and monitoring/enforcement. The effectiveness of EIA is constrained by the capacity of the organizations responsible for its implementation, which varies in relation to the political and governance context of different countries. The importance of EIA for wetlands is recognized by important international conventions such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.