Principles and Purposes of Standards and Thresholds in the EIA Process

Abstract

Standards and thresholds play an important role in the whole EIA process — they are the criteria against which the degree of significance of potential impacts of a development action (generally a project, but more recently also plans and programmes) are assessed. But what are standards and thresholds? They have many, and often overlapping dimensions. What roles do they play in the EIA process? They do play vital roles in many stages of the EIA process — ranging from initial screening as to whether a project/plan etc requires an assessment at all, through many other steps in the process, including decision making and the continuing but often underplayed monitoring of project/plan implementation. This chapter seeks to provide an introduction to standards and thresholds in EIA, by addressing such questions.