Potential Benefits and Challenges in Applying Regional EIA: A Case Study of Special Investment Regions in India

Abstract

Developmentis an ever growing process and its impact is often detrimental to environmentwhich in turn may lead to adverse consequences for human life. EnvironmentImpact Assessment (EIA) is an anticipatory and participatory environmentmanagement tool which helps in the decision-making process for differentupcoming development projects by analyzing the environmental consequences ofthe action. The large scale projects like setting up of Special InvestmentRegions (SIR), Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and Industrial Estates (IE) havecumulative impacts on the environmental condition of the region. This paperintends to describe different practices of impact assessment and seeks todirect this debate towards the potential benefits of applying Regional EIA overthe project specific EIA to capture the cumulative impact of large developmentprojects like SIRs and IE on the environmental condition of the region andunderline the challenges often faced during the study. Regional EIA is a newconcept in India and the process of development of an SIR is different from theother industrial projects such as SEZ or IE. Unlike SEZ which comprises of onlyindustrial activity, SIR also includes residential commercial and other amenitiesover an area of more than 100 square kilometers. Further, the implementation ofRegional EIA in Indian context is also constrained by problem in baseline datacollection and lack of exhaustive ecological and socioeconomic indicators forimpact assessment and restricted use of state of art technologies such asGeographical Information System due to many factors such as cost involved andlack of awareness among consultants. The whole process of Regional EIA shouldbe made rapid and more participatory.