Reviewing the quality of donor agency environmental assessment guidelines

Abstract

Increasingly, environmental impact assessment (EIA) is used as an integral component of project appraisal procedures by donor agencies and development banks. Nearly 200 guidelines relating to different aspects of EIA have been prepared by these agencies and banks but, to date, there has been very little systematic study of their content, quality and effectiveness. This article reports the findings of a pilot study whose main objectives have been to develop a quality review procedure and to test its application to a small sample of these guidelines. The preliminary findings indicate a number of different strengths and weaknesses in the sampled guidelines and identify the kinds of follow-up work to the present study which should now be undertaken.