Environmental impact assessment of airport development proposals in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong: Who should participate?

Abstract

Three major, controversial airport development proposals emerged in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom (UK) and Hong Kong (HK): Heathrow Terminal 5 (HT5) and Manchester Airport Second Runway (MA2) in the UK, and the Replacement Airport at Chek Lap Kok (CLK) in HK. An environmental impact assessment (EIA) was conducted for each of the three projects, demonstrating different levels of public participation in terms of influence on decision-making—negligible, low and moderate influence on the CLK, HT5 and MA2 proposals respectively. An opinion survey of the participants involved in the three proposals indicates that most consider public participation in EIA to be inadequate. © 1997 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.