Role of Environmental Impact Assessment in Plans and Policies

Abstract

The role of regional and local planning is to ensure a harmonious, multi-purpose land use system by avoiding any future incompatibilities of development with its social and physical environment. Environmental impact assessment (EIA), for its part, deals with the short and long-term repercussions of a specific development project. EIA has examined, rarely, the consequences of a forward planning proposal on the regional or sub-regional scale. However, since one of the purposes of planning is to streamline harmonious development in order to avoid any environmental and socio-economic consequences, EIA should be introduced into the planning machinery. EIA is not a complete panacea for controlling the adverse effects of development, since at a project level it may fail to appreciate the cumulative and spatial aspects of impacts. Plans and policies provide the framework in which projects are undertaken and these may place constraints on available project options. Within this context, plans and policies ought also to be subjected to some form of EIA in order to foresee their consequences.