Role of Environmental Impact Assessment in Integrated Coastal Zone Management

Abstract

There is a general agreement today that our planet is under stress due to changes brought about by man’s activities (Brown et al., 1990, World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). Be-fore the industrial revolution, these anthropogenic stresses were largely of local nature, but with the advancements in technology and their application in improving the human condition, they have assumed regional and global dimensions. For example, it has been estimated that fluxes of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulphur induced by man’s activities today are of the same magnitude as those associated with the natural global cycles of these elements (Clark, 1986). The far reaching environmental implications of the global issues such as global warming, depletion of stratospheric ozone, long range transportation of atmospheric pollution, reduction in biodiversity, and depletion of natural resources are also indisputable. It would, therefore, not be an exaggeration if we described man and his activities as a geological force which has not only modified the Earth but has fundamentally transformed it (Vernadsky, 1945).