1.3 Guidelines in EIA
Various guideline on EIA are available. The main steps are as follows:
· Preliminary activities include the selection of a coordinator for the EIA and the
collection of background information. This should be undertaken as soon as a project
has been identified.
· Impact identification involves a broad analysis of the impacts of project activities with
a view to identifying those which are worthy of a detailed study.
· Baseline study entails the collection of detailed information and data on the condition
of the project area prior to the project's implementation.
· Impact evaluation should be done whenever possible in quantitative terms and should
include the workingout
of potential mitigation measures. Impact evaluation cannot
proceed until project alternative has been defined, but should be completed early
enough to permit decisions to be made in a timely fashion.
· Assessment involves combining environmental losses and gains with economic costs
and benefits to procedure a complete account to each project alternative. Costbenefit
analysis should include environmental impacts where these can be evaluated in
monetary terms (see Economic Analysis section).
· Documentation is prepared to describe to the work done in the EIA. A working
document is prepared to provide clearly stated and argued recommendations for
immediate action. The working document should contain a list of project alternative
with comments on the environmental and economic impacts of each.
· Decisionmaking
begins when the working document reaches the decision maker,
who will either accept one of the project alternatives, request further study or reject
the proposed action altogether.
· Post audits are made to determine how close to reality the EIA predictions were.