Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is an environmental-management tool used to forecast the environmental, socio-economic, cultural and human-health consequences of a proposed development project — river projects, dams and highway construction among the chapter's examples — before it goes ahead, so that natural resources are used optimally and ecosystem/community impact stays minimal. By identifying likely stress points in advance, EIA helps reshape a project design to better fit its local environment and to plan waste disposal in a way that avoids environmental degradation, rather than discovering and correcting damage only after construction is complete. The society-level benefits the chapter attributes to this process include a healthier overall environment, better-maintained biodiversity, decreased resource usage, and reduce …