Imbibing Wisdom of Environmental Impact Assessment

Abstract

The background to the development of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and the resulting techniques and procedures, or legislation, have been presented by many authors; for example, Canter (1977), Munn (1975), Porter (1985) and Thomas (1987). During the past decade many people have become involved in the practice of EIA, but how they have been trained for this involvement is not well documented. To contribute to the documentation, I will explain the development of a module which can be adapted to suit the time available for the coverage of EIA, and the varying capabilities of undergraduate and post graduate students enrolled in environmental engineering/ management/ planning/ policy/ science/ studies courses.Following sections examine, firstly the relationship between the objectives of EIA and those of the module, which I will refer to as Environmental Assessment. Next the constraints which influence the form of the subject, and the range of possible training techniques are discussed. Finally, the details of Environmental Assessment's structure are presented along with some comments on its approach.