Emerging challenges of the EIA process

The successful enactment of EIA guidelines and legislation in many developing countries does not necessarily mean EIA is being implemented successfully. “In many cases, EIA has not been effective due to legislation, organizational capacity, training, environmental information, participation, diffusion of experience, donor policy and political will” (Alshuwaikhat, 2005, p. 308), all of which are

24 integral parts of risk governance in relevant political contexts. Alshuwaikhat (2005) further

elaborates that, in many Asian countries, including Sri Lanka, EIA was introduced because of the influence of lending and grant-issuing conditions of multi-lateral funding agencies such as the World Bank, but with insufficient staffing, experience and monitoring, with evaluation inadequacies and even without enough baseline data. Therefore, in such contexts, EIAs are conducted only because they are required by government legislation and donor agencies and, as a tool to justify projects rather than using it as a means to derive the best decision (Momtaz, 2002; Ortolano & Shepherd, 1995).

Moreover, EIA itself has some deficiencies. Mulvihill & Ali (2007) conclude that conventional

approaches to EIA and planning are characteristically deficient in addressing the full range of impacts and risks.Further, many scholars argue that the vulnerability of the affected groups and social impacts are not adequately addressed in conventional EIA processes. Modak & Biswas (1999)assert that EIA is most often biased towards physical and biological impacts whereas social and cultural impacts are given less prominence. They claim this is an unfortunate bias since sociocultural impacts are ones that would affect the local community in their everyday life. Modak & Biswas argue for proper integration of socio-cultural impacts in the EIA process. An initial review of literature revealed a number of independent attempts and concepts presented to strengthen EIA by incorporating different dimensions such as social impact, cultural impact, gender dimensions, and risk assessment, but in a fragmented manner.

Among these, risk assessment has been widely discussed by many scholars including Andrews (1988), Brockie (1994), Contini & Servida (1992), Harrop & Nixon (1999), Morgan (1998), and Ortolano & Shepherd (1995). Those authors note that the concept of risk is an important dimension in EIA. Morgan (1998, p. 41) asserts, “…strictly speaking, all EIA is about assessing risk...”. He defines risk assessment as a study of particular risks to human health and safety associated with planned

development projects especially under abnormal circumstances such as design failures. Both Morgan and Andrews recognize that EIA and risk assessment sometimes have fuzzy boundaries and

overlapping procedures. However, unlike EIA, risk assessment is not generally a mandatory requirement (Andrews, 1988). Another version of risk assessment, hazard assessment, “…requires consideration of the possibility of natural hazards disrupting a project with attendant catastrophic consequences” (Morgan, 1998, p. 41). Again, this is considered as an abnormal condition not because of design failure but due to natural events. However, both risk assessment and hazard assessment in this perspective look at the physical impacts on project employees and neighbouring communities and do not suggest an in-depth investigation into the specific vulnerabilities of the communities.

Vanclay (2003) notes that social impacts of development projects are much broader than the limited aspects normally considered in EIAs (such as demographic changes, job issues, financial security, and impacts on family life). He proposes employing Social Impact Assessment (SIA) complementarily with EIA to cover the evaluation of all impacts on humans and their interaction with socio-cultural, economic and biophysical surroundings. Vanclay (2003, p. 7) further adds:

SIA thus has strong links with a wide range of specialist sub-fields involved in the assessment of areas such as: aesthetic impacts (landscape analysis); archaeological and cultural heritage impacts (both tangible and non- tangible); community impacts; cultural impacts; demographic impacts; development impacts; economic and fiscal impacts; gender impacts; health and mental health impacts; impacts on indigenous rights; infrastructural impacts, institutional impacts; leisure and tourism impacts; political impacts (human rights, governance, democratization etc.); poverty; psycho- logical impacts; resource issues (access and owner- ship of resources); impacts on social and human capital; and other impacts on societies.

The above definition covers most dimensions of vulnerability listed by Aysan (1993). The idea of the integration of social impacts has been further elaborated by the scholarly work of Kværnera et al. (2006) and Toro et al. (2011) who propose addressing the socio-cultural impacts of development planning through vulnerability assessment. Kværnera et al. (2006) suggest that the term vulnerability is superficially addressed in EIA. Referring to experience in Norway, they instead propose including vulnerability within the Integrated Vulnerability Model, which emphasizes environmental

vulnerability and alternative development in the early stages of EIA.

The capability of the EIA process to assess the potential disaster risk generated from development projects has been a subject of discussion among development agencies since the early 2000s. UNDP’s publication ‘Reducing Disaster Risk: A Challenge for Development’ (2004), which was a pioneering work on this aspect, highlights the importance of making DRR explicit in planning a development to ensure a broad participatory decision making process that is helpful in dealing with disaster risk. The report claims that “…environmental impact assessment should be extended to include a risk analysis component”(2004, p. 104). Despite the frequent calls and emerging interest in the usage of EIA to tackle development-induced disasters, the effectiveness of EIA in addressing development-induced disaster risk is yet to be fully realized. Nevertheless, there are some notable initiatives that address disaster risk in the EIA process. Among these, the Caribbean Development Bank’s approach to incorporate Natural Hazard Impact Assessment into EIA (Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), 2004) can be viewed as a much clearer approach with readily available supporting information.

The CDB (2004), in its source book on ‘the integration of natural hazards into the EIA process’ identifies and explains a methodology to adjust the EIA process to address the problems stated above (Figure 2.3). The methodology proposes assessing both hazard risk and vulnerability as a part

26 of the screening and scoping of the environmental effects. The methodology was recommended by the CDB to all Caribbean nations.

Figure 2.3 The adjusted EIA process of the CDB (Source: CDB (2004, p. 9))

The CDB (2004) also highlights that assessing the impacts of natural hazards was not a part of the EIA system in the Caribbean region by 2003. Nevertheless, Davidson (2009) asserts that identification and assessment of natural hazard risk is required in the current EIA system in Jamaica. It is, however, unclear to what extent the CDB’s proposed methodology has contributed to addressing disaster risks of development projects because of the lack of any independent evaluation of the proposed

methodology.