Environmental Impact Assessment in Australia - A Review of the Process - Coursework Example

Environmental Impact Assessment in Australia: A Review of the Process I. Introduction As defined by different environmental impact assessment is essentially a systematic (Glasson, Therivel, and Chadwick 2005, 4), technical (Thomas 2005, 152) process meant to identify potential risks and threats that proposed development actions or projects may pose to the environment and to the health of the populace in aid of decision making for policy formulation (Taylor and Quigley 2002, 2; Elliot and Thomas 2009, xii; Environmental Protection Authority 2009, i). As EIA normally goes through two general stages: The Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), and the assessment report (Thomas 2005, 153) in fulfilling its set objectives, Elliot and Thomas (2009) observed that EIA inevitably gets involved in society’s politics essentially turning it to be a political process (xii), which Thomas (2005) described to include not only ‘politics of parties and election’ but also ‘politics of personal and organisational survival’ (152). This as anyone could imagine would say that EIA is practically a struggle of all stakeholders to influence and get their particular interest into decision makers in any way they find it necessary as far as their capacity could lead them and as desperately as their interest would require them. Moreover, Taylor and Quigley (2002) emphasised EIA as a developing approach (2) – a dynamic process that should respond to the changing developmental needs of society and humanity as shown by EIA’s historical evolution. II. EIA’s Brief History Society started out without having any notion yet of this so-called EIA. But as society progressed – increasing mobility of people using carriages and assembly of large group of people – concern with pollution as a social problem increased which inevitably led to the legislation of laws regulating the problem. Specifically in Australia, the ‘protection of water quality in the Tank Stream, Sydney’s only water supply for the first 40 years’ was its first pollution-related regulation – ‘felling of trees within 50 feet (15 metres) of the stream... throwing filth into the stream, cleaning fish, washing, erecting pigsties near it’ were all prohibited (King 1975, 35, cited in Elliot and Thomas 2009, 6). Then as more frontiers were cleared, concern for the preservation of the bush, nature, plants and animals appeared. In Australia, ‘defenders of the bush’ and ‘nature lovers’ (Dingle 1984, cited in Elliot and Thomas 2009, 6) were recorded sometime during the Victorian ages with the First National Park proclaimed in 1879 under the Royal National Park (NSW) (Elliot and Thomas 2009, 6). Also with the development of industries, concern about health has already become a consideration in early town planning (Cullingworth 1974, cited in Elliot and Thomas 2009, 6), although, it was only in the 21st century that “link between human health and environmental conditions was made explicit in the National Environmental Health Strategy 2000” (Elliot and Thomas 2009, 6). Giroult (1990) enumerated some possible effects of environmental health factors: being exposed and being contaminated by communicable diseases and toxic agents, weakening the immunity system, aggravating sickness, and others (261). As a system, the EIA was started in 1969 by the US upon enactment of the National Environmental Policy ACT (NEPA) (Overseas Environmental Cooperation Center 2000, 2). Thus, “since the beginning of 1970s, EIA has been used as a tool for environmental management and has evolved for the promotion of sustainability” (Thomas 2005, 150). Specifically for Australia, the NEPA had stimulated the Commonwealth Government and its electorate to find better ways and means to better procedural practices in ensuring environment protection that in 1973, the Australian Environment Council created and commissioned a working party to inspect the actual execution of EIA procedures at the federal level which recommendations resultantly led to the legislation of the Environment Protection Act 1974 later replaced by the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. (Thomas 2005, 166-67) In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development introduced sustainable development requiring environmental protection be integrated to any development project and putting EIA as the system to ensure the achievement of such objective. This has made EIA ever more significant especially in highly developed countries where technological development and society’s environmental awareness are far more advance. (Overseas Environmental Cooperation Center 2000, 2) As condensed by Hollick (1986), EIA aims to achieve the following goals: (1) To protect the environment from damage by making sure that decision makers are aided with adequate environmental information for wise and healthy policy formulation, by coordinating decision-making between agencies and policies on environmental protection between nation-states, and by ensuring that the project is given adequate environmental management (2) to improve public participation in government decisions, and (3) to achieve economic efficiency in fulfilling the approval process. (Cited in Elliot and Thomas 2009, 10) III. EIA in Australia: An Overview Consistent with the recommendations made by the InterGovernmental Agreement on the Environment (IGAE), the National Strategy on Ecologically Sustainable Development, the Australian and New Zealand Environment and Conservation Council (ANZECC) and the Commonwealth Environment Protection Agency (now called the Environment Protection Group), EIA in Australia is commonly governed by the following principles participation, transparency, certainty, accountability, integrity, cost-effectiveness, flexibility, practicality, and precautionary (Nevill 2000, 1-2). These principles are meant to ensure that EIA would result to truthful and wise bases for sound policy formulation. EIA management rests on the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) established on January 1, 1972 and current wide-ranging functions are defined by the Environmental Protection Act 1986 : to conduct EIA, to find and initiate better ways by which to protect the environment from any possible harm, to draft environmental protection policies for legislation, and to give sound advice to the Minister on environment on environmental matters. To ensure independence, EPA is appointed by the Governor and works independently from the Minister of environment as illustrated in EPA’s organisation structure (EPA 2010) as appendage to this paper. For EPA to come up with sound environmental results it advises the Minister on environment; it promotes environmental awareness in communities; it develops sound policy positions to be studied by the community and the government; and to issue reports on important environmental matters. (Environmental Stakeholder Advisory Group [ESAG] 2009a, 3-4; ESAG 2009b, 3) The EIA as a formal process has four general stages: Screening, scoping, direct public consultation, and assessment of which Thomas (2005) commented could actually be done informally if only everyone were sufficiently capacitated to undertake such assessments (155). And until today, environmental impact remains largely assessed formally. In Australia, although EIA legislation and procedures vary in its different states (Elliot and Thomas 2009, 289), “the Victorian Environmental Effects Act (and associated guidelines) sets out a process for undertaking EIA is fairly typical” (Thomas 2005, 154). This act applies to all proposals (public and private) that may have an adverse effect on the environment, thus as early as the planning and design stages of development, environmental assessment is already applied to give the community and the government enough to study its environmental impact (Shared Environmental Assessment Knowledge [SEAK] 2009, i). Meanwhile, Glasson, Therivel and Chadwick (2005) reminded, “although the steps are outlined in a linear fashion, EIA should be a cyclical activity, with feedback and interaction between the various steps” (5). The same almost goes through the process of Health Impact Assessment (HIA), only it has more stages: Screening, scoping, appraisal or assessment, developing recommendations, further engagement with decision-makers, and on-going monitoring and evaluation (Taylor and Blair-Stevens 2002, 11-16). IV. EIA Process in Australia: An analysis The first observable point with Australia’s EIA is the diversity of its process in its territories. This could mean two things: (1) Australia’s EIA process considers the particular needs of the territories, which is only consistent with the principle of flexibility; and (2) as observed also by the stakeholders, a “more strategic approach to assessment” is needed (EPA 2009, 6). These two points are important because if the first point refers to the particular implementing mechanism of each territory in assessing the impact of development projects, the second point refers to its general direction and framework. Thus these two points are interrelated because without a clear general direction and framework, the particular efforts of each territory might not fall all into place. However, it should also be noted that despite this weakness in the assessment, the common EIA principles serve as a common guideline as to how each territory should conduct its EIA. Second, EIA in Australia is being democratised with stakeholders participation being sought as early as the planning and design stages of development. Furthermore stakeholders encompass a wide-range of the section of the community following its four groupings in the Review of EIA 2009: “The general community, key peak stakeholder organisations and government agencies, interested stakeholder organisations, and Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) staff involved in the EIA process” (EPA 2009, 4-5). Although, of course what also matters in their participation is the influence they could muster in the process of EIA. Australia has its stakeholder involvement programme meant to give stakeholders the opportunity and forum for active participation. What is lacking is the comprehensive program of the government to ensure that its constituents at all levels are properly educated as to the protection of environment, because without this, community participation will only be overwhelmed by key peak stakeholder organisations and government agencies which are more adept in this matter. In short, stakeholder participation, being basic to EIA for it to truly respond to the need of environmental and health protection of a community, should be truly done in an equal playing field. Third, the EIA process in Australia as described by Thomas (2005) which generally goes as follows – the proponent prepares the Environment Effects Statement (EIS) to be advertised for public comment; after which an assessment report is prepared and forwarded by the Minister of environment to the proponent who is then compelled to consider this before finalising the proposed development project, but ironically, the proponent is not obliged to abide by the recommendations in the assessment (154-55) – blurs the ultimate use of EIA as an effective tool in protecting community health and environment. Following the four stages of EIA the available methods: “project thresholds, sensitive area criteria, positive and negative lists, matrices, initial environmental evaluation” (156) used in the screening process in Australia do not warrant community participation as these require certain level of professional knowledge, which is usually possessed by key peak stakeholder organisations and government agencies. In the scoping stage, issues, risks, and alternatives are discussed. It is at the scoping stage that health impact is also identified through the environmental risk assessment as component of EIA. Although as pointed out by Hyett (2010) ERA methods are not set in detail in Australia’s existing policies and guidelines (2). On the other hand public participation is systematised through consultative committees. This satisfies two of Sadar’s (1994) levels of participation: “informing the public, and soliciting input” (cited in Thomas 158), but not the third level – public representation on decision-making bodies – because these consultative committees are not decision-making bodies; these are simply recommending bodies. The assessment stage is predominated by government agencies which baseline data come from the public, concerned government departments and the proponents. Furthermore, environmental impact is a very broad matter that trimming it down to which is most relevant to the proposed development plan, while not disregarding the strategic environmental concern of the commonwealth is needed to ensure that data being gathered are those needed. Thus, the accurateness, relevance, sufficiency and timeliness of data as basis for assessment are very important for the recommendation to be sound. V. Conclusion Australia has come a long way and has in fact developed its EIA significantly as it tries to protect its environment and its citizens from harm while it encourages technological development and progress. There are noted problems in its EIA process, but these are in fact problems of development meant to further improve EIA process. On the overall, what is observable is the greater role that companies and government agencies play in the EIA process. However, despite its limitations, it cannot be denied as likewise concluded by the Ecological Society of Australia that the EIA has been instrumental ‘in the conservation of Australian biodiversity and ecosystem services” (Ecological Society of Australia n.d., 7). Bibliography Ecological Society of Australia. n.d. Ecological factors in Environmental Impact Assessment. Position Statement. Ecological Society of Australia, Inc. Accessed 15 August 2010. Available from http://www.ecolsoc.org.au/Position_papers/documents/EcologicalFactorsInEnvironmentalImpactAssessment.pdf. Internet. Elliot, Mandy and Ian Thomas. 2009. Environmental Health Impact Assessment in Australia: Theory and Practice (5th Edn.). NSW: The Federation Press. Environmental Protection Authority. 2009. Review of the Environmental Impact Assessment Process in Western Australia. Perth, Western Australia: Environmental Protection Authority. Accessed 15 August 2010. Available from http://www.epa.wa.gov.au/docs/2898_EIAReviewReportFinal30309.pdf. Internet Environmental Protection Authority. 2010. Organisation Structure. Office of the Environment Protection Authority. Accessed 18 August 2010. Available from http://www.epa.wa.gov.au/docs/OEPA_Updated_Interim_structure13710.pdf. Internet. Environmental Stakeholder Advisory Group (ESAG). 2009a. The Appeal Process. Report to the Minister for Environment. Accessed 18 August 2010. Available from http://www.epa.wa.gov.au/docs/EIA_review/ESAGApppealsAdvice21September2009.pdf. Internet. Environmental Stakeholder Advisory Group (ESAG). 2009b. The Role and Structure of the Environmental Protection Authority. Report to the Minister of Environment. Accessed 18 August 2010. Available from http://www.epa.wa.gov.au/docs/EIA_review/ESAGAdviceRoleStructEPA14Aug09Report.pdf. Internet. Giroult, E. 1990. WHO Interest in EHIA. In Environmental impact assessment: Theory and practice, edited by P. Wathern. New York, NY: Routledge. Glasson, John, Riki Therivel, and Andrew Chadwick. 2005. Introduction to environmental impact assessment, 3rd edition. New York, NY: Routledge. Hyett, David. 2010. Environmental risk assessment in environmental impact assessment – optional or mandatory? Paper read at IAIA10 Conference Proceedings on The Role of Impact Assessment in Transitioning to the Green Economy 30th Annual Meeting of the International Association for Impact Assessment, International Conference Centre Geneva, Switzerland, 6-11 April. Nevill, Jon. 2000. Principles of Environmental Impact Assessment. Accessed 15 August 2010. Available from http://jnevill.customer.netspace.net.au/eia_principles.pdf. Internet. Overseas Environmental Cooperation Center (OECC). 2000. Environmental Impact Assessment for International Cooperation: Furthering the Understanding of Environment Impact Assessment Systems for Experts Engaged in International Cooperation Activities. FY 1999 Project Commissioned by Environment Agency. Japan. Accessed 19 August 2010. Available from http://www.env.go.jp/earth/coop/coop/document/10-eiae/10-cover10.pdf. Internet. Shared Environmental Assessment Knowledge (SEAK) Task Force. 2009. Interim Report. Accessed 18 August 2010. Available from http://www.epa.wa.gov.au/docs/SEAK_interim_report.pdf. Internet. Taylor, Lorraine and Clive Blair-Stevens, eds. 2002. Introducing health impact assessment (HIA): informing the decision making process. London: Health Development Agency. Taylor, Lorraine and Robert Quigley. 2002. Health Impact Assessment: A Review of Reviews. UK: Health Development Agency. Accessed 15 August 2010. Available from http://www.nice.org.uk/niceMedia/documents/hia_review.pdf. Internet. Thomas, Ian G. 2005. Environmental Management Processes and Practices for Australia. Sydney, NSW: The Federation Press. Appendix (Source: Image copied from the Office of the EPA 2010) Read More