Human Geog: What are the potential challenges that developing countries face when introducing EIA?

The policy tool, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), was first introduced in the USA in 1969 with the deployment of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) (Wood, 2003; Lee & George, 2013). Since the original employment of environmental assessments in the USA and much of the Western world, the policy tool for negating environmental effects from large projects has found its way into developing regions too (Appiah-Opoku, 2001). Although EIA is being adopted more widely across a variety of nations at different levels of development, a key issue still remains. The proposal and development of EIA began in a Western context and was mainly adopted by Western nations. The result of this evolution is that EIA, in many cases, has been directly carried over to countries struggling with development, where Western concepts and policy tools are not necessarily the most effective when it comes to protecting the somewhat different environment.

The model of EIA was developed and initially employed in the West. Since this initial deployment, the knowledge and process of EIA has been increasingly transferred over to more African countries. However, the key issue of the direct transference of EIA to developing nations has been noted and researched by several academics in this area (Appiah-Opoku, 2001; Wood, 2003; Marara et al., 2011). Through developing EIA in the West, the socio-cultural context in which it was created is very specific. Namely, the expected outcome of an EIA and what kind of information it should contain is directly related to a Western setting. For example, the report is required to be available to the public, however, as Marara et al. (2011) have found following research in East Africa, it is often the case that there are not the administrative resources available to translate reports into native languages, as EIA reports are very often written in English. This example serves to demonstrate the fact that context is extremely important when developing some sort of environmental assessment regulation and policy.

            Tied in with the issue of context, is another serious difficulty prominent when implementing EIA in developing countries – the problem of a lack of legislation and judicial powers in place that can support the running of EIA’s. Many developing countries in Africa are either recently employing democratic governmental systems or are still struggling with dictatorships resulting in ‘a limited degree of openness, access to information and public participation in their environmental regulatory systems’ (Lee, 2013, p.22-23). The result of less robust governments often leads to an absence of resources and expertise being put into environmental issues due to the fact that administrative departments are often newly developed and lack experience and support from the main governmental body (Ebisemiju, 1993). A case study looking into the deployment of EIA’s in Ghana concluded that the political system and policy-making body are one of the most important influences on successful EIA’s, furthermore the level of democracy can have a huge effect on how well run and supported environmental departments are when trying to encourage and implement EIA in policy frameworks (Kolhoff et al., 2013). Surrounding the issue of limited political resources, often the absence of a well-educated and informed public to encourage and lobby for the government to act in the name of the environment can create a compounding effect, which further weakens the chance of successful implementation of EIA (Marara et al., 2011).

            The issue of implementing EIA legislation becomes fractious among developing nations, especially when many of their exports and trade are based on agricultural activities. The reliance on agriculture, especially at a sustenance level is often detrimental to the environment. It has been noted in several papers that in some cases, there exists a belief in developing countries that the implementation of EIA would conflict with the economic interests of a country, perhaps blocking trade and agricultural activity to the detriment of a nation (Horberry, 1985; Lim, 1985; Wood, 2003). Research undertaken by Lim (1985, p.136) corroborates the above suggestion, pointing out that ‘environmental consequences of public and private actions are not likely to be an important concern for policy makers. In extreme cases, policy makers might oppose attempts at environmental protection out of the fear that such attempts might slow economic growth.’ Following the above discussion, it is apparent that in some cases, protecting the environment is viewed as a blockage for development, rather than something that is inherently part of development.

            Through the growth of awareness that protecting the environment is a key part of the development process, there is a positive outlook for the future of EIA in developing contexts. Abaza (2013), has noted that among developing countries there is increasing recognition that environmental issues are associated with and should be integrated with development goals. Through recognising the important issue that EIA is context-based, the positive trajectory that EIA is following in developing countries should continue far into the future. Amendments to current practice are being made and the concept of the environment is becoming more and more synonymous with the concept of development to the benefit of EIA implementation in developing nations.

References:

Abaza, H. (2013). Strengthening Future Environmental Assessment Practice: An International Perspective. In: N. Lee and C. George, ed., Environmental Assessment in Developing and Transitional Countries, 1st ed. Hoboken: Wiley.

Appiah-Opoku, S. (2001). Environmental impact assessment in developing countries: the case of Ghana. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 21(1), pp.59-71.

Ebisemiju, F.S. Environmental impact assessment: making it work in developing countries. J Environ Manage 1993:247–73.

Horberry, J. (1985). International organization and EIA in developing countries. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 5(3), pp.207-222.

Kolhoff, A., Driessen, P. and Runhaar, H. (2013). An analysis framework for characterizing and explaining development of EIA legislation in developing countries—Illustrated for Georgia, Ghana and Yemen. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 38, pp.1-15.