INTRODUCTION

Environmental impact assessments emerged internationally after the 1972 Stockholm Conference and are now an established international and domestic legal technique for integrating environmental considerations into socio-economic development and decision-making processes. An environmental impact assessment (EIA) describes a process that produces a written statement to be used to guide decision-making, with several related functions. First, it should provide decision-makers with information on the environmental consequences of proposed activities and, in some cases, programmes and policies, and their alternatives. Second, it requires decisions to be influenced by that information. And, third, it provides a mechanism for ensuring the participation of potentially affected persons in the decision-making process.

Since environmental impact assessments were first established in the domestic law of the United States under the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act, they have been progressively adopted in a very large number of national legal systems. Internationally, environmental impact assessments are required under numerous international conventions, in the requirements of various multilateral development banks, and in various non-binding instruments adopted at the regional and global levels. Principle 17 of the Rio Declaration states that: