Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management

Follow-up is an essential component of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) if the success of EIA in improving the sustainability of a project once implemented is to be determined. This paper aims to establish universally-applicable criteria for EIA follow-up to evaluate project performance once assessed and underway. A suite of 24 criteria is derived from EIA follow-up best practice principles published by the International Association for Impact Assessment. The criteria are categorized according to the five dimensions of EIA follow-up: monitoring, evaluation, management, communication and governance. Posed as questions, the criteria support qualitative assessments of EIA follow-up performance for a project. Through application of the criteria to a case study currently under construction (the Shell Cove Marina project in eastern Australia), we found they provided an effective basis for a document review process delivering a short but informative account of the follow-up performance of the case study. The more robust evaluation of some of the criteria, particularly in the governance category, would require supplementary techniques such as interviews.

Biodiversity is under significant threat globally and therefore the biodiversity input to environmental impact assessment (EIA) is important. The quality of biodiversity inputs needs to be high if biodiversity is to be protected, especially in areas with high biodiversity value. Here, we follow-up quality reviews of biodiversity inputs to EIA reports, through interviews with the biodiversity specialists who authored the biodiversity inputs, in order to find explanations for the quality results. This is the first quality review research to systematically engage with biodiversity specialists in this way. The biodiversity specialists highlighted professional registration as a key factor supporting strengths around professional conduct and gathering of baseline information. Weaknesses identified relate to review areas dealing with alternatives, public participation, prediction, as well as management actions and monitoring arrangements, which seem to be the result of a lack of understanding and/or agreement on the role of the biodiversity specialists in the EIA process. The research results suggest that ideally biodiversity inputs should not be seen as a one-off contribution but rather as an iterative contribution during different stages of the EIA process.

Within the context of infrastructure projects, the capacity of an affected population to cope with, and recover from, the adverse effects of displacement has been barely explored. Using a longitudinal survey, we analysed the strengths of the displaced people in Tanzania through investigating their adaptation strategies. The KJ analysis revealed two major adaptation trends. First, resettlees utilised their residential plots for crop cultivation immediately after relocation. Secondly, they reestablished their trading activities within a few years after they had settled in their new communities. The contextual disparity between the old and new settlements, however, impeded the growth of trading activities in the new settlement. Furthermore, the lack of infrastructure in the new settlement made it impossible for the resettlees to benefit financially from their crops. We argue that development planners should make deliberate efforts to reflect the real livelihoods of the affected people by ensuring that local skills fit into the new environment, thus enhancing the process of adaptation.

The impacts of global warming, environmental pollution and corrective protective policies for climate change have been discussed by scholars for more than half a century. This study elaborates enabling factors for municipalities that have an active role in emission reduction and adaptation in metropolitan cities in Turkey. Annual Action Reports and Strategic Plans of corresponding Turkish metropolitan municipalities in the second period of Kyoto Protocol were examined with document analysis to capture their local climate protection capacities. Secondary data were also gathered mainly from public institutions inventory and reports to determine major external factors on municipal climate initiatives. Ordinary Least Square regression method was used to analyse the extent of enabling factors including socio-economic, emission and vulnerability conditions that have an impact on local climate governance initiatives in metropolitan cities. The findings of the study indicate that emission level and socio-economics capacity of the metropolitan cities in Turkey have a high aspiration for greenhouse gases reduction actions, while vulnerability level of the climate change has no significant effect on municipal decision-makers and practitioners on local climate protection governance.

Many post-Soviet countries are still improving their Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) systems, and Armenia is no exception. In recent years, approximation to and harmonisation with the laws of the European Union has seen Armenia increasingly adopt and apply EU regulations and directives, and this process was supported by adoption of the new law on EIA and Expertise in 2014. The main objectives of this study are to review and analyse the current state of the Armenian EIA system and to assess its legal framework. We applied a method divided into two parts: review and analysis of the legislative aspects of the EIA system in Armenia and the circulation of a survey-questionnaire to EIA experts to establish current practices. The findings of this research provided positive and negative factors which can both be used to improve the assessment system in Armenia. While the most significant EIA strength combines the existence of a systematic law and public involvement in this process, the law has weaknesses in its monitoring, informative and quality control provisions. Moreover, public participation has many weaknesses in practice, including the definition of stakeholders and the lack of guidelines and manuals which challenges expert action. Finally, this paper has explored the major positives and negatives of the Armenian EIA system in practice, and we consider that this should help other Former Soviet Union (FSU) countries define and combat the challenges of their EIA systems.