Environmental Impact Assessment Evaluation of Legislations in Countries of Africa and South Asia

The Environmental Impact Assessment system follows a typical process of screening scoping, preparation of draft EIA, public hearing and issuance of clearance certificate. These processes are guided by environmental legislations of the practicing countries.

This CSE has decided to evaluate 11 countries and analyse the EIA legislations pertaining to the country although the analysis is independent of the on-ground implementation of the EIA process.

Although EIA itself is being a legal instrument, different countries have different systems in place for collecting information, categorising projects and giving clearance and post clearance vigilance. In order to evaluate the performance of the EIA legislation of the countries, CSE has based its analysing methodology by introducing five parameters; 

• Project categorization
• Information collection
• Compliance mechanism
• Information transparency
• Accreditation of EIA consultants

Based on the indicators,the performance of the countries have been evaluated by studying the acts and regulations of the country pertaining to the EIA system.