Comparative Analysis of Environmental Permitting in Indonesia and Malaysia: Implications for National Strategic Projects

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) foster communication between participators to yield a more environmentally sound decision for a proposed development. Public participation is an integral element in EIA to ensure a successful EIA. Effective public participation encourages community empowerment, fair and democratic decisions and reduce thus avoid public confrontation and delay. Effective public participation is one of the key pillars to achieve effective EIA. Environmental issues are known to be the negative outcome of a poorly implemented EIA process. This paper discusses seven environmental cases that were produced from ineffective application of EIA such as Bakun Dam, Murum Dam, Baram Dam, bauxite mining in Kuantan, gold mining in Bukit Koman, sturgeon farming in Kuala Tahan and Lynas plant. The seven cases focused on the lack of public participation in the administration of EIA. Public objections and protests were results of ineffective public participations and ineffective EIAs in the chosen cases. Four out of seven cases have made substantive results where the projects stopped or ceased due to the public objections. Meanwhile, the three cases went on till today. Conclusively, these cases has shown that public participation in EIA is a valuable tool which encourages transparent decision-making process and defies corrupted influences.

Currently, in Thailand, proposed development projects require an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) as part of the approval process. Effective public participation in the process of developing an EIA helps to ensure fairness and equity for the EIA system. It enables stakeholders to share information and exchange views concerning the complex issues and likely impacts of the proposed development project. Thailand has substantial legislation and regulations that aim to enable public participation for EIA processes. However, implementation of public participation provisions is failing at least to some degree. This article explores how the law concerning public participation might be improved to enable better implementation of the EIA system in Thailand. Some methods for employing effective public participation to support the implementation of EIAs are proposed.

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is the procedure in which information on the environmental effects of a specific activity are used to support decision making. It was first introduced in the United States in 1969 as a mechanism by which development and growth are considered within the context of their impacts on the environment and not only their economic significance. In Europe, the Directive 85/337/EEC was adopted on 27 June 1985 and entered into force 3 years later on July 3 rd 1988. Trends in EIA are moving away from the scientific ‘expert’ approach towards a more holistic one in which economic and social concerns are integrated in the EIA. This broadening of the EIA procedure has paralleled the increase in transparency in administrative processes in many countries and debates about the active role of the public in democracy and decision making. It is recognised that, as one of the key groups of actors involved in the procedure, the public plays an important role, and it can be concluded that the effective involvement of the public serves to guarantee, in part, the effectiveness of the whole EIA procedure. The central question this paper tries to answer is: how can the effectiveness of provisions for and practices concerning public participation in the EIA procedure be improved, with specific reference to Italy and the UK? In order to answer this question, the paper starts with an examination of literature and general public involvement practices in EIA to establish what the ‘goals’ of involving the public in the EIA procedure are, and which ‘factors’ contribute towards achieving effective public participation. Indicators for both the ‘goals’ and the ‘factors’ are then identified. These indicators are used to analyse the legislative provisions and procedures of each country in relation to their implications for effective public participation. Two case studies for each country are also analysed in relation to the same set of indicators. As a final step ‘profiles’ of public participation in EIA for each country are created and broad recommendations based on the opportunities for improving the effectiveness of public participation formulated.

Evaluation and classification of public participation in EIA for transportation infrastructure megaprojects in China

In 1975, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was promulgated in Malaysia after the enactment of Environmental Quality Act (EQA) in 1974. Although the EIA is integrated for nearly five decades, the effective public participation application for EIA remained scant in the Malaysian environment. This paper provides a comparative study on public participation application for EIA in Malaysia, Canada and New Zealand. This study is administered by analysing the current EIA process and EIA legislation pertaining to the public participation for EIA in the three countries via literature review. This paper examines the similarities and differences between the three countries on their application of public participation for EIA. It is paramount to examine the current application of public participation administered for EIA in the Malaysian environment with other developed countries to induce effective public participation for EIA in Malaysia.

Local participation is always beneficial for sustainable action and environmental problems resulting from urban implementation due to the failure of social and institutional change necessary for a successful transformation of rural life to urban life ahead of the rapid movement of the population. Despite good legal practice and comprehensive guidelines, evidence suggests that Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) or more broadly Environmental, Social and Health Impact Assessment (ESHIA) have not yet been found satisfactory in Nigeria, as the current system amounts to duplication of efforts and cost. However, ESHIA has been developed and integrated to help manage project activities, facilities, and operations sustainably, so that both economic and ecological profits are accrued (sustainable development) or ensure that any development project does not result in excessive deterioration of and/or the irreversible adverse effect on any component of the environment – a recite for sustainable development. A literature review was done by using a variety of search engines including Research Gate, Google Scholar, Academia, Mendeley, SSRN search strategy to retrieve research publications, “grey literature” and expert working group reports. The thrust of this study is to evaluate the potential benefits of ESHIA as a tool for sustainable environmental development. The evaluation and implementation of EIA are one of the strengths of these tools. Indeed, EIA is the first and foremost management tool employed to help mitigate adverse, potential, and associated impacts of proposed major developments in our environment. EIA is a regulatory requirement that is efficiently used to improve performance, project design, enhancing decision-making, and facilitating policy programs in a sustainable environment. An evaluation of the EIA systems reveals several weaknesses of the EIA system. These include the inadequate capacity of EIA approval authorities, deficiencies in screening and scoping, poor EIA quality, insufficient public participation, and weak monitoring and erratic government policies. Overall, most EIA study rarely meets the objectives of being a project planning tool to contribute to achieving sustainable development and mitigate the impact of the development project. The study recommends some directions for the future to ensure that entire content of the EIA are religiously implemented, review the existing EIA act, increase the expertise of EIA consultants, create a liaison office with an international organisation and with sister agency, ESHIA must enjoy Improved budgetary provision, time latitude, spatial contexts and methodological improvements for outcome measures to achieve results that are relevant to sustainable development by improving project design, enhancing decision making and facilitating policy programs.

An integration of public participation in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) issignificant in terms of its implication for sound decision and a sustainability of development projects.Accordingly, the Thai EIA system provides a public participation process for stakeholders in an assessmentand review of the EIA study process. There are a number of different participatory techniques to facilitatepublic participation. However, in Thailand traditional public participation methods like public hearing ispreferred. The public hearing process in the Thai context, stakeholders including the project proponents andthe opponents are brought together in a forum to express their view points and recommendations for theproposed projects in order to influence the decision-making process. Frequently, this process leads to violentconflict among stakeholders. This study aimed at trying to close the gap between regulators and civilcommunities with respect to public participation in the Thai EIA system. A case study approach was appliedfor this study. The study revealed that appropriate public participation is essential and may lead to enormousbenefits for the proponents and stakeholders. Where public participation is ignored and ineffective conducted,environmental conflicts and problems may be created for project implementation and sustainability.

While public participation is now considered a crucial component in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) practice, many contexts on the role and function of public participation in EIA practices have yet to be explored. There is a need for advancing the theories on the EIA in the light of nowadays challenges. This PhD thesis adopted an inductive approach to seek answers to the research questions of Does public participation make EIA more effective? and “How does public participation make EIA more effective?”. The research questions emphasise the substantive effectiveness of EIA, arguing that EIA could only be claimed as effective if it could achieve the substantive objectives behind its design, which include its procedural functionality, normative and legitimacy functions and transformative functions. Empirical case studies were conducted in Hong Kong to examine the public participation in Hong Kong's EIA practices during the preparation of the EIA report, the review of the EIA report, and the post-EIA approval stage. Three distinct EIAs, i.e. Tung Chung New Town Extension, Development of the Integrated Waste Management Facilities Phase 1, and South Island Line (East) were reviewed and analysed. The case studies reveal the public participation outcomes in achieving the substantive objectives of the EIA, with the influence of the unique social-political context in Hong Kong. The case studies found that public participation could play significant roles in the procedural functionality, especially in information circulation and policing; however, the normative and legitimacy functions are mixed, and the transformative functions are limited. The empirical findings suggested that contextual factors have much influence on public participation outcomes. The existing Impact Assessment models could not fully incorporate the implications of contextual factors in practices. Meanwhile, some similar findings were observed in regions with other contexts. Further studies to comprehend the understanding of the influence of context in IA practices are recommended.

Retrospect and prospect: Public participation in environmental impact assessment in China

In this paper, the authors reflect on public participation (PP) in environmental impact assessment (EIA) processes in Malawi, where EIA is implemented as Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA). Who is invited and who is actively contributing to PP meetings is explored. In this context, 12 ESIAs are examined, six from rural and six from urban areas. While PP principles ask for a balanced approach towards the inclusion of both interested and affected individuals and bodies, in the 12 projects, participants were mostly development and planning experts in urban projects and traditional leaders (chiefs) in rural projects. People without societal positions that were directly affected by developments only represented 15% of those being present in PP meetings. Based on these findings, the authors suggest that PP policy needs to be improved and enforced in order to allow ordinary people potentially directly affected by development to be better represented.

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) has evolved as an environmental management and sustainability tool. Despite common principles shared by EIA globally, there are considerable variations in EIA processes across countries. In this paper, we reviewed and compared EIA processes of China, Queensland State of Australia and Nepal considering five key steps (selection of consultants, report preparation, public participation, report review and approval, and monitoring and evaluations) of EIA. Our review indicated that the EIA is well recognised in legal instruments in all state and countries under consideration and there are both similarities and differences in key steps of EIA. Monitoring of EIA recommendations and the integration of feedbacks from the past and current practices are important in improving EIA processes. This study also found that there are elements for possible improvement in existing EIA processes by each state and country introducing the best practices from others' EIA system. Some of the practices that Nepal can follow from the EIA processes of Queensland and China are licensing and accreditation of individuals and firms to conduct EIA, establishment of separate monitoring unit within regulating department, development of clear guidelines for approvals and monitoring, and the use of independent third-party auditing in EIA monitoring. The findings of this paper are useful in revising and improving EIA policies, practices and processes in the selected state, countries and elsewhere.

The European Directive on environmental impact assessment: Implementation at last?

Public participation and environmental impact assessment: Purposes, implications, and lessons for public policy making

One of the key strategies for achieving sustainable development is the use of the process of evaluating the potential environmental impacts of development activities. The procedure of environmental impact assessment (EIA) implements the principle of integration which lies at the core of the concept of sustainable development by providing a process through which potential social, economic and environmental impacts of activities are scrutinised and planned for. Sustainable development may not be achieved without sustained and legally mandated efforts to ensure that development planning is participatory. The processes of public participation play a crucial role in ensuring the integration of the socio-economic impacts of a project into the environmental decision-making processes. Public participation is not the only process, nor does the process always ensure the achievement of sustainable development. Nevertheless, decisions that engage the public have the propensity to lead to sustainable development. The public participation provisions in South Africa’s EIA regulations promulgated under the National Environmental Management Act 107 of 1998 show a disjuncture between the idea of public participation and the notion of sustainable development. The provisions do not create a framework for informed participation and leave a wide discretion to environmental assessment practitioners (EAPs) regarding the form which participation should assume. In order for environmental law, specifically EIA laws, to be effective as tools to promote sustainable development the laws must, among other things, provide for effective public participation. The judiciary must also aid in the process by giving content to the legal provisions on public participation in the EIA process.

The government formed a policy that negated land rights for the community in Rempang. Also, They chose to side with foreign investment in national strategic projects which ultimately generated agrarian conflict. This research aims to analyze the minimal protection of community land rights in national strategic projects and the construction of community land rights protection in national strategic projects. The problem was studied through doctrinal research using statutes and a conceptual approach and analyzed using content analysis techniques. Based on the analysis, it is concluded that the government policy that negated the rights of the people on Rempang Island was not in line with the aim of the right to control the state, namely to maximize the prosperity of the people and customary law as the basis of national agrarian law which emphasizes protecting the rights of people who have lived for generations. To overcome this problem, government policy construction should emphasize the value of justice which pays attention to the weak and the social and cultural conditions of society. In making and implementing policies, public participation must also be taken into account.