Comparative review of EIA in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations

Abstract

Environmental sustainability is one of the frameworks for cooperation under the Declaration of ASEAN Concord II, 2015. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been recognized as a crucial tool. This paper proposes the review of EIA in ASEAN countries in three key areas, namely legal enforcement, implementation approach and EIA effectiveness as the basis for a sustainable approach. The results showed that almost all the countries established their EIAs at the legal level with the complete EIA process; however, the implementation was somewhat different depending on the unique characteristics of the EIA processes. Such unique characteristics can be divided into three groups. The first belongs to the countries that initiated the EIA process before 1990, although they have their own outstanding topography, namely, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. The second group includes the countries that applied the EIA after 1990. The Asian Development Bank has played an active role and their EIA processes have rapidly developed especially EIA monitoring, Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and Transboundary Impact Assessment. The countries in this group are Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar. The last group contains the countries with stringent environmental regulations and is becoming part of environmental laws. They include Singapore and Brunei. The tools to support the achievement of sustainability, such as ecosystem services, biodiversity offsets and transboundary impacts will be of prime importance to the ASEAN EIA in the future.