Environmental Impact Assessment Procedures Research Articles

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ОЦІНКИ ВПЛИВУ НА ДОВКІЛЛЯ ПОВЕРХНЕВИХ ВОД

The purpose of this study is a systematic analysis of the features of the environmental impact assessment of surface waters. The article is a continuation of a series of publications on environmental impact assessment of water resources. Method. In the scientific study on the peculiarities of surface water environmental impact assessment, a systematic approach was used to analyze the characteristics of surface water environmental impact assessment (EIA) in the following areas: surface water EIA procedures, terminology, nature and documentation; assessment of the impact of planned (economic) activity on surface water; description of activities related to surface water. In order to achieve this goal, the following tasks were performed: the procedures, duration, nature and documentation of ATS for surface waters were studied and characterized; the assessment of the impact of the planned (economic) activity on surface water was investigated and discussed; the description of activities related to surface water was analyzed. The results. The regulatory and legal aspects of the issue (laws, DBN, methodological recommendations), procedure, term, nature, materials of surface water EIA were considered. The total term of EIA can be from 60 to 120 days. The EIA report includes a variety of materials that reflect the study of the given territory; materials provided by the customer; information of the State reporting balance of surface water use in the relevant district, etc. It should be noted that EIA includes the study of the territory of surface water in the process of preparatory and construction works, during the exploitation of surface water, description of the resources that will be used, SPZ, water use and drainage. Assessments of the impact on surface water of planned (economic) activities have been studied, as well as a description of measures regarding surface water have been analyzed. The study was carried out on the basis of reports from EIA for planned activities on surface water bodies. The probable impact on surface waters is recommended to be carried out according to biological, hydromorphological, chemical and physicochemical indicators, as well as the general level of clogging and silting at the local level. The assessment includes contamination of the massif of surface waters by household and other garbage. A description of the environmental factors that are likely to be affected by the planned activity and its alternative options is carried out, including the health of the population, the state of fauna, flora, biodiversity, land, soils, water, air, climatic factors, material objects, including architectural, archaeological and cultural heritage, landscape, socio-economic conditions and relationships between these factors. And an assessment of the possible impact on the environment of the planned activity is also carried out, in particular, the magnitude and scope of such impact. An assessment is carried out according to the types and amount of expected waste. It is also necessary to evaluate the activities of companies, enterprises, institutions, etc., which are in the zone of influence of such planned activities. It is necessary to take into account the existence of an approved river basin management plan, dangerous geological processes to which the morphological effects of waters can lead when assessing the EIA. When evaluating, it is recommended to use modern research methods. The study did not consider the issue of the results of the public discussion regarding such planned activities with surface water. The scientific novelty consists in the systematic analysis of the features of the environmental impact assessment of surface waters. The study was conducted for all participants who can study and perform EIA. Practical significance. The results of the research can be used in the educational process of the National university of water and environmental engineering, in particular, in the specialty 103 "Earth Sciences" and other institutions of higher education when teaching hydrological, natural, geographical, economic, ecological and geological disciplines. The results will find their application in the legislative and executive work of local self-government bodies when developing programs for the socio-economic development of territorial communities. Research materials will contribute to the rational use of water resources in the regions of Ukraine.

An integrated building information modelling-based environmental impact assessment framework

The application of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) studies faces many challenges, especially in developing countries. This problem was investigated in the existing literature and via a designed questionnaire among local practitioners. The reasons were mainly attributed to the seclusion of the EIA process across the project’s phases, as well as the complexity of the EIA procedures. Hence, the research argues that Building Information Modelling (BIM) applications can be the key to resolve several associated problems to EIA either directly, or indirectly by streamlining Environmental Management System (EMS). Thus, a keyword-based scientometric analysis was used to define parameters and interrelations and establish network analysis for a proposed BIM-based EIA framework. The proposed framework presents scoring schemes to support three types of assessments: the efficiency of applying BIM techniques for an EIA process (Score A), proper integration of BIM techniques for different EIA steps (Score I) and proper integration of BIM techniques across project phases (Score B). It also shows the interplay of points between the three schemes via a Sankey diagram. The proposed framework was applied to compare three major construction projects in a developing country, the case of Egypt to pinpoint areas of drawbacks. The results pinpointed poor application of advanced BIM models to support sustainability analysis for EIA studies. This is in addition to imbalance of applying BIM applications across different project phases, it was notably less pronounced for the operation and maintenance stage as well as end of life scenarios. Also, poor integration of BIM tools could not support decisions related to the mitigation step. Hence, applying 6-dimensional BIM model shall enable developing mitigation measures and shall support design optimization during building operation and end of life phase. This novel approach presents the required level of verification and quality control procedure needed by decision-makers and environmental engineers to perform EIA studies and pave the way for further related research.Graphical

An Evaluation of the Environmental Impact Assessment Process in Iraq

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is becoming more prevalent. However, compared to many jurisdictions in developed countries, the Middle East countries, including Iraq, have been relatively late in introducing and developing their environmental impact assessment systems. The Iraqi Protection and Improvement of the Environment Law of 2009 improved the EIA procedure established in 1997. Nonetheless, the current technique has severe drawbacks. The purpose of this study is to assess Iraq's present EIA system. The evaluation was carried out using a simple conceptual model created to meet the goal. The performance of the EIA process in Iraq is evaluated, and a list of recommendations for further enhancing the Iraqi EIA system is developed by key interviews. The findings show that Iraq's current EIA system fulfills seven of the fourteen assessment criteria developed and applied for this study's evaluation, partially meets four, and fails to satisfy three. This study aims to strengthen Iraq's EIA process by making recommendations such as allocating adequate funds for the EIA process, particularly for the Iraqi government's monitoring of environmental regulations, and providing capacity building and EIA training to individuals involved in the EIA process. These recommendations might help to enhance the EIA process and make it more accessible to developing countries. The results provide a national basis for analyzing EIA and should help other developing countries create, evaluate, and review EIA.

Past local industrial disasters and involvement of NGOs stimulate public participation in transboundary Environmental Impact Assessment

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) emerged as a regulatory procedure and is now implemented worldwide. EIA aims to increase the sustainability of economic activities by decreasing the impact on environmental components. Transparency of the evaluation process is a key feature of the procedure, and this is achieved predominantly by encouraging participation in public debates. Public participation is essential for EIA's effectiveness, particularly in transboundary projects. This study evaluates whether media coverage of certain projects with transboundary environmental impacts increases public participation during EIA. We analyzed how online media covered the stories about four major projects subject to the EIA procedure in Romania (i.e., reactors 3 and 4 of Cernavoda Nuclear Power Plant, Oltenita used oil recycling facility, Certej mining project, management of Moldova Noua tailing ponds). We focused on articles published between 2010 and 2020, covering stories about the four projects. We further extracted the stakeholders involved in the projects using social network analysis. We extracted the main topics of articles discussing the four projects using deep categorization tools. The polarities of titles and contents of the articles were assessed using sentiment analysis tools. Our findings indicate that EIA is a media subject only when NGOs become important actors in the process and the industry generated local industrial disasters in the past; otherwise, the media rarely debate the environmental impact of projects. Without NGO reactions, Romanian readers are fed with political and economic aspects driven by large projects rather than environmental issues. The outcome of the current study is significant for understanding what triggers NGOs and the media to take a stand against major projects. Projects involving activities that generated ecological disasters in Romania's recent history are strongly opposed by NGOs and the public. In such cases, environmental and EIA topics are more often included in media stories. However, projects with undeniable environmental impact but without a negative background in Romania do not reach the public agenda, and the media stories do not focus on environmental aspects either, leading to limited public participation within the EIA procedure.

The power of protest in the EIA proceedings. Influence of local community on environmental decisions regarding intensive livestock operations - Example of Poland

Planned intensive livestock operations (ILOs) are often the subject of protests from the local communities due to the possible negative impacts. Active participation of local people occurs at an early stage of investment process, i.e. environmental impact assessment (EIA). The aim of this paper is to reveal the strength of influence from the protesting residents on the environmental proceedings for intensive livestock operations, the knowledge that local people bring to the proceedings and whether - finally - environmental conditions are established, giving the green light to the investment. The results showed that the EIA in Poland mainly endorses technocratic rationality and does not include comprehensive assessment of social impact (SIA). Yet, owing to the opposition from the local inhabitants, who bring into the EIA procedure, concerning ILOs, their value-based and experiential knowledge, local authorities often refuse to establish the environmental conditions for the potential investors. In practice the opposition from the inhabitants leads to the broadening of the scope of SIA in the framework of EIA. This means, however, that the environmental procedures get more complex and controversial from the legal point of view. Ultimately, the majority of the analysed instances of ILO projects, against which the local inhabitants protested, got blocked at the procedural stage of EIA.

Criteria for Identifying Splitting of Projects (Salami-Slicing) Tactic in Light of the C-11/20 Regione Puglia Case and eia Practice in Greece

Abstract The aim of this paper is to assess the method of ‘salami-slicing’ or ‘project splitting’, which refers to the act of splitting of larger projects into smaller units before or during the environmental impact assessment procedure, as provided for in the eia Directive. To this end, emphasis is placed on the definition and key features of this concept as delineated by the Court of Justice of the European Union (cjeu). The debate is enriched by the recent cjeu Regione Puglia case as well as the analysis of the salami-slicing tactic in Greek case-law and public administrative practice. Subsequently, in light of the EU and Greek jurisprudence on this matter, the determination of certain criteria that can be used as rebuttable presumptions of identifying salami-slicing is attempted. Lastly, recognizing that salami-slicing practices go beyond (the scope of) a technical assessment, it is concluded that the emergence of standard salami-slicing criteria might be of added value both in safeguarding the legality of the entirety of the environmental permitting process and in ensuring the effective implementation of the precautionary principle.

Concise or comprehensive? Predictors of impact assessment choices for electric transmission line projects.

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedures required in the United States and many other countries are often highlighted as a major hindrance to timely and efficient deployment of critical infrastructure projects. Under the U.S. National Environmental Policy Act, a more extensive environmental impact statement (EIS) review can take several more years and cost much more than a succinct environmental assessment (EA). This not only affects the project in question, but also likely informs how-or whether-additional projects are pursued. Thus, understanding key predictors of the EA versus EIS choice sheds light on supply-side considerations affecting infrastructure deficits. Using the case of NEPA reviews conducted for 244 transmission line projects between 2005 and 2018 by two U.S. federal agencies in the western United States, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Department of Energy (DOE), this addresses the following question: What project features most predict whether EA or an EIS is used to assess a transmission line project? Drawing upon NEPA assessment guidance and agency NEPA records, we use a regression classification tree to analyze how protocols and project attributes relate to assessment choice. The result is essentially a null finding: transmission line length is by far the most important predictor of whether a project receives an extensive EIS or a shorter EA, with little predictive value provided by other attributes. While absolute project size undoubtedly influences impacts, the lack of further differentiation in what predicts use of EISs versus EAs suggests assessment does not simply respond to project details but also shapes proposal and design choices beforehand.

Assessment of the Еffectiveness of the EIA System and its Role in the Development of the Industrial Zone of the City

The prospects of applying the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedure as part of nature protection in an industrial area city development are analyzed . The issues of increasing the economic efficiency and investment attractiveness of industrial areas development, with constant monitoring of the possible negative impact on the environment are considered. Different aspects of the city industrial zones development with the introduction of modern emission/discharge cleaning technologies and improve the environmental safety of industries as a whole were studied. The statistical data on the territory pollution of Samara region big cities (on the case of Togliatti), on the industrial enterprises making the greatest contribution to the pollution of the region environment are analyzed. The structure of the EIA project is investigated, using a specific example of the industrial zone of PJSC KuibyshevAzot.

Location of photovoltaic farms in the absence of a local spatial development plan

Depletion of fossil fuel resources is no longer just a pessimistic vision of the future. The economy’s demand for electricity continues to grow steadily and, given the dwindling resources of traditional energy sources, makes humanity look for alternative solutions. Harvesting energy from renewable sources is becoming commonplace, solar energy being one of them. The development of technology provides more and more new technical solutions, and photovoltaic installations in the form of farms are gaining popularity in Poland. The quantity of electricity generated from them depends on many factors, i.e. not only the efficiency of the cells as such, but also the size of the area covered. In the light of the existing regulations, projects based on the development of photovoltaic systems with an area of not less than 1 hectare are classified as projects that may potentially have a significant impact on the environment, which entails the need to conduct an environmental impact assessment procedure and then obtain a building permit by the investor. The possibility of obtaining a building permit for a photovoltaic farm installation depends on obtaining a decision on land development and management conditions or a decision on the location of public purpose investment. At this stage, administrative bodies are faced with the need to decide how the required arrangements are to be made between administrative bodies. Legislative acts in force in Poland do not seem to regulate this issue in a sufficiently clear manner. This study analyses the above issue from the point of view of the existing provisions of the Spatial Planning and Development Act.

ПРАВОВІ ТА ОРГАНІЗАЦІЙНІ ЗАСАДИ ОЦІНКИ ВПЛИВУ НА ДОВКІЛЛЯ

The article notes that economic priorities remain subordinated to economic activity, and the economic development of the state is supported by unbalanced activities of natural resources. It should be emphasized that after the signing of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, our state undertook to be involved in the harmonization of environmental legislation with European ones. One such step was the adoption of the Law of Ukraine “On Environmental Impact Assessment”, according to which most enterprises must go through an environmental impact assessment procedure when planning their activities that will have an impact on the environment. Emphasis is placed on the fact that environmental impact assessment is an administrative procedure that has clearly defined stages, rights and responsibilities of its subjects and is carried out by the competent authorities. Legal and organizational aspects of environmental impact assessment are identified. The stages of the environmental impact assessment procedure are analyzed. It is substantiated that the decision on the obligation to carry out an environmental impact assessment for the planned activity is made by the subjects of this activity. However, it is emphasized that the current legislation does not define the entity that has the right and obligation to monitor the compliance of decisions with these criteria if the entity believes that its activities do not fall under the criteria of mandatory impact assessment on the environment. It is determined that the environmental impact assessment procedure is aimed at the development of environmentally friendly economic activities, achieving a balance of interests of economic entities, residents of the territory in which these activities are carried out and the state. Emphasis is placed on the fact that the legal and organizational framework for environmental impact assessment is currently clearly spelled out in the legislation, but their practical implementation is not in full, which suggests that the main purpose of the Law of Ukraine “On Environmental Impact Assessment” is not is achieved. It is concluded that the environmental impact assessment procedure is multi-stage.

An evaluation of EIA system performance in Turkey in the context of procedural effectiveness

Purpose In Turkey, where the environmental impact assessment (EIA) has been applied since 1993, there have been numerous amendments in the legal and administrative process of the EIA. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of those amendments to the EIA process. Design/methodology/approach This paper evaluated EIA system performance in the context of procedural effectiveness in Turkey from the day implementation was begun. From its beginning to the present day, the positive and negative developments at the EIA process in Turkey caused by the amendments were evaluated and at which stages. Measures recommended increasing the effectiveness of each of the EIA systems were also identified. Findings As the EIA Directive first came into force in the USA in 1970, EIA procedures have been widely adopted throughout the world. Although it has been implemented for many years, expectations regarding the EIA process have still not been realized which has forced countries to conduct studies to increase the effectiveness of the EIA process. Turkey, like other countries that are implementing the EIA, acknowledges that the EIA is a significant impact assessment tool and continues its studies to implement this system effectively. In this respect, in Turkey, where the EIA has been applied since 1993, there have been numerous amendments in the legal and administrative process of the EIA. Originality/value The results obtained from this study were expected to facilitate the evaluation of the EIA process in Turkey and to guide other similar countries.

Researchers' perspective on the main strengths and weaknesses of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedures

Core characteristics of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedures along with the quality of implementation vary from country to country and sometimes from project to project. However, several issues obstructing EIA's proper implementation are common, such as: national or regional EIA specific regulations, low quality of assessment reports, insufficient equipment and trained staff, inadequate institutional framework, lack of public participation, and low levels of cooperation between policymakers, researchers, and stakeholders. The gap between EIA research and practice is often highlighted in the scientific literature and technical reports; however, data is often limited to particular cases. This paper explores researchers' perspectives on the main strengths and weaknesses of EIA so we may advance recommendations to improve the quality and effectiveness of EIA procedures for more sustainable outcomes. We applied an online survey on EIA strengths and weaknesses to researchers that published at least one paper related to EIA in the last ten years. We use different statistical analyses, network analysis and co-occurrence analysis to investigate the 103 responses received from researchers in the field. Our findings capture researchers' perspectives and could help to change our current traditional approaches. Our results could also help us rethink the EIA collaborative process leading it toward more sustainable holistic planning by learning from past experiences, best practices, and expert opinion. We highlight important EIA researchers' recommendations for improving EIA procedures and the relationship between EIA and the scientific field, and implicitly for improving the quality of the environment and for developing a better EIA strategy.

The mitigation hierarchy in environmental impact assessment and related legislation as a tool for species conservation: A case study of western chimpanzees and mining development

Global biodiversity loss is occurring at an alarming rate, with a growing consensus that we are entering a sixth mass extinction. Rapid human development and associated habitat loss, principally through agriculture, infrastructure and extractive industries, is a significant contributor. The critically endangered western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) is at the nexus of the development-habitat loss conflict with 83% of the subspecies occurring outside protected areas. To protect its habitat, robust regulation of large-scale development, in particular through Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedures that adequately incorporate the Mitigation Hierarchy Principles (MHPs), is required. We developed a framework to review EIA and related legislation in all eight western chimpanzee range countries and assessed how well they incorporate MHPs, focusing specifically on mining activity. Costa Rica was selected as a benchmark of good practice, based on the recognised quality of its biodiversity laws. Overall performance of the eight countries fell substantially below that of Costa Rica. Whilst isolated good examples were identified, the overall approach legislates for broad concepts but fails to deliver on detailed provisions. As recommended by the current regional action plan for the conservation of western chimpanzees, all countries would benefit from urgent legislative reform to better incorporate MHPs within EIA procedures. This study provides recommendations in that regard together with a replicable tool for assessing EIA legislation in other jurisdictions.

Public participation, indigenous peoples’ land rights and major infrastructure projects in the Amazon: The case for a human rights assessment framework

AbstractThe recognition of land title and demarcation of indigenous peoples’ ancestral lands and the guarantee of the rights of consultation and free, prior and informed consent in the context of large infrastructure projects represent some of the major challenges for indigenous peoples and communities in the Amazon States. These challenges have been exacerbated by the election of the current Brazilian federal government in power since January 2019. Yet a significant development with the potential to strengthen participatory environmental governance in the region followed the adoption and entry into force in April 2021 of the 2018 Regional Agreement on Access to Environmental Information, Public Participation and Access to Justice in Latin America and the Caribbean. This article will argue that national environmental impact assessment and licensing procedures must integrate a human rights approach to project impact assessments to safeguard the protection of the environment and indigenous peoples’ fundamental rights.

How can the effects of EIA procedures and legislation foreseen for the mining operation activities to mining change positively in Turkey?

Environmental criteria have an impact on the decisions made whether to realize mining operating activities or not alongside with criteria for production and investment such as reserve, cut off grade, sales price, cost. In this direction, according to the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), it is determined whether mining projects will be carried out or not. Necessary arrangements have been made in the EIA Regulations since the first time they came into force in Turkey. And environmentally sensitive EIA reports were prepared to carry out mining activities. Additionally, the participation of local community to the EIA process is ensured and mining enterprises also contribute economically to the mining region. Turkey has adopted legislation similar to EU legislation and carried out its applications in EIA and other environmental legislation in compliance with EU legislation for the European Union (EU) membership. Thus, in Turkey, being sensitive to the environment, EIA for mining is carried out under a tighter audit and more controlled way compared to EU countries locally and no mining projects that do not comply with the environment are approved and current activities are halted. However, bureaucracy has increased in EIA assessments, permitting processes have been prolonged, and mining investments have become difficult. This situation can be observed with the decline of Turkey in the worldwide rank regarding the mining investment attractiveness index (IAI) category and the other categories determining it, or with the fact that Turkey doesn't have a steady progress when compared to the EU member states. For the solution of the problems in Turkey, it was suggested that legislation which would enable projects with EIA Positive decisions to be carried out by being subjected to only one law and being obtained from one institution was made. Also, it is beneficial to take account of the suggestion which says each mineral group shall be subject to different processes in terms of EIA due to the fact that each may have a significantly different environmental effect. According to the survey conducted, majority of mining sector agrees with this view.

Open-pit Mining Area Segmentation of Remote Sensing Images Based on DUSegNet

Remote sensing is an important technical means for monitoring and protecting mineral resources. However, because of the complex surface environment, very few good results have been achieved in the study of automatic open-pit mining area segmentation. Inspired by SegNet, UNet and D-LinkNet, this paper proposes a novel deep convolutional neural network for pixel-level semantic segmentation of optical remote sensing images termed DUSegNet. In this network, the pyramid model and upsampling method of pooling indices, similar to SegNet, are employed in the encoder–decoder architecture. In addition, the convolutional skip connection architecture, similar to UNet, is adopted to connect shallow features to the decoder. Additionally, the serial-parallel model, similar to D-LinkNet; the intensifier constructed by dilated convolution; and the classifier constructed by softmax layers are applied in the process of encoding and decoding. In the practical application stage, we present an effective open-pit mining area segmentation method for entire remote sensing images, which has great significance for practical work, such as environmental impact assessment procedures and mine management. In the experimental stage, we compared the open-pit mining area segmentation effects of SegNet, UNet, DecovNet, and DUSegNet on the same dataset manually collected from GF-2 remote sensing images and verified the advantages of DUSegNet using graphic results and optimal evaluation metrics, such as AP (0.94) and F-score (0.67).

Residential Environmental Suitability Evaluation on the Area Packed with Independently Located Factories - Focused on Sawol Community, Incheon, Korea -

The individual location of the factory was accelerated by deregulates building regulations and simplifies environmental impact assessment procedures to facilitate the expansion of factories in non-urban areas such as natural green areas. As a result, non-urban areas such as natural green areas continued to increase the location of avoiding facilities such as factories, and the deterioration of the residential environment was accelerated by chemicals, noise, and odors emitted from these facilities. The existing residential environment evaluation study focused on expanding facilities and infrastructure maintenance projects such as the HEMI so the evaluation framework for residents’ health and safety of environmental avoidance facilities is insufficient. In this study, the RERI model was developed by accepting climate change risk assessment models such as IPCC, and the residential environment suitability was evaluated by the residential environment risk as a receptor.

Environmentally-driven design of a floating desalination platform (Case study: reverse osmosis floating desalination platform of ras gharib, Egypt)

<abstract> Floating desalination plants are fairly new technologies and are not as common as the traditional land-based desalination plants. Almost none of the proposed nor installed projects' designers indicates that the design is environmentally driven, and only few designs are environmentally assessed. This paper aims to highlight the significant role of the environmental practices to achieve a sustainable design, where most of the environmental impact assessment procedures are performed prior to the design phase. Throughout the research, comparing alternatives and analyzing the baseline provided reliable technical help in the tasks of selecting the proposed project's location, desalination technology, power source and platform configuration. Thus, detailed technical descriptions of different systems are presented. Finally, environmental impacts associated with the operation of the proposed floating desalination plant in the selected location are assessed to give guidance on the monitoring and mitigation processes necessary to enhance the process performance, minimize the adverse environmental impacts and ensure the project's sustainability. </abstract>

Acquiring practice in environmental and social impact assessment: case study of Lviv city dumpsite, Ukraine

Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM) is a new and fast-growing business area that is becoming widespread in Ukraine. The fire accident at Lviv city landfill "Hrybovychi" forced the local governments to initiate work on its closure and reclamation. The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the planned activity is the first mandatory step in this direction. The complex nature of EIA procedures requires a similarly integrated approach to identify hazards and develop a shared vision of existing risks. This is demonstrated by the analysis of two published EIA reports on remediation of "Hrybovychi" dump and the dangers that were not identified. Threats of additional groundwater pollution, causes of fire and consequences of negative impact on adjacent areas, the possibility of re-ignition of the landfill, the spreading of micro-particles (PM2,5), and formation of toxic compounds classified as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) together with their long-distance migration - these and other dangers were not identified and were not discussed with public organizations. The article aims at showing a scientific approach to identifying environmental hazards in combination with the social component - assessments of problematic activities for public health, which are often ignored in post-Soviet countries. Current and best practices of the Baltic Sea countries in this field are presented by an international team of university scientists. Analysis of critical observations and making recommendations for preventing, minimizing, and mitigating the adverse effects of an accident can help to improve the peer review and development of similar EIA projects.

Participación ciudadana en los procesos de evaluación de impacto ambiental

El presente trabajo analiza la participación ciudadana en los procesos de evaluación de impacto ambiental en el Paraguay, lo cual se ve justificado en tanto la misma conforma uno de los principios en los cuales se basa el moderno Derecho ambiental, debido a los peculiares caracteres del hábitat, el carácter social del ambiente y la diversidad de los problemas ambientales. El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar las instancias de participación en el procedimiento administrativo del proceso de evaluación de impacto ambiental. Se desarrolla a través de la revisión bibliográfica y legislativa, el tipo de investigación es exploratoria y descriptiva. El análisis demostró que, en el ordenamiento jurídico paraguayo, la legislación ambiental reconoce diversos espacios de intervención de la ciudadanía, uno de ellos, el procedimiento de evaluación de impacto ambiental y que, si bien existe consenso como instrumento obligatorio para la aprobación de proyectos capaces de causar daño al ambiente, no se visualiza eficaz para considerar mejoras ambientales.