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BOOK REVIEW |
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BOOK REVIEW |
Environment Impact
Assessment: Process and Practice Book Environmental
Concerns Uprety’s
new book discusses various ways of environment impact assessment By A
CORRESPONDENT Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been considered as an effective planning and management tool to make the development projects environmentally sound and sustainable. This tool is used to identify and predict the environmental impacts and evaluate their significance. This tool accommodates public concerns as EIA reports are made public. Usage of this tool was recognized in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the developed countries, and after the 1992 Earth Summit in the developing countries. Nepal used this tool since 1980s and its usage has spread after the enforcement of Environment Protection Act (EPA) 1996 and Environment Protection Rules (EPR) 1997 in June 1997. EPR includes about 200 different types of projects requiring either Initial Environmental Examination (IEE) or EIA. The book aims to clarify the concepts, procedures and practices EIA as well as accommodate Nepal's legal provisions on IEE and EIA. This book will be useful for professionals and practitioners involved in EA report preparation, review and decision-making, and also to graduate and post-graduate students. The project managers and EA recommendation implementers would also find it useful to integrate environmental concerns in the project cycle. During the early phase of development, planners and policy makers undermined the impacts of environment. Only after the major damages and destruction, there was a realization of sorts of EIA. For Nepalese experts, it is a new area since many projects that were constructed in the past are now facing many problems regarding the implication to the environment. The book begins with the origin, process and benefit of using EIA and ends with key challenges and future course of actions to mainstream it in Nepal's socio-economic development process. The book contains following 14 chapters including environmental assessment: The principle and understanding , Environmental Assessment in the non-regulatory and regulatory context, Environmental screening, scoping and TOR Baseline information and alternative analysis. Apart from them, it also includes Identification, prediction and evaluation of environmental impacts, Environmental protection measures, Environmental monitoring, Environmental auditing, Environmental management plan preparing an Environmental Assessment report, EA report review and decision-making, Stakeholder consultation and public participation and key challenges and the way forward. Uprety, an initiator of EIA process in Nepal since 1983, explains the challenges and prospects of the EIA. Before joining as an Environment Officer at the Environment Division of the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation, Uprety worked for about six years at the EIA Section of the Ministry of Population and Environment. This is not his first work as he is credited for publishing over 20 dozens of papers and articles on Nepalese environmental issues. ”I do consider that this book recapitulates about two decades of my experience on institutionalizing an environmental assessment system in Nepal,” said Uprety. Despite short experience in the field of EIA, Nepal has made tremendous progress in developing the modalities and mechanism to overview the environmental impact assessment. The new book will help students and other scholars to understand various aspects of EIA. |
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