Public participation in environmental impact assessment : a comparative analysis of the United Kingdom, South Africa and the United States'

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT:Despite calls for greater public participation in all aspects of environmentalplanning, impact assessment and decision making, opportunities for participation in theplanning, legal and administrative systems governing these activities, are limited. Publicparticipation has often been reduced to a procedural exercise instead of a substantiveprocess to include the public in environmental decision making. Thus, it is relevant toexamine public participation in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), providing waysto improve its effectiveness.The emphasis of this thesis is therefore, to compare the role of publicparticipation in the environmental assessment process in the United Kingdom, SouthAfrica and the United States. It begins by defining the principles of Environmental ImpactAssessment and the concept of public participation and explores how the rationales ofpublic participation may be integrated into the environmental planning process.Features of each of the three existing EIA systems are examined since components suchas the appropriate legislative framework, the institutional framework, the public, andformal and informal public participation opportunities in the EIA process are the factorscontributing towards effective public participation in Environmental Impact Assessment.The author argues that public participation deserves attention because the degreeof participation affects the quality of the Environmental Impact Assessment, which, inturn, affects the quality of a decision about a project. Broader participation creates moreinformation and alternatives to be presented to decision makers, enhancing theopportunity to mesh public values and government policy. Although public participationmay slow down the EIA process, the real goal of EIA theory is to ensure sustainabledevelopment, no matter how long the EIA process takes.Apparently, the three EIA laws discussed in the comparative analysis, areconsistent with sustainable development since these laws operate to force considerationsof environmental impacts into the decision making process. Moreover, properly draftedEIA laws are based on a strict standard of procedural compliance to ensure that theresponsible decision makers are fully apprised of the environmental consequences whichthey review.Involving the public is a safeguard against bad or politically motivated decisions,and a mechanism to increase public awareness of the delicate balance between economicand environmental trade offs. If conducted openly, it may ultimately increase publicconfidence in the decision making process. Public participation has the potential toenhance the maintenance of accountability in public and private sectors. The publicshould realise that they, individually or through interest groups, can participate in publicmatters that affect them, with a view to persuading decision makers and shapingenvironmental policies.The thesis further reviews the different roles the public can play during the variousstages of an Environmental Impact Assessment process, whereby formal and informalpublic participation opportunities are explored according to the country-specific context.The comparative analytical framework in the thesis reveals significant variationswithin and between the three countries. Apparently, the three EIA systems seem topossess more or less mature, well-defined and formal Environmental Impact Assessmentsystems. For the UK and South Africa, examples could be taken from the United States,which has developed more adequate public participation provisions than those of theEuropean Directive and of the South African EIA Regulations, particularly as far as thelevel and degree of public participation and techniques are concerned.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University