Environmental impact assessment of infrastructure projects: a governance perspective

Abstract

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) has been promoted as an instrument for preventive environmental management in construction projects, but its performance in safeguarding the environment through influencing project decision-making is questioned. This paper probes the underlying reasons from a governance perspective as an important supplement to the regulatory and technical perspectives. A framework, with process integration, professional governance, and public engagement being its key components, is proposed to analyze the governance arrangements that enable or inhibit the effective functioning of EIA, based on which a comparative study of three infrastructure projects in China, the United States and Finland was conducted. The results reveal that, while the level of process integration and public engagement of EIA determines the degree to which EIA influences project decisions, it is the professional governance that controls the accountability of EIA. The paper has implications on institutionally where efforts should be directed to improve the performance of EIA.

Keywords:

• environmental impact assessment
• project governance
• cross-national comparative studies

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions. We thank all the experts who participated in our research. We also thank the Centre for Industrial Development and Environmental Governance, Tsinghua University, for its critical support. Our greatest gratitude goes to all anonymous participants who kindly participated in the research and, especially, to those who trustfully shared their stories with us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant number 71390523.