This chapter presents an overview of the environmental assessment (EA) process, concentrating on the evaluation of physical impacts of forestry projects: their initial screening to determine the depth of investigation required, through to steps for the mitigation of possible impacts. The economic dimension to EA are covered in the next chapter and followed by a brief treatment of social issues. Readers should keep it in mind that the procedures described below would be undertaken within a broader project cycle-type framework, as described in Chapter 1. As the carrying out of a fully detailed EA can be highly technical and complex, the following chapter can provide only the guidelines or a basic outline of the procedures that need to be followed. Much of the EA process would appear to be common sense, but it is surprising how even the most experienced worker, when working under field conditions, can overlook items without the use of a checklist. EA therefore needs to be a systematic, stepwise procedure: it is important to work in an organised manner to a system, though the details of that system may vary with the situation.
The initial EA process is essentially one of a sequential gathering of information and evaluation of the impact of the change in circumstances that will result from implementation of a project. The steps required are:
Step 1: Screening of the project.
Step 2: Preliminary assessment of environmental impact
Step 3: Design revision and phased environmental analysis
Environmental information and decision points should be included in the project design as the process proceeds. For example, impacts on water quality may not be envisaged as being significant, but water quality may be identified as a key indicator of environmental impact and the project should be able to react if quality deteriorates. Bioindicators should be selected that can be used to monitor ecosystem health. The sequential process of increased complexity of information gathering may be terminated at each step as more information becomes available. The reason for doing this, is that it is unnecessary to continue investigations if it is decided that there will be no significant environmental impact.
Impacts may be:
Positive.
The project may have a beneficial impact on desirable environmental qualities. For example, protection of forest may improve water quality.
Negative.
The project will cause a deterioration of desirable environmental qualities. For example, logging of forest may cause increased silt load in water.
Direct.
The project will have a direct effect on an environmental factor. For example, protection of a catchment forest will have a direct positive impact on maintaining biodiversity.
Indirect.
The project will indirectly affect an environmental factor. For example, a project may have a negative indirect impact on forest resources adjacent to the project site because of increased population density associated with increased employment opportunities.
The EA process should be seen as a way of eliminating or minimising negative impacts and optimising the positive impacts. Given appropriate environmental information, alternative courses of action can be considered while a project is in the design phase prior to implementation.
The EA process should be included in the original definition and design of the forestry project. Often this is not done in a sufficiently integrated way, and the EA is seen as an external, independent, process. This has resulted in EA being viewed as a negative, restrictive practise, rather than a positive, enabling procedure. The project will have specific objectives and certain criteria that define it to be feasible and desirable by the implementing agency. These objectives and criteria form the framework within which the EA takes place and into which environmental information and indicators are integrated.
During the definition and design phase of the project, it is unlikely that the concept planning team had access to all the information necessary to evaluate the environmental impact. If they did, then the EA will hopefully simply confirm their initial design. If not, then the first step is to gather information in a screening, or scoping, exercise. The term scoping arises from the USA National Environmental Policy Act which includes a regulation “there shall be an early and open process for determining the scope of issues to be addressed and for identifying the significant issues relating to a proposed action”. Scoping is not always accepted, and, depending on the circumstances, might be better placed, or a participatory approach used, in the preliminary assessment.
The main function of screening is to identify the significant issues and eliminate the insignificant ones. To this end, the process should identify, and refer to, as many of the affected communities or stakeholders as possible. Screening has tended to be a meeting between the planners of the forestry project and relevant government officials, for example from the environmental protection agency, natural resources offices, public health, local administration etc. In this it differs from scoping, which implies an open, rather than closed, meeting to exchange information.
Whilst a meeting between officials from a range of ministries recognises inter-sectoral impacts of the project, it assumes that government officials have sufficient information on likely environmental impacts and are representative of all the stakeholders. This is not necessarily true, and whilst it entails more work and raises complex issues, an important part of the screening process must be to identify and consult stakeholders in the project other than government officials. These may be villagers in the immediate project area, fishermen affected by siltation downstream of the project, or local or international environmental groups. The problem with doing this is that local public concern about a project may not reflect long term national requirements and environmentalists rarely agree to eliminate any issue (Kennedy 1987).
In contrast, the advantages of consultation are that potential disagreements and confrontations can be identified early in the process. Issues raised in a broader context can then be taken to the meeting of government officials and their significance evaluated together with a discussion of the likely biophysical and socio-economic impacts of the project. At this point it is helpful to use a checklist such as those contained in Appendix 1, which are representative of the approach taken by the World Bank in assessing its forest sector projects. These use of checklists is discussed in more detail in the next section.
The outcome of screening will be a consensus opinion of one of the following options:
The project proposed has no harmful or a positive environmental impact, and has sufficient environmental monitoring and feedback mechanisms incorporated into its design so that no further environmental information and action is required.
Certain environmental aspects of the project are poorly known or unknown and a preliminary assessment is required.
The project has identified impacts that can be prevented or mitigated by a revision of the project design.
The project is in an environmentally sensitive area with an potentially severe impact and a detailed assessment is required.
Usually at this stage a project will be assigned a “grading” based upon selection of one of the above options, or a similar classification system. For instance, the World Bank uses a system of categories, designated A to D, whereby projects with more significant risks for environmental harm are assigned Category A, while those intended to support or enhance environmental functions are given a Category D. Between the two extremes are two further categories with an increasing likelihood of environmental impacts indicated as one moves from Category C to B.
If the initial screening of the project indicates that a preliminary environmental impact assessment is necessary, then further planning of the project must take the outcome of this assessment into account. An EA is not a process that runs parallel to project planning to be considered at convenient junctures, it must be an integral part of the planning procedure. Once the decision has been made to continue with the EA process, the planning procedure must include it. There are essentially three parts to the preliminary environmental impact assessment, as described below.
Assemble all available information.
The information assembled should include:
basic information on biodiversity values likely to be affected by the project.
Prepare a checklist of likely project impacts with an assessment of the magnitude of the impacts.
Using a checklist can be a useful means of ensuring nothing is missed. The checklist of likely impacts should be prepared in the context of the type of project and project area. The sample checklists provided in Appendix 1, for example, are specific to the type of forestry project under review (for this reason, they are especially relevant to the next section which considers detailed EA by forestry sub-sector). When assessing the impacts, the estimated magnitude and time scale of each impact should be indicated. Effects of the project remote from the project area should not be ignored. If a forestry project causes a river to dry up and so render a hydopower dam useless 500 km downstream, forestry planners will not be popular with the power generation ministry. Or if deforestation causes siltation and loss of fisheries in a neighbouring country, a diplomatic incident may result.
Gathering useful information necessitates field work. Whilst remote sensing and aerial photographs are useful tools, there is no substitute for direct observation and above all, talking to the people who are likely to affected by the project. The checklist can be divided primarily into environmental and socio-economic components. Whilst these two components are traditionally assessed independently, there are strong links between the socio-economic situation of a community and their impact on the environment (this point is discussed in more detail in Chapter 5). There is a danger that these linkages can be overlooked if a checklist is used uncritically.
Decide on whether to revise the project, based on assessment of the impacts.
Once completed, the information gathered and presented in the form of a check-list should enable a decision to made as to whether or not further action needs to be taken to reconsider the project design, carry out phased environmental monitoring, or conduct a detailed EA.
The initial screening or preliminary assessment of the environmental impact of a project may recommend a combination of revision of the project design and environmental monitoring phased over the duration of the project. In situations of minimal environmental risk, these actions may be sufficient to address environmental concerns. Where instead severe environmental impacts are anticipated, and detailed EA will be required, more substantial mitigating measures are liable to be necessary. This situation is covered under Section 3.3.1.
Revision of project design may require only simple mitigating measures, such as relocating roads or changing the seasonal timing of particular activities. Certain areas may need to be considered as being important for protection, rather than production. Some care should be taken to avoid preconceptions. It may be easier and cheaper to change a policy decision or legal framework, for example, relating to involvement of local communities in management decisions and granting access to resources, than it is to use an active management prescription to solve an apparent problem such as relocating a community.
Environmental monitoring is essentially an extension of the information gathering process and should be chosen if there is incomplete knowledge of the project impacts. Thus, even if a detailed EA is not needed, the environmental review process does not terminate at this stage. If environmental monitoring is chosen, then the project design needs to be sufficiently flexibile to incorporate any likely findings from the monitoring programme as implementation proceeds. In other words, likely outcomes should be anticipated and contingency plans included. More detailed environmental monitoring is covered in Section 3.3.2.
If a project is considered to be likely to have substantial impacts -- for example, if it is in an environmentally or socially sensitive area -- then screening or preliminary assessment will recommend a detailed environment assessment. A detailed EA will consist of much more than assembling background information and use of checklists. Rather it will contain a substantial active research component that may range from establishing new weather stations to conducting detailed socio-economic household or medical surveys.
Establishment of a protection forest is not a neutral activity without an environmental impact. Social impacts, for example, are liable to be substantial (see Chapter 5 for a brief overview of social issues in EA). Neither does it mean that no management is required. When a forest is reserved purely for protection, then access to previously utilised forest resources will be restricted or prevented all together. Wildlife populations can increase in the forest, causing damage to crops in adjacent farmland and requiring family members -- often children -- to spend time guarding crops when they could be carrying out other more beneficial activities. Moreover, authorities do not generally regard protected forests as non-productive, but seek to optimize financial returns from them through tourism (see Section 4.2). Tourism can be beneficial for remote rural communities, generating income and creating new transport infrastructure where none existed before. Two examples of the creation of protected areas, one in Thailand and the other in Sri Lanka, are considered in Appendix 2 in terms of the economic benefits they have created.
However, tourism can bring diseases and non-traditional social practises. The negative impacts of tourism include: increased population pressure resulting in construction of towns, hotels, recreation facilities, airports and roads; introduction of plants, domestic and feral animals. Islands are particularly susceptible to invasion as their biota have evolved often without competition. In capturing environmental values with tourism, natural environmental risks such as hurricanes, volcanic activity, landslides and floods need to be taken into account using a risk analysis.
Potential direct negative impacts of tourism include (World Bank 1991):
displacement of indigenous population.
Potential indirect negative impacts of tourism include (World Bank 1991):
If an area has already been identified as being of sufficient biodiversity or scenic value to warrant consideration as a protection reserve, and the management aim is to maintain or improve its environmental value, an important question to ask is whether current utilisation of the forest is ecologically unsustainable. The next question is how current utilisation can be changed to achieve ecological sustainability.
It may be that ecologically unsustainable practises, such as intensive logging operations could be stopped, but extensive traditional uses, such as gathering of locally utilised medicines and materials for household utensils, could continue. If declaration of a protected forest in order to achieve ecological sustainability results in social unsustainability, it is likely that the disaffected local population will work against the management aims of the forest. This will result in increased management costs for patrolling and legal actions.
For the purposes of an EA the key questions to ask are:
what are the traditional tenure and access rights to the forest?
what are the current tenure and access rights, and have they been superimposed to the detriment of a traditional system?
who are the current beneficiaries of access to forest resources?
how sustainable is current extraction of forest resources?
who will benefit from protection?
who will loose from protection?
The EA should identify ways of returning benefits of protection to local stakeholders who may lose access to land and resources. Environmental benefits from protection may be remote from the site and difficult to value. This makes levels of compensation difficult to assess. Another problem is that if communities living adjacent to protected areas are receiving compensation benefits, this can attract people to the area resulting in social instability and increased pressure on the environment. Designing compensation schemes to capture only those persons rightfully losing access to forest resources can surmount this difficulty.
Natural forests in Asia are ecologically complex, and vary in relation to climate and elevation, as discussed in Chapter 2. A management prescription for one forest may be totally inappropriate for another forest under different ecological conditions. This must be borne in mind when considering the range of management regimes that have been proposed or implemented in Asia. The aim of most natural forest management is to achieve a double dividend; that is, the forests continue to be economically productive whilst retaining their ecological values. Thus, the forests are managed in an ecologically and economically sustainable manner. In order to arrive at a decision about whether to pursue an option for natural forest management, the many direct and indirect environmental benefits arising from that option need to be considered and alternatives evaluated. For example, mangroves have a timber value which is the normal basis for management decisions, but they are also important in maintaining fisheries and coastal protection. Chapter 4 discusses the economic techniques for placing values on forest uses and non-uses and sample case studies of valuation applied to natural forest management are presented in Appendix 2.
In practice, achieving sustainable natural forest management by foresters has proved to be elusive, despite attempts being made for over 100 years. There are two main reasons for the apparent lack of sustainability in natural forest management:
forests have been managed primarily for timber production.
the life cycle of a forestry rotation substantially exceeds that of a political rotation.
social needs of local communities have not been taken into consideration.
Logging is considered in more detail in Section 3.2.3, but timber is not the only forest product of interest. Aside from environmental benefits, such as water catchment, forests have been used for non-timber forest products (NTFP) for thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years and many rural communities rely heavily on NTFPs (see Section 4.1.2). In this respect, ecologically sustainable management has already been achieved, as we regarded the traditionally managed forests as being the most natural, even though centuries of collecting of building poles of a particular species may have resulted in substantial ecological change in the forest. However, this does not mean that extraction of NTFPs is necessarily sustainable. With increasing populations and the commercialisation of NTFPs, new management prescriptions need to be drawn up for natural forest management.
In order to assess the ecological sustainability of extraction, consideration should be given to natural distribution, abundance, population structure and dynamics, and variation of these factors across a landscape for each species. Changes over time in both natural and harvested populations of each species must be projected and evaluated (Hall, P. & Bawa, K. 1993).
Any management prescription involving natural forest management must also take into account social issues and should consider alternatives to extractive management, such as:
reduction of demand for wood through conservation and improved fuel efficiency or alternatives.
more efficient use of forest products, such as veneers, or use of waste wood.
use of non-traditional species.
plantation development.
agro-forestry or social forestry programmes.
development of eco-tourism.
promotion of in-country processing to gain value-added benefits, when economically justified.
use of trees cleared for non-forestry activities.
improvement of agriculture and forestry on previously cleared areas, rather than opening up of new areas.
The most obvious forest value is timber, particularly in relatively undisturbed forest, and concerns for timber values have tended to dominate forest policy and management options (see Boxes 3.1 and 3.2). In terms of normal management time scales, old growth natural forest timber is a non-renewable resource. Replacement will take several hundred years and initial management inputs to assist regeneration are costly. The emphasis for EA here is on management actions which substantially alter the ecological integrity of a site. This may involve destructive logging but no land conversion, or outright conversion of logged land to other uses.
| Box 3.1 | Utilisation of Forest Resources: The Traditional Forester's View |
“ … the word “utilisation” refers in particular to timber of mill-log size … I fully appreciate that there are many other forest products in Tropical Moist Forests, but it is rare in practice that these will dominate management considerations of the designated “permanent” forest estate, whether state, communally, or even privately owned, to the detriment of timber production even for a short period of the felling cycle. It also goes almost without stating it that in general we should be discussing the sustained and hopefully improved production of merchantable timber, rather than the ‘mining’of a valuable renewable natural resource even when under controlled exploitation and economic management” Source: Wyatt-Smith (1987) | |
Appendix 1 provides detailed descriptions of the potential impacts which might be associated with a logging or forest conversion management regime. In brief, these include direct impacts on soils, vegetation, wildlife and abiotic elements of the landscape, as well as social and cultural impacts (see Chapter 5). Potential for erosion and other damages to soils once exposed by loss of tree cover are obvious effects of destructive logging. More subtle alteration of vegetation and wildlife species mixes must also be considered, arising from loss of habitat. Indirect effects of logging also need to be reviewed, including the impacts from transport and other infrastructure development. Downstream or offsite effects should be noted to ensure that these are detected early on and potential damages either minimized or compensated. Mitigation is liable to be important where potentially destructive logging is to be undertaken and is considered in more detail in Section 2.3.
In preference to destructive logging, it is normally best to aim for sustainable forestry management, consistent with the principles of natural forest management described in the previous section. Five conditions, at least, must apply for a logging system to succeed in meeting the conditions of natural forest management, involving timber production in a tropical mixed forest:
after the harvesting of a timber crop, the land must remain in forest use.
harvesting operations must be carried out without impairing the ability of the forest to maintain or re-establish a “natural” structure and composition.
harvesting operations must be carried out without damaging the environmental and social functions that the forests provide.
harvesting is carried out in such a way that adequate regeneration to eventually replace the harvested crop is inducted or, if already on the ground, released without damage.
Full social acceptance of the decision that the land remains in forest after harvesting is necessary for the decision to be effective (see Chapter 5). Official recognition is not enough. If forest conversion to agriculture is the management objective, then sufficient resources and infrastructure are required to ensure that good practises of land husbandry are followed on formerly forested land. Otherwise, once the land is exhausted, further forest land will be required.
| Box 3.2 | Basics of Logging Management Systems for Non-Foresters |
Essentially there are three options for logging an area of forest:
The proportion of the increment to be harvested can be met by felling and removal using a variety of systems:
Source: FAO (1989) | |
If forest products are to be regarded as a crop to be harvested regularly, and natural forests are valued as repositories of biological diversity, then forest products must be planted. Scale of production can very from small holder agro-forestry intercropping to huge industrial plantations. Investment in plantations and afforestation is based on a number of positive impacts (World Bank 1991):
Plantations are an alternative to extraction of natural forest products.
Re-establishing or increasing forest cover brings environmental benefits such as soil and climate stabilisation, control of rainwater runoff and production of desirable fruits, nuts and other commodities.
Establishment of plantations can generate positive economic and social returns (ie.employment).
However, there can be negative impacts, particularly with large plantations:
Plantations can replace valuable natural forest.
During planting and harvesting, soil will be exposed and vulnerable to erosion.
Plantations can deplete soil nutrients and moisture.
Irrigation, fertilisers and chemicals are used to improve growth and these can cause environmental problems.
Land annexed for plantations is often alienated from traditional use and access.
More elaboration of the specific impacts of plantations and afforestation are provided in Appendix 1. One of the more interesting concerns about plantations based upon monospecific planting regimes is their impact on biodiversity, it generally being assumed that such plantations have very limited species richness. While this is obviously true of the overstory trees, some researchers have found that understories in Indian plantations sited in degraded areas can acquire new species as quickly as secondary growth on degraded sites, and in some situations much more quickly (Lugo, Parrotta and Brown, 1993). Thus, when designing plantations, natural successional processes should be maintained as much as possible in the understory, and when assessing biodiversity impacts of plantations, care must be taken to consider prior or alternative land use (ie. was the site degraded and liable to have remained so?).
Choice of species in both plantations and agroforestry needs to be carefully considered. Exotics are usually used because of desirable productivity. Some species improve soil fertility, but others can have negative affects, for example on food crop productivity when intercropped from shading, nutrient depletion or toxic effects. An often-cited example of where this was a concern is the planting of Eucalyptus species in India under social forestry programmes. One of the case studies presented in Appendix 2 deals with this particular situation and demonstrates the complexity of assessing such impacts. Plantations are also often susceptible to fire and attack by pests, although the risk from fire can be reduced by appropriate consideration of social factors.
Processing wood products in the manufacture of paper can have substantial impacts on the environment. A major investment is required for a pulp and paper mill, and to be kept operational large quantities of wood and water are required. Impacts associated with wood supply are covered above. The main impacts which need to be considered in addition are those associated with:
construction of the processing plant.
operation of the processing plant.
waste products.
Since economies of scale apply -- that is, production costs fall as the scale of operations increases -- the mill complex must be quite extensive to be financially viable. As a result, the mill should not be sited in an ecologically sensitive area, but water requirements may make this difficult. In operation, the mill will generate continuous concentrated employment, so consideration needs to be given to the environmental impacts both of the workers and the associated service sector.
Likewise, the occupational health risks faced by employees need be taken into account. Transport infrastructure, both of logs into the mill and finished paper out of the mill, will also need to be considered in an EA.
Pulp and paper mills are notorious for their waste products, and some of the most likely pollutants to be encountered are cited in Appendix 1, along with basic steps for mitigation of impacts. In brief, the pollutants generated by a processing facility will fall within the following three groups:
gaseous emissions, notably sulphurous compounds and some chlorine emissions.
solid waste, which is mostly organic plus boiler ash.
liquid waste from process and wash water.
Modern plants are designed to minimise polluting waste products, but it is important that effective environmental monitoring systems are in place throughout the operating life of the mill. Inevitably, as the plant ages, so the pollution abatement measures, equipment and storage facilities will operate at less than optimum capacity. Effective management decision processes need to be in place and ready-to-go if environmental problems arise.
As outlined in Section 2.3, forest policy can have a major environmental impact. In particular, an EA should consider whether new forest policies address the following:
Integration of the rights and requirements of communities dependent on environmental benefits.
Recognition of cross-sectoral issues.
Inclusion of both use and non-use environmental values as being of importance.
Mechanisms for implementing Statements on environmental importance.
Clear and uncontradictory references to environmental policy and agreements at a local, regional, national and international level.
Constraints in forest policy may influence the environmental impact of a forestry project in an indirect way, and for this reason policy issues must be recognised and accounted for in project design. Constraints identified in existing forest policy have already been discussed in Section 2.3, but because of their importance these bear restating here:
Lack of political support and commitment may exist with respect to implementation of environmental policies and regulations.
Policies are often too ambitious.
Conflicts may exist within state controlled forest agencies when they act as producer, consumer and regulator.
There are institutional weaknesses, which may be managerial, financial or due to lack of capacity.
Forest policy benefits are difficult to quantify.
If necessary, project implementation should be dependant upon policy changes or capacity-building in appropriate sectors.
An EA may indicate that a project will have a major ecological and social impact, but it may be decided that project benefits outweigh the ecological and social costs. In this case, mitigation measures and monitoring of impacts need to be initiated at the planning stage and carried on throughout the project life if necessary.
Mitigation measures are decisions and actions that are designed to minimise adverse impact of a project. In addition to mitigation, alternative project designs should be considered. Often there is more than one way of achieving any particular goal and alternative measures do not necessarily have to be more expensive. It is much more effective and cheaper to include mitigation or consider alternative measures during project planning than to implement them as a crisis management measure later. To put it another way: crisis management is expensive, embarrassing and can cause unnecessary suffering. Mitigation and alternatives are most effectively formulated with the participation of communities likely to be affected by the project. There are structured techniques for doing this, such as the logical framework approach.
Specific mitigation measures need to be targeted to the problem at hand, taking consideration of site conditions and other factors. The checklists provided in Appendix 1 contain useful suggestions for mitigating a host of negative project impacts under varying forestry management regimes, and highlight the important role that mitigation or minimizing of damaging activities can play in addressing environmental impacts.
Monitoring is an important part of an ongoing environmental process to ensure that guidelines and approaches of the original management plan are being followed and that no unforeseen environmental impacts remain undetected. Monitoring should ensure that (World Bank 1991):
contractual and financial conditions are being adhered to with respect to logging and management practises.
unanticipated environmental or socio-economic problems do not occur.
stand treatments are altered in line with changes of site conditions and species.
natural regeneration occurs as predicted.
overall project objectives are being met and management infrastructure is adequate.
Of course, both monitoring and mitigation are liable to impose financial costs and these must be taken into account when arriving at cost estimates for the project in question. It is conceivable that in some cases the added costs of monitoring and mitigation may be difficult to justify, or it may be hard to establish an appropriate scale for these activities. The next chapter provides information about how to use economic analysis, more specifically benefit-cost analysis, as an aid to such decisions.
