Environmental assessment (EA) in forestry aims to identify the environmental consequences of actions, and to evaluate if these actions are to have serious environmental and economic consequences. Other definitions can also be found for EA: the World Bank defines the purpose of EA as one of “enhancing projects by helping prevent, minimize, mitigate or compensate for any adverse environmental, and often, social impacts”. UNDP, in contrast, defines EA as
“an analytical process that systematically examines the possible consequences of the implementation of projects, policies and programmes. Its main objective is to provide decison-makers with an account of the implications of alternative courses of action before a decision is made.”
Regardless of the definition, EA is a broad concept and not confined to simple listings of potential environmental impacts accompanied by suggested mitigating measures. It is a fluid process linked closely to economics (as this manual will emphasize), social systems analysis and the project cycle. EA is not a one-time exercise, nor is it rigid or static, although formal procedures assist in providing a structure within which an EA is carried out.
EA should be integrated into the project cycle, starting at the earliest point, and must be integrated throughout via a monitoring process. These requirements recognize that the life of a project extends through many phases, beginning with identification, and then proceeding to prefeasibility and feasibility studies, final design and implementation, and terminating in final project review and followup. There is an integral role for EA at each of these stages in a project's life. Similarly, preparing forest sector projects, policies or programmes is a multifaceted process, involving technical forestry planning, engineering, financial analysis and political and social considerations. An EA, therefore, should not be an isolated exercise which has only infrequent contacts with these other stages and dimensions of project preparation and implementation. Environmental indicators identified early in the process should be monitored as a routine project activity, and mechanisms put in place so that information on environmental quality can feed into ongoing project decision-making.
EA objectives should be “in tune” with broad project objectives which, in turn, should reflect society's environmental and economic goals. Thus, one way of providing a benchmark with which to judge environmental consequences is to consider the environmental sustainability of a project, a frequently stated, if vague, policy target of many Asian countries. Sustainability can be represented by:
Ecological sustainability.
Will the genetic biodiversity and ecosystem functions be substantially affected by the project, both on an immediate and long term time scale and in a local, regional, national and international spatial scale?
Economic sustainability
Will the project's environmental consequences bring about long term economic benefits or costs, once mitigating measures (where necessary) have been integrated into project design?
Social sustainability.
Will the social systems inside and outside the project area be markedly affected by the project's environmental impact, either for good or for bad, and will these social consequences lead to further environmental changes?
Sustainability is not a question of maintaining a static situation. Ecological and social communities are naturally subject to change and may change for the better or worse in absence of the project. The different forms of sustainability are also linked. If social sustainability can be achieved, then ecological sustainability may result and vice versa. The objective view of sustainability for environmental assessment of a project depends on the overall policy and institutional context.
The focus on sustainability in the discussion above reflects new thinking in the natural resource sciences. For forestry this new thinking is manifested in a shift away from managing forests purely for timber production. Integrating both economic and social analyses into forest management decision-making has helped in recognizing that forests produce, and are relied upon for, much more than timber. Forest projects are now routinely designed to generate not only financial benefits but often non-market (ie. subsistence) and environmental benefits as well. Thus, EA no longer consists of just looking for negative impacts but requires tallying of the positive ones too. Recognition of the multifunctional nature of forests, especially their role in maintaining biodiversity, requires that ecology play a greater role in EA. Similarly, economic valuation techniques, many of them newly developed and unfamiliar to foresters, have become an important analytical tool in the new way of thinking about natural resource management.
Despite this note of optimism, there remain situations where negative environmental impacts are deliberately overlooked by Asian forest nations, in pursuance of social and financial benefits (ie. revenues, employment) which are deemed to outweigh short term negative environmental impacts, even if mitigating measures cannot be adopted. Environmental assessments rarely possess the stature or force of law to result in a veto of highly-prized developments. It is ultimately at the policy or decision-making level that ‘weights’ are assigned to positive and negative impacts of projects. Thus, a good EA does not guarantee sustainable resource management if there is not the political will to act on it.
The purpose of this manual is to provide Asian planners and foresters with an overview of current practice in the field of environmental assessment, as applied to forest management and project design, with an emphasis on ecological aspects of forestry (especially biodiversity) and the use of economic analysis as an integral part of the EA process. Thus, it is not its intent to provide a systematic treatment of detailed environmental impact assessment or to provide full coverage of all ecological, economic and social issues associated with EA in its broadest definition. In particular, only a cursory review of social impact analysis (SIA), as applied to environmental problems in forestry, is presented. Nonetheless, it is recognized that social issues are critical to any project's success. Suggestions for further reading provided at the end of the main text should be helpful for those readers seeking further detail, or wishing to actually undertake an EA in the field. Ideally, the manual should be used in conjunction with a short workshop and maintained by participants as a reference.
The manual is structured in the following way. Chapter 2 covers background issues pertinent to the planners needing to undertake an EA for forestry project. Its content may be superfluous for some, especially foresters already trained in the underlying ecology and institutions of the region. However, to ensure all participants in a course or workshop making use of the manual have a common background of knowledge, such a chapter was included. Chapter 3 presents basic guidelines for undertaking an EA, concentrating on the stages in undertaking a preliminary EA, followed by an overview of detailed sub-sectoral guidelines. The material in Chapter 3 is supplemented by sub-sectoral checklists from the World Bank contained in Appendix 1. Valuation case studies presented in Appendix 4 can also be read as supplementary material to the sub-sectoral guidelines, as the case studies are organized in a similar sub-sectoral fashion. Chapter 4 provides an overview of basic economic analysis and project appraisal concepts, and introduces the techniques of economic valuation, as applied to environmental values of mostly tropical Asian forests. Appendix 2 contains more detailed information on valuation techniques, while Appendix 3 shows which of a selection of valuation techniques are best suited to key environmental problems. The Asian forestry case studies of Appendix 4 further demonstrate the application of valuation techniques and appraisal methods to environmental assessment problems.
