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Components of environmental assessment

Various forms of environmental data, including assessment of environment situation, is required from a strategic perspective in order to provide concise and practical direction for appropriate policy making. Appropriate use of environmental assessment system is an important factor for decision making.

The figure below describes some components of environmental assessment;

• Causes / sources,
• Effects / status
• Impacts on human welfare
• Responses

Causes / Source: Environmental conditions are the product of human actions (individuals, communities, firms, governments, other institutions) and ongoing natural processes. Assessment should obviously focus on human causes of environmental change, as natural processes are usually very difficult to control. Of course, natural phenomena, such as earthquakes, flooding, and erosion (the latter two can have a human component) should be monitored in order to take appropriate responses e.g., natural disaster emergency response programs.

The challenge facing environmental assessment practitioners is to identify causes of significant environmental change and relate these causes to effects.

Effects: Human activity effects the environment leading to changes in environmental status. The quantitative effects are often relatively easy to measure, e.g., changes in atmospheric pollutants, changes in stocks of a mineral or timber. However, qualitative impacts such as landscape aesthetics, urban ambiance, are often much more difficult to measure. However, these qualitative effects can be equally or more important in ecological and economic terms than quantitative effects. For example, in post-industrial society, attraction and retention of knowledge industry is often more related to the amenity of an urban area rather than levels of conventional pollutants or coverage by environmental (often network) services - the latter are assumed to exist. Similarly, from an ecological point of view, the bio-diversity of a tropical forest may, in the long run, be much more important in economic terms than the stock of timber it holds.

Impact on Human Welfare: Assuming a human-centered (anthropocentric) point of view, the prime motivator of responses to changes in the environment is concern over human welfare. In East Asia, this concern usually relates to public health, especially in urban areas. However, negative economic consequences of environmental degradation (in the short and / or long run) may also generate concern, e.g., loss of income in rural areas from deforestation and erosion, or loss of higher paying jobs in urban areas because of an inability to attract higher value economic activity. And, some people are concerned about the habitat or way of life as an end in itself.

Identifying past or potential environmental impacts of human intervention both from (a) large projects, e.g., a hydro electric project or major forestry concession and (b) the cumulative behaviour of large numbers of people, e.g., farmers or fishers, is an important assessment activity.

Responses: The end product of the assessment process is to provide information in support of intervention.

By assessing the results of past interventions, much can be learned. For example:

• How did people respond to a regulation? Was there compliance? Did the regulation result in desirable or undesirable secondary effects?
• Were user fees acceptable and did people pay them?
• How elastic or inelastic was demand for a given product when its price was raised by imposition of an environmental tax?

In assessing responses, new interventions that are "in the pipeline" should be identified and their likely effects on environmental status estimated. Once an understanding of the effectiveness and effects of existing and committed future responses has been reached, new interventions can be identified and designed.

Reference: Synthesis study on Modalities for Environmental Assessment for Integrating Environmental Considerations into Economic Policy Making Processes: East and Southeast Asia, ESCAP, 1998, unpublished.

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