Environmental Impact Assessment and Cost-Benefit Analysis

Overview

Environmental Impact Assessment, strengths and weaknesses of EIA as a management tool and cost-Benefit Analysis.

What you need to know

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Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is an Environmental Impact Assessment?

   Model answer

   A formal study carried out before a coastal scheme is approved, which predicts the effects the proposal would have on the environment so that decision-makers know the consequences before they commit. It establishes a baseline of existing conditions, identifies the likely impacts of construction and of the finished scheme, assesses how significant and how reversible each impact would be, sets out measures to avoid or reduce them, and provides for monitoring once the scheme is built. It does not decide whether the scheme goes ahead; it informs that decision.

2. 2

   What would an EIA for a coastal defence scheme need to consider?

   Model answer

   The baseline survey of what is there: geology, beach profiles, sediment budget and drift direction, water quality, habitats and protected species, and archaeology. The physical consequences: how the structure would alter wave energy, tidal currents and, above all, the movement of sediment along the coast and therefore beaches updrift and downdrift. The ecological consequences: habitat lost beneath the works, disturbance to birds and marine life during construction, and coastal squeeze of intertidal habitat against a new hard defence. The human consequences: visual intrusion, noise and traffic during construction, access to the beach, effects on fishing, tourism and property. Mitigation measures and alternatives, including the option of doing nothing. And a programme for monitoring the coast afterwards to check whether the predictions were right.

3. 3

   What are the strengths and weaknesses of EIA as a management tool?

   Model answer

   Its strengths are that it forces the environmental consequences to be examined systematically before rather than after construction, that it requires alternatives and mitigation to be considered, that it produces a public document which allows local people and interest groups to scrutinise and challenge the proposal, and that it establishes a baseline against which later monitoring can measure change. Its weaknesses are that predicting the behaviour of a coastal system is genuinely difficult and long-term effects are frequently underestimated, that the assessment is usually commissioned and paid for by the developer, which creates a pressure towards favourable conclusions, that it can be treated as a procedural hurdle to be cleared rather than a genuine test, and that it has no force of its own since a scheme can be approved despite an unfavourable assessment. Monitoring commitments are also often poorly funded and quietly dropped.

4. 4

   What is a Cost-Benefit Analysis?

   Model answer

   An appraisal that puts a monetary value on everything a scheme would cost and everything it would deliver, and compares the two, so that the case for spending public money can be tested. Costs include construction, land purchase and the maintenance the structure will require over its lifetime; benefits include the value of property, farmland, infrastructure and business activity protected from erosion and flooding. Because costs and benefits fall in different years, future values are discounted to present values so that they can be added together, and the scheme is normally judged worthwhile if the benefits exceed the costs, often expressed as a benefit-cost ratio greater than one.

5. 5

   Distinguish between tangible and intangible costs and benefits in a coastal CBA, with examples of each.

   Model answer

   Tangible items have a clear market price and can be counted directly: the cost of rock armour, of concrete and of the contractor's time, the maintenance bill, and on the benefit side the market value of houses, farmland, roads and businesses that would otherwise be lost, and the income from tourism protected. Intangible items have no market price but are real nonetheless: the loss of a habitat or a species, the visual damage a large concrete wall does to a scenic coast, the destruction of an archaeological site, the loss of public access to a beach, and the anxiety, community disruption and loss of place felt by residents whose homes are at risk. Intangibles appear on both sides of the account, which is part of what makes the technique contentious.

6. 6

   What are the main criticisms of using CBA to decide coastal management?

   Model answer

   Placing a money value on intangibles such as a rare habitat, a landscape or a community's attachment to a place is inherently arbitrary, so the figures can be chosen to support a preferred conclusion. Discounting future values systematically reduces the weight given to long-term costs, which biases decisions against protecting against slow processes such as sea level rise and in favour of short-lived structures. The analysis depends on predicting erosion rates, property values and maintenance costs decades ahead, which is highly uncertain. Crucially, it rewards protecting high-value property, so wealthy areas pass the test and poorer or thinly populated stretches, where a few farms and homes cannot outweigh the cost, do not, which raises a question of equity rather than of arithmetic. And a narrowly drawn analysis may exclude costs imposed further along the coast.

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