According to the Norwegian Planning and Building Act, which i s quite specific, any change of land use or change of land use plan has to be approved by the Municipality and by the County. In case of developmental activities with substantial effects on the environment and society, a separate impact assessment must be made.

See: http://www.regjeringen.no/en/doc/laws/Acts/planning-building-act.html?id=570450

Especially see section 4.2.

I do not have detailed knowledge about legislation in other countries, but I guess that this act is similar at least to that of other Scandinavian countries and probably many other European countries.

Dear Ivar,

Thank you for your answer. In India, we do have an environment protection act and other provisions which mandate impact assessmemt but this is hardly done in terms of cost benefit analysis. I am specifically look for cases which do the latter.

In Flanders we have a standard methodology for performing a social cost-benefit analysis for large infrastructure works. It consists of the classical economic issues but als environmental issues (external costs) and impact on landscape and nature.

unfortunately the manual exist only in Dutch (i think, will check) and the data are also relatively specific for the Flemish region (highly populated area)

For the impact on landscape and nature they integrately need to use our tool the "Nature value explorer", a tool that estimate the impact on ecosystem services. You can check it for free at www.natuurwaardeverkenner.be I think I mentioned it already before in one of your other questions :)