Typically, the environmental impact assessment (EIA) is used to study the chain effects (changes in the environmental evolution in time and space) generated by certain anthropogenic projects. Obviously, climate changes have a major contribution to changing of the environmental conditions, but their effects are analyzed using simulation and forecasting tools. Do not exclude the possibility of developing a new assessment tools that take account of both forms of environmental degradation.

Dear Ramesh,

Noble thought. Yes, it is indeed warranted, Please consider taking some inputs from ISO 14001 environmental management system inputs. Also, please add CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (CSR) and Climate Change Impact factors into the assessment framework, which will help.

Best Regards.

Sekar Gopal.

Dear Ramesh,

Noble thought. Yes, it is indeed warranted, Please consider taking some inputs from ISO 14001 environmental management system inputs. Also, please add CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (CSR) and Climate Change Impact factors into the assessment framework, which will help.

Best Regards.

Sekar Gopal.

Dear Ramesh,

Noble thought. Yes, it is indeed warranted, Please consider taking some inputs from ISO 14001 environmental management system inputs. Also, please add CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (CSR) and Climate Change Impact factors into the assessment framework, which will help.

Best Regards.

Sekar Gopal.

Thank you very much all for your suggestions. I am also thinking about the best option is environmental management system that could be development of site specific environmental management plan. The plan should be practice and whole measures should be implementable.

Maybe here you´ll obtain some guidelines from SEA and other approaches and discussion. http://ec.europa.eu/environment/eia/sea-legalcontext.htm 

Regards

Prasad Bhatt: We agree with his observation and suggest that under current conditions it is necessary to combine several tools including recommend the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and the Studies of hazard, vulnerability and risk (PVR), which considered the effects of climate change, particularly in special development zones.

http://dspace.geotech.cu/jspui/handle/123456789/166

Thank you for your valuable suggestion

Impact Prediction and Identification in EIA considers the degree of Impacts the proposed project has on the environments of air, water, biodiversity, culture including CLIMATE. so in that regards a holistic approach to impact assessment using the methodologies like overlay, batielle system incorporating the team of experts in the fields including climatologists as EIA governance permits. I presume the climate change is dully attended to 

Thanks

for your suggestion

Dear Ramesh,

I understand your point, as there are many procedures that could be used to bring Climate Change in the broad family of tools that features Impact Assessment. To my understanding, Climate Change should be addressed at first at the SEA level (policies, plans, programs), and then at the EIA one (projects). I honestly don't know if a new procedure/tool is what we really need, considering how a multitude of tools has proliferated in the last decades, increasing the complexity of the current scenario on SEA. Because of this, and in order to avoid the risk of streamlining SEA "cutting green tape" (Middle et al. 2013), I would push for an improvement of current procedures of Impact Assessment. From this perspective, both EIA and SEA could be involved.

Since one of the features of SEA is to foster sustainable development (and climate change is certainly one of the key concepts at stake), I would bring Climate Change within these procedures, through a keen selection of relevant indicators broadly used to measure the impacts of Climate Change, or indicators used to measurees the phenomena which contributes to Climate Change.

In this way, I am confident that Climate Change could find its niche within the family of Impact Assessment tools/procedures.

Most certainly I am not saying anything new, however I strongly believe that in the current uncertain and problematic insitutional and professional scenario (the literature on Impact Assessment seems to agree that we have probably too many forms of Impact Assessment, which generates confusion and makes almost impossible to compare practices and legislation in different countries - references to Fischer, Dalal-Clayton, Sadler, Noble, Partidario, etc), what we do need is not another form of environmental management, but rather a stronger committment to what legislation and practices currently provide.

Please not that I am talking primarily from an Italian and European perspective, whereas other countries might have a different institutional and legislative framework.

Bottom line, since we can put little effort in terms of resources and time, I would suggest to work on the set of indicators which are helpful to measure the causes and the impacts of Climate Change, adopting a DPSIR approach (I am not an expert in Climate change, but I have found this paper of much interest - http://wwz.ifremer.fr/dce/content/download/69291/913220/file/DPSIR.pdf ).

From this perspective, Climate Change could simply be added to the current dimensions that are assessed in tiered ways through SEA and then EIA (referring to the European Union framework, this could be added to the 'components' currently identified by the European Directive 42/2001 -please see its attachments at http://ec.europa.eu/environment/eia/sea-legalcontext.htm).

Please let me know in case you find this of any help.

I wish you all the best for your research and work.

Kindest regards,

Umberto

Thank you very much for broad analysis about EIA and climate change perspectives. Yes off course EU directives and SEA have sufficient incorporation about the issues. Development country and some donor supported strategy like WB, ADB has already incorporated this issue. This case is poor in developing countries and we are seeking for appropriate place to address it.

Thank you very much for your contribution

Article Sustainable Development and Environmental Impact Assessment ...

Good article