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Significance as a concept is
at the core of impact identification, prediction, evaluation and
decision-making in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) processes.
Despite this, there is no international consensus amongst
practitioners on an agreed approach for assessing the significance
of impacts. Evaluating the significance of environmental impacts is
linked to all the phases of the EIA process. It is used throughout
the process and formal or intuitive evaluations can be made at
different stages. The
current general practice of determining significance is to derive it
from a combination of scientific methods and values ascribed by the
EIA team. The various stakeholders involved in the EIA process are
very seldom afforded an opportunity to relate their concerns, views
and values to determining the significance of impacts. Including
stakeholders in the process of determining the significance of
impacts represents a serious challenge to the current EIA practice.
The evaluation of significance will remain contentious even when
using scientific criteria for thresholds of significance or when
using a structured generic approach. This paper focuses on
the concept of significance in the identification, prediction and
evaluation of impacts. It provides an overview of the formal
methods, criteria and generic approaches, which are used to
determine the significance of impacts. The paper concludes that
evaluation of impact significance should include consideration of
value judgements and whose values they represent. It is considered a
strength that the concept of significance can be adapted to
different political, social and cultural contexts. |