Improvement of environmental impact assesment in the Baltic States

Abstract

The main purpose of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is to assess the possible impact of the implementation of intended activities, or a planning document, on the environment and to subsequently develop proposals for the prevention or decreasing of negative effects in order to beyond compliance specified in regulatory enactments. The EIA 85/337/EEC was adopted and proclaimed 25 years ago, during these years a system for impact assessment was built and many projects have been conducted including the methodology. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia belong to the same region, however, significant differences in the procedure exist. In the Baltic States the EIA procedure has been carried out for more than ten years, every country has its own procedure for screening and scoping. In the same period the development of alternative methodology started blooming in Europe: the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. LCA is a specific procedure for product or process impact assessment specified in the ISO Standards 14040-44. LCA differs from EIA in its primary holistic approach that is referenced not on the evaluation of the impacts of a particular site or facility but on the entire environmental effects (direct and indirect) of a certain product or system among all their single life processes (cradle-to-grave thinking). The LCA and EIA tools are compared in this article. The examples of how LCA methodology and results of LCA can be used to improve the EIA procedure are also presented. The work concludes with the suggestions how to include principles of LCA in the EIA procedure for the improvement of the impact assessment in the Baltic States.