Environmental Impact Assessment

EIA systems have been set up worldwide and have become a powerful environment safeguards in the project planning process.  This course is intended to enable students to appreciate the purpose of EIA in the decision making processes and to understand the strengths of EIA in regard to environment management, as well as to appreciate the technical and social/ political limitations of EIA. The course introduces, describes, and enables students to appreciate that the best way to control environmental degradation is by predicting the possible irreversible negative effects of development and their mitigation or alternatives

COURSE JUSTIFICATION/RATIONALE

This is to make the students visualize how policies can be effective in preventing environmental degradation through carrying out an EIA.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of this course, the student should be able to:

Get exposed to the need, methodology, documentation and usefulness of environmental impact assessment and to develop the skill to prepare environmental management plan.

Discuss the broad field of environmental risk assessment, important processes that control contaminant transport and tools that can be used in predicting and managing human health risks.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

A student completing the course is expected to:

Explain the major principles of environmental impact assessment

Outline the different steps within environmental impact assessment

Discuss the implications of current jurisdictional and institutional arrangements in relation to environmental impact assessment

Communicate both orally and in written form the key aspects of environmental impact assessment

Describe how to liaise with and the importance of stakeholders in the EIA process

Access different case studies/examples of EIA in practice

Discuss the necessity to study the impacts and risks that will be caused by projects or industries and the methods to overcome these impacts.

Outline the legal requirements of Environmental and Risk Assessment for projects.