PRESENTATION The EIA s
Friday, December 19, 2008
Subwoofer In Test Does Not
Studies Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)
The environmental impact of dams is extremely complex and difficult to predict. Should be required a thorough assessment of potential environmental impacts that may result in a dam before they launch any stage of the project. Unfortunately, governments and dam construction companies have made the EIA process is a bureaucratic formality, a mere obstacle that companies must overcome to make their project approved. Rarely do governments and funding agencies treat the EIA as serious studies to be used to initiate an open debate about the viability of the project. On the contrary, taken as the simplest way to obtain approval for the project.
The assessment of whether environmental damage which may cause the dam outweigh the benefits is a finding of anything political and impartial. The decisions involved in such assessments should be taken after discussions between the affected and the public, which must be previously informed. The balance between the cost of extinction of a species or estuary and the benefit of an increase in electricity generating capacity should not only be done by the consultants, who have an interest in the design and build more dams. Environmental consultancy has become a lucrative international business. Environmental assessment of large dam projects are undertaken mainly by consultants A limited number of companies, some of which are directly involved in the construction of dams.
It creates an obvious conflict of interest when the company that assesses the environmental sustainability of a project may be the same that is contracted to build the dam. Even seemingly independent consultants and have no direct link with the dam-building companies have a vested interest in minimizing the environmental impact of the project and overstate its benefits. If their conclusions are not favorable to funding agencies of dams or construction companies, these consultants will never be hired in the future. Therefore, the conclusions an EIA on a large dam can be sensed before reading the report: the environmental impact of the dam will be relatively minor, relatively inexpensive and easily reduced. Although some individual sections of an EIA are considered critical or raises troubling questions about some of the effects that can not be predicted, these aspects are invariably downplayed in the report's findings and criticisms in the draft usually disappear in the final version.
From: International Rivers Network (Guardians of the rivers)
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