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Environmental impact assessment: evidence-based policymaking in Brazil.
- Source :
- Contemporary Social Science; Mar2018, Vol. 13 Issue 1, p100-111, 12p
- Publication Year :
- 2018
-
Abstract
- Environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedures aim prospectively to collect evidence about the environmental impacts of economic projects and to avoid or compensate for the costs incurred. This article asks whether such procedures have been effective in Latin America after many regional countries returned to some version of the developmental state after 2000. It does so by surveying the procedural effectiveness of Latin American regulations comparatively before turning to a deeper study of the Brazilian case. In Brazil, which has some of the strongest EIA procedures in the region, it finds that stakeholders make very different assessments of its effectiveness, not least because they define the standard differently. Economic actors in and out of the state criticise Brazilian EIA as ineffective from a transactive standpoint, which questions the time and cost associated with environmental licencing. Environmental and community activists see EIA as ineffective in achieving the substantive sustainability ends they value. Neither appreciates the procedural improvements offered by licencing professionals. The article concludes that EIA invites a broader set of stakeholders than did classic developmental states, but cannot on its own adjudicate among the resulting multiple visions of how to carry out development strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- ENVIRONMENTAL impact analysis
ENVIRONMENTAL policy
ENVIRONMENTAL protection
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 21582041
- Volume :
- 13
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Contemporary Social Science
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 128140161
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1080/21582041.2017.1393556