What is wrong with EIAs?

AMBRIDGE – Walhi, Indonesia’s largest environmental organization, recently took the government to court for issuing construction permits to a Chinese company based on what they allege was a “deeply flawed” environmental impact assessment. In fact, Wahli contends, the $1.5 billion Batang Toru dam project will have severe ecological consequences, including the likely extinction of the world’s rarest great ape, the Tapanuli orangutan.  

Batang Toru is just one of many planned infrastructure projects worldwide that are officially deemed environmentally sound, despite posing serious environmental risks. For example, construction is nearly complete on a railway line through Kenya’s famous Nairobi National Park, despite public outrage over an “incomplete and incompetent” environmental impact assessment.

Similarly, in Guinea, the government has approved plans for another Chinese company to build a dam inside the Moyen-Bafing national park, a chimpanzee sanctuary. The environmental impact assessment that was carried out, experts say, significantly underestimates the number of chimpanzees that the project threatens.

Source:www.project-syndicate.org