环评中公众参与有效性的途径

公众参与是环境影响评价体系的重要组成部分．本文从公众参与的定义、发展入手，就环境影响评价中公众参与现状进行了分析，并就如何提高公众参与的有效性进行了探讨。     

探讨我国环境影响评价中公众参与的有效性

公众参与是环境影响评价中的重要内容,它贯穿于环境影响评价工作的全过程。本文分析了我国目前在环境影响评价公众参与中存在的问题,提出了提高环境影响评价公众参与有效性的具体措施,以使环境影响评价公众参与更好地发挥其有效作用。     

公众参与在环境影响评价中的应用

简述了环境影响评价中公众参与的定义、目的、意义，简要回顾了国内外环境管理及环境影响评价中公众参与的发生发展过程及其现状，浅析了公众参与在环境影响评价中的应用以及存在的问题，并提出了改进的建议。     

甘肃省公众环境意识与感受程度的调查与分析

在近几年的环境影响评价工作中，进行了一系列的环境影响评价公众参与调查活动，通过对回收问卷的统计分析，可以从中了解甘肃或可以推广到西北地区的公众普遍的环境意识与环境感受程度。     

环境影响评价中公众参与的调查与评价

简要回顾分析了我国环境管理及环境影响评价中公众参与的发展及其现状,简述了环境影响评价中公众参与的方式,途径和目的意义,并以某化工厂改扩建工程环境评价中的公众参与调查为例,分析说明了公众参与调查的方法、调查对象的选择、调查范围、内容与工作程序的确定及其调查结果的统计分析与评价。     

美国核电厂辐射环境监测与信息公开及其借鉴

综述了美国核电厂辐射环境监测管理体系和环境信息公开制度及法制化管理模式,对比分析了我国辐射环境监测与信息发布实际开展情况及存在问题,提出需借鉴美国核管理委员会(NRC,以下简称NRC)的管理经验,进一步完善我国辐射环境监测标准体系,建立辐射环境监测数据公开制度,加强公众参与制度建设,明确核电厂辐射环境监测管理边界等建议。     

铁路工程环境影响评价综述

通过对近十年来铁路工程环境影响评价状况的分析，提出了五点结论：（１）评价结论应逐步定量化而且应做出综合评价；（２）评价应与污染工程治理相结合；（３）为解决铁路环评滞后问题，应建立铁路工程环境影响评价决策支持系统（ＥＩＡ．ＤＳＳ）；（４）应体现清洁生产工艺全过程控制的要求；（５）应考虑公众参与和危险运输品的风险等风险评价内容和社会经济评价。     

南京市公布2000年度重点企业环境行为“绿黑榜”

为建立和完善环境保护公众参与制度 ,引导社会各界广泛参与环境监督管理 ,促使企业树立良好的环境形象 ,增强企业保护环境的意识和责任 ,南京市根据国家环保总局和江苏省环保厅的要求 ,经过近半年时间反复认真评判 ,将占南京市污染物负荷 80 %以上的 2 17家环境保护重点企业在     

生态环境监测工作的安全风险及防控措施

随着经济社会的发展，人们的生活水平不断提高，公众对生态环境质量的需求也在增加。生态环境监测作为生态环境保护的一项重要的基础性工作，是生态环境治理的数据支撑和重要保障，也是公众了解环境质量必不可少的途径。笔者结合2020年3月6日实施的《职业健康安全管理体系要求及使用指南》等规范要求，调研生态环境监测职业面临的安全风险，识别和分析环境监测工作可能存在的安全风险因素，并在此基础上给出相应的防护技术及措施，对生态环境监测从业人员的安全保障提出了重点抓好生态环境监测实验室的安全与质量管理、制定应急预案、强化日常监管、完善制度体系和加强宣传教育等方面的建议。     

加强公众参与 促进节能减排

环保事业关乎每一个人的身体健康和社会的发展进步，节能减排是一项典型的“公众事业”，随着我国国民经济的进一步发展，环境问题越来越受到人们的关注，搞好环境保护，促进节能减排单靠政府和环保系统的人员显然力不从心．事实表明，发现和解决环保问题需要广泛的公众参与和社会支持．本文结合盐城市动员公众参与节能减排的实际，对公众参与节能减排的意义及方法做了初步的探讨．     

Public participation modes in China's environmental impact assessment process: An analytical framework based on participation extent and conflict level

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) serves as a gatekeeper to prevent environmental pollution, and public participation is a legal requirement in the EIA process that ensures people's awareness of activities that may jeopardize the environment. Recently, with the elevated awareness of environmental protection and increasing environmental sensitivity, EIA has evolved as a means for the public to show their attitudes towards environmental issues. More frequently, public protests against not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) facilities have become a significant challenge in the government's decision-making process. Government officials and EIA practitioners continue to look for a more effective way of public participation and aim to establish a platform that can involve related stakeholders. However, current research on public participation is limited to individual case studies or lacks a systematic approach to analysing diversified modes of public participation, which may differentiate levels of acceptance by the government in the EIA process and consequently lead to different effects. Therefore, from the perspectives of the participation extent and conflict level, this paper aims to establish an integrated framework to categorize different public participation patterns in EIA practices and to analyse their characteristics, such as preferences and the action logic arising from different stakeholders, including the government and public. The paper concludes that collaborative public participation is a possible way to strengthen the effectiveness of public involvement within the Chinese context.     

Public participation in environmental impact assessment: why,who and how?

Even a cursory glance at the literature on environmental impact assessment (EIA) reveals that public participation is being considered as an integral part of the assessment procedure. Public participation in EIA is commonly deemed to foster democratic policy-making and to render EIA more effective. Yet a closer look at the literature unveils that, beyond this general assertion, opinions of the precise meaning, objectives and adequate representation of public participation in EIA considerably diverge. Against this background, in this article we aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the academic debate on public participation in EIA concerning its meaning, objectives and adequate level of inclusiveness. In so doing, we hope to stimulate a more focused debate on the subject, which is key to advancing the research agenda. Furthermore, this paper may serve as a starting point for practitioners involved in defining the role of public participation in EIA practice.     

Public participation in China's EIA process and the regulation of environmental disputes

This article reconsiders the role that public participation in the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process plays in China. Whilst some commentators have found that public participation has largely failed to make an impact in China, this article argues that it has been an important focal point during environmental disputes over siting decisions. The principles of transparency and public participation embodied in EIA legislation have been prominent frames used to legitimize public action against locally-unwanted-land-uses when decisions are taken unilaterally without sufficient public input or notification. In this sense, the EIA becomes a lightning rod for citizen claims-making in relation to siting disputes. At the same time, these principles help depoliticize contention by channeling it within state-approved discourses, enabling officials to buy time and defuse tension. Here, EIA serves as a shock absorber, helping contribute to social stability when disputes break out. By showing how public participation regulations are closely intertwined with contentious politics, this article highlights the paradoxical and contradictory nature of public participation in China.     

Ethical implications of democratic theory for U.S. public participation in environmental impact assessment

Traditional mechanisms for public participation in environmental impact assessment under U.S. federal law have been criticized as ineffective and unable to resolve conflict. As these mechanisms are modified and new approaches developed, we argue that participation should be designed and evaluated not only on practical grounds of cost-effectiveness and efficiency, but also on ethical grounds based on democratic ideals. In this paper, we review and synthesize modern democratic theory to develop and justify four ethical principles for public participation: equal opportunity to participate, equal access to information, genuine deliberation, and shared commitment. We then explore several tensions that are inherent in applying these ethical principles to public participation in EIA. We next examine traditional NEPA processes and newer collaborative approaches in light of these principles. Finally, we explore the circumstances that argue for more in-depth participatory processes. While improved EIA participatory processes do not guarantee improved outcomes in environmental management, processes informed by these four ethical principles derived from democratic theory may lead to increased public engagement and satisfaction with government agency decisions.     

Evaluating public participation in Chinese EIA. An integrated Public Participation Index and its application to the case of the New Beijing Airport

In recent years, China's government authorities have devoted increasing attention to the role of public participation processes in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). The capacity of these processes to influence decision-making remains widely debated. This paper aims at appraising the institutional rationale informing the implementation of public participation in China's EIA, benchmarking it against three conceptualisations: (1) Normative, based on objectives of empowerment and democratisation; (2) Substantive, where participation is pursued mainly to improve quality of decisions; (3) Instrumental, seeking participation as an instrument to legitimise decision-making processes. The appraisal is carried out by means of a new integrated index (Public Participation Index, PPI), which is applied to a case study representative of latest advancements in EIA public participation practices in China, namely the “New Beijing Airport Project”. Located 46 km south of downtown Beijing, the project was approved in 2014 and it is currently under construction. Results of the PPI application to this case study indicate that, despite progress made in recent years, the implementation of public participation in Chinese EIA still largely responds to an instrumental rationale, with limited capacity for the public to affect decisions.     

Comparison of China’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Law with the European Union (EU) EIA Directive

In this paper, we first review the development of China’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) system in the past 30 years. Then we compare the framework and operational procedures of China’s new EIA law with those of the EU EIA Directive. We also compare public participation, as well as sanctions and control in the two EIA systems. In addition, we identify where the processes in both EIA systems are similar or different from one another. By comparison, we noted that there are at least three obvious weaknesses in China’s EIA system: (1) the application of new models for EIA legislation; (2) the improvement of EIA guidance and education; and (3) the enhancement of public participation in EIA process. Our study indicates that these three major shortcomings should be overcome and improved in China’s EIA system, when compared with the EU EIA system.     

Environmental impact assessment in urban transport planning: Exploring process-related barriers in Spanish practice

The effectiveness of EIA for evaluating transport planning projects is increasingly being questioned by practitioners, institutions and scholars. The academic literature has traditionally focused more on solving content-related problems with EIA (i.e. the measurement of environmental effects) than on process-related issues (i.e. the role of EIA in the planning process and the interaction between key actors). Focusing only on technical improvements is not sufficient for rectifying the effectiveness problems of EIA. In order to address this knowledge gap, the paper explores how EIA is experienced in the Spanish planning context and offers in-depth insight into EIA process-related issues in the field of urban transport planning. From the multitude of involved actors, the research focuses on exploring the perceptions of the two main professional groups: EIA developers and transport planners. Through a web-based survey we assess the importance of process-related barriers to the effective use of EIA in urban transport planning. The analyses revealed process issues based fundamentally on unstructured stakeholders involvement and an inefficient public participation     

Simplified environmental impact assessment processes: Review and implementation proposals

There is a widespread tendency to streamline EIA, a confusing concept, which in practice usually means shortening processes to speed up project licensing, facilitating investment. It is reasonable for developers seek processes quick, simple and inexpensive, but it is also the obligation of governments to ensure that approved projects are environmentally suitable. Not all projects subject to EIA have the same impacts, so the existence of two processes, simplified and ordinary, seems reasonable. The aim of this paper is to analyse the implementation of simplified EIA processes, discussing its benefits and drawbacks. To do this, we have analysed 55 EIA processes from 25 jurisdictions, discussing its benefits and drawbacks and selecting effective and well-established formulas for simplified EIA. In most of the analysed cases, simplified EIA is achieved by reducing public participation, one of the pillars of EIA. It seems to be a chain reaction: ordinary EIA processes have been “streamlined” by removing formal scoping, giving rise in practice to simplified processes. As a result, simplified processes have been ultra-simplified, eliminating public participation, turning them, at best, into screening stages. Simplification must ensure a proper EIA, and not merely a shortening of deadlines.     

Regulators' perceptions of environmental impact assessment (EIA) benefits in a sustainable development context

The costs of conducting Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) are well known. Yet the benefits of EIA are much more intangible, leading to a situation where some question its value as the tool of choice for informing decision makers of the sustainability consequences of their actions. Exponents of EIA have thus called for more research on the benefits of EIA in order to provide better evidence on its costs versus benefits, and therefore its value as a decision-making tool. This paper contributes to this evidence by exploring the perceived potential benefits and perceived realised benefits of EIA from a regulators' perspective in the context of sustainable development. Using South Africa as a case study, one third of all the officials responsible for EIA review and decision-making (referred to in this paper as the “regulator”) were surveyed to identify their perceptions of the benefits of EIA, and their ideas on how to bridge the gap between potential benefits and realised benefits. The paper contributes suggestions for the analysis of benefits in a sustainable development context, and identifies some additional benefits currently missing from the literature. In a South African context, the key potential and realised benefits as perceived by regulators are the protection of biodiversity, public participation, access to information, mitigation of environmental impacts, and legal compliance and enforcement.