environmental impact assessment

Environmental impact assessment:
An environmental impact assessment EIA of the possible impact positive or negative that a proposed project may have on the environment together of the natural social and economic aspects.
The purpose of the assessment is to ensure that decision makers consider the ensuing environmental impact when deciding whether to proceed with a project. The International Association for Impact Assessment IAIA defines an environmental impact assessment as the process of identifying predicting evaluating and decreasing he biophysical social and other relevant effects of development proposals prior to major decision being taken and commitments made...
The Need for Environmental Assessment:
Economic social and environmental changes are inherent to development. In order to predict environmental impacts of any development activity and to provide on opportunity to mitigate against negative impacts and enhance positive impacts the environmental impact assessment EIA producers was developed in the 1970s..
An EIA may be defined as:
"A formal process to predict environmental consequence of human development activities and to plan appropriate measure to eliminate effects and to enhance positive effects."
EIA thus has three main functions:
To predict problems
To find ways to avoid them and
To enhance positive effects
The third function is of particular importance. This EIA provides a unique opportunity to demonstrate ways in which the environment may be improved as part of the development process. The EIA also predicts the conflict and constraints between the propose project programme or sectoral plan and its environment. It provides an opportunity for mitigation measure to be incorporated to minimize problems. It enables monitoring programmes to be established to assess future impacts ad provide data on which managers can take decision to avoid environmental damage.
Consumption population technology resources:
A major of human impact on earth systems is the destruction of biophysical resources and especially the earth ecosystem. The total environmental impact of a community or of humankind as whole depends both on population and impact per person which in turn depends in complex ways on what resources Are being used whether or not those resources are renewable and the scale of the human activity relative to the carring capacity of the ecosystem involved. Careful resources management can be applied at many scales from economic sector like agricultural manufacturing and construction to work organization the consumption pattern of household and individuals and to the resources demand of individual good and service. On the initial attempt to express human impact mathematically was developed in the 1970s and is called the IPAT formula. This formulation attempts to explain human consumption in the term of three components; population number, levels of consumption affluence, and impact per unit of resources use which is termed technology because this impact depends on the technology used. The equation is expressed:
             I=P×A×T
Where:I = Environmental impact, P=Population, A=Affluence, T=Technology.