The Environmental Impact Study is part of the requirements requested by the organizations and institutions that manage the environmental policies of a region or country. It is the instrument used to monitor and evaluate the benefits or damages caused by the environmental impact. I invite you to learn a little more about it.
The Environmental Impact
Human beings since they began to populate the planet have made use of natural resources and, although at the beginning the impact was insignificant, as they expanded and colonized new territories to establish their customs, it caused profound consequences for human populations and ecosystems, these impacts are mostly negative.
In recent times, Environmental Impact Studies are carried out to know the possible consequences that may be suffered by carrying out a project, this information will allow reducing the negative impacts and increasing the positive impacts, when appropriate. This is the objective of carrying out Environmental Impact Studies, and monitoring them through Environmental Impact Assessments.
The effects that human activities can cause in society and in the environment as a whole, is what is known as Environmental Impact. Most or better said all human actions have some impact, whether by the construction of power plants, housing buildings, the cultivation of flowers, the exodus of populations from one place to another, as well as hikers who take walks by the mountain, they produce environmental modifications. The Environmental Impact can be of different types, viz.
The different types of Environmental Impact
As we saw before, the impacts caused by human activities are different in their intensity, because the impact of the footsteps of a person walking along a path is very different from the footsteps of a crowd along the same path. Because due to the intensity of the activity or how they are organized, they can cause an impact of greater or lesser magnitude that can result in environmental benefits or losses. Due to this the impacts can be:
- Positive environmental impact. They are those effects that produce a benefit or good to the environment. Several companies responsible for the environment have environmental programs, such as the protection of forested areas, as a way of contributing CO2, generating added value.
- Negative environmental impact. They are the negative effects that the execution of a project has on the environment.
These differences between the impacts are not always presented in black and white, most of the time in different shades of gray. An example of this is observed in: the artificial lagoons located in the southeast sector of Madrid, the capital of Spain. It happened that in the first half of the XNUMXth century there was an overexploitation of aggregates in this region and this led to the level of the water table being exceeded, due to which some ponds sank.
After this negative environmental impact occurred, this place was recovering until an ecological balance was achieved, due to this it is currently considered a place with high ecological value. This balance has allowed a great diversity of animals and plants to coexist, allowing it to be a refuge for migratory birds. This indicates that initially, a negative Environmental Impact occurred due to the over-exploitation of resources. Over time, this became a wildlife refuge for flora and fauna, providing a positive environmental impact.
As the opposite can also happen, believing that the project can impact the environment in a positive way, a repopulation of forests was carried out in the region of Galicia, for this repopulation fast-growing forest species were used, such as Eucalyptus trees, which it is an introduced species. This brought as a consequence, a deterioration in the ecological value of that forest.
Environmental Impacts can also be for a short time or permanent, they can be simple or accumulated impacts. They can be reversible in time or irreversible. Perennial or intermittent and periodic or extraordinary. This can cause that when the Environmental Impact Study is carried out, it is necessary to be very careful to specify the impact that they can actually cause.
Environment Effect investigation
The Environmental Impact study is the diagnosis that is carried out on the environmental conditions of a place, due to the changes that it may have due to its alteration by some activity. These studies are required when it is considered that the programmed changes that a project may produce end up generating more harm than good.
Environmental Impact Studies can also be carried out when changes have already occurred due to a project already executed and they are being reported for any damage it is causing. The Environmental Impact Study will seek to analyze for this opportunity if the damage caused or reported is real and if true, how deep it is for that environment. The studies have some of the following parts, these can vary and include or remove some of these parts.
- General descriptive report of the study: includes the delimitation of the study area, study objectives, a detailed description of the actions to be carried out, consumption of materials, occupied space, among others.
- Exposition of the strategies: The different strategies to study, the materials, processes and others are presented. It is proposed not to carry out the project
- Carry out an environmental inventory: inventory of natural spaces, population, biological diversity, climatic factors, soil and others
- Assessment of possible effects or impacts: An assessment is carried out, parameters are determined, impacts are assessed, as well as direct and indirect effects or impacts with potential occurrences, due to the planned activities.
- Presents preventive and corrective measures
- Proposes surveillance and monitoring programs for environmental conditions
- Presentation of the Environmental Impact Study report, its Summary and Conclusions.
Evaluation of environmental impact
This is an instrument of environmental quality management, the purpose of the Environmental Impact Assessment is the prevention, reduction and recovery of damage caused to the environment. Also, write the regulations for the works or activities that can be carried out in that evaluated place. The goal of the environmental impact assessment is to achieve the sustainability of the projects, in view of this, the economic profitability of the project and the benefit to society must be analyzed, through the rational use of natural resources.
The Environmental Impact Assessment Procedure
The evaluations of the Environmental Impact Studies are carried out by the technicians of the institution in charge of complying with the environmental policies of a region. They can be presented according to three options that change, depending on the controls that are made on the impacts and their magnitude in a given area. These are: A. Preventive report. B. Statement of Environmental Impact (particular scope) and C. Statement of Environmental Impact (regional scope).
Preventive report. In this option, only a preventive report of the Environmental Impact is presented, and it is carried out when:
- There are environmental regulations that regulate all possible environmental impacts of the project being carried out. Such as a land use law, forestry law, water law, solid waste law and other laws or regulations of interest.
- When the project that is being evaluated has already been proposed to be executed in accordance with a partial urban development or land use plan and the environmental institution has already approved it
- The project is about the facilities of an industrial park, previously reviewed and approved.
Environmental Impact Manifestations. These reports are made taking into consideration the technical studies that the designers are going to use to carry out some of the works adjusted to the environmental law, as well as the Law of Environmental Impact Studies and its Regulations. In these reports they analyze the diagnosis of the environmental conditions in which the area was before the project. The objective is to evaluate the potential impacts of the execution of the project that is being studied, on the environment. In these documents, measures are proposed to avoid, reduce or compensate the possible Environmental Impact.
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