Location Alternatives in Environmental Impact Assessment of Roads in Minas Gerais State

Abstract

Alternatives studies are considered one of the best practice principles of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Without an alternative study, EIA is reduced to proposition of mitigating measures of impacts that could have been avoided. Despite the growing academic interest, there are still few studies dealing with location alternatives, especially in the road transport sector. Therefore, the present research aims to evaluate how the consideration of alternatives has been developed within the EIA processes of roads processed in environmental agency of Minas Gerais state. The selection of case studies aimed to find environmental licensing processes of roads processed in Minas Gerais state and based on Environmental Impact Studies (EIS) and then compare criteria used for the selection of alternatives of these cases with the best practices recommended in the literature. In Integrated Environmental Information System (Sistema Integrado de Informações Ambientais – SIAM), 10 cases were found in overall Minas Gerais state, of which three required EIS elaboration, and all of them had study of location alternatives. From the literature, it was found a series of general criteria to be addressed and common failures that need to be avoided during the elaboration alternatives studies. When comparing them with the cases, a worrying result was obtained, since all alternatives studies presented themselves in a precarious way, with information without detailing and failures that could have been avoided, while meeting some best practice criteria. Thus, it can be said that in environmental agency of Minas Gerais state, location alternatives study for roads is considered fragile, and there is no necessary and due consideration of this essential factor in decision making on environmental viability.