Quality Review of Environmental Impact Statements in Espirito Santo State (2007-2013)

Abstract

Considering the need for evidence-based information to support the improvement of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) practice and given the few papers devoted to this aspect in Brazil, the present paper is focused on the systematic quality review of Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) submitted to the environmental licensing process. The EIA system as implemented in the Espirito Santo state was adopted as a research object, which provided 21 EISs to be reviewed, corresponding to 57% of the EISs submitted to the state environmental agency from 2007 to 2013. The studies include different projects such as oil and gas, thermoelectric power plants, ports, transmission lines, roads, housing and so on.  EIS quality review was done by following the Lee and Colley Review Package, which is widely applied and recognized in the international literature. The outcomes reveal some aspects of the state EIA system to be improved, moreover in terms of the identification and assessment of relevant impacts, association between the impact and the environmental baseline, the consideration of cumulative effects, prediction of magnitude and significance assessment of impacts. Positive aspects include the description of environment and baseline, and the organization and presentation of data/information. Although similar to other contexts, the results allow to the conclusion that EIS are delivering information of low quality to support EIA decisions in the state of Espirito Santo, thus contributing to a low effectiveness of the state EIA system.