Environmental Impact Assessment in Green Procurement and Partnering Contracts Looking for environmental performance beyond EIA
Introduction There are several ongoing trends, which will influence the future practice of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in infrastructure development projects: i) Many decisions that influence the design and environmental performance of the project are made after the EIA process has been completed; ii) There is a lack of transfer of information (follow up) from the planning stage to the construction and implementation; iii) The issue of the effectiveness of EIA is EIA delivering the outcomes expected and needed? iv) A trend towards more collaborative relationships between various parties (governmental, private, public) v) Authorities and companies increasingly use procurement and contracting as an environmental policy instrument to further the environmental performance of products and services. However, there has been limited research on the role of how these different trends are influencing practice of EIA and how they can interact with each other in order to achieve more effective EIA. The next three sections will address the five issues mentioned above. Subsequently, the paper discusses how these trends might be combined in order to enhance environmental performance throughout the project life cycle. Finally some conclusions are drawn. This paper aims at exploring how green procurement in relation to public private partnerships could be used in order to deal with some of the problems that previously have been be identified in relation to safeguarding an effective EIA that contributes to environmental sustainable development. The paper provides an introduction to the session devoted to Partnerships and Impact Assessment, and sets the context for further discussion.