Integrating climate change in Environmental Impact Assessment: A review of requirements across 19 EIA regimes

The contribution of human activities to climate change is well understood. Yet the integration of climate change considerations into local decision making tools designed to govern activities affecting the environment, such as Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs), remains underdeveloped and inconsistently applied for proposed policies, programs, plans and projects. This study reviews progress across a range of 19 EIA regimes and identifies and assesses regulations and guidelines that have been established to promote the integration of climate change considerations within EIAs. A typology of levels of integration is developed to guide analysis across multiple EIA regimes. The findings identify a global and growing requirement for climate change aspects to be considered within EIAs and describe the range of ways this is done across the regimes selected. Climate change is typically concerned with the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions from proposed developments in EIAs. Fewer regimes are concerned with climate change adaptation, and in general, an integration deficit is identified for regimes where climate change is only partially considered. Examples of high integration indicate that EIA holds the potential to play a substantive role in climate change governance at project level decision making, suggesting the tools hold promise for local level climate governance. However, many domestic obstacles can militate against integration, including political, socio-technical, and economic imperatives, particularly for exemptions of sector and scope. Nevertheless, examples also indicate advances can be made through jurisprudence during the EIA review stage to establish new precedents of how climate should be considered in EIAs. Potential future research and practice directions are identified, and recommendations include the development of regulations and practice guidelines; inclusion of climate change adaptation; strengthening post-decision monitoring; application to all relevant sectors and activities; alignment with SEA; and integration across all stages of the EIA process.