Cultural influences on implementing environmental impact assessment: insights from thailand, indonesia, and malaysia

In Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, political and business support for environmental impact assessment (EIA) is low, and environmental agencies are virtually powerless compared with economic development agencies. Western-style democratic principles are weakly supported, the public is effectively excluded from project planning and decision-making, mission agencies are relatively isolated from public demands for environmental protection, and environmental agencies have difficulty enforcing EIA requirements. Environmental advocacy is growing but is still new and largely unappreciated by government.Whereas technical factors contribute to the consequent ineffectiveness of EIA, cultural factors provide complementary explanations. A reliance on paternalistic authority, hierarchy, and status as principles of social organization; a dependence on patron–client relationships for ensuring loyalty and advancement among political, bureaucratic, and private-sector actors; and a strong desire to avoid conflict and maintain face all reinforce the power of political and business elites and circumscribe that of individuals and communities. They also result in government bureaucracies where low-status environment agencies have little power or authority and the interagency cooperation needed for effective EIA is lacking. The article demonstrates that it is vital to consider cultural as well as technical factors when examining the difficulties of implementing policies or programs like EIA, which are invented in the West and transferred to another culture with very different social and political heritages and practices.