Eia’s contribution to environmental decision-making on large chemical plants

To obtain the environmental permits needed to build a large-scale chemical plant in The Netherlands, the initiator must write an environmental impact assessment (EIA). In a case study on the construction of a large chemical plant in The Netherlands, it was found that the associated decision-making is unstructured, uncontrollable, and unpredictable. Furthermore, the actual contents of the EIA contributed little to decision-making on the environmental permits. To alleviate the problems identified and to improve the quality of the EIA decision-making, we used the “process approach” to formulate a novel framework for environmental decision-making. The main differences between the proposed approach and the present Dutch situation are that all of the knowledge and opinions of all parties become available at the start of decision-making and that time pressure is largely avoided. The approach offers flexibility in decision-making and promotes the involvement of all relevant parties, which ensures effective problem handling.