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Conference paper, 2004

Cumulative impact assessment for municipal and regional planning – an outline of a Swedish research project

Rapaport Eric, Oscarsson Antoienette, Wallentinus Hans-Georg

Abstract

Research on cumulative impact assessment has shown that small cumulative impacts may result in greater environmental disturbances than a single particular action. Cumulative EIA (CEIA) is demanded by the European Union. However, CEIA is still not included in Swedish legislation. The Swedish Environmental Code, states that the Swedish County Boards are responsible for determining – in parallel to the project developer which types of impacts are to be assessed in the EIA, including in relation to other projects and plans. The objective of this project is, firstly, to make a review of the international research surrounding the issue of cumulative impact assessment. Secondly we will study why cumulative impact assessments are being conducted. Thirdly, the research aims to demonstrate a method for conducting cumulative impacts assessment that will be possible to use in municipal and regional planning as well as for environmental protection and management. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has not released any guidelines regarding CEIA. The reason behind this will be investigated in this research. No specific methodology for Cumulative environmental impact assessment (CEIA) has been proposed, but models are available from the USA National Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ, 1997) and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA). Given that Sweden has a different arrangement of political powers than USA and Canada, the research can bring to light which barriers exists in the implementation of cumulative impact assessment in the Swedish context

Keywords

EIA; Sweden; cumulative impact assessment

Published in

Conference

24th Annual Conference International Association for Impact Assessment, Whose business is it? Impact Assessment for Industrial Development