Ten principles of quality in environmental impact assessment

When environmental impact assessment has been triggered the quality of the study becomes all-important. Over almost three decades courts in the many jurisdictions which have adopted the North American NEPA model have developed a "common law of EIA " around what constitutes a sufficiently rigorous and objective inquiry to answer the requirement that EIA be conducted. This article identifies and substantiates ten basic principles of quality in EIA which can be distilled from the hundreds of cases involving this issue.