Policies drive environmental outcomes.  Accordingly, we need to develop ways to consider how policies create and deal with pressing environmental issues as well as mechanisms to force actions in order to improve outcomes.  This course provides students with an understanding of the theory and practice of key Environmental Assessment (EA) approaches that are the principle means of integrating environmental considerations into governmental decision making.  Course participants study how EAs have evolved since the 1960s to become the primary strategies for institutionalizing environmental reform, the role of public participation and science in environmental decision making, and how political, social and economic dynamics affect decisions.  Together with a leading environmental consultant, participants learn to apply the basic principles of environmental assessment to critically assess development proposals, develop public consultation strategies, evaluate monitoring and mitigation in environmental management plans. Following recent shifts to approaches informed by ecological modernization and new environmental policy instruments, participants consider how processes of categorizing social and environmental impacts, carrying out assessments and setting out minimum management standards have been extended beyond the conventional EA processes to environmental management systems and standard based self-regulation.

On completion of this unit students will be able to:

• Demonstrate a sound understanding of the theoretical principles and conceptual development of Environmental Assessment.
• Demonstrate an appreciation of tools and processes for, and practice of, environmental assessment and management;
• Demonstrate skills in assessing development projects, policies and program documents;
• Drawing on key social science readings, analyze and evaluate environmental problems and policy problems affecting EA practices.
• Evaluate the role, strengths and limitations of various assessment tools among a suite of policy approaches used in environmental decision making.
• Demonstrate understanding of how complex socio-political and economic contexts affect environmental decision making
• Identify, assess and articulate how social relationships and political contexts affect how assessment practices function, especially in shaping the trade-offs that occur between competing interests during assessment processes.

The course will be assessed on the basis of student performance in three assessment tasks: Seminar presentation, facilitation & literature review 20%; EIS outline (students are required to draft an outline of an EIS for a hypothetical development) 40%; Essay (2000 words) 40%.

Contact hours 3 hours per week; study and assignment preparation 5 hours per week.

Below is an indicative list of some of the material that students will consider:

Glasson, John , Riki Therivel, Andrew Chadwick Environmental Impact Assessment: Principles, and Procedures. (2005) Taylor & Francis

Thomas, I., 2005. Environmental Impact Assessment: Theory & practice in Australia (4th edition), Federation Press, Sydney.

Fische, Thomas B.  (2007) Theory and Practice of Strategic Environmental Assessment: Towards a More Systematic Approach. Earthscan

Eisner, MA 2007, Governing the environment: the transformation of environmental regulation, Lynne Rienner Publishers,  Boulder 

Offered on campus only.

In the second half of the course students learn to apply the basic principles of environmental assessment to critically assess development proposals, develop public consultation strategies, and evaluate monitoring and mitigation in environmental management plans, and consider how Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) principles might be built into decision making.