Environmental Impact Assessments in Developing Countries: An Opportunity for Greater Environmental Security?

The first half of this Working Paper will give a background of the origins and development of environmental impact assessments. The second half of the paper will focus on environmental impact assessments in Southeast Asia, specifically the Mekong River Basin countries (China, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam), a region where many new projects will be located in the near future, and which suffers from notable inadequacies in its EIA processes and practices. The goal is to help identify gaps between EIA practices in the five countries listed above and internationally recognized best practices.