ABSTRACT
Environmental impact assessment (EIA) and strategic environmental assessment (SEA) procedures are prescribed in laws and regulations. These formal instruments are supplemented by more informal administrative practices. An EIA or SEA process always involves a number of categories of participants or stakeholders (including institutions). Given the objective of this process, describing the relationships between these stakeholders in the impact assessment process as an ‘administrative negotiation process’ is quite acceptable (De Hemptinne, 1994). So the EIA/SEA serves multiple purposes (Cashmore et al, 2004). As the participants or stakeholders have different expectations regarding the process and its outcome given their interests, perceptions and societal values, their opinions about a ‘good quality EIA’ might also differ. From this participatory perspective, one may agree with observations in the literature that EIA professionals – but also the other stakeholders in the process – should come to grips with the facts that EIAs (and,even more, SEAs, given their ‘strategic nature’) are not science and will always contain unexamined and unexplained value assumptions (Beattie, 1995).
