ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the issue of the need for joint implementation (JI) actions to address environmental and social impacts. These impacts are not the ones arising from JI projects specifically in terms of the desired reduction in green-house gas (GHG) emissions that the action is intended to achieve. The chapter provides the background to activities implemented jointly to reduce GHG emissions. It then discusses the non-climate change related context of environmental impacts of JI. The chapter also suggests ways of encouraging progress in implementing environmental and social assessments of JI projects under the Kyoto Protocol and discusses what form such impact assessments ideally might take. Environmental impact assessment (EIA), often with an accompanying environmental impact statement (EIS), is a well-established method of investigating the potential impacts that development projects are likely to have. The EIA tool, and the accompanying EIS, came into being in the late 1960s and early 1970s for actions ‘significantly affecting the quality of the human environment’.
