ABSTRACT
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is one of the most critical environmental policy instruments. It emerged in thesecond half of the 20th century as a response to the growing need to assert environmental values in decision-making processes related to development projects. It took the form of a new analytical approach that makes it possible to evaluate and interpret, prior to decision- making, any potential for negative impacts (Clark and Canter, 1997; Partidàrio and Pinho, 2000). Public hearings, and related input, constitute integral parts of this evaluation. In principle, the EIA should lead to the discarding of environmentally unacceptable actions and the mitigation – until an acceptable level is reached – of the environmental effects of proposed activities (Sadler, 1996; Wood, 2003).
