Incorporating Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation in Environmental Impact Assessments - Opportunities and Challenges

The analysis in this report shows that there is ample scope for employing Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedures as a vehicle for enhancing the resilience of projects to the impacts of climate change. A number of entry points are identified to incorporate climate change impact and adaptation considerations, from the strategic phase that precedes the initiation of the EIA, to the scoping, detailed assessment and implementation stages. Several national and sub-national authorities as well as multilateral development banks have already made some progress in terms of examining the possibility of incorporating climate change impacts and adaptation measures within the context of EIA modalities. A key bottleneck identified is the availability of detailed information on the historical climate, as well as fairly specific scenarios of future climate for the project location. In many jurisdictions such information is currently not available. There is also the risk of unnecessary or even counterproductive investments in altering project design if the uncertainties associated with climate change projections are not adequately considered.