Assessing environmental impacts  Tags: Op-ed Assessing
environmental impacts NATURAL CONNECT: Tourists at the Perito
Moreno glacier in Argentina. The lowest levels of public
participation in environmental impact assessment can be found in
the developing world According to Yaakov Garb, a faculty at Ben
Gurion University, Israel, environmental impact assessment (EIA)
is a relatively new tool for decision making that involves a
standardised set of procedures designed to evaluate the
pr­ospective impacts a planned measure will have on the natural
environment and on hu­man health. EIA processes involving
difficult trade-offs between nature, society, and economy, are
located at the heart of the most contentious public policy
decisions.  Garb suggests that EIA came into being as a formally
required, legislatively mandated, decision-making tool in 1970s
in the US with the inception of the National Environmental
Protection Act (NEPA). This was a groundbreaking and
revolutionary moment in the legislative history of the