The Alternatives In The Environmental Impact Assessment In U.S.A.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) prescribed that the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) must consider the alternatives to the proposed action. The alternatives are described as the heart of EIA in U.S.A. The dissertation is aiming to provide some useful information for perfecting the Environmental Impact Assessment Law in China, through the study of alternatives in EIA in U.S.A. The first reason why alternatives are important to EIA is that the alternatives could help to fulfill the fundamental goal of EIA. The history of American Environmental Laws and the legislation background and content of NEPA show that the fundamental goal of EIA is to apply the assessment results to the decision-making process. And the alternatives could optimize the decision-making by helping the decision makers to consider the environmental, economic and social interests synthetically, and finally choose an action that has least harm in environment and most advantages in economy and society. Second, considering alternatives is the need of carrying out the precautionary principle in Environmental Law. The precautionary principle emphasizes that people have the responsibility to fully consider the alternatives to the propose action before carry it out in order to avoid fatal environmental risks. That is because alternatives could promote the protection to environment by seeking methods that are less harmful to environment; could stimulate innovation by encouraging enterprises to look for new ways to solve the environmental problems; could reduce risks to the maximum extend by comparing different plans and choosing one that bears the least risks; could reduce the burden of decision makers by modifying the potentially harmful action to make it more responsible. Third, the alternatives accord with the trend of decision-making, and help to achieve the scientific decision-making criteria of least cost and least side effect.