Poor Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) practice leads to poorly planned projects, and ultimately poor environmental protection. Written by recognized NEPA authority Charles H. Eccleston, The EIS Book: Managing and Preparing Environmental Impact Statements supplies focused direction on preparing an EIS, highlighting best professional practices (BBP) and lessons learned from case law that provide valuable direction for preparing legally defensible documents. The book is not about preparing bigger or more complicated EISs—but better ones. Beginning with fundamental topics and advancing into successively more advanced subjects, Eccleston describes EIS preparation as a comprehensive framework for planning future actions, rather than merely a document preparation procedure. He supplies direction for preparing defensible analyses that facilitate well-planned projects and improved decision-making. Discusses EIS document requirements including the Council of Environmental Quality’s NEPA regulations and related guidelines, EPA guidance and requirements, presidential executive orders, and case law Covers how to perform a legally sufficient cumulative impact assessment and how to evaluate greenhouse emissions and climate change Details a step-by-step approach for navigating the entire EIS process that includes all pertinent process requirements from issuing the notice of intent, through public scoping, to issuing the final record of decision (ROD) Includes analytical requirements for preparing the EIS analysis and guidance for performing various types of analyses Provides tools, techniques, and best professional practices for preparing the EIS and performing the analysis Presents a case study that reinforces key EIS regulatory requirements, and integrates lessons learned from this case study with appropriate regulatory requirements The book gives readers a firm grasp of the process for preparing an EIS, including all key regulatory requirements that a legally sufficient EIS document must satisfy. No other book synthesizes all such requirements and guidance into a single source for easy and rapid access.

This book provides the reader with a fundamental understanding of the environmental impact statement (EIS) process and the environmental law that must be understood in order to prepare a credible EIS. It contains a thorough description of the entire EIS process including a lead agency's decision to prepare an EIS, publication of the notice of intent in the Federal Register, scoping, preparation of the draft EIS, public hearings, preparation of the final EIS, and publication of the agency's record of decision in the Federal Register. This new second edition has been revised to include expanded chapters on environmental assessment and risk assessment, a brief section on Internet sources, and other improvements to make the text current.

The central idea animating environmental impact assessment (EIA) is that decisions affecting the environment should be made through a comprehensive evaluation of predicted impacts. Notwithstanding their evaluative mandate, EIA processes do not impose specific environmental standards, but rely on the creation of open, participatory and information rich decision-making settings to bring about environmentally benign outcomes. In light of this tension between process and substance, Neil Craik assesses whether EIA, as a method of implementing international environmental law, is a sound policy strategy, and how international EIA commitments structure transnational interactions in order to influence decisions affecting the international environment. Through a comprehensive description of international EIA commitments and their implementation with domestic and transnational governance structures, and drawing on specific examples of transnational EIA processes, the author examines how international EIA commitments can facilitate interest coordination, and provide opportunities for persuasion and for the internalisation of international environmental norms.

Cooperation and Engagement in the Asia-Pacific Region brings together contributions from leading experts around the world in the law of the sea. The volume addresses topics such as regional cooperation, protection and preservation of the marine environment, freedom of navigation, sustainable fisheries, and future cooperation within the important Asia-Pacific region. This book provides valuable insight into a region that encompasses many important maritime regions, and harbors promising opportunities for maritime cooperation and engagement.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) introduced the environmental impact statement, transformed decision making by federal agencies, and spurred the growth of an extensive body of environmental law. This book takes a close look at the litigation of NEPA cases, including jurisdiction and related issues, standard and scope of judicial review, and the specific concerns of litigators. It identifies key NEPA issues and offers solutions to the challenges faced in practice, including climate change and its relationship to the NEPA process.

The central concern of this book is the social intelligence that goes into environmental decisions. Not, what is the 'correct' balance when trade-offs must be made between environmental and economic values? But rather, how can the social thinking necessary for intelligent trade-offs be institutionalized? How, that is, can environmental impacts be recognized beforehand so that less costly trade-offs can be explored, relative risks assessed, and choices made in a manner acceptable to both the public and the government? This book evaluates the first ten years of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process of the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act - in particular, how it has worked inside two federal agencies with important impacts on the environment, the Forest Service and the Army Corps of Engineers. It assesses how successful the EIS process has been in establishing a concern for environmental values in the federal bureaucracy, and how widely applicable the general impact statement approach is in other policy areas.