Challenges at the early stages of the environmental licensing procedure and potential contributions from geomorphology

Defining impact significance is the main technical task that influences decision-making during the Environmental Licensing Procedure(ELP).The ELP begins with screening to determine potentially significant impacts of the proposed project.Scoping then follows to address any interventions deemed worthy of attention in the production of an Environmental Impact Assessment(EIA).This will include consideration of relevant landforms and geomorphological processes.However,preliminary assessments of environmental impacts often lack the scientific robustness to procure substantive and transactive effectiveness.This review presents an examination of the established practices of screening and scoping while highlighting the foremost challenges to improve the technical grounds of the ELP.The analysis of screening and scoping practices stresses the need for novel methods that ensure the sequential reasoning between their criteria while improving the preliminary evaluation of impact significance.Reducing the inherent subjectivity of discretionary judgment requires scientific methodologies that acknowledge the interaction between the natural system and human interventions,which has been addressed by geomorphological research.The knowledge consolidated in this review opens the gate to explore the compatibility between the United Nations strategy of Ecosystem Approach(EA)with the ELP through a novel geomorphological interpretation of the EIA.Therefore,this diagnosis demonstrate that screening and scoping practices would benefit from reliable methods that balance the precautionary principle with the efficient character required in the ELP.

A geomorphological model of susceptibility to the effect of human interventions for environmental licensing determination(SHIELD)

Almost every country requires some form of environmental licensing prior to the inception of development projects that may affect the integrity of the environment and its social context.We developed a new conceptual and methodological model to instruct the assessment of the potential impacts posed by proposed projects.Susceptibility to Human Interventions for Environmental Licensing Determination(SHIELD)includes a novel geomorphological interpretation of the Environmental Impact Assessment(EIA).It considers the impact of human interventions on geomorphological processes and landscape functioning in the context of the entire ecosystem,going further than the classical concept of vulnerability.Estimated susceptibility of the site informs the screening stage,allowing local conditions to help define the criteria used in the process.Similarly,the level of detail of the environmental baseline is scoped by considering the degree of disturbance of natural processes posed by human intervention.Testing this geomorphological susceptibility model on different kinds of environments would allow shifting the environmental licensing practices from the prevailing anthropocentric and static conception of the environment towards an Ecosystem Approach.SHIELD addresses the need to improve the screening and scoping stages that form the basis of the rest of any EIA.SHIELD introduces several innovations to EIA including the incorporation of fuzzy logic,a preassembled database of contributions form experts,and a shifting of emphasis from the type of proposed intervention to the type of environment and its relative susceptibility.