Bridging EIA and risk assessment enhances safety by systematically addressing raw and residual risks. Recognizing their equivalence of effects, risk is seen as an unwanted potential adverse impact.
Despite their shared goal of informing regulatory decisions through evidence-based predictions of potential environmental and societal harm, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Risk Assessment (RA) reports are frequently analyzed separately by distinct teams within Brazil’s federal environmental licensing.
Although both methodologies are essential to comprehensive safety governance and regulatory decision-making, supporting the management of adverse outcomes and the evaluation of trade-offs, they differ in their origins, approaches to public participation, legal requirements, treatment of uncertainty, estimation of event frequencies and consequences, and emphasis on effects arising during normal versus abnormal operations.
This study reviews and examines the relationship between EIA and RA and argues that their improved integration can enhance project safety by systematically addressing both inherent/raw risks (before mitigation) and residual risks (remaining after safety measures are implemented).
To foster this integration, this study suggests that risk be understood as a potential, non-immediate impact of uncertain occurrence, contingent upon the intentional or accidental release of polluting agents (chemical substances, organisms, or energy flows) into the environment.
Under this framework, a risk materializes as an impact when these agents adversely affect receptors in the physical, biotic, and socioeconomic environments beyond the project boundaries. In short, risks are essentially unwanted potential negative impacts.
Environmental Specialist (EIA Practitioner) at the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA). PhD in Geography, University of Waterloo, Canada.