RETRACTED: Espoo Convention and its role in construction industry as an element of an environmental impact assessment mechanism (Retracted Article)

In the construction industry, there are many risk management models, the purpose of which is to bring the project to full implementation, namely to minimize possible violations of project deadlines, deviations from the quality of work, reduce financial costs and so on. However, contractors and subcontractors are faced with a high level of risk when implementing a construction project. The problem is that contractors have formed problem-solving systems that are purely local, which means they are intuitive and unsystematic and cannot extend beyond local initiatives and construction solutions. Besides that, the construction industry forms a whole list of environmental problems, such as excessive consumption of energy resources, changing landscapes and an increase in household and industrial waste. Construction can have a significant impact on the local environment and the energy intensity of the built-up environment could increase significantly over the next decade. The concept of environmental impact assessment, introduced by the Espoo Convention, is directly related to the concept of risk management, since it involves minimizing them at the initial stages of the implementation of construction projects. According to the Convention, the assessment procedure should be carried out at an early stage of planning (Paragraph 3 Article 2 of the Convention). The purpose of the study implies to consider environmental impact assessment as a successful construction risk management tool. This study is designed to analyze the effectiveness of the Convention's mechanisms in practice in risk management and create a reliable legal background for developing an innovative integrated and systematic method of assessing risks in the implementation of a construction projects. The implementation of such an integrated approach is primarily aimed at preventing the causes of the risk and not at eliminating the consequences of existing risks in current and potential infrastructure projects, the activities of which fall under the scope of the above-mentioned Convention.