Effectiveness of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in addressing development-induced disasters: a comparison of the EIA processes of Sri Lanka and New Zealand

Disasters are no longer viewed as natural events, but as the results of ill-planned development and poor governance. It has been generally accepted that instruments such as Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) reduce disaster risks of development projects. This study evaluates the effectiveness of the EIA process in addressing disaster risks in development projects in Sri Lanka and New Zealand, two countries with quite different quality of governance. We find that governance quality does not result in substantive improvements, and neither of the two EIA processes is found to be effective in addressing disaster risk. This is due to inadequate policy integration of disaster risk into the environmental legislation that governs the EIA process. The results suggest that more specificity is needed in legislative provisions.