A proposal for integrating environmental impact assessment, cost-benefit analysis and multicriteria analysis in decision-making

Environmental decision-making is often a difficult process, in both developed and developing countries. Environmental degradation, public discontent, social conflicts, project delays, cost overruns, externalities and economic inefficiency are frequent results. To support decision-making, different evaluation approaches and techniques have been developed: environmental impact assessment; (extended) cost-benefit analysis; multicriteria analysis. Such tools are still fraught with problems; furthermore, they are developed and applied ‘in parallel’, and thus are not integrated. In this paper the key features of what could be an integrated approach are outlined. Many of the ideas are already well known, however, here they are amalgamated explicitly and in a structured form.