Abstract: Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) is an effort to anticipate, measure and weight the socio-economic and bio-Physical changes that may result from a proposed project. It assist decision makers in considering the proposed project’s environmental costs and benefits. Where the benefits sufficiently exceed the costs, the project can be viewed as environmentally justified. The environmental harm from a large project could be reduced if it’s probable environmental impacts were explored before the projects inception. The modern technological state intensifies the conflict between environmental values and developmental needs. Legal strategies are necessary to reconcile this conflict, and to augment sustainable development. EIA is an instrument of reconciliation. The Council on European Economic Committee, in the following words: The effects of a project on the environment must be assessed in order to take account of the concerns to protect human health, to contribute by means of a better environment to the quality of life, to ensure maintenance of the diversity of species and to maintain the reproductive capacity of the ecosystem as basic resource of life. Any project utilizing natural resources beyond their self-replenishing capacities or discharging emissions/wastes beyond assimilation capacities of receiving bodies, will have a profound impact on the environment. The extent of the impact will vary from project to project and from location to location. EIA is an effort to anticipate the measures and weigh the socio-economic and bio-physical changes that may result from a proposed project. Thus, EIA is potentially one of the most valuable, interdisciplinary, and objective decision making tools with respect to alternate routes for development, process technologies, and project sites.

Key Words: Environment, Effect, Justified, Protection, Project, Decision, Making

| DOI: 10.17148/IARJSET.2021.81033