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Integration of climate change considerations into environmental impact assessment — implementation, problems and recommendations for China |
I-Shin CHANG1, Jing WU2( ) |
1. College of Environment and Resources, Inner Mongolia University, Huhhot 010021, China; 2. College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China |
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Abstract Climate change plays an important role in affecting and altering the course of human development. So far, there have been no effective and efficient techniques to directly quantify the influences of climate change on human development, but there have been rough estimation and qualitative description of the effects. Since the 1990s, climate change considerations have been required to be included in environmental impact assessment, which is a flexible institutional framework of environmental risk evaluation and management. However, there have been no concrete achievements demonstrated. The purpose of this study was first to summarise the practical experience and to disclose the existing problems during the implementation of the process of integrating climate change considerations into environmental impact assessment in China through a case study. Currently in China, the practice of integrating climate change considerations into environmental impact assessment is mainly concentrated on the strategic environmental assessment level. The influences of climate change were identified as energy consumption, greenhouse gases emission, and the restraint of development under abnormal or extreme weather or climate conditions. Because of a lack of related technical guidelines and practical experience, the climate change considerations that have been selected and the evaluation methods that have been applied are quite different. Recommendations on policies, laws, and institutional regulations institution are proposed to better utilise environmental impact assessment to integrate climate change considerations into economic, social, and environmental decisions and actions.
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Keywords
climate change considerations
environmental impact assessment
energy consumption
greenhouse gases
low carbon
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Corresponding Author(s):
WU Jing,Email:wujing@nankai.edu.cn
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Issue Date: 01 August 2013
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