ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT
Environmental assessment involves the analysis of all possible impacts of a project. These impacts are both positive and negative. The assessment takes in social, natural, and economic perspectives. This assessment is necessary to equip the decision maker with adequate information on whether to authorize a project or not. However at times there are data gaps during the assessment forcing the one assessing to make estimates and assumptions based on their own expertise. The incorporation of these assumptions and estimates into the risk assessment process may impact on it negatively.
One reason why the use of estimates is not very recommendable in risk assessment is that there is no arithmetic involved. This means that the impacts or risks cannot be analyzed on a scale and hence their magnitude is determined by the perception of both the risk assessor and the decision maker. This in turn makes the process inaccurate and in some cases unreliable.
The fact that the estimates are also very subjective makes their use unviable. This is because what one risk assessor may consider an accurate estimate may not be the same for another. This therefore means that the whole process of risk assessment is then dependent on the expertise of the risk assessor. This is a great problem since the assessor may be wrong or unfamiliar with a situation and hence make the wrong estimate.
Absolute environmental hazard is not achievable. However it is recommended that over 75% of the hazards are eliminated and that a zero-risk policy is adapted (Callow, 1998, p. 214). The latter ensures that even when there are still some traces of harmful substances in the environment, they cannot pose any health, social, economic or environmental risk to anyone or anything near them.
REFERENCES
Callow, P. (1998). Handbook of Environmental Risk Assessment and Management. New Jersey:
Wiley
