EIA follow-up - linking impact assessment with implementation

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has revolutionised the range of environmental considerations applied to projects pre-decision. However, this emphasis on the pre-decision stages and on the preparation of the Environmental Impact Statements often deflects attention from the actual environmental impacts of a development and the effectiveness of the enacted mitigation strategies. Practitioners should not forget the important role that EIA can continue to play post-decision. In this article Ross Marshall and Angus Morrison-Saunders argue that practitioners need to pay greater attention to follow-up during the post-decision phases of EIA.