Abstract Determining if and why an impact is significant is a key task to inform decisions on the acceptability of a project through Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Hence, an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) should be coherent in reaching conclusions about impact significance and in reverberating them in recommendations about mitigation. In this paper we present a procedure to analyze whether significant impacts are addressed coherently in an EIS, by analyzing if significance determination is grounded in information presented in the baseline and project description, supported by prediction of impact magnitude and if it unfolds into mitigation measures. In order to test the procedure, we applied it to two EIS selected from the International Finance Corporation's database. Results show that all impacts classified as significant were supported by information presented in the baseline and project description, as well as connected to corresponding mitigation measures. However, prediction of impact magnitude was not substantiated either on qualitative or quantitative methods. We argue that coherence in addressing significant impacts is one measure of EIS quality. If an EIS does not address its impacts coherently its reliability and credibility are impaired.

中文翻译：

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在环境影响报告中连贯地处理重大影响

摘要 确定影响是否重要以及为什么重要是通过环境影响评估 (EIA) 为项目可接受性决策提供信息的一项关键任务。因此，环境影响报告 (EIS) 在得出有关影响重要性的结论并将其反映在有关缓解的建议中时应该是连贯的。在本文中，我们提出了一个程序来分析重大影响是否在 EIS 中得到一致解决，方法是分析重要性确定是否以基线和项目描述中提供的信息为基础，由影响程度的预测支持，以及它是否体现为缓解措施。为了测试该程序，我们将其应用于从国际金融公司数据库中选出的两个 EIS。结果表明，所有被归类为重大的影响都得到了基线和项目描述中提供的信息的支持，并与相应的缓解措施相关联。然而，无论是定性方法还是定量方法，对影响程度的预测都没有得到证实。我们认为，处理重大影响的连贯性是衡量 EIS 质量的一项措施。如果EIS 不能连贯地处理其影响，其可靠性和可信度就会受到损害。