Legal Functions of the Concept of Significance in the Process of Environmental Impact Assessment

Abstract

Significance is an essential concept in the international, national and regional law texts that regulate the process of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).1 Nevertheless, there is no clear definition of the concept of significance in such legal texts.2 In other words, there is no clear legal definition of it; it is still undefined. It is important to stress that the concept of significance has a threshold/limit function in the EIA process. This threshold/limit function provides the acceptability of the possible negative impacts. In practice, it is common that traditional law is not able to find solutions with its traditional concept of damage nor it is possible to implement the concept of damage in a concrete case. Therefore, the concept of possible negative impact is contained in the legal texts as an alternative for the cases where the damages appear in the long term. The concept that legally provides the acceptability of possible negative impacts is the significance. Thus, the activity shall not be permitted even though there is no damage projected.