Press Release

May 12, 2016
  • Environmental Policy

Asia EIA Conference 2016 was held in Nagoya

Asia EIA Conference 2016 was held in Nagoya, May 12, 2016, where, in the presence of Directors General from 15 Asian countries, participants discussed developing to strengthen mutual learning to address key challenges in Asian countries and the region by promoting exchange of lessons, discussing how Asian countries can learn from good practices, adopt or scale up them in their countries, and matchmaking needs and good practices with other countries and/or development agencies through this network/community.

Having been reaffirmed by the participants that EIA is a significant tool for sustainable development in Asia, and, for fostering it, they also expressed their interest in joining similar discussions in future and called for further collaboration by all concerned stakeholders, including national and local governments.

The results of this conference provided input to the International Association for Impact Assessment 2016 (IAIA16).

  1. Date and Time

    9:00 -18:20, May 10th (Tue), 2016

  2. Venue

    Castle Plaza

    Mei-Eki, 4-3-25, Nakamura-Ku, Nagoya city

    450-0002, Aichi Prefecture

  3. Host of the Conference

    ✔ The Conference was hosted by Ministry of the Environment of Japan, in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

    ✔ Besides, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) and Convention Linkage, Inc. served as the secretariat.

  4. Participants

    Participants of approx. 100 in total are consisted of;

    ✔ Directors General in charge of EIA and experts from 15 Asian countries (Kingdom of Cambodia, People's Republic of China, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Korea, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Republic of Maldives, Mongolia, Republic of the Union of Myanmar, Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, Republic of the Philippines, Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, Kingdom of Thailand, Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, and Japan).

    ✔ Government officials from the United States of America and Australia.

    ✔ Representatives of International Organizations including the Asian Development Bank (ADB), International Finance Corporation (IFC), Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the World Bank, and, so on.

    ✔ Persons concerned with EIA from home and abroad other than the above.

  5. Summary of the conference

    ✔ The keynote speeches were given by Dr. Stephen Lintner, the globally known expert of EIA, who enlightened the participants to the great potential of EIA and its future vision towards sustainable development, and by Mr. Davis Jones from United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), who underlined the importance of EIA as a tool for ensuring social and environmental safeguards are considered as countries expand their infrastructure and industrial development.

    ✔ The presentation of research findings by IGES shed light on common and unique challenges and opportunities across the seven countries, such as Cambodia, Indonesia, Korea, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Viet Nam.

    ✔ Thematic group discussions were conducted respectively in four areas of 1)the quality of EIA, 2)information disclosure and public participation, 3)implementation of environmental management and monitoring plan (EMMP),and 4)Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and upstream EIA, where selected country representatives shared good practices and participants discussed the root causes of existing challenges of EIA implementation, good practices, and recommendations.

    ✔ That afternoon, with the outcomes of the group discussion and exchange with development agencies, a panel discussion was conducted by government officials from each of the seven Asian countries and Japan to see how EIA and related policies can play an enhanced role in a broader perspective.

    ✔ Lastly, the chairman's summary was welcomed by the participants. In short, it says:

    The participants agreed that realization of both environmental conservation and economic growth is important for sustainable society and recognized that EIA has increasingly played an essential role for achieving it. While many Asian countries have introduced EIA systems, there is still room to improve the systems and to strengthen, as the region faces rapid economic progress and associated infrastructure and industrial development. The participants were encouraged to strengthen EIA system nationally to achieve sustainable development across Asia. They recognized mutual learning among countries is to be one of the meaningful ways to promote sound implementation of EIA, and expected to continue communication and cooperation among the participants through the strengthened networking which evolves from this conference.

    Environmental Impact Assessment Division

    Environmental Policy Bureau

    Ministry of the Environment

    Phone (Dial in)  :  03 5521 8236

For Japanese

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