The role of environmental impact assessment for global environmental protection:
Towards more practical solutions in environmental dispute settlements

ISHIBASHI Kanami

This paper analyses the new role of environmental impact assessment (EIA hereinafter) for global environmental protection. The EIA is mainly used for assessments of environmental impacts of projects carried for developments based on precautionary principle or precautionary approach, which aims to prevent from occurring any environmental damages in advance. However, nowadays, there are the new movement in the field of Law of the Sea and the Convention of Biodiversity (CBD hereinafter). While the UN Convention of Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) traditionally adopted sectorial approaches based on areas like territorial sea, EEZ or the high seas to rule and regulate states’ various rights and obligations, the above new convention is to be very different; it pursues only marine living environmental protection and somehow to override the existing states’ rights and obligations, particularly in the ABNJ (Area Beyond National Jurisdiction), depending on EIA system to be coordinated with CBD. Therefore, it is expected that the EIA would play much larger role for global environmental protection not only to implement precautionary principle or precautionary approach but also to provide better and practical solutions in dispute settlements. Eventually, it would contribute to the field of international environmental law as one of the core pillar which could be functioned in a cross-sectoral manner.