Environmental Assessment is an inherently interdisciplinary mechanism which is concerned with the input and quality of information about the likely effects of development upon the environment. It is a useful tool for examining aspects of the relationship between law, governance, and the regulation of decision making, which have been central to the development of environmental law. In this volume, the procedural mechanism of environmental assessment is analysed. The author argues that, notwithstanding its procedural nature, environmental assessment is highly material to the outcome of a decision. A major focus of this analysis is the enhanced role of the developer in shaping the outcome of a decision by assuming responsibility for providing information on which a decision will be based, in accordance with a broader agenda of expanding the roles and responsibilities of participants in environmental decision making. The author draws upon several contemporary projects as case studies of assessment: a global port, an offshore windfarm, a flood defence strategy, and a recreation centre. In analysing these sites of decision making from a legal perspective, the author touches upon the key determinants of environmental assessment: discretion, the significance of environmental effects, alternative options, and participatory rights. Finally, the volume looks to the future development of environmental assessment: as an avenue for protest, and, alternatively, as a standardized component of international contracts for development.

Prizes

Winner of Joint-Second Prize Winner of the Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship, 2005.

'This is an important book, and it is clearly not just for students and academics, nor only for those whose prime interest is in the law of planning and development. Jane Holder has made a major contribution to the study of environmental regulation and protection.' * David Hughes, 2005, 17 Environmental Law and Management *
'This book provides far more than a detailed account of the emergence and development of environmental assessment as a regulatory mechanism (alongside the development of environmental law itself as a discrete discipline). The sheer depth and sophistication of the scholarship presented here, (which draws on literature from a broad range of disciplines) is outstanding...In sum, this is an excellent work. Holder's careful analysis enhances the reader's understanding of environmental assessment as an interdisciplinary, highly complex, and far from neutral process. The role of law in shaping and, at times reinforcing the competing interests and values that are at work within the process, is skilfully drawn out... * Áine Ryall, Yearbook of European Law, 24 *
'This book represents a formidable feat of scholarship. And since it has as many references to Habermas as it has to Lord Hoffman, its readership should not be confined to lawyers...Whether or not the future development of evironmental assessment continues to support Holder's pessimistic conclusion, this book will remain the definitive text for many years to come.' * Chris Miller, University of Salford, Environmental Law Review 7, (2005) 161 *
'Holder does not shirk [these] difficult questions; through an immpressively close examination of environmental assessment, Holder opens up some of the key dilemmas facing those concerned with the means by which we seek to protect the environment. This book is the type of wide ranging and imaginative legal scholarship that deserves the widest readership.' * Maria Lee, Kings College London, Environmental Values *

Dr. Jane Holder is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Laws at University College London (UCL), where she has worked since 1992. She is Co-director of the centr of Law and the Environment and the Centre of Law and the European Union at the Faculty of Laws at UCL, and is a member of the board of the journal Social Legal Studies.