8 - EIAs and the process and substance of international environmental law

Summary

Introduction

An underlying theme of this book is that international EIA commitments capture something of the spirit of international environmental governance in the post-Rio era. Insofar as EIAs are reflective of, or respond to, emerging features of international governance, they can provide insights into strategies for designing institutions intended to address transboundary and global environmental concerns. At the center of EIA commitments, at both the domestic and the international level, is the relationship between process and substance. In this concluding chapter, I want to return to the process–substance relationship as an organizing principle for discussing the main findings of this study. I do this not only because of the importance of this relationship to EIA commitments themselves, but also because this relationship plays out in important ways on a number of different levels within this study and within international governance structures more generally. To this end, I return to the central characteristics of international environmental governance identified at the outset of this study, namely, proceduralism, transnationalism and integration. While these characteristics were identified at the outset as having particular relevance for international EIA commitments, at this final stage it is helpful to consider how international EIA commitments respond to these trends, as this points to the future utility and limitations of EIA commitments in international governance structures.