16 - Environmental Impact Assessment Law and Land Use: A Comparative Analysis of Recent Trends in the Nigerian and U.S. Oil and Gas Industry

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The topic of environmental impact assessment (EIA) has generated a lot of interest among scholars, researchers, policymakers, politicians, advocates, and citizens. This perhaps accounts for the concern governments now attach to the topic. Most governments have reacted to this growing environmental concern by enacting statutory legislation regulating the environment, particularly on the subject of EIA and sustainable land use. In the United States, the main environmental statute is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969. The general principles, regulations, practice, and procedures for EIA are contained in the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), NEPA regulations, and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines. In Nigeria, the main environmental statute is the Federal Environmental Protection Agency Act (FEPAA). The rules, practices, and procedures for the EIA process are governed by FEPA and the object-specific legislation – the Environmental Impact Assessment Act.

Whereas NEPA sets forth significant substantive national environmental goals, its mandate provides for procedural action forcing national environmental policy–based general principles for EIA in the United States to ensure a fully informed and well-considered decision. Such a decision is not necessarily a decision the judges of the Courts of Appeal or of other courts would have reached had they been members of the decision-making unit of the agency. In the case of Nigeria, FEPAA took a “command and control” approach providing excruciating details of a national adjectival environmental protection objective.