Investigating the Quality of Wildlife and Biodiversity Terms of Reference in Environmental Impact Statements

Human activities due to implementation of projects has caused significant concerns on biodiversity in human societies. Hence, assessing the environmental impacts of those projects has been considered as a tool to help environmental managers to prevent emergence of those adverse impacts in general and those impacts which are related to biodiversity, in particular. It is provided that all components of the environment including biodiversityto be considered and integrated into environmental impact assessment process properly.
The present study revealed that Iranian environmental impact assessment guidelines, which has been ratified in 1994 suffers lack of sufficient and effective approach in integrating biodiversity, as has been stated in UN Biodiversity Convention, in its environmental impact assessment process.
In our study, we have applied a quantitative evaluation approach to investigate the quality of 50 environmental impact statements out of more than 1171 which have been ratified by Iran Environmental Protection Agency standpoint of biodiversity. Having analyzed sample-based data, binomial test has been applied for deducting population-based inferences relying on our sampling-based data.
Findings of the present study have indicated that biodiversity-related concerns are properly not addressed in more than half of the environmental impact statements at significance level of 95%. Accordingly, more attention on the biodiversity-related concerns should be paid by EIA practitioners considering the significance of biodiversity in general and wildlife in particular in our national environmental impact assessment system.