Indicator System Study Of Cumulative Environmental Effects Assessment

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a kind of scientific method and technical process to analyze and forecast the changes of environmental quality caused by anthropic actions. After EIA system was established in U.S. in 1969, it has been used in more than one hundred countries and plays an important role in controlling and decreasing environmental pollution. But EIA has been used at projects level all along and is limited to microcosmic environmental management. Therefore some limitations emerged. Project EIA can only ratify or veto the project, bring forward mitigation measures, and cannot affect the initial decisions or programs. Project EIA cannot solve the cumulative effects, macroscopically effects and potential effects etc. of the development and construction actions. Project EIA cannot deal with the alternatives and mitigation measures in the round.Cumulative effects assessment calculating the impact of people's activities on environment from a large time-space scale. It is obvious that Cumulative effects assessment is required to perfect EIA system and carry out sustainable development strategy.In this thesis, some concrete topics of Cumulative effects assessment theory are discussed. What indicators should be used to evaluate the degree of environmental effects and the environmental sustainability of people's activities is very important to the theory system and practical operation of CEA.In this thesis, a series of appraisal indicators, "ecology—society—resource and energy" indicator system of Cumulative effects assessment is brought forward. Indicators of ecological environment, environmental quality, sustainable utilization of natural resource and energy, and pollution control and prevention are included in this indicator system based on statistical materials and data in existence, project EIA, ecological EIA, and sustainable development appraisal indicator system. The indicators of each level can be divided into several sub-indicators. In this thesis, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to identify the weight of individual...