IEMA’s EIA Quality Mark will uphold quality practice within the green economy.

The Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA), the UK’s largest environmental professional association representing over 15,000 practitioners, is today launching a unique stamp of approval for organisations that demonstrate a dedication to excellence in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).

From today (Tuesday 17^th May 2011) consultancies and developers that regularly carry out EIAs can demonstrate their dedication to such quality practice by applying to use the EIA Quality Mark and join a register of 40 pre-approved organisations. The scheme will help planners, consultancies, developers, infrastructure bodies and construction companies to locate and work with externally verified EIA organisations from a central register and subsequently deliver a successful EIA project as part of delivering the green economy.

EIA, an assessment process that can be applied to new developments, ensures that the environment is considered during the early stages of any development project. It provides a mechanism by which the environmental effects generated by a development can be predicted allowing them to be reduced or avoided. As such EIA forms a critical part of the decision-making process for proposed developments.

With the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive having been in place for 25 years and any updates some years away, IEMA identified the need for a new measure of EIA performance while the UK replaces major infrastructure in pursuit of the low carbon economy. As a result, IEMA has developed the EIA Quality Mark scheme to ensure future EIA practice in the UK continues to uphold high standards of quality.

Martin Baxter, IEMA’s Executive Director-Policy, says “Ensuring that development makes economic sense, is good for society and works with the environment are at the heart of delivering the green economy”, said Baxter. “The 40 organisations that have so far gained the EIA Quality Mark have proven that they are capable of delivering sustainable development in practice.”

Three key elements of the scheme’s operations will ensure that the EIA Quality Mark generates improvement in EIA practice that hold benefits for developers, decision-makers, the environment and society:

1.      Organisations joining the scheme agree to operate their EIA activity in line with a series of EIA Commitments, allowing developers to benchmark performance.

2.      IEMA will independently check compliance with these EIA Commitments on an annual basis allowing decision-makers and communities to have greater confidence in the findings of assessments undertaken by EIA Quality Mark registrants.

3.      The EIA Quality Mark places action to enhance practice at its heart. As a consequence, the environment impacts of future development can be reduced helping to generate more sustainable forms of development.

The EIA Quality Mark has been specifically designed to ensure it generates multiple benefits for each registrant, IEMA’s 15,000 members and all those interested in improving UK EIA practice.  Ultimately, the EIA Quality Mark aims to assist the environmental profession in addressing the bigger picture of sustainable development. 

The Environment Agency’s National Environment Assessment Service (NEAS) recently became the first developer to boast the EIA Quality Mark. Ross Marshall, Director of NEAS, welcomes the scheme and their position as a founding organisation; “NEAS joined the EIA Quality Mark scheme to demonstrate the value as an asset operator that environmental impact assessments bring to our own infrastructure programmes and emphasise the need for continuous performance improvement. We are proud to be the first recipient of the EIA Quality Mark.”

To find out more about the EIA Quality Mark, including its EIA commitments and the current registrants, visit www.iema.net/qmark. For further details, images and comment opportunities contact Katrina Pierce at k.pierce@iema.net or call 01522 540069.