The Improved Model of the Method, Rights, and Resources (MRR) for the Evaluation of the EIA System: Revising the Sustainability Indicators

Measuring effectiveness of environmental impact assessment systems is central to the implementation of environmental impact assessment, considering the debate about relevance and usefulness of environmental impact assessment systems. Many models for evaluating environmental impact assessment system's effectiveness have been developed. Difficulties in quantifying environmental impacts have restricted the effectiveness mostly to procedural effectiveness evaluation, though substantive effectiveness evaluation is better. The method, rights, and resources (MRR) model was initially developed to harness the indicator-based evaluation theory into the evaluation of environmental impact assessment system's effectiveness. This chapter reviews the method, rights, and resources model and proffers some improvement. The method, rights, and resources model evaluates environmental impact assessment systems using indicators of compliance, participation, and capacity. The indicators incorporate both procedural and substantive approaches; hence, it attempts to present a more indicative measure of environmental impact assessment system's effectiveness. The guiding idea in this chapter is that monitoring and evaluating environmental impact assessment systems should be embedded in the environmental impact assessment system itself as opposed to being concepts that are externally and subsequently applied on existing environmental impact assessment systems.